It has now been over 700 days since my last YouTube video so I thought I'd take a moment to share a few life updates and just generally check-in with you guys.

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Kaspersky explains why different vulnerable groups need different approaches to digital education — from children to elderly people, from non-profit organizations to people with disabilities. Watch to see how we build confidence and resilience in a rapidly changing digital world.

Find more details in the report: https://kas.pr/7jar

#kaspersky #esg #sustainability #cybersecurity #inclusion

India online safety rules are being strengthened as the government steps up measures to protect children and other users from harmful digital content, cyber risks and emerging threats linked to artificial intelligence. The government said its policies are aimed at ensuring an open, safe, trusted and accountable internet, with recent measures focusing on child safety, privacy protection, faster content removal and stronger platform responsibilities.

The Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, form the core legal framework governing online safety and intermediary responsibilities in India. The government has also highlighted the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and recent amendments to the IT Rules as part of its broader approach to digital safety.

India Online Safety Rules Tighten Platform Responsibilities

Under the IT Rules, intermediaries are required to observe due diligence and inform users that they must not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update or share content that is harmful to children or violates applicable laws.

Recent amendments require social media platforms and other intermediaries to remove unlawful content within three hours of receiving an order from a competent court or a reasoned intimation from the appropriate government or its agency.

The government has also outlined specific obligations related to content involving nudity, impersonation and other sensitive material. In cases involving certain complaints about content featuring full or partial nudity, exposed private areas or artificially morphed images, intermediaries must take reasonable and practicable measures to remove or disable access within two hours.

Government Targets Harmful Content and OTT Platforms

The government said it has taken action against online platforms and OTT services over unlawful and obscene content. In the last two years, 50 OTT platforms have been disabled for public access in India for displaying obscene content and violating provisions including Sections 67 and 67A of the IT Act, Section 294 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986.

The government also said it has taken note of reports alleging the dissemination of advertisements linked to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on social media platforms and sought a detailed report from the concerned intermediary. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has also issued notices to the concerned platforms.

India Strengthens AI-Generated Content Safeguards

The government has also expanded its regulatory focus to address risks associated with AI-generated content and synthetically generated information. Amendments to the IT Rules introduce requirements for clear labelling and traceable metadata for permissible AI-generated content, allowing users to identify synthetically generated material.

The framework also strengthens platform accountability and requires greater user awareness about the legal consequences of unlawful AI-generated content. The rules specifically cover harmful material including CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery and impersonation.

Platforms are required to deploy reasonable and appropriate technical measures, including automated tools or other mechanisms, to prevent users from creating, modifying, publishing or sharing synthetically generated information that violates applicable laws.

Significant Social Media Intermediaries are also required to make reasonable efforts to deploy technical measures to proactively identify content depicting rape, child sexual abuse or conduct, as well as content identical to information previously removed.

Child Privacy and Digital Addiction Remain Key Concerns

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, provides a framework for protecting children's privacy online. It mandates parental consent for processing children's personal data and prohibits practices considered detrimental to children's well-being, including tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising directed at children.

The government has also highlighted digital addiction as a serious challenge affecting children and young people. The Economic Survey 2025-26 noted potential impacts on cognitive development, academic performance, workplace productivity, social connectedness and mental health, alongside risks linked to cyberbullying, compulsive gaming, social media and online gambling.

Cyber Awareness Reaches 11.37 Lakh Participants

Alongside regulatory measures, the government is expanding cyber awareness initiatives through the Information Security Education and Awareness project. So far, 6,650 awareness workshops have been conducted nationwide, reaching more than 11.37 lakh participants, including students, teachers, law enforcement officials, government personnel and members of the public.

The government has also highlighted digital safety initiatives in education. The PRAGYATA Guidelines provide a framework for safe online learning and responsible use of social media and electronic devices. CBSE has introduced digital etiquette and cybersecurity training initiatives, while NCERT has incorporated cyber safety into its curriculum.

The measures were outlined by Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw in the Lok Sabha on July 22, 2026, as the government continues to strengthen its approach to c child protection and accountability across India's digital ecosystem.

A Florida teen whose lawsuit claimed Meta’s platforms were to blame ⁠for his depression ⁠and anxiety ​dropped his case against the company just days before the trial in Los Angeles was ⁠set to start, his attorneys said on Wednesday. It was the latest in a massive series of high-stakes lawsuits against social media companies for allegedly designing addictive products that lead to the harm of children.

The lawsuit, brought by a 15-year-old boy known as ⁠RKC, originally named four defendants, Google’s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram, Snap Inc’s ​Snapchat and ByteDance’s TikTok. YouTube and TikTok ‌settled in June and Snap reached a tentative settlement in the case, Bloomberg ‌reported on Monday. The terms of those settlements were confidential.

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Believe it or not, Pokémon Go is 10 years old this month. The wildly successful smartphone game, which allows you to track down lovable creatures in the real world using GPS and augmented-reality technologies, has reportedly been downloaded 800m times across 150 countries and regions. A trillion Pokémon have been caught so far – and I have been responsible for a modest percentage of that figure.

When the game was first released, my sons and I spent many happy hours wandering the streets and parks of Frome searching for Jigglypuffs and Charizards, and the game’s social element, which lets you take on gym battles with other players in your vicinity, offered my autistic son a route to communicate with other children in a way he’d never been able to before.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In late 2024, in a quiet suburb of Stockholm, a 14-year-old boy approached a man in his 80s who was using a walker. He stabbed the man three times in the back.

The video of the attack in Hässelby was streamed and spread quickly. It fed a global online ecosystem that actively encourages and glorifies acts of violence and degradation – the “gamification of harm”, as the researcher Marc-André Argentino puts it.

It took me a while to realise what the man sitting next to me on the train was doing. He was flicking through pictures of a little girl on his phone; zooming in on some, cropping the images. Hardly unusual, of course, except that on closer inspection the pictures were very clearly of the toddler sitting opposite us, playing with her parents. On a crowded train of people mostly staring obliviously at our own phones, a stranger had been covertly photographing that little girl over and over again. And if it hadn’t been for that very visible phone screen giving him away, he wouldn’t have been caught.

That encounter was a while ago but my memory was jogged last week listening to a clip of Meta’s VP of wearables, Alex Himel, talk fondly to the BBC about using his new smartglasses to film his daughter singing in a talent contest. They let him capture the memory without having to watch her through a screen, he said, freeing him to be “kind of living in the moment, head up and hands free”. So far, so sweet. But what about the risk of creeps potentially using them to film other people’s daughters covertly, heads up and hands free? Meta’s smartglasses have a tiny flashing warning light on the frame to indicate when the wearer is recording, but the technology is still new enough that many people don’t think to look for it. And in the age of AI, stolen images of children matter. Taken in real life or scraped from the internet, they’re the raw material for generating realistic-looking child abuse material of the most extreme and disturbing kind. (If that sounds like a grim but ultimately fairly victimless crime, the Internet Watch Foundation warned in a recent report that AI-generated material risks fuelling sexual interest in children, normalising violence and increasing the risk of real-life offending.)

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Read more: How this researcher helps parents with their children’s mental health

Cases of predators coercing children into producing sexual photos and videos of themselves have surged globally in the past year, a cruel phenomenon known as “sadistic online exploitation”, child safety experts and law enforcement officials warn.

In cases of sadistic online exploitation, perpetrators target vulnerable teens on social media platforms and online games. These predators then compel their victims into producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), harming themselves and others, or, in extreme cases, attempting suicide.

In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Social media companies could be forced to identify anonymous accounts accused of online vilification, under new laws being proposed in Victoria.

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, announced a suite of social media reforms on Sunday, saying families needed new ways to protect their children online.

Young people today have unprecedented opportunities to learn, connect, and explore — not just the web and the world, but also themselves. With the increased ubiquity of digital technologies and devices, worries around the relationship between these technologies and young people’s well-being have grown, too. While concerns about the societal implications of new technologies is not a new phenomenon, experts argue that the accelerating speed of deployment of new technologies has outpaced scientists’ capacity to feed into policy recommendations addressing risks. A growing body of research documents the harms experienced by young people online and the challenges reported by parents attempting to mediate their kids’ technology use. At the same time, experts highlight the importance of contextual factors like existing mental health conditions, socio-economic circumstances and parental mediation to understand the real-world effects of digital technologies.

Faced with this complexity, and mounting public pressure, policymakers around the world are urgently seeking ways to improve child safety online. Driven by a sense of time running out and promises of new technical solutions to difficult questions, this has led, across jurisdictions, to proposals to restrict young people’s access to certain technologies or platforms by introducing age assurance mandates.

Privacy and user empowerment have always formed a core part of Mozilla’s mission. As we have said before, we support safer spaces for minors, but we caution against approaches that rely on identity checks, surveillance-based enforcement, or exclusionary defaults. Such interventions rely on the collection of personal and sensitive data and, thus, introduce major new privacy and security risks.

While many technologies exist to verify, estimate, or infer users’ ages, fundamental tensions around accessibility, their effectiveness and effects on user’s privacy, security and free expression remain. Technological approaches must be part of wider efforts to address the root causes of online harms. However, the deployment of age assurance technologies will not solve the complex challenge of preparing young people to navigate an increasingly online world and ensure their wellbeing. That will require more holistic approaches: offering education and support to navigate the web safely, addressing harmful business practices and acknowledging the offline factors shaping children’s lives including social inequality, poverty or disparate access to (mental) health care services.

Ineffective age-gating mandates and the dangerous shift toward VPN restrictions

As jurisdictions around the world gain experience with government-mandated age gates for certain services, evidence is mounting that age restrictions are not an effective policy tool. Avoiding age gates is widespread and trivially easy: In Australia, where minors under 16 year of age have been banned from certain social media platforms since December 2025, the government’s Compliance Update reports that seven out of ten young Australians remain online, often skirting age checks by simply entering a fake birthdate. A recent study on the implementation of the UK’s Online Safety Act found that a third of children have bypassed age gates with fairly trivial steps like faking their birthdate, borrowing someone else’s login credentials, or even drawing on facial hair, and that a quarter of parents have helped their children to bypass age assurance systems. In the US, studies indicate that as far back as 2011, 64% of parents who were aware their child under 13 had a social media account were also ones who helped them create that account.

Confronted with the apparent ineffectiveness of age gates, policymakers around the world seem to be shifting their attention to alleged circumvention tools. While research shows that many young people bypass age barriers by using other people’s devices and accounts or tricking age estimation tools by making themselves look older, virtual private networks (VPNs) are increasingly framed as primarily a “loophole” to age gates. VPNs create encrypted “tunnels” between a user’s device and the internet, protecting all internet traffic from that device and concealing users’ IP addresses. VPNs are an essential privacy and security resource for millions of users worldwide, including young people.

