Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

More details continue to trickle out about OpenAI’s mysterious new hardware device — described previously as an AI-fueled smart speaker that will be the “physical manifestation” of ChatGPT. Bloomberg now reports that the device will be “donut-shaped,” designed thusly to allow users to carry it around their home and place it in different locations, like a bedside table or a kitchen counter. It will be constructed from “high-quality metal,” have a “premium look,” and (in a detail that mystifies) will have distinct “moving parts,” sources told Bloomberg. It also could be slightly more expensive than your average smart speaker, perhaps…

Swati KhandelwalAug 07, 2026Web Security / Vulnerability PortSwigger says HTTP Terminator, an artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted research system built by James Kettle, generated and proved new HTTP desynchronization techniques after exploring 30,000 candidate desync vectors. PortSwigger said a separate human-guided discovery cascade also exposed a zero-day in Apache Traffic Server. Kettle said HTTP Terminator tested 30,000 websites where scanning was authorized through bug bounty or vulnerability disclosure programs and found roughly 700 vulnerable targets before deeper validation and RQP research. Kettle said those findings involved banks, government infrastructure, security products, and an airport. The research produced new desync triggers, a dual-matching…

BTCPay Server has temporarily restricted public remote connections to Lightning Network nodes running Lightning Network Daemon (LND) software after attackers exploited a critical vulnerability to obtain credentials and move funds. BTCPay said the restriction prevents external wallets such as Zeus from connecting through a BTCPay Server domain or Tor onion address on Docker deployments. BTCPay said Lightning payments can continue and that it plans to restore the remote-access option when it considers it safe. Version 2.4.2 installs LND version 0.21.1 and automatically regenerates the macaroon credentials on standard BTCPay installations. The project advised operators to check for unauthorized payments, unexpected channel closures,…

As the new season of Ted Lasso started, I was reminded of one of the show’s stranger storylines. When Dani “Football is life!” Rojas gets injured, his teammates blame the incident on a curse said to haunt the treatment room.Absurd? Perhaps. But sports curses aren’t just fictional plot devices. Football is fertile ground for stories of mysterious forces, blamed for everything from missed penalties to decades of failure.Take Mayo’s Gaelic football team. After they won the All-Ireland title in 1951, the story goes that a local priest cursed them, declaring they would not win another final until every member of…

Until a few years ago, a small stream meandered down a long valley flanked by sheer ridges in Umiujaq, a subarctic village in northern Quebec. The waterway had pretty much hewed to that course since the earth’s crust rebounded after the last ice age.Newcomers from the south, though, had other ideas.A crew of bucktoothed, paddle-tailed beavers has erected five dams, the most impressive being as tall as a city bus and even longer. The sound of cascading water is heard half a mile away. Toads paddle inside the large ponds that now pockmark the valley, beneficiaries of the hydrological attenuation…

Representative Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, thought he was going to make himself a political pariah when he announced publicly that he did not believe in God.Mr. Huffman, the only self-declared “humanist” in Congress, found that constituents in his mostly liberal Northern California district were unfazed.Now Mr. Huffman has written a book in which he takes on how religion influences politics in America, in which he argues that extreme Christian nationalism, embraced and enabled by influential Republicans, is the country’s most dangerous political movement. He also accuses many of his own Democratic colleagues of being “incapable” of naming and confronting…

In the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election, as President Trump refused to accept defeat and pumped out false claims about voter fraud, Mike Rogers was a clear and consistent voice of reproach.Mr. Rogers, a former Republican representative from Michigan, denounced Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the election as “cause for both concern and alarm.” He ripped the president’s pressure on Georgia’s top election official “as more gangster than presidential.” As for Mr. Trump’s role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Rogers declared, “You’re damn right you had responsibility for this.”But as he aims…

A New Mexico Court judge on Thursday ordered Meta to pay a fine of $567 million, on top of the $375 million levied in March, in a case regarding social media harms and addiction. This brings the total fines the company has to pay to $942 million. The court also ordered Meta to make changes to how its platforms function in the state: It wants the company to remove Like counts, and only show such metrics to children under 18 with approval from a parent or a guardian. Push notifications to underaged users in the state are also to be…

Latest NewsPublishedAug 9, 2026The rules, effective Jan. 1, 2027, cover transactions above $10,000 sent to overseas providers or self-custody wallets, along with other transfers flagged for review.Brazil’s central bank will require virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to place precautionary holds of up to 24 hours on certain transfers to foreign platforms or self-custody wallets as part of new measures aimed at preventing fraud. On Friday, the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) said the requirement will apply to funds received above $10,000, either in a single transaction or based on a customer’s total transactions in a day. Providers must also hold other…

HAIGLER, Neb.—The far southwestern corner of this state unfurls in a rolling sea of dusky-green prairie where cattle have outnumbered people for generations. A sign along U.S. Highway 34, just before the road crosses into Dundy County from Colorado, reads “Welcome to Beef Country.” Another along State Highway 27, which wanders north from the shortgrass hills of northwest Kansas, declares Dundy a “livestock friendly county.”  Nearly everything here—the farm supply stores, the corn fields, the gas stations, the hotels, the schools, the bars—operates, one way or another, in service of the great American beef machine. Every grumbling cattle-hauling semi-truck, every…