Pirate sports streaming site Streameast has quietly reclaimed the Streameast.xyz domain after U.S. authorities allowed it to expire, despite having seized it under a federal warrant in 2024. TorrentFreak reports: While researching both old and newly-seized Streameast domains recently, we noticed that Streameast.xyz expired earlier this year. Apparently, it was not renewed by those who controlled it, as the seizure banner was gone. Instead, the domain appeared to have been reclaimed by the original Streameast team. While it is not listed as an official mirror site, Streameast.xyz points to content from the original site once again. And indeed, the original Streameast team confirms that the domain is theirs.

It is not clear why the U.S. authorities lost control of the domain or whether it was intentional. Other domain names covered by the same seizure warrant were renewed recently, including Streameast.io. The Streameast team might view this as a significant symbolic victory. After all, they effectively reclaimed a federally seized domain name without having to mount a legal challenge. In the grander scheme, one domain name is not going to make a massive difference. However, the U.S. government went through the trouble to obtain a federal warrant, so it's ironic to see it controlled by pirates once again.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: A pair of e-commerce entrepreneurs who bought a number of well-known retail brands -- including RadioShack, Modell's Sporting Goods and Pier 1 Imports -- out of bankruptcy are accused of running a Ponzi scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday accused Alex Mehr and Tai Lopez, founders of the Miami-based Retail Ecommerce Ventures (REV), of defrauding investors out of approximately $112 million. Through their holding company, Mehr and Lopez acquired distressed brick-and-mortar companies in order to turn them into successful, online-only brands. Dress Barn and Linens 'n Things were also among their acquisitions. [...]

The SEC's suit alleges that between 2020 and 2022, Mehr and Lopez, "made material misrepresentations" to hundreds of investors about the bankrupt retailers they had acquired. For example, to entice individuals to invest in their acquisitions, they said their portfolio companies were "on fire" and that "cash flow is strong." They also told prospective backers that money raised for a company would only be invested in that specific firm. That proved not to be the case, according to the SEC's lawsuit, which was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

"Contrary to these representations, while some of the REV Retailer Brands generated revenue, none generated any profits," the suit states. "Consequently, in order to pay interest, dividends and maturing note payments, Defendants resorted to using a combination of loans from outside lenders, merchant cash advances, money raised from new and existing investors, and transfers from other portfolio companies to cover obligations." The SEC alleges that at least $5.9 million of returns paid to investors were actually Ponzi-like payments funded by other investors, as opposed to companies' profits. Additionally, the federal regulatory agency claims that Mehr and Lopez allocated $16 million worth of investments for their own use, according to the filing.

The FCC mistakenly published a 163-page PDF containing detailed schematics for Apple's upcoming iPhone 16e, despite Apple explicitly requesting indefinite confidentiality to protect trade secrets. AppleInsider reports: A cover letter is also distributed alongside the schematics, addressed to the FCC and dated September 16, 2024. The letter from Apple is a request for the confidential treatment of documents that are filed with the FCC. [...] The letter from Apple requests a series of documents are withheld from public viewing "indefinitely." The justification is that they contain "confidential and proprietary trade secrets" that are not disclosed to the public post-release, due to giving competitors an "unfair advantage."

The list of documents, Apple states, includes: Block Diagrams, Electrical Schematic Diagrams, Technical Descriptions, Product Specifications, Antenna Locations, Tune-Up Procedure, and Software Security Description. Other documents, such as external and internal photographs, shots of the test setup, and the user manual, are deemed to be less damaging and have "short-term confidentiality" requirements. In those cases, Apple asks for short-term confidentiality for 180 days after the equipment authorization is granted by the FCC.