Utah’s recent age verification law holds websites hosting age-restricted content liable for verifying the age of anyone physically located in Utah, including individuals using VPNs or proxies. While the law does not ban VPNs outright, it forces websites to either block known VPN IP addresses or verify the age of every visitor globally. In the UK, policymakers debated age gates for VPNs extensively, but stopped short of restricting VPNs after new evidence confirmed that VPNs are not a relevant pathway for children seeking to bypass age checks. In Brazil, the ECA Digital law empowers the regulatory authority to order technical countermeasures against circumvention tools such as VPNs. These developments suggest a worrying trend: well-meaning but ineffective attempts to protect children risk undermining the fundamental rights to privacy, security, and free expression of all users, as well as the health and openness of the web itself.

We are convinced, however, that there are rights-respecting alternatives policymakers can pursue to empower young people online and improve their safety and well-being.

Moving beyond access bans

We strongly believe that online safety frameworks should be grounded in children’s rights, striking a balance between their right to protection and their right to participate in society, express themselves freely, and access media and information. Such frameworks must also be proportionate and should not undermine the fundamental rights and access to tools like VPNs for all users.

Rather than focusing on limiting access, we believe that policymakers should prioritize interventions that tackle the root causes of online harm. Before considering new instruments, this work starts with ensuring that independent regulatory authorities have the necessary resources to enforce existing online safety frameworks. In Europe, preliminary findings against Meta and TikTok find these companies’ addictive design features to be in breach of the Digital Services Act, underlining the potential of frameworks like the DSA to address key concerns.

The design of online interfaces, and the affordances and constraints they offer, significantly influences users’ interactions, decisions and overall wellbeing. ‘Dark patterns’ or deceptive interfaces are key drivers of harms experienced by users, and especially young people: they can compel people to consent to extensive data collection and processing, resulting in hyper-personalized feeds, personalized ads that may exploit cognitive vulnerabilities and promote unhealthy or excessive consumer choices, and an overall erosion of privacy.

This is why we support proposals like EU Digital Fairness Act (DFA) and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) that could fill regulatory gaps. Specifically, we advocate for the prohibition of harmful design, guided by harmonized definitions of core concepts like “dark patterns”, “deceptive design,” and “addictive design” and anti-circumvention clauses to prevent companies from avoiding regulation through small tweaks. Platforms should be responsible for demonstrating that their design choices are fair, non-manipulative and non-exploitative. And services that are likely to be accessed by children should be required to refrain from enabling certain design features, including excessive notifications, endless feeds and gambling-like features by default, and only with parental consent.

Further, we urge policymakers to adopt a privacy-first approach to online harms. Many of the risks encountered by young people online are related to the collection and processing of personal data. Platforms collect enormous amounts of personal data, including sensitive data, to personalize and target services, ranging from algorithmic recommender systems to online ads. While the systems that target and display ads and curate online content are distinct, both are based on the surveillance and profiling of users.

Such profiling is the basis for young people being targeted with personalized ads and content recommendations, which can segment, exclude, or steer people into inequitable options and towards harmful content. Providers should thus be prohibited from using sensitive personal data (e.g. ethnicity, religious belief, health status, sexual orientation, political affiliation) to personalize content recommendations or ads, and they should be mandated to enable privacy-protective settings by default, including restricting access to users’ location, camera, microphone, contacts, and camera roll. Policymakers should also extend the fairness and transparency obligations to personalization systems and advertising actors, including intermediaries and data brokers.

Additionally, everyone online, including families and young people, should be fully in control of their online experiences and navigate the web according to their preferences and needs. There is a significant opportunity to empower users with easy, effective opt-out rights and granular user controls. In practice, users should have the right to opt out of personalized content and targeting without being penalized with a downgraded version of the service. Some frameworks already strengthen choice – in those cases, we advocate for their robust enforcement.

Across jurisdictions, choice can be strengthened by ensuring that preferences explicitly expressed (e.g. settings selected, feedback signals, customization choices made, survey responses) are respected and “sticky”, so do not get reset without being explicitly requested by the user. Interoperability mandates should let people integrate third-party content moderation systems or recommendation algorithms that better match their preferences and help them break out of the walled gardens of a few dominant companies. Parental controls are another important lever to operationalize user controls: Providers should deploy easy-to-use and effective parental controls that allow families to tailor online experiences to their preferences, across platforms.

We appreciate that this is a long list of complex policy recommendations which are also impacted by broader (geo)political developments. The fact remains that current age assurance approaches are not a silver bullet, and will create more, rather than solve, problems in the long term.

Where policymakers consider age signals as necessary to ensure age-appropriate online experiences, we believe that there are technical approaches better suited to balance users’ rights than those currently pursued. We will explore these developments and approaches in the second part of this series.

The post Beyond technical fixes: Protecting kids online without breaking the internet  appeared first on Open Policy & Advocacy.

The UK's communications regulator has launched a formal investigation into TikTok age verification, raising questions over whether the platform is adequately protecting children online under the country's Online Safety Act. The move comes as Britain prepares to introduce a social media ban for under-16s, with regulators warning that current age assurance methods used by some platforms may not be sufficient to prevent children from accessing harmful content.

The investigation follows the publication of a new Ofcom report that found age checks are becoming more common across online services, but significant gaps remain, particularly on social media platforms and some pornography websites.

Ofcom Questions TikTok Age Verification Method

According to Ofcom, some social media companies rely primarily on age inference methods to identify child users. These systems estimate a user's age based on their online behavior rather than verifying it directly.

The regulator said it has "serious doubts" about whether these methods are capable of meeting the standards required under the Online Safety Act. Ofcom believes some companies may be failing to correctly identify a significant number of children, potentially exposing them to harmful content, including pornography, self-harm, and suicide-related material.

As a result, Ofcom has launched a formal investigation into whether TikTok is complying with its legal duties to protect children from harmful content.

The regulator also warned that age inference alone will not be considered sufficient for enforcing the government's planned restrictions on social media use by children under 16. Platforms using such methods have been urged to adopt more effective age assurance technologies or provide compelling evidence demonstrating their effectiveness.

Age Checks Increase Across Online Services

The report found significant progress in the adoption of age checks since the Online Safety Act's child protection duties came into force in July 2025.

Between July 2025 and January 2026, the proportion of children encountering highly effective age checks increased from 25% to 43%.

Ofcom said more than 69 million age checks were completed across a sample of 32 UK services during the second half of 2025, representing a 23-fold increase compared to the previous six months.

The regulator also reported that all of the UK's top 10 pornography websites and most of the top 100 now have age verification measures in place.

Among children aged 8 to 14 who attempted to access pornography, only 8% visited such services. Half of those children reached only websites with age checks, while nearly 87% of their visits lasted less than 30 seconds, suggesting age verification discouraged continued access.

Search Engines Also Face Scrutiny

Despite the wider rollout of age assurance, Ofcom found that children can still easily discover pornography websites without age checks through Google Search and Bing.

Its analysis found that 33% of first-page Google search results and 54% of Bing results directed users to pornography websites lacking age verification or equivalent protections.

Following discussions with the regulator, Google and Bing have agreed to work with Ofcom on practical measures to reduce the visibility of such websites in search results.

Meanwhile, Ofcom continues enforcement against adult services that fail to comply with the law. The regulator has opened 23 investigations involving 88 adult service providers, with many either introducing age assurance or blocking UK users after enforcement action.

UK Moves Toward Social Media Ban for Under-16s

The investigation comes as the UK government advances plans to introduce a social media ban for under-16s, modeled on Australia's approach.

Under the proposal, platforms including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and X would be prohibited from offering social media services to users under 16. Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal are not expected to be included.

The government also plans to introduce additional protections, including restrictions on livestreaming and communication with strangers for children under 16 across social media and certain gaming platforms. Similar safeguards would apply by default to users aged 16 and 17 to avoid what officials describe as a "cliff-edge" at age 16.

The proposed measures are expected to be presented to Parliament before the end of the year, with implementation targeted for Spring 2027.

Ofcom said it will submit a rapid assessment to Parliament by the end of October outlining what constitutes highly effective age assurance for verifying whether someone is over 16, helping shape future enforcement of the planned restrictions.

TikTok is under formal investigation over concerns it has failed to protect children from harmful content, the UK’s online regulator, Ofcom, has announced.

The social media platform’s approach to checking the ages of users has sparked “particular concerns” at the watchdog, almost a year after measures to protect children from the worst of online content came into effect under the Online Safety Act.

The quickest way to make being online safer for children and teens would be to kick all adult men off the internet, the Canadian psychologist Candice Odgers believes. Men are the biggest perpetrators of sextortion and most likely to spread misinformation, she says.

Odgers is not recommending this as a policy for governments to adopt: “That would be crazy, right? It would be unfair.” But she is on a drive to puncture the prevailing narrative that the best way to address online harms is a social media ban for teenagers.

Sixteen and 17-year-olds are to be encouraged to observe a midnight social media curfew, in the latest stage of Labour’s bid “to protect the next generation” from online harms, including poor sleep caused by night-time scrolling.

From next spring, Britain’s oldest children will be urged to refrain from using certain apps with a midnight to 6am block being switched on by default. But the curfew will not be mandatory and can be overridden. The move is an extension of the under-16 social media ban announced last month, which included restrictions on platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.

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The post UK Warns Parents: Limit Online Sharing of Kids’ Photos Amid AI Abuse Risks appeared first on IT Security News.

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian. Today, we’re discussing the UK’s difficult position in the AI race, new doubts over OpenAI’s path toward a trillion-dollar stock market debut and the changes to IRL tech reporting in the age of AI.

My patients use ChatGPT for therapy. Now I use it too | Sarah Darghouth | The Guardian

Chasing new skills, going back to basics and pushing for collective action: how software engineers are adapting to AI

The European Commission is moving closer to introducing new measures on Child Safety Online after President Ursula von der Leyen received recommendations from a Special Panel examining the impact of social media on children. The report, released Monday, calls for stronger safeguards, greater platform accountability, and age-appropriate restrictions as the EU prepares to review the findings and present legislative proposals after the summer.

Speaking alongside the panel's co-chairs, von der Leyen said protecting children online has become one of the most pressing challenges facing governments. She stressed that parents, not algorithms, should shape children's development and warned that the current digital environment is exposing young users to growing risks.

Child Safety Online Becomes a Priority for the EU

Von der Leyen said the Special Panel examined both the opportunities and harms created by social media algorithms and their effects on children. According to the findings highlighted in her statement, young people across Europe now spend between four and six hours each day on screens, while nearly 60% of young children have experienced emotional or psychosocial problems online.

She said these challenges include loss of sleep, anxiety, depression, cyberbullying, exposure to harmful content, and unwanted online interactions, all occurring while children's brains are still developing.

