An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: What did Ilya see?" Two years ago, it was the meme seen 'round the world (or at least 'round the tech industry). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had been briefly ousted in November 2023 by members of the company's board of directors, including his longtime collaborator and fellow cofounder Ilya Sutskever. The board claimed Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board," undermining their confidence in him. He was out for less than a week before being reinstated after hundreds of employees threatened to resign. But observers wondered: What hadn't Altman been candid about? And what led Sutskever to turn against him?

Now, new details have come to light in a legal deposition involving Sutskever, part of Musk's ongoing lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI. For nearly 10 hours on October 1st, bookended by repeated sniping between Musk's and Sutsever's attorneys, Sutskever answered questions about the turmoil around Altman's ouster, from conflicts between executives to short-lived merger talks with Anthropic. He testified that from personal experience and documentation he'd viewed, he'd seen Altman pit high-ranking executives against each other and offer conflicting information about his plans for the company, telling people what they wanted to hear.

The testimony paints a picture of a leader who could be manipulative and chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda -- though Sutskever expressed hesitation about his reliance on some of the secondhand accounts later in testimony, saying he "learned the critical importance of firsthand knowledge for matters like this." In a statement toThe Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said that "The events of 2023 are behind us. These claims were fully examined during the board's independent review, which unanimously concluded Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI." The comment echoes a 2024 statement by board chair Bret Taylor, following an investigation conducted by the company. Altman "exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another," reads a quote from the memo Sutskever. Altman told him and Jakub Pachocki, who is now OpenAI's chief scientist, "conflicting things about the way the company would be run," leading to internal conflict and repeated undermining.

Sutskever said he also faulted Altman for "not accepting or rejecting" former OpenAI research executive Dario Amodei Dario's conditions when he wanted to run all research and fire OpenAI president Greg Brockman, implying Altman played both sides.

Furthermore, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati surfaced claims that Altman left Y Combinator for "similar behaviors. He was creating chaos, starting lots of new projects, pitting people against each other, and thus was not managing YC well."

Three employees at cybersecurity companies spent years moonlighting as criminal hackers, launching their own ransomware attacks in a plot to extort millions of dollars from victims around the country, US prosecutors alleged in court filings. From a report: Ryan Clifford Goldberg, a former incident response supervisor at Sygnia Consulting, and Kevin Tyler Martin, who was a ransomware negotiator for DigitalMint, were charged with working together to hack five businesses starting in May 2023. In one instance, they, along with a third person, received a ransom payment of nearly $1.3 million worth of cryptocurrency from a medical device company based in Tampa, Florida, according to prosecutors.

The trio worked in a part of the cybersecurity industry that has sprung up to help companies negotiate with hackers to unfreeze their computer networks -- sometimes by paying ransom. They are also accused of sharing their illicit profits with the developers of the type of ransomware they allegedly used on their victims. DigitalMint informed some customers about the charges last week, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News.

The other person who was allegedly involved in the scheme was also a ransomware negotiator at the same firm as Martin but wasn't charged, according to court records. The person wasn't identified in court records, nor were the companies that were the defendants' former employers. Sygnia confirmed Goldberg had worked there. Martin last year gave a talk at a law school, which listed him as an employee of DigitalMint.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.S. prosecutors have charged two rogue employees of a cybersecurity company that specializes in negotiating ransom payments to hackers on behalf of their victims with carrying out ransomware attacks of their own. Last month, the Department of Justice indicted Kevin Tyler Martin and another unnamed employee, who both worked as ransomware negotiators at DigitalMint, with three counts of computer hacking and extortion related to a series of attempted ransomware attacks against at least five U.S.-based companies.

Prosecutors also charged a third individual, Ryan Clifford Goldberg, a former incident response manager at cybersecurity giant Sygnia, as part of the scheme. The three are accused of hacking into companies, stealing their sensitive data, and deploying ransomware developed by the ALPHV/BlackCat group. [...] According to an FBI affidavit filed in September, the rogue employees received more than $1.2 million in ransom payments from one victim, a medical device maker in Florida. They also targeted several other companies, including a Virginia-based drone maker and a Maryland-headquartered pharmaceutical company.

