Shameless Plug

Flock Announces Changes Amid Backlash Over Its License Plate Reader Network Published on 2026-08-14T22:00:00Z Flock Safety is tightening controls on its nationwide license plate reader network after mounting backlash over privacy and documented police misuse. By January 1, law enforcement customers will be required to use automated auditing, tie searches to specific case numbers, and accept a shorter seven-day default retention period. Critics, including the ACLU, argue the changes still leave too much surveillance power in police hands. The Associated Press reports: In an interview, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said many of the product changes will make what were once optional guardrails mandatory for its users to implement by Jan. 1. Among them: All law enforcement customers will have to implement an audit tool that's intended to flag abnormal search behavior. When the system detects abnormal behavior, the user would be locked out pending an internal review, the company said in a ...

France's Top Court Blocks Social Media Ban For Under-15s Published on 2026-08-14T21:00:00Z France's Constitutional Council has struck down a law that would have banned children under 15 from social media, ruling that it disproportionately restricted freedom of expression and lacked adequate privacy safeguards around age verification. President Emmanuel Macron has asked the government to rewrite the measure, with the goal of putting a revised version in place before spring 2027. Reuters reports: "The Council holds that the contested provisions, on the one hand, disproportionately infringe upon the freedom of expression and communication and, on the other, fail to provide the legal safeguards necessary to ensure the right to respect for private life," it said. French lawmakers had approved the bill in July, becoming the first in Europe to follow Australia, whose world-first ban barred access to platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for under-16s...

PBS Station Fears Losing 50TB of Data After Being Ghosted By Cloud Provider Published on 2026-08-14T20:00:00Z An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After its cloud storage provider went defunct, a PBS affiliate decided to sue a data center provider to regain access to 50TB of TV shows, videos, and other data dating back 70 years. As reported this week by Current, a trade newspaper covering public broadcasting, St. Louis affiliate Nine PBS filed a lawsuit against Iron Mountain Data Centers on July 28, seeking access to the data. In the litigation filed in Denver District Court, Nine PBS says that its cloud storage provider, Open Source Storage (OSS), used one of Iron Mountain's Denver data centers to store the channel's data. However, OSS is being unresponsive, and Nine PBS says Iron Mountain has refused to release its data. The data in question includes the station's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, East St. Louis' history, The Great Flood of 1993...

Ukraine Finds Nvidia AI Chip In New Russian Missile Published on 2026-08-14T19:00:00Z Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Kyiv Post: Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) has identified an Nvidia Jetson Orin computer module inside Russia's new S-71 Monochrome air-launched cruise missile, potentially indicating the use of artificial intelligence technology in the weapon, the agency said Wednesday, Aug. 12. The finding was published in the 'Components in Weapons' section of the HUR's War&Sanctions portal, which documents foreign electronic components found in Russian weapons used against Ukraine. The latest research identified 35 electronic components in Russian weapons, according to the HUR. HUR specialists identified the Nvidia Jetson Orin module in the S-71 Monochrome, a new Russian air-launched cruise missile. The agency said the use of the computer module may indicate the integration of artificial intelligence technologies into the missi...

Google's Gemini 3.7 Flash Targets Coding and Agents With a 50% Price Cut Published on 2026-08-13T22:00:00Z Google has released Gemini 3.7 Flash just three weeks after 3.6 Flash, focusing on better coding, agentic workflows, and enterprise automation while temporarily cutting API prices in half through the end of 2026. VentureBeat reports: For enterprise developers, the more consequential story may be the combination of those intelligence gains with lower inference costs: through the end of 2026, Gemini 3.7 Flash costs $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens. Starting Jan. 1, 2027, pricing rises to $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens. That means the current discount is temporary, but it gives teams deploying high-volume coding and business agents several months to evaluate whether Google's claimed reductions in retries and manual oversight translate into lower total operating costs. The launch also underscores Google...

Microsoft Is Combining Its Copilot Apps Ahead of a 'Super App' Published on 2026-08-13T21:00:00Z Microsoft is merging its consumer Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot apps ahead of a broader "super app" launch later this year. "Both personal and work accounts will be moved to the new unified app, which recycles the 'Microsoft Copilot' name but features an updated app icon," reports The Verge. "The single app also means there won't be two annoying Copilot icons in the system tray or taskbar anymore." From the report: The updates are intended to be a technical milestone in preparation of the "super app" Microsoft is planning to launch later this year, so this is laying the foundations of what will be changing for Copilot products. A worldwide rollout for the mobile and web apps will start in "mid-August," according to Microsoft, with a rollout to Windows and Mac apps set for "mid-September." Mobile app users ...

Amazon Will Train On Twitch Streamers' Content By Default, Unless They Opt Out Published on 2026-08-13T20:00:00Z Twitch will begin allowing Amazon to use streamers' content to train generative AI models by default, requiring creators to manually opt out if they don't want their videos and audio included. The decision has drawn backlash from creators, with Twitch's own product chief acknowledging that an opt-in system would likely attract almost no participants. "Why is it not opt-in? That's what everybody is spamming in chat. I get it. 'Let me opt in versus making me opt out,'" said Twitch Chief Product Officer Mike Minton. "Well, there's an honest answer... If this was opt-in, nobody would opt in. That's honestly the answer." TechCrunch reports: For Amazon, these stream recordings are incredibly valuable, offering thousands of hours of audio and video content to help train AI models. But Twitch users worry that since creators...