Smishers looking for new infrastructure are getting creative. Scammers have been abusing unsecured cellular routers used in industrial settings to blast SMS-based phishing messages in campaigns that have been ongoing since 2023, researchers said. The routers, manufactured by China-based Milesight IoT Co., Ltd., are rugged Internet of Things devices…
Giant sloths are extinct in part because they were tasty and nutritious. The extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna may be people’s fault after all, according to a recent study. A team of archaeologists recently examined animal bones at sites dating to the waning years of the last Ice Age. Their…
xAI’s claim that Apple gave ChatGPT a monopoly on prompts is “baseless,” OpenAI says. OpenAI and Apple have moved to dismiss a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s xAI alleging that ChatGPT’s integration into a “handful” of iPhone features violated antitrust laws by giving OpenAI a monopoly on prompts and Apple…
The Korean automaker’s price cut comes in as the clean vehicle tax credit dies. Earlier today, we wrote about how Ford, General Motors, and Tesla have reacted to the end of the clean vehicle tax credits. Now we know what Hyundai is doing, and the answer is “giving the…
Cord reviving isn’t common but points to discontent with today’s streaming options. Streaming is overtaking broadcast, cable, and satellite. But amid all the cord cutting lies a much smaller, yet intriguing, practice: going back to cable. Cord reviving is when cord cutters, or people who previously abandoned traditional TV…
Sora social app launches with deepfake-style “cameos” and feed controls. On Tuesday, OpenAI announced Sora 2, its second-generation video-synthesis AI model that can now generate videos in various styles with synchronized dialogue and sound effects, which is a first for the company. OpenAI also launched a new iOS social…
New order in September narrowed access request down to data of UK citizens. The UK government has issued a new order to Apple to create a backdoor into its cloud storage service, this time targeting only British users’ data, despite US claims that Britain had abandoned all attempts to…
Tesla is raising lease prices; Ford and GM may have found a loophole. Just after midnight this morning, in addition to getting a federal government shutdown, we also lost all federal tax credits for new electric vehicles, used electric vehicles, and commercial electric vehicles. Sadly, this was not a…
TV tie-ins aside, it’s the combat tweaks over the past year that really matter. Like anybody, I have a few controversial gaming opinions and tastes. One of the most controversial is that Fallout 76 —the multiplayer take on Bethesda’s rethink of a beloved ’90s open-world computer roleplaying game—has been…
Google promises a better smart home experience thanks to Gemini. Google’s products and services have been flooded with AI features over the past couple of years, but smart home has been largely spared until now. The company’s plans to replace Assistant are moving forward with a big Google Home…