A new class-action lawsuit accuses Spotify of allowing billions of fraudulent Drake streams generated by bots between 2022 and 2025, allegedly inflating his royalties at the expense of other artists. "Spotify pays streaming royalties using a 'pro-rata' model based on an artist's market share," notes Consequence. "Each month, revenue from subscriptions and ads is collected into a single, fixed 'pot' of money, which is then distributed to rights holders based on their percentage of the platform's total streams. Because this pot is fixed, an artist who artificially inflates their numbers through bots would dilute the value of every legitimate stream. This allows them to take a larger share of the pot than they earned, effectively siphoning royalties that should have gone to other artists." From the report: According to Rolling Stone, the lawsuit alleges bot use is a widespread problem on Spotify. However, Drake is the only example named, based on "voluminous information" which the company "knows or should know" that proves a "substantial, non-trivial percentage" of his approximately 37 billion streams were "inauthentic and appeared to be the work of a sprawling network of Bot Accounts."

The complaint claims this alleged fraudulent activity took place between "January 2022 and September 2025," with an examination of "abnormal VPN usage" revealing at least 250,000 streams of Drake's song "No Face" during a four-day period in 2024 were actually from Turkey "but were falsely geomapped through the coordinated use of VPNs to the United Kingdom in [an] attempt to obscure their origins." Other notable allegations in the lawsuit are that "a large percentage" of accounts were concentrated in areas where the population could not support such a high volume of streams, including those with "zero residential addresses." The suit also points to "significant and irregular uptick months" for Drake's songs long after their release, as well as a "slower and less dramatic" downtick in streams compared to other artists.

Noting a "staggering and irregular" streaming of Drake's music by individuals, the suit also claims there are a "massive amount of accounts" listening to his songs "23 hours a day." Less than 2% of those users account for "roughly 15 percent" of his streams. "Drake's music accumulated far higher total streams compared to other highly streamed artists, even though those artists had far more 'users' than Drake," the lawsuit concludes.

CBS News investigates what happened when police thought they'd tracked down a "porch pirate" who'd stolen a package — and accused an innocent woman.

"You know why I'm here," the police sergeant tells Chrisanna Elser. "You know we have cameras in that town..." "It went right into, 'we have video of you stealing a package,'" Elser said... "Can I see the video?" Elser asked. "If you go to court, you can," the officer replied. "If you're going to deny it, I'm not going to extend you any courtesy...." [You can watch a video of the entire confrontation.] On her doorstep, the officer issued a summons, without ever looking at the surveillance video Elser had. "We can show you exactly where we were," she told him. "I already know where you were," he replied.

Her Rivian — equipped with multiple cameras — had recorded her entire route that day... It took weeks of her collecting her own evidence, building timelines, and submitting videos before someone listened. Finally, she received an email from the Columbine Valley police chief acknowledging her efforts in an email saying, "nicely done btw (by the way)," and informing her the summons would not be filed.
Elser also found the theft video (which the police officer refused to show her) on Nextdoor, reports Electrek. "The woman has the same color hair, but different facial and nose shape and apparent age than Elser, which is all reasonably apparent when viewing the video..."