"Swiss voters have backed plans for electronic identity cards by a wafer-thin margin," reports the Guardian, "in the second nationwide vote on the issue." In a referendum on Sunday, 50.4% of voters supported an electronic ID card, while 49.6% were against, confounding pollsters who had forecast stronger support for the "yes" vote. Turnout was 49.55%, higher than expected... [V]oters rejected an earlier version of the e-ID in 2021, largely over objections to the role of private companies in the system. In response to these concerns, the Swiss state will now provide the e-ID, which will be optional and free of charge... To ensure security the e-ID is linked to a single smartphone, users will have to get a new e-ID if they change their device... An ID card containing biometric data — fingerprints — will be available from the end of next year.

Critics of the e-ID scheme raised data protection concerns and said it opened the door to mass surveillance. They also fear the voluntary scheme will become mandatory and disadvantage people without smartphones. The referendum was called after a coalition of rightwing and data-privacy parties collected more than 50,000 signatures against e-ID cards, triggering the vote.
"To further ease privacy concerns, a particular authority seeking information on a person — such as proof of age or nationality, for example — will only be able to check for those specific details," notes the BBC: Supporters of the Swiss system say it will make life much easier for everyone, allowing a range of bureaucratic procedures — from getting a telephone contract to proving you are old enough to buy a bottle of wine — to happen quickly online. Opponents of digital ID cards, who gathered enough signatures to force another referendum on the issue, argue that the measure could still undermine individual privacy. They also fear that, despite the new restrictions on how data is collected and stored, it could still be used to track people and for marketing purposes.
The BBC adds that the UK government also announced plans earlier this week to introduce its own digital ID, "which would be mandatory for employment. The proposed British digital ID would have fewer intended uses than the Swiss version, but has still raised concerns about privacy and data security."

The Guardian reports: The referendum came soon after the UK government announced plans for a digital ID card, which would sit in the digital wallets of smartphones, using state-of-the-art encryption. More than 1.6 million people have signed a petition opposing e-ID cards, which would be mandatory for people working in the UK by 2029.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Tim Berners-Lee writes in a new article in the Guardian that "Somewhere between my original vision for web 1.0 and the rise of social media as part of web 2.0, we took the wrong path Today, I look at my invention and I am forced to ask: is the web still free today? No, not all of it. We see a handful of large platforms harvesting users' private data to share with commercial brokers or even repressive governments. We see ubiquitous algorithms that are addictive by design and damaging to our teenagers' mental health. Trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web. On many platforms, we are no longer the customers, but instead have become the product. Our data, even if anonymised, is sold on to actors we never intended it to reach, who can then target us with content and advertising...

We have the technical capability to give that power back to the individual. Solid is an open-source interoperable standard that I and my team developed at MIT more than a decade ago. Apps running on Solid don't implicitly own your data — they have to request it from you and you choose whether to agree, or not. Rather than being in countless separate places on the internet in the hands of whomever it had been resold to, your data is in one place, controlled by you. Sharing your information in a smart way can also liberate it. Why is your smartwatch writing your biological data to one silo in one format? Why is your credit card writing your financial data to a second silo in a different format? Why are your YouTube comments, Reddit posts, Facebook updates and tweets all stored in different places? Why is the default expectation that you aren't supposed to be able to look at any of this stuff? You generate all this data — your actions, your choices, your body, your preferences, your decisions. You should own it. You should be empowered by it...

We're now at a new crossroads, one where we must decide if AI will be used for the betterment or to the detriment of society. How can we learn from the mistakes of the past? First of all, we must ensure policymakers do not end up playing the same decade-long game of catchup they have done over social media. The time to decide the governance model for AI was yesterday, so we must act with urgency. In 2017, I wrote a thought experiment about an AI that works for you. I called it Charlie. Charlie works for you like your doctor or your lawyer, bound by law, regulation and codes of conduct. Why can't the same frameworks be adopted for AI? We have learned from social media that power rests with the monopolies who control and harvest personal data. We can't let the same thing happen with AI.
Berners-Lee also says "we need a Cern-like not-for-profit body driving forward international AI research," arguing that if we muster the political willpower, "we have the chance to restore the web as a tool for collaboration, creativity and compassion across cultural borders.

"We can re-empower individuals, and take the web back. It's not too late."