"We believe that parents bring up our kids, and not predatory algorithms," von der Leyen said, adding that social media platforms should no longer have unrestricted access to children.

Digital Services Act Places Responsibility on Platforms

A key recommendation focuses on holding technology companies accountable for the safety of their services. Von der Leyen said platforms that build online systems should also be responsible for ensuring they do not harm users, particularly children.

She pointed to the Digital Services Act (DSA) as the EU's framework for requiring providers to remove harmful features, including addictive algorithms, dark patterns, harmful content, and unwanted contacts.

According to the Commission President, the EU has already taken action under the Digital Services Act against TikTok over its addictive design and recently against Meta. She said platforms have a duty of care toward users and must respond quickly when children report harmful experiences.

EU Considers Social Media Age Restrictions

The report also strengthens the case for introducing social media age restrictions, with von der Leyen arguing that the debate is no longer about whether children use social media but when platforms should be allowed to reach them.

She said the European Union's age verification app is designed to help parents by providing an easy-to-use, privacy-preserving, and open-source tool to verify age before accessing online platforms.

Von der Leyen also suggested that Europe should consider establishing a "social media start date," comparing it to existing age limits for driving and purchasing alcohol.

Panel Calls for Age-Appropriate Digital Access

According to the statement, children under the age of three should have no exposure to screens or digital platforms. Older children should only access social media under parental, caregiver, or teacher supervision and within limited time periods.

Von der Leyen said childhood is a critical stage of brain development and argued that children need opportunities to play, build real-world friendships, and develop their identities before algorithms begin shaping their online experiences.

She added that policymakers should first identify platforms with age-inappropriate and addictive features, describing the category as "social media plus," before considering phased access for different age groups.

EU to Review Recommendations Before New Proposal

The European Commission said the report comes after consultations with parents, educators, experts, young people, EU member states, and international partners, including Australia.

Von der Leyen confirmed that the Commission will now review the recommendations before presenting a formal proposal after the summer.

While no legislative measures have yet been announced, the report signals the EU's intent to strengthen Child Safety Online protections by expanding platform accountability, improving age verification, and evaluating new rules governing children's access to social media.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more: EU weighs under-13 social media ban

The Chat Control 1.0 framework has been revived after the European Parliament voted to restore the legal basis that allows major technology companies to voluntarily scan users' private communications for Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The decision, taken on July 9, comes months after the temporary regulation expired in April and has reignited debate over privacy, surveillance, and the future of online safety laws in the European Union.

The vote was held on the final sitting day before the Parliament's summer recess. Under an urgent legislative procedure, rejecting the proposal required an absolute majority of all Members of the European Parliament rather than a simple majority of those present. As a result, the proposal passed despite more lawmakers present voting against it than in favor.

Chat Control 1.0 Restores Voluntary CSAM Scanning

The revived regulation, formally known as Regulation (EU) 2021/1232, provides the legal basis for online platforms to voluntarily scan private communications for known and new Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) as well as the solicitation of children.

The original regulation was introduced in 2021 as a temporary derogation from the ePrivacy Directive. It expired in April after lawmakers failed to agree on a long-term replacement amid widespread concerns over user privacy.

Although several technology companies continued voluntary scanning after the regulation lapsed, European authorities had warned that doing so without a legal basis could expose platforms to legal uncertainty. The restored framework does not authorize scanning on end-to-end encrypted messaging services such as Signal.

Urgent Procedure Draws Criticism

The renewed proposal followed an urgent legislative process that critics described as highly unusual. According to CDT Europe, the Parliament had previously rejected a similar proposal in March, but the issue returned through a fast-tracked second-reading procedure supported by European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.

Because the proposal was treated as a second reading, opponents needed at least 361 votes to block it. While a simple majority supported rejecting the measure during voting, it did not reach the higher threshold required under the urgent procedure. Reduced attendance before the summer recess also affected the outcome.

Only two amendments were adopted during the process, both aimed at preserving protections for end-to-end encryption.

Debate Continues Over Permanent CSAM Framework

The revival of Chat Control 1.0 comes shortly after negotiations on the proposed Child Sexual Abuse Material Regulation (CSAR) ended without agreement on June 29. Discussions on the permanent framework are expected to resume after the summer break.

CDT Europe argued that restoring the temporary regulation could complicate ongoing negotiations over the long-term legislative framework. The organization said questions surrounding voluntary or mandatory scanning require careful legal and technical assessment before permanent rules are introduced.

Questions Raised Over the Need for Urgency

Supporters of the urgent procedure argued that allowing the temporary regulation to expire would create an immediate regulatory gap for online platforms investigating child sexual abuse content.

However, CDT Europe challenged that justification, pointing to statements from the German Federal Police, which reportedly acknowledged there was no direct connection between the expiration of the temporary regulation and the number of CSAM reports received.

The organization also noted that several legal mechanisms remain available even without the temporary derogation. These include targeted telecommunications surveillance with judicial authorization, electronic evidence preservation under the EU's e-evidence framework, existing content removal and reporting processes under the Digital Services Act, and hash-matching technology that identifies previously verified CSAM for human review.

Privacy Concerns Remain

Following the vote, CDT Europe said it opposed both the outcome and the legislative process used to restore the regulation. The organization stated it would continue advocating for a future Child Sexual Abuse Material Regulation (CSAR) that rejects indiscriminate mass scanning while protecting end-to-end encryption and fundamental rights.

The renewed Chat Control 1.0 regulation restores the legal framework for voluntary scanning by online platforms, but the broader debate over balancing child protection, privacy, and digital rights in the European Union remains unresolved.

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When Mark Zuckerberg walked into a Los Angeles courtroom on 18 February flanked by an entourage bedecked in Meta Ray-Bans, some people laughed. If this was an attempt at product placement for the company’s newest range of smart glasses, it was jarringly ill-judged: Zuckerberg was about to testify before a jury in a landmark lawsuit that sought to prove that Instagram and YouTube are addictive by design, and he had passed a throng of bereaved parents on his way into the courthouse. But the prosecution team, led by Mark Lanier, were not laughing.

This was a serious trial. For the first time, the most powerful names in social media were being held to account for the inherent design of their platforms, rather than the content hosted on them. They were accused of deliberately and maliciously building products that keep children hooked, with disastrous consequences for the mental wellbeing of young people. It was a landmark case – a big tobacco moment for big tech.

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US senator Ed Markey is worried about the perils of unregulated artificial intelligence.

What part? All of it: the costs associated with thirsty, energy-guzzling datacenters, intrusive workplace surveillance, bias in discriminatory algorithms, AI overriding workers’ judgments, and deepening economic inequality – as those who profit most from AI rake in extraordinary windfalls.

In his early days as a writer, Heinlein wrote his stories in the context of a shared universe that he called the Future History. These were mostly short stories at first, with the occasional novella. But they include some great stories.

The Future History, Part 2

There were a few key themes running through Heinlein’s body of work. One we have already remarked upon, individual freedom, which had to be protected from any source of power, including both government and private corporations. This was essentially a libertarian perspective, but unlike many of today’s libertarians he was equally averse to the corporate type of power as a threat. But he had a complex view of the world which has resisted some attempts to pigeonhole him. He started out as a socialist, and while he didn’t remain one, he never became a knee-jerk reactionary either. In fact, he clearly despised them just as much. One way of looking at his body of work is that he explored the ramifications of different social policies through his stories, but in most cases the needs of a good story came first in the early years. In his later works he often surrendered to the temptation to pontificate, which reduced the enjoyment of them somewhat for anyone who was not already in agreement with his opinions

The second major theme you see throughout all of his works is the idea of the competent individual. He admired anyone who could do a job well, and clearly did not care whether they were man or woman, nor black or white. Alexei Panshin writes, in Heinlein in Dimension:

“There is one unique and vivid human Heinlein character, but he is a composite of Joe-Jim Gregory, Harriman, Waldo, Lazarus Long, Mr. Kiku, and many others, rather than any one individual.  I call the composite the Heinlein Individual.  . . .  It is a single personality that appears in three different stages and is repeated in every Heinlein book in one form or another.

“The earliest stage is that of the competent but naïve youngster. . . .  The second stage is the competent man in full glory, the man who knows how things work. . . .  The last stage is the wise old man who not only knows how things work, but why they work, too.”

Harriman we have already encountered in The Man Who Sold The Moon, and the others appear later. The Heinlein Individual, as he is often referred to, appears in many of Heinlein’s stories.

A third major theme has to do with morality and religion. Heinlein grew up in what he considered the heart of the Bible Belt, in Missouri, and saw first-hand how the evangelical Christians operated, and despised what he saw. As someone who believed in individual freedom, he could never surrender to someone else’s idea of how he should live his life. He saw them as a danger to his ideal libertarian society, and this shows up very early in his work. He personified the good, upright, church-going folk as “Mrs. Grundy”, and while you might want to draw the drapes to keep her from knowing what you were doing, you should never let her dictate how you would live your life. Revolt in 2100 begins the exploration of this in detail.

There is a chart of the future history at Baen Books, and in it we see that the 1960s were what Heinlein called The Crazy Years. (Remember, he conceived this in the 1940s and 1950s.) But in 2012 the major thing occurred when Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher, managed to get elected as President. This would be the last election held under the U.S. Constitution as he established a religious dictatorship that lasted a couple of generations. IS this plausible? Heinlein wrote about this:

“As for … the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past.

“It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.“

His background in the Bible Belt is what informs a lot of his thinking. He goes on to describe how this might happen:

“Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negroism, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening — particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.”

As the science fiction author David Brin points out, Heinlein accurately predicted much of what we are going through in the United States right now. There is an emerging dictatorship in the United States, promoted by right-wing religious groups. The “material heaven here on earth” is represented by the Prosperity Gospel, prominent in the Trump movement, and so on. Where the Prophet used a restored Ku Klux Klan as his muscle, we have The Proud Boys, and so on. It really does track very closely. Read David Brin’s article for more on this.

But nothing lasts forever. Empires rise and fall, governments change, and in this case a resistance movement arises. The revolt is depicted in the novella If This Goes On— (1940), and it is set in the year 2100, giving the title to the book. The main character is John Lyle, who is a young army officer assigned to the group protecting The Prophet in his capital of New Jerusalem. In the beginning he is thoroughly indoctrinated, but then begins to question his beliefs when he falls for one of The Prophet’s virgins, Sister Judith. He has an older companion in the military who is not only unshocked when John confides in him about his doubts, but offers to help him. It turns out this companion, Zeb Jones, is a member of the underground group called The Cabal that is working to overthrow the theocracy. In the end they are successful, and in the course of this John Lyle does a lot of growing up. In this we see another common characteristic of Heinlein stories: a young, naive boy meets up with an older and wiser man who helps him to grow.