But Elser does drive a green Rivian truck, which police knew had entered the neighborhood 20 times over the course of a month. (Though in the video the officer is told that a male driver in the same household passes through that neighborhood driving to and from work.) The problem may be their certainty — derived from Flock's network of cameras that automatically read license plates, "tracking movements of vehicles wherever they go..." The system has provoked concern from privacy and freedom focused organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union. Flock also recently announced a partnership with Ring, seeking to use a network of doorbell cameras to track Americans in even more places.... [The police] didn't even have video of the truck in the area — merely tags of it entering... (it also left the area minutes later, indicating a drive through, rather than crawling through neighborhoods looking for packages — but police neglected to check the exit timestamps)... Elser has asked for an apology for [officer] Milliman's aggressive behavior during the encounter, but has heard nothing back from the department despite a call, email, and physical appearance at the police station.
The article points out that Rivian's "Road Cam" feature can be set to record footage of everything happening around it using the car's built in cameras for driver-assist features. But if you want to record footage all the time, you'll need to plug in a USB-C external drive to store it. (It's ironic how different cameras recorded every part of this story — the theft, the police officer accusing the innocent woman, and that innocent woman's actual whereabouts.)

Electrek's take? "Citizens should not need to own a $70k+ truck, or even a $100 external hard drive, to keep track of everything they do in order to prove to power-tripping officers that they didn't commit a crime."

Trevor McNally posts videos of himself opening locks. The former Marine has 7 million followers and nearly 10 million people watched him open a Proven Industries trailer hitch lock in April using a shim cut from an aluminum can. The Florida company responded by filing a federal lawsuit in May charging McNally with eight offenses. Judge Mary Scriven denied the preliminary injunction request in June and found the video was fair use.

McNally's followers then flooded the company with harassment. Proven dismissed the case in July and asked the court to seal the records. The company had initiated litigation over a video that all parties acknowledged was accurate. ArsTechnica adds: Judging from the number of times the lawsuit talks about 1) ridicule and 2) harassment, it seems like the case quickly became a personal one for Proven's owner and employees, who felt either mocked or threatened. That's understandable, but being mocked is not illegal and should never have led to a lawsuit or a copyright claim. As for online harassment, it remains a serious and unresolved issue, but launching a personal vendetta -- and on pretty flimsy legal grounds -- against McNally himself was patently unwise. (Doubly so given that McNally had a huge following and had already responded to DMCA takedowns by creating further videos on the subject; this wasn't someone who would simply be intimidated by a lawsuit.)

In the end, Proven's lawsuit likely cost the company serious time and cash -- and generated little but bad publicity.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2 billion cloud-computing deal in 2021, their customer -- the Israeli government -- had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code as part of an arrangement that would become known as the "winking mechanism." The demand, which would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world, was born out of Israel's concerns that data it moves into the global corporations' cloud platforms could end up in the hands of foreign law enforcement authorities.

Like other big tech companies, Google and Amazon's cloud businesses routinely comply with requests from police, prosecutors and security services to hand over customer data to assist investigations. This process is often cloaked in secrecy. The companies are frequently gagged from alerting the affected customer their information has been turned over. This is either because the law enforcement agency has the power to demand this or a court has ordered them to stay silent. For Israel, losing control of its data to authorities overseas was a significant concern. So to deal with the threat, officials created a secret warning system: the companies must send signals hidden in payments to the Israeli government, tipping it off when it has disclosed Israeli data to foreign courts or investigators.

To clinch the lucrative contract, Google and Amazon agreed to the so-called winking mechanism, according to leaked documents seen by the Guardian, as part of a joint investigation with Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. Based on the documents and descriptions of the contract by Israeli officials, the investigation reveals how the companies bowed to a series of stringent and unorthodox "controls" contained within the 2021 deal, known as Project Nimbus. Both Google and Amazon's cloud businesses have denied evading any legal obligations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since launching Google Play (nee Android Market) in 2008, Google has never made a change to the US store that it didn't want to make -- until now. Having lost the antitrust case brought by Epic Games, Google has implemented the first phase of changes mandated by the court. Developers operating in the Play Store will have more freedom to direct app users to resources outside the Google bubble. However, Google has not given up hope of reversing its loss before it's forced to make bigger changes. Epic began pursuing this case in 2020, stemming from its attempt to sell Fortnite content without going through Google's payment system. It filed a similar case against Apple, but the company fell short there because it could not show that Apple put its thumb on the scale. Google, however, engaged in conduct that amounted to suppressing the development of alternative Android app stores. It lost the case and came up short on appeal this past summer, leaving the company with little choice but to prepare for the worst.