Berners-Lee has also written a new book titled This is For Everyone.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says America's Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a patent to Tableau (Salesforce's visual analytics platform) — for a patent covering "Data Processing For Visualizing Hierarchical Data": "A provided data model may include a tree specification that declares parent-child relationships between objects in the data model. In response to a query associated with objects in the data model: employing the parent-child relationships to determine a tree that includes parent objects and child objects from the objects based on the parent-child relationships; determining a root object based on the query and the tree; traversing the tree from the root object to visit the child objects in the tree; determining partial results based on characteristics of the visited child objects such that the partial results are stored in an intermediate table; and providing a response to the query that includes values based on the intermediate table and the partial results."

A set of 15 simple drawings is provided to support the legal and tech gobbledygook of the invention claims. A person can have a manager, Tableau explains in Figures 5-6 of its accompanying drawings, and that manager can also manage and be managed by other people. Not only that, Tableau illustrates in Figures 7-10 that computers can be used to count how many people report to a manager. How does this magic work, you ask? Well, you "generate [a] tree" [Fig. 13] and "traverse a tree" [Fig. 15], Tableau explains. But wait, there's more — you can also display the people who report to a manager in multi-level or nested pie charts (aka Sunburst charts), Tableau demonstrates in Fig. 11.

Interestingly, Tableau released a "pre-Beta" Sunburst chart type in late April 2023 but yanked it at the end of June 2023 (others have long-supported Sunburst charts, including Plotly). So, do you think Tableau should be awarded a patent in 2025 on a concept that has roots in circa-1921 Sunburst charts and tree algorithms taught to first-year CS students in circa-1975 Data Structures courses?

The U.S. is considering a rule requiring chipmakers to match the volume of semiconductors that their customers currently import from overseas providers through domestic production, or face tariffs. Reuters reports: President Donald Trump has doubled down on his efforts to reshore semiconductor manufacturing, offering exemptions from tariffs of roughly 100% on chips to firms that produce domestically. Companies that fail to sustain a 1:1 domestic-to-import ratio over time would face tariffs, the Journal said. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick floated the idea with semiconductor executives, telling them it might be necessary for economic security, the Journal said.

"America cannot be reliant on foreign imports for the semiconductor products that are essential for our national and economic security," the newspaper cited White House spokesperson Kush Desai as saying, who added that any reporting about policymaking should be treated as speculative, unless officially announced. [...] Under the proposal, a company pledging to make chips in the U.S. would receive credit for that pledged volume, allowing imports without tariffs until the plant is complete, with initial relief to help ramp capacity, according to the report.

xAI struck a deal with the U.S. General Services Administration to sell its chatbot Grok to federal agencies under the executive branch for 42 cents over 18 months, undercutting OpenAI and Anthropic's $1 offerings. TechCrunch reports: The steep discount for federal agencies includes access to xAI engineers to help integrate the technology. The price point is either part of a running joke Musk has of using variations of 420, a marijuana reference, or a nod to one of Musk's favorite books, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which references the number 42 as the answer to the meaning of life and the universe.

... In late August, internal emails obtained by Wired revealed the White House had instructed the GSA to add xAI's Grok to the approved vendor list "ASAP." The company was also one of several AI firms, including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, to be selected for a $200 million contract with the Pentagon. A GSA spokesperson told TechCrunch that Musk was not directly involved in negotiating the agreement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A team of suspected Chinese hackers has infiltrated US software developers and law firms in a sophisticated campaign to collect intelligence that could help Beijing in its ongoing trade fight with Washington, cybersecurity firm Mandiant said Wednesday. The hackers have been rampant in recent weeks, hitting the cloud-computing firms that numerous American companies rely on to store key data, Mandiant, which is owned by Google, said. In a sign of how important China's hacking army is in the race for tech supremacy, the hackers have also stolen US tech firms' proprietary software and used it to find new vulnerabilities to burrow deeper into networks, according to Mandiant.