In 2016 If This Goes On— won the Retro-Hugo Award for best novella of 1940. And in a personal note, I have T-shirt that says “Scudder for President 2012”. This baffles most people, but I enjoy the in-joke.

What is interesting in this book is that Heinlein doesn’t stop with a successful revolution. He then goes on in a second novella to describe the government that arose following the revolution, and this story is called Coventry (1940). The new government that arises after the revolution is called The Covenant, and it is an attempt to make sure that what happened with Scudder in 2012 could never happen again. It is a strongly libertarian government based on an agreement to be non-violent. In this society, scientists can cured criminal or violent tendencies, but any citizen convicted of such must agree to the treatment. The alternative to treatment is that they can be exiled to a place called Coventry. Coventry is outside of the Covenant society, and the Covenant society has nothing to do with them.

Our protagonist, David McKinnon, is convicted of assault, and chooses to go to Coventry instead of getting treatment. He imagines it is a peaceful anarchy, but is disabused of this notion when he is robbed of all of this possessions upon entry and thrown in jail. A fellow inmate, Fader Magee, helps him escape, and we learn he is an agent of the Covenant government. They learn that two of the factions in Coventry have joined forces, and found a way to break through the barrier that surrounds Coventry. They plan to attack and overthrow the Covenant government. David and Fader separately work to escape and get back to warn the Covenant government, which they do successfully. And by doing this, David has demonstrated that he is no longer a danger to the Covenant society and no longer subject to treatment.

This story won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, which is awarded by the Libertarian Futurist Society. And the Covenant society certainly has libertarian features. But this is not the Randian version of libertarianism, as exemplified by the fact that David is restored to the society because he demonstrated his concern for others. Heinlein always promoted individual freedom, but also the idea that people have a responsibility towards others.

Finally, Revolt in 2100 contains the short story Misfit, w2hich we have looked at previously.

The Past Through Tomorrow (1967) is a one volume collection of most of the Future history stories. I say most because just which stories belonged in this group could change from time to time. It also has the last version of the Chart of the Future History, and a few stories we have not yet mentioned (Methusaleh’s Children, and The Menace From Earth). And many of his other works contain back references to these events that imply that they might be set in the same alternate universe. Heinlein gets the last word on this:

“I have never been sure whether or not publishing that chart was a good idea or a bad mistake. Possibly it helped to sell some stories later—but certainly it caused me and still causes me to receive a lot nuisance mail from nitpickers. I have never felt bound by that chart; it was to serve me, not the other way around. If I found myself with a good story notion which fitted fairly well into the chart but not perfectly, I shed no tears—I went ahead and let the inconsistencies stand.

I want each story to be internally consistent . . . but I won’t let myself be painted into a corner through trying to fit that chart perfectly. I may start another “Future History” story tomorrow . . . and find that to make it a good yarn I must violate some item on that chart. I’ll give the nitpickers something to pick, for I will not hurt a good yarn for the sake of “logic”—logic is not involved, as that chart is fiction, not Holy Writ.”

Links:

• https://www.amazon.com/Heinlein-Dimension-Critical-Alexei-Panshin/dp/0911682015
• https://web.archive.org/web/20151105170345/http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133417/1439133417___1.htm
• https://david-brin.medium.com/heinleins-future-history-coming-true-before-our-eyes-10356a95556a
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_(short_story)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_Award#Hall_of_Fame_Award_inductees
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Past_Through_Tomorrow
• https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/the-golden-age/robert-a-heinlein/the-future-history-part-2/

Provide feedback on this episode.

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The launch marks a pivotal test of the sprawling, vertically integrated AI empire Musk has assembled over the past six months, and of a strategy that bets developers care less about topping benchmark leaderboards than about speed, cost, and whether a model can actually do the work.

"Announcing Grok 4.5, our first model trained specifically for coding and agents," the company said in a post on X. "It was trained with Cursor and offers frontier intelligence at leading speeds and cost efficiency."

Why Grok 4.5's pricing strategy matters more than its benchmark scores

SpaceX is not claiming Grok 4.5 is the smartest model in the world. Instead, it is making an economic argument. The company says the model uses half as many tokens per task as comparable models, delivers higher throughput, and costs less than half as much — priced at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. That undercuts the premium tiers of rivals like Anthropic's Claude Opus line and OpenAI's frontier models by a wide margin.

Musk framed the positioning candidly. "Our internal assessment is that Grok 4.5 is roughly comparable to Opus 4.7, but much faster," he wrote on X. "The combination of capability, faster speed and lower cost is what makes it competitive. We are closing the loop on real-world usefulness, not benchmarks. Hardcore engineers at Tesla & SpaceX find Grok 4.5 genuinely useful, which is what actually matters."

That framing is both a philosophy and a hedge. Independent evaluations released Wednesday suggest Grok 4.5 is genuinely competitive but not dominant on raw capability. The benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis ranked the model fourth on its GDPval-AA v2 index of real-world agentic knowledge work, with an Elo score of 1543, "behind only the latest Claude releases from Anthropic." But the cost figures are where the model stands out. Artificial Analysis measured Grok 4.5 at $0.49 per completed task — "nearly 90% cheaper than the models ahead of it on our leaderboard," the firm wrote, placing it "clearly on the Pareto frontier for performance versus cost."

For enterprise buyers, that math matters enormously. Agentic workloads — where a model works autonomously for minutes or hours, reading codebases, calling tools, and iterating on its own output — consume tokens voraciously. A model that is 90% cheaper per completed task, even if slightly less capable, changes the calculus for any engineering organization deploying agents across hundreds of developers. Investor Gavin Baker captured the market's cautious optimism: "Pareto dominant for coding by the numbers. We will see on the all-important vibes."

How the $60 billion Cursor acquisition shaped Grok 4.5's training

Grok 4.5 is the first concrete evidence of what SpaceX bought when it acquired Cursor, and the deal itself unfolded in stages. In April, SpaceX struck an unusual arrangement giving it the right to buy the coding startup for $60 billion — or pay billions in fees and compute if it walked away, as Business Insider reported at the time. Days after SpaceX's record-setting Nasdaq debut in June, the company exercised that right, announcing an all-stock acquisition that CNBC reported is roughly 3.4% dilution at the IPO valuation. SpaceX shares rose 16% on the news.

The strategic logic was always about data as much as product. Cursor's AI-first code editor generates an enormous stream of high-quality interaction data: how expert engineers write, edit, review, and debug code in real production environments. Musk said openly this spring that Cursor interaction data was being fed directly into Grok's training. Cursor, for its part, got access to SpaceX's Colossus supercomputer in Memphis — roughly 200,000 Nvidia GPUs with plans to scale toward one million — after publicly acknowledging it had been "bottlenecked by compute."

"We've partnered with SpaceXAI to train Grok 4.5," Cursor's official account posted Wednesday. "It's our most powerful model yet and the first we've built for more than software engineering." SpaceX says the model reflects that pedigree: it "excels in large codebases and handles long-running tasks that span multiple repositories, hundreds of skills, and a variety of tools" — precisely the messy, multi-file reality of professional software engineering that clean coding benchmarks often fail to capture. Early developer reactions suggest the training paid off. "Ok Grok 4.5 is wild," posted developer Evan Bacon. "It just built me this rocket tracking app with live data and a 3D globe. I might need a new benchmark after this."

Inside xAI's turbulent year of scandals, departures, and rebuilding

The polished launch belies how chaotic the road here has been. Grok has spent much of the past year in crisis. In mid-2025, the chatbot generated antisemitic content and at one point called itself "MechaHitler," episodes covered extensively by NPR and CNN. Earlier this year, its image-generation features allowed users to create sexualized deepfakes, including of children — drawing investigations from the European Commission and Britain's Ofcom, as the BBC reported, and prompting SpaceX to list the behavior as a business risk in its own IPO filings.

The organization behind the model was fracturing, too. All 11 of Musk's xAI co-founders had departed by the end of March, according to TechCrunch, and Musk publicly conceded that xAI "was not built right [the] first time around," saying he was rebuilding it "from the foundations up." Musk himself admitted at a conference this spring that Grok was "currently behind in coding" — a rare public concession from an executive not known for them.

Against that backdrop, Grok 4.5 reads as the first product of the rebuilt organization — and the first proof point for the audacious story SpaceX told public market investors. During its IPO roadshow, the company pitched a total addressable market of roughly $28 trillion, with about $26 trillion tied to AI, including a $22.7 trillion "enterprise applications" opportunity. Those numbers strained credulity even by Silicon Valley standards. A competitive, cheap coding model is the most direct route from that narrative to actual revenue, which is why Wednesday's launch carries weight far beyond a routine model release.

Grok 4.5 vs. Claude: the battle for the AI coding market

The competitive stakes are hard to overstate, because the AI coding market has been consolidating around a single leader — and it isn't Musk. Even as Cursor's revenue exploded, its market share was eroding. Spending data from Ramp cited by CNBC showed Cursor's share of the AI coding category falling from 41% in June 2025 to about 26% by May 2026, while Anthropic came to control roughly half the market. Anthropic also topped CNBC's Disruptor 50 list this year and, by Artificial Analysis's own measure, still holds the top spots on agentic performance rankings.

That is the gap Grok 4.5 is engineered to close — not by out-thinking Claude, but by underpricing it. The model's economics create a classic disruption dynamic: if it delivers most of the frontier's capability at a fraction of the cost per task, price-sensitive enterprise workloads will migrate, and incumbents will face pressure on their most profitable API traffic. The counterargument is that in coding, quality compounds. A model that resolves a complex bug correctly on the first attempt can be cheaper in practice than one that costs half as much per token but requires three tries. That is why Baker's caveat about "vibes" — the developer community's shorthand for a model's felt reliability on real work — will determine more than any launch-day benchmark.

There is also a structural question buried in the deal. Cursor built its business on offering developers their choice of models, including Claude and GPT. If Grok becomes the favored child inside Cursor — and Musk was already urging users to "Try out Grok 4.5 in Cursor!" within hours of launch — the product risks alienating the very users whose data made Grok 4.5 possible. Regulators, already scrutinizing Grok on safety grounds in two jurisdictions, may take a keen interest in a company that controls the training data, the model, and a dominant distribution channel simultaneously.

What Musk's trillion-dollar vertical integration bet means for AI's future

Grok 4.5 also crystallizes what Musk's frenetic dealmaking was building toward. In February, SpaceX absorbed xAI in a share-exchange merger that CNBC confirmed valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion — the largest merger of all time, valuing SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. The June IPO followed, the biggest in history, and the stock has since surged past $200 from its $135 offering price, vaulting SpaceX past Amazon and Microsoft to become the fourth most valuable company in the United States.

