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Earlier this week, the California Attorney General’s Office announced that it was investigating xAI over reports that its chatbot Grok was being used to create non-consensual sexual images of women and minors. On Friday, the government sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company, demanding that it immediately stop producing CSAM, which contains non-consensual intimate images and child sexual abuse material. “Today, I sent a cease-and-desist letter to xAI, demanding that the company immediately cease producing and distributing deepfakes, non-consensual intimate images, and child sexual abuse material,” California AG Rob Bonta said in a press release. “The production of this material…
TikTok has quietly released a new standalone short drama app called PineDrama in the US and Brazil. This app provides access to microdramas. Microdramas are essentially bite-sized television shows that are available as a series of one-minute episodes. Think TikTok. But every video you see is a short episode of a fictional story. PineDrama is available on iOS and Android. It’s free and currently has no ads, but that may change in the future. The news was first reported by Business Insider. You can find content from the app’s Discover tab. There you can sort ‘All’ or ‘Trending’ dramas and…
According to court documents, a hacker posted personal data of several hacking victims on his Instagram account @ihackthegovernment. Last week, Nicholas Moore, 24, of Springfield, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to repeatedly hacking into the U.S. Supreme Court’s electronic filing system. At the time, the specific nature of the hacking crime to which Moore had admitted was not disclosed. Newly filled out documents first discovered by forensic monitor Seamus Hughes on Friday revealed further details about Mr Moore’s hack. In addition to the Supreme Court’s systems, Moore hacked into the networks of AmeriCorps, a government agency that runs scholarship volunteer programs, and…
An ongoing debate within and outside the technology community is when and how OpenAI, currently valued at $500 billion, will turn a profit. There’s one surefire way to do that. That is by using advertising. In the short term, that appears to be the plan for the AI giant, which announced this week that limited ads will be targeted to certain ChatGPT users. OpenAI said in a blog post published Friday that it will begin testing ads in both the free and Go tiers in the United States. (The $8-per-month Go account was introduced globally on Friday.) The company is…
The Trump administration wants to add $15 billion worth of new power generation to the largest power grids and wants tech companies to pay for it, even if they don’t need that capacity. The White House and the governors of several states in the region are calling on grid operator PJM to hold an auction for a 15-year contract for new generation capacity. The administration has said it wants tech companies to bid on contracts, even if the data centers ultimately don’t need the power. Demand from data centers is expected to nearly triple over the next decade. PJM said…
January 16, 2026Ravi LakshmananMalvertising/Threat Intelligence A JavaScript (also known as JScript) malware loader called GootLoader has been observed using malicious ZIP archives designed to evade detection efforts by concatenating 500 to 1,000 archives. “Adversaries are creating fraudulent archives as an anti-analysis technique,” Aaron Walton, a security researcher at Expel, said in a report shared with Hacker News. “In short, while many decompression tools consistently fail to extract files, one important decompression tool seems to work consistently and reliably: the default tool built into Windows systems.” This prevents tools such as WinRAR and 7-Zip from processing the archive, and many automated…
On Tuesday, UK-based Iranian activist Nariman Gharib tweeted an edited screenshot of a phishing link sent to him via a WhatsApp message. “Don’t click on suspicious links,” Ghalib warned. The activist, who follows the digital aspects of Iran’s protests from afar, said the campaign targets people like himself who are involved in Iran-related activities. The hacking operation comes as Iran grapples with its longest nationwide internet shutdown in its history, amid escalating anti-government protests and violent crackdowns across the country. Given that Iran and its closest adversaries are very active in offensive cyberspace (i.e. hacking people), we wanted to know…
On December 16, 2025, the Trump administration announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the world’s premier weather and climate research center. Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement to USA Today that NCAR is “one of the largest sources of climate change concerns in the country.”But dismantling NCAR could have a serious impact on the nation’s ability to ensure public safety and protect economic stability, Holly Gilbert, the institute’s interim deputy director, told Live Science. “The research we’re doing here has direct application to public protection,”…
Scientists have successfully extracted DNA from an ancient cheetah mummy found in a cave in Saudi Arabia. Researchers say this is the first time they have been able to extract genetic information from a naturally mummified ancient big cat, which could lead to the reintroduction of cats to the region.In 2022 and 2023, researchers discovered the desiccated skeletal remains of seven cheetahs and 54 other cheetahs in the Lauga cave network in northern Saudi Arabia’s Aral region. The ruins are between 100 and 4,000 years old.In a new study published Thursday (January 15) in the journal Communication, Earth and Environment,…
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Friday that the country will reduce its 100% import tax on Chinese-made EVs to just 6.1%, paving the way for companies such as Geely, BYD and Xiaomi to establish a second foothold in the North American auto market. However, Canada will not fully participate in China’s EV market. Initially, the country will limit annual imports to 49,000 vehicles. That cap will gradually increase to about 70,000 people over about five years, according to the Associated Press. This is a major shift, especially as the European Union considers lowering its own auto tariffs and China…