[...] In some cases, the hackers have lurked undetected in the US corporate networks for over a year, quietly collecting intelligence, Mandiant said. The disclosure comes after the Trump administration escalated America's trade war with China this spring by slapping unprecedented tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States. The tit-for-tat tariffs set off a scramble in both governments to understand each other's positions. Mandiant analysts said the fallout from the breaches -- the task of kicking out the hackers and assessing the damage -- could last many months. They described it as a milestone hack, comparable in severity and sophistication to Russia's use of SolarWinds software to infiltrate US government agencies in 2020.

Digital ID will be mandatory in order to work in the UK, as part of plans to tackle illegal migration. From a report: Sir Keir Starmer said the new digital ID scheme would make it tougher to work in the UK illegally and offer "countless benefits" to citizens. However, opposition parties argued the proposals would not stop people crossing the Channel in small boats.

The prime minister set out his plans in a broader speech to a gathering of world leaders, in which he said it had been "too easy" for people to work illegally in the UK because the centre-left had been "squeamish" about saying things that were "clearly true."

Addressing the Global Progressive Action Conference in London - attended by politicians including Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney - Sir Keir said it was time to "look ourselves in the mirror and recognise where we've allowed our parties to shy away from people's concerns."

"It is not compassionate left-wing politics to rely on labour that exploits foreign workers and undercuts fair wages," he said. "The simple fact is that every nation needs to have control over its borders. We do need to know who is in our country."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A viral app called Neon, which offers to record your phone calls and pay you for the audio so it can sell that data to AI companies, has rapidly risen to the ranks of the top-five free iPhone apps since its launch last week. The app already has thousands of users and was downloaded 75,000 times yesterday alone, according to app intelligence provider Appfigures. Neon pitches itself as a way for users to make by providing call recordings that help train, improve, and test AI models. But now Neon has gone offline, at least for now, after a security flaw allowed anyone to access the phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts of any other user, TechCrunch can now report.

TechCrunch discovered the security flaw during a short test of the app on Thursday. We alerted the app's founder, Alex Kiam (who previously did not respond to a request for comment about the app), to the flaw soon after our discovery. Kiam told TechCrunch later Thursday that he took down the app's servers and began notifying users about pausing the app, but fell short of informing his users about the security lapse. The Neon app stopped functioning soon after we contacted Kiam. TechCrunch found that the app's backend services didn't properly restrict access, allowing any logged-in user to request and receive data belong to other users. This included call transcripts, raw call recordings, and sensitive metadata, including phone numbers, the date/time of calls, and their durations.

Google has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a judge's order requiring major changes to its Play Store after losing an antitrust case to Epic Games. The injunction would force Google to allow rival app stores, external billing links, and broader competition -- changes Google says could harm users and developers. Epic argues they're necessary to break Google's monopoly. Reuters reports: Google said it has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to halt key parts of a judge's order that would force major changes to its app store Play, as it prepares to appeal a decision in a lawsuit brought by "Fortnite" maker Epic Games. Google called the judge's order unprecedented, and said it would cause reputational harm, safety and security risks and put the company at a competitive disadvantage if allowed to take effect, according to a filing, opens new tab provided late on Wednesday by Google, which said it had submitted it to the court. [...]

Google in its Supreme Court filing said that the changes will have enormous consequences for more than 100 million U.S. Android users and 500,000 developers. It asked the court to decide by October 17 whether to put the order on hold. Google said it plans to file its appeal to the Supreme Court by October 27, which could allow the justices to take up the case during their nine-month term that begins on October 6.

Epic in a statement said Google is relying on what it called "flawed security claims" to justify its control over Android devices. "The court's injunction should go into effect as ordered so consumers and developers can benefit from competition, choices and lower prices," Epic said. The jury, siding with Epic in the trial, found that Google illegally stifled competition. Donato subsequently issued the order directing Google to make changes to its app store.

Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that it duped users into paying for Prime memberships, the regulatory agency announced Thursday. CNBC: The surprise settlement comes as Amazon and the FTC were just three days into the trial in a Seattle federal court. Opening arguments took place on Tuesday. The lawsuit, filed by the FTC in June 2023 under the Biden administration, claimed that Amazon deceived tens of millions of customers into signing up for its Prime subscription program and sabotaged their attempts to cancel it.

Three senior Amazon executives were at risk of being held individually liable if the jury sided with the FTC. Amazon will pay a $1 billion civil penalty to the FTC and will refund $1.5 billion to an estimated 35 million customers who were impacted by "unwanted Prime enrollment or deferred cancellation," the agency said.

The Japanese city of Toyoake has passed (PDF) a symbolic ordinance limiting recreational smartphone use to two hours a day, aiming to improve citizens' sleep -- especially for students after summer vacation. The Register reports: "The primary purpose of this ordinance is to ensure that all citizens receive adequate sleep," states a Council information page, which explains that many Japanese people ignore Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare recommendations to spend six to eight hours a day dozing. An accompanying FAQ [PDF] explains that Council passed the ordinance because students who return to school after summer vacations sometimes need a nudge the re-establish an appropriate daily regime.

The ordinance also points out "Excessive phone users and their families are facing difficulties in their daily and social lives," and suggests the two-hours-a-day guidance might help. Council's documents point out that smartphones have myriad uses beyond recreation, and that the ordinance should not be taken as a suggestion to reduce overall use of the devices. Toyoake is part of the Nagoya megalopolis and is home to around 70,000 people. The town's government plans to survey residents about the ordinance, and the FAQ also mentions it wants to tackle other digital menaces, among them harmful effects of using smartphones while walking.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: After deflecting the US Department of Justice's attack on its illegal monopoly in online search, Google is facing another attempt to dismantle its internet empire in a trial focused on abusive tactics in digital advertising. The trial that opened Monday in an Alexandria, Virginia, federal court revolves around the harmful conduct that resulted in US district Judge Leonie Brinkema declaring parts of Google's digital advertising technology to be an illegal monopoly in April. The judge found that Google has been engaging in behavior that stifles competition to the detriment of online publishers that depend on the system for revenue.

Google and the justice department will spend the next two weeks in court presenting evidence in a "remedy" trial that will culminate in Brinkema issuing a ruling on how to restore fair market conditions. If the justice department gets its way, Brinkema will order Google to sell parts of its ad technology -- a proposal that the company's lawyers warned would "invite disruption and damage" to consumers and the internet's ecosystem. The justice department contends a breakup would be the most effective and quickest way to undercut a monopoly that has been stifling competition and innovation for years. [...]

The case, filed in 2023 under Joe Biden's administration, threatens the complex network that Google has spent the past 17 years building to power its dominant digital advertising business. Digital advertising sales account for most of the $305 billion in revenue that Google's services division generates for its corporate parent Alphabet. The company's sprawling network of display ads provide the lifeblood that keeps thousands of websites alive. Google believes it has already made enough changes to its "ad manager" system, including providing more options and pricing options, to resolve the problems Brinkema flagged in her monopoly ruling.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from ICO Bench: As of September 1, 2025, banks across Vietnam are closing accounts deemed inactive or non-compliant with new biometric rules. Authorities estimate that more than 86 million accounts out of roughly 200 million are at risk if users fail to update their identity verification.

The State Bank of Vietnam has also introduced stricter thresholds for transactions:
- Facial authentication is mandatory for online transfers above 10 million VND (about $379).
- Cumulative daily transfers over 20 million VND ($758) also require biometric approval.

The policy is part of the central bank's broader "cashless" strategy, aimed at combating fraud, identity theft, and deepfake-enabled scams. [...] While many Vietnamese citizens have updated their biometric data without issue, the measure has disproportionately affected foreign residents and expatriates who cannot easily return to local branches and dormant accounts that had been left inactive for years. schwit1 highlights a post on X from Bitcoin expert and TFTC.io founder Marty Bent: "If users don't comply by the 30th they'll lose their money. This is why we bitcoin."