The result is a single public company that owns nearly the entire stack: Colossus for training compute, ambitions for orbital data centers to power future scaling, a frontier model in Grok, a distribution channel in Cursor's developer base, and captive demand from Tesla and SpaceX's own engineering organizations. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic can fully replicate that integration; both must reach developers through third-party tools, some of which Musk now owns. Whether that concentration proves to be an unassailable moat or a regulatory target — or both — is now one of the defining questions in enterprise AI.

The next few weeks will start to answer it. Artificial Analysis says its full Intelligence Index results are forthcoming. Enterprise pilots will reveal whether the token-efficiency claims survive contact with real codebases. And Anthropic, which has answered every serious challenge this cycle with a rapid counter-release, is unlikely to cede the price-performance frontier quietly.

But the deeper story of Grok 4.5 may be what it says about where the AI race has moved. For three years, the industry's scoreboard was intelligence: whose model was smartest. Musk, arriving late and battered, has chosen to compete on a different axis entirely — whose model is cheapest to actually use. It is a telling choice from a man who built his fortune not by inventing the rocket or the electric car, but by relentlessly driving down the cost of making them. If the strategy works, Musk will have done to AI what he did to spaceflight. If it doesn't, he'll have spent $60 billion to learn that in software, unlike rockets, the cheapest ride isn't always the one engineers choose.

“Chat told me I should break up with him.”

I instructed my face to remain therapist-neutral, but I must have smirked. The truth is, I was annoyed. We had been discussing the viability of this relationship for weeks, and in an instant AI had brought the answer. “How do you feel about it?” She said this had been her gut feeling all along. The following session, her relationship was over.

Summary

SINEC OS before V4.0 contains multiple vulnerabilities. Siemens has released a new version for RUGGEDCOM RST2428P and recommends to update to the latest version.

The following versions of Siemens SINEC OS are affected:

• RUGGEDCOM RST2428P (6GK6242-6PA00) vers:intdot/<4.0 

Background

• Critical Infrastructure Sectors: Critical Manufacturing, Transportation Systems, Energy, Healthcare and Public Health, Financial Services, Government Services and Facilities
• Countries/Areas Deployed: Worldwide
• Company Headquarters Location: Germany

Vulnerabilities

Acknowledgments

• Siemens ProductCERT reported these vulnerabilities to CISA.

General Recommendations

As a general security measure, Siemens strongly recommends to protect network access to devices with appropriate mechanisms. In order to operate the devices in a protected IT environment, Siemens recommends to configure the environment according to Siemens' operational guidelines for Industrial Security (Download: https://www.siemens.com/cert/operational-guidelines-industrial-security), and to follow the recommendations in the product manuals. Additional information on Industrial Security by Siemens can be found at: https://www.siemens.com/industrialsecurity

Additional Resources

For further inquiries on security vulnerabilities in Siemens products and solutions, please contact the Siemens ProductCERT: https://www.siemens.com/cert/advisories

Terms of Use

The use of Siemens Security Advisories is subject to the terms and conditions listed on: https://www.siemens.com/productcert/terms-of-use.

Legal Notice and Terms of Use

This product is provided subject to this Notification (https://www.cisa.gov/notification) and this Privacy & Use policy (https://www.cisa.gov/privacy-policy).

Recommended Practices

CISA recommends users take defensive measures to minimize the exploitation risk of this vulnerability.

Minimize network exposure for all control system devices and/or systems, and ensure they are not accessible from the internet.

Locate control system networks and remote devices behind firewalls and isolate them from business networks.

When remote access is required, use more secure methods, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), recognizing VPNs may have vulnerabilities and should be updated to the most recent version available. Also recognize VPN is only as secure as its connected devices.

CISA reminds organizations to perform proper impact analysis and risk assessment prior to deploying defensive measures.

CISA also provides a section for control systems security recommended practices on the ICS webpage on cisa.gov. Several CISA products detailing cyber defense best practices are available for reading and download, including Improving Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity with Defense-in-Depth Strategies.

CISA encourages organizations to implement recommended cybersecurity strategies for proactive defense of ICS assets. Additional mitigation guidance and recommended practices are publicly available on the ICS webpage at cisa.gov in the technical information paper, ICS-TIP-12-146-01B--Targeted Cyber Intrusion Detection and Mitigation Strategies.

Organizations observing suspected malicious activity should follow established internal procedures and report findings to CISA for tracking and correlation against other incidents.

Advisory Conversion Disclaimer

This ICSA is a verbatim republication of Siemens ProductCERT SSA-253495 from a direct conversion of the vendor's Common Security Advisory Framework (CSAF) advisory. This is republished to CISA's website as a means of increasing visibility and is provided "as-is" for informational purposes only. CISA is not responsible for the editorial or technical accuracy of republished advisories and provides no warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within this advisory. Further, CISA does not endorse any commercial product or service. Please contact Siemens ProductCERT directly for any questions regarding this advisory.

Revision History

• Initial Release Date: 2026-06-02

Legal Notice and Terms of Use

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I am a psychotherapist who works with frazzled, snappy parents, and spend my days writing about why we struggle to find calm. I also used to pick up my phone hundreds of times a day, failing to realise that it was making me a snappier, more irritable, less present mother.

My phone was my office, my income, my means of communication. Every time I checked it, there was something to action, a notification of something new, something that told me I was useful and productive, giving me dopamine hits that motherhood didn’t offer. It had become my coping mechanism.

• Analysis | AI prey: why watchdogs are telling parents to protect children from nudification apps

The UK National Crime Agency has recommended parents should not put photos of their children on public display online as part of landmark guidance to tackle the rise of AI-generated sexual abuse material.

Advice issued by the NCA and the child safety watchdog the Internet Watch Foundation suggests parents and guardians make their social media accounts private or share pictures of their children through a “close friends” group.

• UK parents warned over posting images of children amid AI sexual abuse fears

The two photos started out as typical teenage selfies: looking into the mirror, fully clothed. But once online predators had got hold of those pictures and ran them through an AI imaging tool, they had become the basis for extreme pornography videos.

These examples come from the Report Remove service, which allows children who have had explicit pictures of themselves distributed without their consent to flag the image confidentially and have it blocked or taken down from social media. Due to breakthroughs in AI, and the wide availability of AI models and nudification apps, some under-18s are becoming victims without even being in contact with criminals.

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The post UAE Becomes First Arab Nation to Ban Social Media for Children Under 15 appeared first on IT Security News.

What are the benefits obtained from AI’s massive use of electricity and water (‘We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres, 29 June)? Analysis shows that the top four uses of AI are “therapy/companionship”, “technical assistance and troubleshooting”, “fun and nonsense”, and “fan fiction and storytelling”.

AI use for therapy, and due to loneliness, appears not to reduce loneliness. AI provides affirmation, but at the expense of reducing the social skills needed to interact in the real world. Teachers report that students’ use of AI reduces their capacity for critical thinking.

Read more →

The post This month in security with Tony Anscombe – June 2026 edition appeared first on IT Security News.

The post US House Passes KIDS Act, Advancing Child Safety While Privacy Advocates Warn of Universal Age Verification appeared first on PrivacySavvy.

It's that time of month when ESET Chief Security Evangelist Tony Anscombe (https://www.welivesecurity.com/en/our-experts/tony-anscombe/) looks back at some of the top cybersecurity stories that made the news over the past 30 or so days and considers what they may mean for your own cyber-defenses. Here's some of what caught Tony's attention in June 2026:

• The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued new vulnerability patching rules (https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/cisa-rewrites-federal-patching-requirements-ai-threat-era) that require federal agencies to remediate the most dangerous vulnerabilities within three days,
• Cyberattackers are taking aim (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-900-us-gas-station-tank-gauge-systems-exposed-to-attacks/) at Internet-exposed automatic tank gauge (ATG) systems in the United States, according to a warning (https://www.ic3.gov/CSA/2026/260602.pdf) by several US government agencies,
• Americans lost $3.5 billion (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ftc-warns-of-record-35-billion-losses-to-imposter-scams-in-2025/) to imposter scams in 2025, with reported losses nearly tripling since 2020, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC),
• The UK and Canada are planning to introduce a ban on social media (https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/uk-social-media-ban-privacy-experts-worried) use by children under the age of 16.

What lessons does the new CISA policy hold for organizations outside the agency's direct remit? What else is there to know about threats facing ATGs or, indeed, many other critical infrastructure systems? How can you stay safe from imposter fraud (https://www.welivesecurity.com/en/scams/many-faces-impersonation-fraud-spot-imposter-too-late/), and could the social media bans for children work? Learn more from Tony's video and be sure to check out the May 2026 edition (https://www.welivesecurity.com/en/videos/month-security-tony-anscombe-may-2026/) of Tony's monthly security news roundup for more insights.

All this – and more – on https://www.welivesecurity.com/en/
Connect with us on: https://www.facebook.com/eset, https://x.com/ESET, https://www.linkedin.com/company/eset/ and https://www.instagram.com/eset/.

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The post More NI Schools Warned After C2K Network Hack appeared first on IT Security News.

An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has quietly rebuilt some of the federal government’s most sensitive websites – for passport applications, voter registration, prescription-drug pricing and children’s savings – in ways critics say appear to violate federal law.

The National Design Studio (NDS) was established by a Donald Trump executive order last August, and is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans.