Google has updated its support pages to confirm that it's abiding by the court's order. In the US, Play Store developers now have the option of using external payment platforms that bypass the Play Store entirely. This could hypothetically allow developers to offer lower prices, as they don't have to pay Google's commission, which can be up to 30 percent. Devs will also be permitted to direct users to sources for app downloads and payment methods outside the Play Store. Google's support page stresses that these changes are only being instituted in the US version of the Play Store, which is all the US District Court can require. The company also notes that it only plans to adhere to this policy "while the US District Court's order remains in effect." Judge James Donato's order runs for three years, ending on November 1, 2027.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The International Criminal Court will switch its internal work environment away from Microsoft Office to Open Desk, a European open source alternative, the institution confirmed to Euractiv. The switch comes amid rising concerns about public bodies being reliant on US tech companies to run their services, which have stepped up sharply since the start of US President Donald Trump's second administration.

For the ICC, such concerns are not abstract: Trump has repeatedly lashed out at the court and slapped sanctions on its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. Earlier this year, the AP also reported that Microsoft had cancelled Khan's email account, a claim the company denies. "We value our relationship with the ICC as a customer and are convinced that nothing impedes our ability to continue providing services to the ICC in the future," a Microsoft spokesperson told Euractiv.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: A mother with court-ordered custody of her children has described how Apple's Family Sharing feature can be weaponized by a former partner. Apple support staff were unable to assist her when she reported her former partner using the service in controlling and coercive ways... [...] Namely, Family Sharing gives all the control to one parent, not to both equally. The parent not identified as the organizer is unable to withdraw their children from this control, even when they have a court order granting them custody. As one woman's story shows, this can allow the feature which allows it to be weaponized by an abusive former partner.

Wired reports: "The lack of dual-organizer roles, leaving other parents effectively as subordinate admins with more limited power, can prove limiting and frustrating in blended and shared households. And in darker scenarios, a single-organizer setup isn't merely inconvenient -- it can be dangerous. Kate (name changed to protect her privacy and safety) knows this firsthand. When her marriage collapsed, she says, her now ex-husband, the designated organizer, essentially weaponized Family Sharing. He tracked their children's locations, counted their screen minutes and demanded they account for them, and imposed draconian limits during Kate's custody days while lifting them on his own [...] After they separated, Kate's ex refused to disband the family group. But without his consent, the children couldn't be transferred to a new one. "I wrongly assumed being the custodial parent with a court order meant I'd be able to have Apple move my children to a new family group, with me as the organizer," says Kate. But Apple couldn't help. Support staff sympathized but said their hands were tied because the organizer holds the power." Although users can "abandon the accounts and start again with new Apple IDs," the report notes that doing so means losing all purchased apps, along with potentially years' worth of photos and videos.

ExxonMobil has sued California, claiming the state's new climate disclosure laws violate its First Amendment rights by forcing the company to report greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks using standards it "fundamentally disagrees with." The Verge reports: The oil and gas company claims that the two laws in question aim to "embarrass" large corporations the state "believes are uniquely responsible for climate change" in order to push them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. There is overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels cause climate change by trapping heat on the planet. [...] Under laws the state passed in 2023, "ExxonMobil will be forced to describe its emissions and climate-related risks in terms the company fundamentally disagrees with," a complaint filed Friday says. The suit asks a US District Court to stop the laws from being enforced.

[...] ExxonMobil's latest suit now says the company "understands the very real risks associated with climate change and supports continued efforts to address those risks," but that California's laws would force it "to describe its emissions and climate-related risks in terms the company fundamentally disagrees with." "These laws are about transparency. ExxonMobil might want to continue keeping the public in the dark, but we're ready to litigate vigorously in court to ensure the public's access to these important facts," Christine Lee, a spokesperson for the California Department of Justice, said in an email to The Verge.