YouTube's parent company, Alphabet, said it will reinstate creators previously banned for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and false election claims, citing free expression and shifting policy guidelines. The Hill reports: "Reflecting the Company's commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect," the company said in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee. "YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse. The Company recognizes these creators are among those shaping today's online consumption, landing 'must-watch' interviews, giving viewers the chance to hear directly from politicians, celebrities, business leaders, and more," it added in the five-page correspondence.

Alphabet blamed the Biden administration for limiting political speech on the platform. "Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies," the letter read. "While the Company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative user-generated content," it continued. Guidelines were changed after former President Biden took office and urged platforms to remove content that encouraged citizens to drink bleach to cure COVID-19, as President Trump suggested in 2020, or join insurrection efforts launched on Jan. 6, 2021, to overthrow his 2020 presidential win. But the company said the Biden administration's decisions were "unacceptable" and "wrong," while noting it would forgo future fact-checking mechanisms and instead allow users to add context notes to content.

Customs and Border Protection collected DNA from nearly 2,000 US citizens between 2020 and 2024 and sent the samples to the FBI's CODIS crime database, according to Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology analysis of newly released government data. The collection included approximately 95 minors, some as young as 14, and travelers never charged with crimes.

Congress never authorized DNA collection from citizens, children or civil detainees. DHS has contributed 2.6 million profiles to CODIS since 2020, with 97% collected under civil rather than criminal authority. The expansion followed a 2020 Justice Department rule that revoked DHS's waiver from DNA collection requirements. Former FBI director Christopher Wray testified in 2023 that monthly DNA submissions jumped from a few thousand to 92,000, creating a backlog of 650,000 unprocessed kits. Georgetown researchers project DHS could account for one-third of CODIS by 2034. The DHS Inspector General found in 2021 that the department lacked central oversight of DNA collection.

The Supreme Court has temporarily allowed President Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, the last Democrat on the FTC. "The court's action is technically temporary, since the justices said they will hear arguments in the case in December, but every indication is that the conservative court majority will use the case to reverse a major Supreme Court precedent that dates back almost a century," reports NPR. From the report: Congress created the FTC and lots of other agencies to be multi-member, bipartisan regulatory agencies. And the Supreme Court in 1935 upheld those statutes ruling ruled against then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's claim that he could fire FTC commissioners at will. In a unanimous opinion at the time, the court said Congress acted within its powers in declaring that a commissioner could only be fired for misconduct -- not for a policy disagreement. But now, prodded by President Trump, the court's six-member conservative majority seems poised to remake the way independent agencies operate. And if the handwriting on the wall is as clear as it seems to be, the independent agencies won't be independent. Their membership will be subject to the will of the president.

The court's action Monday was hardly subtle. While the lower courts had ruled that the president could not fire Slaughter, under the court's 1935 precedent, the conservative Supreme Court majority allowed the president to fire her. Indeed, her name isn't even on the FTC website anymore. And the court so far has allowed Trump to fire other agency board members. In short, the justices are not playing hide-the-ball. And it's a good bet that the court will reverse the 1935 precedent, which until now had been reaffirmed multiple times. The result will be that whereas in the past, these agencies had to be bipartisan, with a minority of opposition party members, now there will be no such requirement. In short, Trump can name all the agency members. And if his successor is a Democrat, he or she can fire all the Republicans.

The U.S. General Services Administration has approved Meta's AI system Llama for use by federal agencies, declaring that it meets government security and legal standards. Reuters reports: "It's not about currying favor," [said Josh Gruenbaum, the GSA's procurement lead, when asked whether tech executives are giving the government discounts to get President Donald Trump's approval]. "It's about that recognition of how do we all lock in arms and make this country the best country it could possibly be." Federal agencies will be able to deploy the tool to speed up contract review or more quickly solve information technology hiccups, among other tasks, he said.