Read more: Irish Internet Hotline named Trusted Flagger under EU Digital Services Act

• [cde0daabcc] - (SEMVER-MINOR) doc: update blockList stability status to release candidate (alphaleadership) #63050
• [b78f5a7537] - (SEMVER-MINOR) fs: support caller-supplied readFile() buffers (Matteo Collina) #63634
• [417aacbc36] - (SEMVER-MINOR) http: close pre-request sockets in closeIdleConnections (semimikoh) #63470
• [fbb108be7d] - (SEMVER-MINOR) loader: implement package maps (Maël Nison) #62239
• [45494d5a8a] - (SEMVER-MINOR) net: support TCP_KEEPINTVL and TCP_KEEPCNT in setKeepAlive (Guy Bedford) #63825
• [ee29465e77] - (SEMVER-MINOR) tls: add certificateCompression option (Tim Perry) #62217
• [b17817eb2b] - (SEMVER-MINOR) vfs: dispatch node:fs/promises to mounted VFS instances (Matteo Collina) #63537
• [7bc93a6ac5] - (SEMVER-MINOR) vfs: add minimal node:vfs subsystem (Matteo Collina) #63115

Commits

• [c7eb83b46a] - benchmark: add child_process async path baselines (Yagiz Nizipli) #63929
• [066fff17a5] - benchmark: remove old alias usage in ffi benchmarks (Anna Henningsen) #63666
• [509cd1b94f] - buffer: optimize Buffer.prototype.copy (Robert Nagy) #63828
• [86e651bbd0] - buffer: use simdutf for two-byte utf8 byteLength (Mert Can Altin) #63639
• [d3f4ed9015] - build: suppress compiler warnings for histogram (Richard Lau) #63980
• [82dd7ddbe6] - build: add QUIC CI job for PRs matching QUIC related paths (Tim Perry) #63875
• [1124c0652d] - build: remove redundant intermediate node_aix_shared (Chengzhong Wu) #63747
• [e510ee8087] - build: build codecache and snapshot with libnode (Chengzhong Wu) #63626
• [5b583dace5] - build: enable maglev by default on Linux ppc64le (Richard Lau) #63474
• [a2324246b4] - build: remove duplicated node_use_sqlite and node_use_ffi conditions (Chengzhong Wu) #63629
• [2a467a5f69] - Revert "build, doc: generate node.1 with doc-kit" (Antoine du Hamel) #64091
• [e01dec45b8] - build, doc: generate node.1 with doc-kit (Aviv Keller) #62044
• [2ab9848fe4] - child_process: pass spawn options to the binding positionally (Yagiz Nizipli) #63930
• [04c04c8b5c] - child_process: serialize advanced IPC messages natively (Yagiz Nizipli) #63933
• [1eef57293d] - crypto: support non-byte WebCrypto lengths and cSHAKE (Filip Skokan) #63988
• [788a66e147] - crypto: share WebCrypto method and usage helpers (Filip Skokan) #63975
• [f9fdce3f46] - crypto: use EVP_MAC for HMAC on OpenSSL >=3 (Filip Skokan) #63942
• [7e9ca87e58] - crypto: make webcrypto aliasKeyFormat directional (Filip Skokan) #63910
• [656e57ebbf] - crypto: fix unhandled error in Hash._transform (Haram Jeong) #63261
• [65536f0d98] - crypto: refactor keyObject.toCryptoKey() and SubtleCrypto.getPublicKey() (Filip Skokan) #63622
• [978f1d2bcc] - crypto: handle cipher context allocation failures (Tian Teng) #63542
• [5551e8f773] - crypto: deduplicate X509 subject matching logic (Tobias Nießen) #63644
• [57ae87640a] - crypto: fix warnings in test_node_crypto.cc (Maya Lekova) #63490
• [9984b05dff] - crypto: coerce -0 to +0 before native calls (Filip Skokan) #63556
• [88011a3689] - crypto,tls: do not ignore BN_get_word error (Tobias Nießen) #63895
• [9a3393d14f] - debugger: lazily wait for initial break output (Trivikram Kamat) #63969
• [b0bfcb9c59] - debugger: defer probe pause handling until startup (Trivikram Kamat) #63608
• [8516003953] - debugger: await initialization after run and restart (Trivikram Kamat) #63607
• [4438cb5284] - debugger: add --max-hit option to probe mode (Joyee Cheung) #63704
• [238b54ed2a] - debugger: add more logs to probe mode (Joyee Cheung) #63663
• [bbef54b413] - deps: libffi: cherry-pick 9ca53a19833d (Anthony Green) #64040
• [9761385dbd] - deps: update libffi to 3.6.0 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #64040
• [373ec2d092] - deps: update acorn to 8.17.0 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63901
• [e44b5d487e] - (SEMVER-MINOR) deps: update OpenSSL build config to support compression (Tim Perry) #62217
• [3ed287a2e2] - deps: upgrade npm to 11.17.0 (npm team) #63857
• [b1b597c797] - deps: add ngtcp2_fmt.c to build configuration (ngtcp2.gyp) (沈鸿飞) #63821
• [0bf8e12305] - deps: V8: add CopyArrayBufferBytes API (Robert Nagy) #63828
• [e49d7301a5] - deps: update ngtcp2 to 1.23.0 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63777
• [e5c079004b] - deps: update nghttp3 to 1.16.0 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63776
• [d599fa2346] - deps: update googletest to 7140cd416cecd7462a8aae488024abeee55598e4 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63775
• [bc09f1508c] - deps: update sqlite to 3.53.2 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63774
• [60787746c4] - deps: update zlib to 1.3.2.1-motley-3246f1b (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63773
• [971af104f1] - deps: update amaro to 1.1.10 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63670
• [e17f665444] - deps: update googletest to 8736d2cd5c1dcba41170ed2fddca14021d4916c3 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63669
• [7591949457] - dgram: add synchronous Socket connectSync() (Guy Bedford) #63932
• [d75222d7cb] - dgram: add synchronous Socket.prototype.bindSync() (Guy Bedford) #63838
• [0cf8342ae2] - dns: coerce -0 to +0 in lookup and resolver inputs (Filip Skokan) #63556
• [e068299320] - doc: update gcc toolchains to gcc-13 and g++-13 (Louie Llaneta) #64018
• [65178bdcf3] - doc: add aduh95 to last security release steward (Antoine du Hamel) #63981
• [83eedfe85b] - doc: fix typo in util.md (Daijiro Wachi) #63961
• [54948c78e7] - doc: clarify callback exceptions (Matteo Collina) #63939
• [205d0a57f2] - doc: fix incorrect test runner mock examples (Kimaswa Emmanuel Yusufu) #63656
• [44809b176c] - doc: clarify fromReadable() duck-typed contract (Trivikram Kamat) #63682
• [9cb15fcc85] - doc: fix typo in cli.md (Daijiro Wachi) #63883
• [394d0bb928] - doc: fix typo in vm.md (Daijiro Wachi) #63881
• [59b7be8193] - doc: fix typo in packages.md (Daijiro Wachi) #63882
• [33c236cea9] - doc: fix a/an article typos in module, util, and dns (Daijiro Wachi) #63766
• [30595da67b] - doc: update npm supported versions link (hojeong park) #63672
• [5919ba7e97] - doc: fix AES-OCB IV length in SubtleCrypto.supports example (Anshika Jain) #63717
• [51cab5cb72] - doc: add webstreams to args for pipeline from stream/promises (David Sanders) #63628
• [ce85b2af88] - doc: fix "used to sent" → "used to send" in http2 (Daijiro Wachi) #63700
• [298735e8df] - doc: mark Node.js 25 as End-of-Life (Antoine du Hamel) #63692
• [56948518b9] - doc: clarify tty raw mode applies to input processing only (Muhammad Zeeshan) #63438
• [32ff731248] - doc: add worker_threads history entries (Bob Put) #63545
• [cde0daabcc] - (SEMVER-MINOR) doc: update blockList stability status to release candidate (alphaleadership) #63050
• [d29483fc4f] - doc,crypto: mark argon2 and encap/decap as stable (Filip Skokan) #63924
• [6e668331d9] - events: improve addAbortListener perf by caching options object (Raz Luvaton) #52367
• [97aafe2519] - ffi: add fast support for almost all other platforms (Paolo Insogna) #63941
• [f52cf5eeaa] - ffi: add experimental fast FFI call API for AArch64 and x86_64 (Paolo Insogna) #63068
• [d9461fee05] - ffi: port semi-colon fix for riscv64 (and others) (Stewart X Addison) #63794
• [4c8402e0a8] - fs: do not treat EPERM as ENOTEMPTY on Windows (Kirill Saied) #63709
• [b78f5a7537] - (SEMVER-MINOR) fs: support caller-supplied readFile() buffers (Matteo Collina) #63634
• [3d0097d489] - fs: prevent spurious recursive watch events on prefix siblings (Marco) #63095
• [14d829cb3c] - fs: ignore deleted dirs in recursive watch scan (Trivikram Kamat) #63686
• [ceba08a1ea] - fs: coerce -0 to +0 in mode flags and watch intervals (Filip Skokan) #63556
• [6577d3b282] - http: avoid stream listeners on idle agent sockets (Matteo Collina) #64004
• [417aacbc36] - (SEMVER-MINOR) http: close pre-request sockets in closeIdleConnections (semimikoh) #63470
• [b7fd13a59a] - http2: retain header memory in session accounting (Matteo Collina) #63752
• [e611ccd167] - inspector: fix inspector.close() documented behavior (Chengzhong Wu) #63837
• [a44f51eef3] - lib: fix missing lazyDOMException import (Filip Skokan) #64033
• [27cc4ec598] - lib: add lint rule to enforce use of kEmptyObject (Antoine du Hamel) #63790
• [7ee31b0bf4] - lib: improve control abstraction coverage in frozen intrinsics (Renegade334) #63698
• [078457839a] - lib: add Iterator global to primordials (Renegade334) #63698
• [58837dc4dd] - lib: remove source map deadcode in type stripping (Chengzhong Wu) #63738
• [e7513a8b9e] - lib: make Navigator#language getter throw on invalid this (Mohamed Sayed) #63601
• [fbb108be7d] - (SEMVER-MINOR) loader: implement package maps (Maël Nison) #62239
• [ea0b8e1dc2] - meta: bump github/codeql-action from 4.35.3 to 4.36.1 (dependabot[bot]) #63724
• [ac90719532] - meta: bump actions/cache from 5.0.4 to 5.0.5 (dependabot[bot]) #62847
• [3ed3de3062] - meta: bump actions/checkout from 6.0.2 to 6.0.3 (dependabot[bot]) #63726
• [d08d57bf70] - meta: bump codecov/codecov-action from 6.0.0 to 6.0.1 (dependabot[bot]) #63725
• [e748d192cf] - meta: bump cachix/cachix-action (dependabot[bot]) #63729
• [10554eb131] - meta: bump actions/stale from 10.2.0 to 10.3.0 (dependabot[bot]) #63728
• [791885f2af] - meta: bump step-security/harden-runner from 2.19.0 to 2.19.4 (dependabot[bot]) #63727
• [32d9a407d9] - meta: bump cachix/install-nix-action from 31.10.5 to 31.10.6 (dependabot[bot]) #63723
• [b97c7bed07] - module: enable existing machinery for deferred import of static modules (Maya Lekova) #63712
• [4becad2117] - module: use file: URL as sourceURL for type-stripped CommonJS (Joyee Cheung) #63705
• [c71c85b95f] - net: early TCP binding via synchronous net.BoundSocket (Guy Bedford) #63951
• [45494d5a8a] - (SEMVER-MINOR) net: support TCP_KEEPINTVL and TCP_KEEPCNT in setKeepAlive (Guy Bedford) #63825
• [3988efa1f3] - net: coerce -0 to +0 in BlockList prefixes (Filip Skokan) #63556
• [484efd1c44] - quic: fix get_reader bug that dropped data on FIN (Tim Perry) #63946
• [04a17fe6f0] - quic: expose QUIC certificates as JS X509Certificate, not raw handles (Tim Perry) #63191
• [b62d5696dc] - quic: fix reader backpressure deadlock on idle connections (Tim Perry) #63950
• [3f1c8d7453] - quic: fix broken listEndpoints export, test callbacks & nghttp3 include (Tim Perry) #63874
• [d8538b9deb] - quic: impl. cb for http/3 settings/app. options (Marten Richter) #63558
• [643b19716e] - quic: add listEndpoints API (James M Snell) #63536
• [2bce35bea4] - sqlite: do not leave database open after failed open (Yagiz Nizipli) #63854
• [394af52abb] - sqlite: fix stack-use-after-scope with function callback (ndossche) #63640
• [10f03e5958] - src: omit unconvertible names in cjs_lexer::Parse (Yagiz Nizipli) #63943
• [1723773d41] - src: keep global list of addon-provided cleanup hooks (Anna Henningsen) #63985
• [ef12e9ea44] - src: guard OpenSSL compression header include (Filip Skokan) #64009
• [48af8a6d8d] - src: handle empty MaybeLocal in cjs_lexer::Parse (Yagiz Nizipli) #63885
• [2a672ee9e8] - src: fast path empty native immediate drain (Gürgün Dayıoğlu) #62969
• [db6a31d1a1] - src: do not track weak BaseObjects as childrens of Realms (Anna Henningsen) #63842
• [5fb837ff46] - src: allow tracking children in MemoryTracker with weak edges (Anna Henningsen) #63842
• [6d22d373a9] - src: use C++14 deprecated attribute for NODE_DEPRECATED (Anna Henningsen) #63755
• [7ac3fe1992] - src: add cleanup hooks to node::ObjectWrap (Anna Henningsen) #63642
• [d82d369155] - src: fix edge case when deflateInit2() fails with Z_VERSION_ERROR (Nora Dossche) #63476
• [03858d152b] - src: remove redundant handle_ field in ffi (Anna Henningsen) #63665
• [1682264f6b] - src: add Latin1 fast path in StringBytes::Encode utf8 (Mert Can Altin) #63385
• [cc29696acf] - stream: fix Writable.toWeb() desiredSize for non-object-mode (Matteo Collina) #62986
• [d9967a25b2] - stream: handle falsy push writer fail reasons (Trivikram Kamat) #63569
• [b53f8f75c9] - stream: reduce allocations on WHATWG streams hot paths (Matteo Collina) #63876
• [315ca426d8] - stream: handle setEncoding after buffered data (Matteo Collina) #63973
• [06413cd6bd] - stream: fix Utf8Stream stall after full write of multi-byte data (Daijiro Wachi) #63964
• [a9f9a3dafa] - stream: keep overlapping broadcast reads pending (Trivikram Kamat) #63500
• [009cca11bd] - stream: refine the stream/iter backpressure (James M Snell) #63697
• [3f81dcfc99] - stream: only pass the expected number of parameters to callbacks (Antoine du Hamel) #63909
• [9a83b5d1fe] - stream: fix dropped first chunk in Utf8Stream buffer mode (Daijiro Wachi) #63833
• [0bdf5adea9] - stream: remove transform-writer handling in pipeTo (Trivikram Kamat) #63684
• [10272a94b6] - stream: check done before backpressure in stream reader (Daijiro Wachi) #63699
• [792c410631] - stream: fix pipeToSync byte accounting (Trivikram Kamat) #63564
• [3cfafbc54b] - stream: reject pull() reads on abort (Trivikram Kamat) #63498
• [640a8cede5] - stream: fast-path stateless transform flush results (Trivikram Kamat) #63605
• [ece4477872] - stream: optimize pipeTo promise handling (Matteo Collina) #63572
• [2cb84c2daf] - stream: handle sync writev completion in pipeTo (Trivikram Kamat) #63561
• [7d9fdda5fa] - stream: settle pending broadcast reads on return (Trivikram Kamat) #63603
• [e2aea3aac7] - test: tolerate duplicate watch change events (Trivikram Kamat) #63937
• [ea6300593a] - test: mark test-debugger-run-after-quit-restart as flaky on macOS (Matteo Collina) #64006
• [be1b204fa4] - test: update WPT for url to d4598eba09 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63899
• [b3d0d05b05] - test: update WPT for WebCryptoAPI to 03a1476844 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63900
• [046af2609f] - test: update WPT for urlpattern to 23aac92784 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63898
• [562b831a98] - test: add tests for 3 methods in utils (Daijiro Wachi) #63765
• [28e3629dd3] - test: mark SEA tests flaky on linux arm debug (Trivikram Kamat) #63743
• [243aa846de] - test: validate ERR_INVALID_THIS for scheduler methods (Daijiro Wachi) #63764
• [6bd07df2bc] - test: add coverage outside SEA (Daijiro Wachi) #63744
• [bd67c9d11b] - test: update WPT for urlpattern to 2f28df545c (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63771
• [e40bfe7081] - test: make Brotli 16GB test wait for backpressure (Trivikram Kamat) #63389
• [444c03fd3b] - test: add regression test for using ObjectWrap in worker (Mohamed Akram) #63642
• [771230df78] - test: accept SIGILL aborts in async-hooks tests (Trivikram Kamat) #63687
• [0b3cd8e5e6] - test: add more test cases for pathToFileURL (Rafael Gonzaga) #63293
• [0cbc77c60e] - test: update test426-fixtures to 2965987bf4c96afa400c9356c8e620cb340aaee (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63668
• [f53dee5fe4] - test: update WPT for WebCryptoAPI to 0c413fb56b (Node.js GitHub Bot) #63647
• [3048f8dc1a] - test,debugger: add test for type stripping in debugger probe mode (Joyee Cheung) #63748
• [9485caa97e] - test_runner: remove unused shuffleArrayWithSeed (Daijiro Wachi) #63847
• [34433a4a87] - test_runner: fix watch cwd with isolation none (Trivikram Kamat) #63690
• [2e7da29b7c] - test_runner: avoid recompiling coverage globs for every file (sangwook) #63675
• [205295a31e] - test_runner: cache shouldSkipFileCoverage result per URL (sangwook) #63675
• [ee29465e77] - (SEMVER-MINOR) tls: add certificateCompression option (Tim Perry) #62217
• [57d060ed2b] - tls: route event listener exceptions through error handlers (Antoine du Hamel) #63822
• [d2dc6f8506] - tools: bump piscina from 5.1.4 to 5.2.0 in /tools/doc (dependabot[bot]) #64002
• [b0c418f605] - tools: update sccache to v0.16.0 (Michaël Zasso) #63078
• [2af8433bef] - tools: bump js-yaml from 4.1.1 to 4.2.0 in /tools/lint-md (dependabot[bot]) #63948
• [8ba5b8574b] - tools: bump js-yaml from 4.1.1 to 4.2.0 in /tools/eslint (dependabot[bot]) #63947
• [325087be5b] - tools: enforce iterator result property order (Trivikram Kamat) #63526
• [314f417db7] - tools: update the llhttp updater script (Antoine du Hamel) #63819
• [c6e4f5a4fe] - tools: avoid test/fixtures/wpt/README.md conflicts (Filip Skokan) #63938
• [363912acc3] - tools: align Bash snippets in GHA with lint-sh conventions (Antoine du Hamel) #63829
• [cfd16e973c] - tools: bump @node-core/doc-kit in /tools/doc in the doc group (dependabot[bot]) #63760
• [1566872706] - tools: bump the eslint group in /tools/eslint with 7 updates (dependabot[bot]) #63730
• [08437a3a5b] - tools: fix zlib updater script (Antoine du Hamel) #63707
• [e883366172] - url: fix URLSearchParams(null) to prudce null= per spec (Marco) #63782
• [60e83d9bfd] - util: fix scientific notation formatting (Daijiro Wachi) #63823
• [5f7f60ac36] - util: fix -0 formatting when numericSeparator is enabled (Daijiro Wachi) #63815
• [af1a11e0dd] - util: remove style caches from styleText slow path (Guilherme Araújo) #63706
• [b17817eb2b] - (SEMVER-MINOR) vfs: dispatch fs/promises to mounted VFS instances (Matteo Collina) #63537
• [7bc93a6ac5] - (SEMVER-MINOR) vfs: add minimal node:vfs subsystem (Matteo Collina) #63115
• [584e7527c4] - vm: fix property queries for proxy sandboxes (Brian Meek) #63742
• [a926e72eaf] - watch: print name of changed file that triggers restart (Marco) #63781
• [32a2621ca4] - watch: cancel pending restart on shutdown (Trivikram Kamat) #63383
• [692215d1b1] - zlib: coerce -0 to +0 for crc32 seeds (Filip Skokan) #63556