Australia's competition regulator sued Microsoft today, accusing it of misleading millions of customers into paying higher prices for its Microsoft 365 software after bundling it with AI tool Copilot. From a report: The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged that from October 2024, the technology giant misled about 2.7 million customers by suggesting they had to move to higher-priced Microsoft 365 personal and family plans that included Copilot.

After the integration of Copilot, the annual subscription price of the Microsoft 365 personal plan increased by 45% to A$159 ($103.32) and the price of the family plan increased by 29% to A$179, the ACCC said. The regulator said Microsoft failed to clearly tell users that a cheaper "classic" plan without Copilot was still available.

Reason.com explores the fortunes of Aurora Innovation, the first company to put heavy-duty commercial self-driving trucks on public roads (and hopes to expand routes to El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix by the end of the year): An obscure federal rule is slowing the self-driving revolution. When trucks break down, operators are required to place reflective warning cones and road flares around the truck to warn other motorists. The regulations areexacting: Within 10 minutes of stopping, three warning signals must be set in specific locations around the truck. Auroraaskedthe federal Department of Transportation (DOT) to allow warning beacons to be fixed to the truck itself — and activated when a truck becomes disabled. The warning beacons would face both forward and backward, would be more visibleâthan cones (particularly at night), and wouldn't burn out like road flares. Drivers of nonautonomous vehicles could also benefit from that rule change, as they would no longer have to walk into traffic to place the required safety signals.

In December 2024, however, the Transportation Department denied Aurora's request for an exemption to the existing rules, even though regulatorsadmittedin theFederal Registerthat no evidence indicated the truck-mounted beacons would be less safe. Such a study is now underway, but it's unclear how long it will take to draw any conclusions.
The article notes that Aurora has now filed a lawsuit in federal court that seeks to overturn the Transportation Department's denial...

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

"Exxon Mobil sued California on Friday," reports Reuters, "challenging two state laws that require large companies to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks." In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Exxon argued that Senate Bills 253 and 261 violate its First Amendment rights by compelling Exxon to "serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees," and asked the court to block the state of California from enforcing the laws. Exxon said the laws force it to adopt California's preferred frameworks for climate reporting, which it views as misleading and counterproductive...

The California laws were supported by several big companies including Apple, Ikea and Microsoft, but opposed by several major groups such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which called them "onerous." SB 253 requires public and private companies that are active in the state and generate revenue of more than $1 billion annually to publish an extensive account of their carbon emissions starting in 2026. The law requires the disclosure of both the companies' own emissions and indirect emissions by their suppliers and customers. SB 261 requires companies that operate in the state with over $500 million in revenue to disclose climate-related financial risks and strategies to mitigate risk. Exxon also argued that SB 261 conflicts with existing federal securities laws, which already regul

"The First Amendment bars California from pursuing a policy of stigmatization by forcing Exxon Mobil to describe its non-California business activities using the State's preferred framing," Exxon said in the lawsuit.
Exxon Mobil "asks the court to prevent the laws from going into effect next year," reports the Associated Press: In its complaint, ExxonMobil says it has for years publicly disclosed its greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related business risks, but it fundamentally disagrees with the state's new reporting requirements. The company would have to use "frameworks that place disproportionate blame on large companies like ExxonMobil" for the purpose of shaming such companies, the complaint states...

A spokesperson for the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an email that it was "truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency."

An anonymous reader shares this report from the Associated Press: Myanmar's military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite internet terminals, state media reported Monday... The centers are infamous for recruiting workers from other countries under false pretenses, promising them legitimate jobs and then holding them captive and forcing them to carry out criminal activities.

Scam operations were in the international spotlight last week when the United States and Britain enacted sanctions against organizers of a major Cambodian cyberscam gang, and its alleged ringleader was indicted by a federal court in New York. According to a report in Monday's Myanma Alinn newspaper, the army raided KK Park, a well-documented cybercrime center, as part of operations starting in early September to suppress online fraud, illegal gambling, and cross-border cybercrime.