Transport for London Cyberattack Led to Major Disruption

Investigation Linked Attackers to Scattered Spider

Additional Allegations Involving US Healthcare Networks

Law Enforcement Highlights Impact of Cybercrime

Our global chapters work to keep the Internet a force for good. This brief overview covers just some of their activities in May.

The post Community Snapshot—May appeared first on Internet Society.

The post Pickleball takes center court: Jake Johnson and Ben Stiller serve up laughs in Apple TV comedy film ‘The Dink’ trailer appeared first on MacDailyNews.

In October, Kelly Clancy’s son received an assignment in sixth grade at a middle school in Brooklyn, New York, to create a science experiment and then ask Google Gemini, an artificial intelligence chatbot, for feedback, she said.

Clancy, who has three children in New York City public schools, told the teacher that the bot “is something that just teaches kids that they can have machines do the thinking for them”, instead of suggesting: “Let’s talk to your partners. What about the science experiment could you improve?”

Read more: UCD PhD student explores link tying maths and spatial skills in children

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For more than 30 years, Pixar’s signature Toy Story series has been entertaining children while giving voice to their parents’ anxieties. This is especially pronounced in the film’s sequels, as the living toys who dedicate their lives to the happiness of their owner/child experience all different sorts of potential and parent-paralleled obsolescence, from physical wear-and-tear and a child reaching young adulthood to the toy equivalent of empty-nesting (still hanging around the playroom but no longer anyone’s favourite). It’s only natural – maybe even a little belated – that Toy Story 5 would address the encroachment of technology, which continues to make its way to children earlier and earlier. So many years after the tech breakthroughs that allowed Toy Story to become the first computer-animated feature, and Pixar to become a household name in family entertainment, has the formerly Steve Jobs-owned company turned against the kind of innovation that built its success?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Norway is banning generative AI tools in elementary schools starting in late August. Students in grades 1 through 7 won't be allowed to use AI at all; secondary schools will permit it only under supervision. Prime Minister Stoere says children must first "learn to read, write, and do math."

The article Norway bans generative AI tools in elementary schools to protect kids' basic learning skills appeared first on The Decoder.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week, the UK announced a wide-ranging ban on social media that will soon block users from communicating or accessing information on apps such as X, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat unless they prove that they’re over the age of 16.

The prime minister, Keir Starmer, called the policy “a line in the sand”. “Tech giants had their chance and failed,” he said, “but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.” All internet users, especially children, should be protected from exploitative systems online, but this new law will only foster more harm and help the largest and most powerful tech companies consolidate power and influence over everyone’s lives.

Taylor Lorenz is a technology journalist who writes the newsletter User Mag and is the author of the bestselling book Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

When a Lancashire schoolgirl was asked what she would do if the proposed social media ban for under-16s came into effect, her answer hit a national nerve: “Stare at a wall,” she deadpanned.

The clip went viral, not least because it distilled a question many parents have been asking themselves about the consequences of the government’s proposed social media ban.

The post Apple Original Films to bring beloved children’s book ‘Little Santa’ to the screen appeared first on MacDailyNews.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The post Glucose Tracking for Children Is Moving Into Apps and Smart Devices appeared first on TechRepublic.

The post Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban Faces Loopholes as Teens Bypass Restrictions appeared first on PrivacySavvy.

The post Canada introduces privacy law with GDPR-like penalties for data breaches appeared first on CyberInsider.

Read more →

The post Ofcom Warns Over Enforcement Of Youth Social Media Ban appeared first on IT Security News.

Added

• Added UMANS_WEBSEARCH_PROVIDER=native|exa support for routing Umans gateway-owned web search requests.

Fixed

• A single MCP tool whose input schema can't be emitted as a valid strict tool schema for the active provider no longer fails the whole turn with HTTP 400. convertTools (openai-responses) now validates each tool's emitted parameter schema for enum/const-vs-type contradictions that pass structural JSON-Schema validation but the provider rejects — e.g. a non-null enum on a type: "null" node, or an enum on an array node — and quarantines just the offending tool with a logger.warn naming the tool and schema path, keeping every other tool usable. Adds findStrictToolSchemaViolation to @oh-my-pi/pi-ai/utils/schema (#2652)
• Fixed OpenAI Responses-compatible streams from Ollama/local hosts dropping arguments for parallel tool calls whose deltas use fc_<call_id> item ids, which left earlier ast_grep calls with {} and failed validation. (#2715)
• Fixed dialect transcript rendering so literal thinking envelopes are unwrapped before adding the dialect's own thinking tags, preventing nested <thinking> output in advisor raw dumps (#2700).
• Fixed Anthropic-compatible Umans requests escaping client tool names and forwarding gateway web search headers so Kimi answers normally instead of returning raw gateway search results.
• Fixed Google Gemini tool calls with toolChoice: "auto" serializing an explicit toolConfig AUTO mode, which can cause Gemini-3 models to leak raw planning JSON instead of executing tools. (#2776)
• Fixed OpenAI-compatible Ollama completions that return empty finish_reason:length after filling num_ctx so they surface an actionable context-window error instead of an empty length stop. (#2774)
• Fixed Codex browser login issuing credentials for the opencode OAuth originator while OMP requests identify as pi, which could make the first authenticated Codex request return 401 (#2696).

@oh-my-pi/pi-catalog

Fixed

• Fixed Kimi output caps for Umans AI Coding Plan and Venice so discovery metadata cannot use context-sized token ceilings as request caps.
• Marked Umans Anthropic-compatible models as client-tool escaped so cached and bundled metadata do not expose web_search as a provider server tool.

@oh-my-pi/pi-coding-agent

Added

• Added the UMANS_WEBSEARCH_PROVIDER environment variable to CLI help for Umans gateway web search backend selection.

Changed

• The eager task (task.eager: always) and eager todo (todo.eager: preferred/always) hidden reminders now re-fire on the auto-continuation turn after a compaction (context-full / snapcompact / handoff / shake). Compaction summarizes away the first-message prelude, so the agent would otherwise silently lose the delegate-via-tasks / phased-todo guidance mid-work; the post-compaction todo nudge is reminder-only and never forces the todo tool onto the resumed turn.

Fixed

• Fixed edit-tool block operations on Emacs Lisp files: .el and .emacs paths now resolve top-level forms for SWAP.BLK, DEL.BLK, and INS.BLK.POST instead of reporting an unsupported-language block-resolution error.
• Fixed PDF reads leaking recoverable MuPDF WASM warnings into the terminal TUI by routing MuPDF output through the file logger before markit-ai loads it (#2766).
• Fixed /exit and /quit waiting one shutdown timeout per hanging extension by running session_shutdown handlers within a shared shutdown window (#2736).
• Fixed GitHub Copilot .github/instructions/*.instructions.md discovery by loading those files as rules that honor applyTo scoping, including always-apply ** files and rule://<name> access for glob-scoped entries (#2731).
• Fixed Windows bash-tool child processes defaulting interpreter pipe I/O to the ANSI codepage by adding UTF-8 encoding defaults when the inherited environment is unset (#2701).
• Fixed /advisor dump raw so Opus 4.5 thinking content that already includes literal <thinking> tags is not rendered with nested thinking tags (#2700).
• The plugin-extensions-discovery test suite no longer writes fixtures into — and rm -rfs the node_modules of — the developer's real ~/.omp/plugins. Its XDG_DATA_HOME isolation was a no-op on Windows (XDG is gated to Linux/macOS) and was bypassed in XDG-migrated Linux/macOS environments, so a local run could delete installed plugins. The suite now isolates the whole config root via an os.homedir() mock plus cleared XDG_* vars, with a pre-write guard that fails if resolution escapes the temp home (#2721).
• Installed plugins whose extensions manifest entry points at a directory of sub-extensions (the standard pi extensions/<name>/index.ts layout, e.g. pi.extensions: ["./extensions"]) are no longer rejected at install (declared extension entry not found on disk) or silently dropped at load. The plugin manifest resolver now resolves a directory the same way as the configured-directory (-e) extension loader: the directory's own package.json omp/pi extensions (authoritative — a missing declared entry is reported instead of falling back to a decoy index), then a direct index.{ts,js,mjs,cjs}, then a one-level scan of sub-extensions (#2713).
• Fixed OpenRouter @upstream routing selectors whose upstream slug also appears in the model id, so openrouter/...@deepseek:high keeps openRouterRouting.only instead of being consumed by provider-scoped fuzzy matching (#2708).
• Fixed omp plugin list --json omitting locally linked plugins that exist only in omp-plugins.lock.json and node_modules symlinks. (#2742)
• Fixed task subagents to install their configured ordered model candidates as child-session retry fallback chains, so retryable provider failures can advance to the next subagent model instead of failing the worker (#2750).
• Fixed empty reasonless aborted assistant turns to auto-retry without switching model fallback, so transient provider-side aborts after tool results do not end headless sessions (#2685).

@oh-my-pi/hashline

Fixed

• Auto-repaired duplicated JSX/XML closing boundary lines at the end of single-line replacement expansions. (#2705)

@oh-my-pi/pi-natives

Added

• Added Emacs Lisp (.el, .emacs, emacs-lisp/elisp) support to native tree-sitter language inference, enabling astGrep/astEdit, summarizeCode, and blockRangeAt on Emacs Lisp source.

@oh-my-pi/pi-tui

Fixed

• Fixed VS Code integrated terminal keypad digit CSI-u input being handled as navigation instead of text.
• Fixed xterm-compatible terminals scrolling the native viewport to the bottom on prompt-editor keypresses by disabling ?1010/?1011 while the TUI owns the TTY and restoring the prior set modes on exit (#2732).
• Fixed CMUX sessions being treated as direct terminals during resize/reset because they do not set TMUX/STY/ZELLIJ and may run with TERM=dumb; the renderer now treats CMUX workspace/surface env markers as multiplexer signals and preserves pane scrollback instead of emitting ED3 (CSI 3 J).
• Fixed a self-sustaining resize-redraw storm in Warp: the non-multiplexer resize fast path borrows the alternate screen, and Warp re-reports a one-row-different size whenever the alt buffer is toggled, so each drag frame fed back a fresh resize event and the TUI flooded ED3 full repaints with stable geometry. Resize now repaints in place (no alt-screen borrow, no ED3 rewrap) on terminals that re-report size on alt-screen toggles, matching the multiplexer path. Overridable with PI_TUI_RESIZE_IN_PLACE=1|0.

What's Changed

• fix(ai): route prefixed Responses tool deltas by @roboomp in #2719
• test(plugins): isolate discovery test from real ~/.omp on all platforms by @AsafMah in #2722
• fix(coding-agent): load GitHub Copilot instruction rules by @roboomp in #2734
• fix(tui): stop Warp resize feedback-loop redraw storm by @sorphwer in #2741
• fix(cli): speed up exit shutdown handlers by @roboomp in #2745
• fix(cli): list linked local plugins by @roboomp in #2746
• fix(providers): handle Umans Kimi output caps and web search by @oldschoola in #2751
• fix(agent): retry subagent model fallback chains by @roboomp in #2753
• fix(tui): detect CMUX as multiplexer by @pathard1128 in #2755
• fix(coding-agent): route MuPDF warnings to logger by @roboomp in #2772
• fix(ai): omit Google AUTO toolConfig by @roboomp in #2782
• feat(ast): add Emacs Lisp tree-sitter support by @ryjm in #2693
• fix(ai): unwrap thinking envelopes in raw dumps by @roboomp in #2702
• fix(tool): default Windows bash children to UTF-8 by @roboomp in #2704
• fix(hashline): drop duplicated JSX boundary echoes by @roboomp in #2709
• fix(providers): preserve OpenRouter upstream routing by @roboomp in #2710
• fix(openai-responses): quarantine invalid tool schemas instead of failing the whole turn (#2652) by @AsafMah in #2711
• fix(plugins): resolve directory extension manifest entries one level deep by @AsafMah in #2714
• fix(tui): preserve scrollback while editing by @roboomp in #2733

New Contributors

• @sorphwer made their first contribution in #2741
• @pathard1128 made their first contribution in #2755
• @ryjm made their first contribution in #2693

Full Changelog: v16.0.1...v16.0.2

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The post UK to Ban Under-16s From TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Other Social Media Platforms appeared first on IT Security News.

Florida became the latest state to sue TikTok on Monday after the attorney general accused the company of violating a state law that limits social media access for teenagers.

In a press conference, Republican James Uthmeier said TikTok exposed children to harmful sexual content and addictive features, such as unlimited scrolling and push notifications. “It’s designed to keep kids stuck on those screens for hours,” Uthemeier said at a press conference. “Our evidence suggests that so many kids are on TikTok for upwards of six, seven, eight or more hours a day. We are going to get our kids their lives back.”

UK Social Media Ban for Under-16s to Cover Major Platforms

AI Chatbots Also Under Scrutiny

Global Momentum Builds Behind Social Media Age Restrictions

Australia's Experience Highlights Enforcement Challenges

Age Assurance Measures Key to Enforcement

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more: UK latest to ban social media for under-16s

Read more of this story at Slashdot.