Automattic has filed counterclaims against WP Engine in a lawsuit the hosting company initiated in October 2024. The counterclaims accuse WP Engine of trademark infringement and deceptive marketing practices. After private equity firm Silver Lake invested $250 million in WP Engine, the hosting company began calling itself "The WordPress Technology Company" and allowed partners to refer to it as "WordPress Engine," the lawsuit says. WP Engine also launched products named "Core WordPress" and "Headless WordPress."

The counterclaims allege that WP Engine promised to commit 5% of its resources to the WordPress ecosystem but failed to keep those promises. Automattic contends that WP Engine engaged in trademark violations to avoid licensing fees that would have affected the company's earnings and valuation. Silver Lake sought to sell WP Engine at a $2 billion valuation but could not find a buyer. The filing notes that potential buyers included Automattic. The counterclaims also assert that WP Engine degraded product quality and removed essential features to reduce costs during this period.

A UK tribunal ruled that Apple abused its dominant position by charging app developers unfair commissions through its App Store, potentially costing the company hundreds of millions in damages. It marks the first major tech "class action" victory under the UK's collective lawsuit regime. Reuters reports: The Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled against Apple after a trial of the lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of millions of iPhone and iPad users in the United Kingdom. The CAT ruled that Apple had abused its dominant position from October 2015 until the end of 2020 by shutting out competition in the app distribution market and by "charging excessive and unfair prices" as commission to developers.

Apple -- which has faced mounting pressure from regulators in the U.S. and Europe over the fees it charges developers -- said it would appeal against the ruling, which it said "takes a flawed view of the thriving and competitive app economy." The case had been valued at around $2 billion by those who brought it. A hearing next month will decide how damages are calculated and Apple's application for permission to appeal. "This ruling overlooks how the App Store helps developers succeed and gives consumers a safe, trusted place to discover apps and securely make payments," an Apple spokesperson said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Social media platform Reddit sued AI startup Perplexity in New York federal court on Wednesday, accusing it and three other companies of unlawfully scraping its data to train Perplexity's AI-based search engine. Reddit said in the complaint that the data-scraping companies circumvented its data protection measures in order to steal data that Perplexity "desperately needs" to power its "answer engine" system.

The German Koblenz Regional Court has banned the internet service provider 1&1 from marketing its fiber-to-the-curb service as fiber-optic DSL. The court found that the company misled customers because its network uses copper cables for the final stage of connections, sometimes extending up to a mile from the distribution box to subscribers' homes.

Customers who visited the ISP's website and checked connection availability received a notification stating that a "1&1 fiber optic DSL connection" was available, even though fiber optic cables terminate at street-level distribution boxes or building service rooms. The company pairs the copper lines with vectoring technology to boost DSL speeds to 100 megabits per second. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations filed the lawsuit. Ramona Pop, the organization's chairperson, said that anyone who promises fiber optics but delivers only DSL is deceiving customers.

Apple lashed out at the European Union's attempts to tame the power of Silicon Valley in the most far-reaching legal challenge of the bloc's Big Tech antitrust rules. From a report: The iPhone maker's lawyer Daniel Beard told the General Court in Luxembourg on Tuesday that the Digital Markets Act "imposes hugely onerous and intrusive burdens" at odds with Apple's rights in the EU marketplace.

The DMA came onto the EU's books in 2023 and is designed to clip the wings of the world's largest technology platforms with a slew of dos and don'ts. But over recent months, the law has also drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump and plagued EU-US trade talks. Apple -- seen as the biggest renegade against the EU's crackdown -- challenged the law on three fronts: EU obligations to make rival hardware work with its iPhone, the regulator's decision to drag the hugely profitable App Store under the rules, and a decision to probe whether iMessage should have faced the rules, which it later escaped.