SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded by the FAA for the second time in less than two months following the failed landing of a first-stage booster, which was destroyed in a fireball after its 23rd flight. Spaceflight Now reports: The booster, serial number B1062 in the SpaceX fleet, suffered a hard landing, at the tail end of its record-setting 23rd flight. It was consumed in a fireball on the deck of the drone ship 'A Shortfall of Gravitas', which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean about 250 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina. The mishap was the first booster landing failure since February 2021. In a statement on Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said that while no public injuries or public property damage was reported, "The FAA is requiring an investigation."

The FAA made a similar declaration following a Falcon 9 upper-stage failure on July 12 during the Starlink 9-3 mission, which resulted in the loss of 20 satellites. Following that incident, SpaceX rockets did not return to flight until the Starlink 10-9 mission, on July 27. [...] The booster failure came the same week that SpaceX had to twice delay a launch attempt of the Polaris Dawn astronaut mission, first due to a helium leak and then for recovery weather at the end of the mission. The Polaris Dawn crew remain in quarantine for now, according to social media posts from Isaacman, but the timing of the next launch attempt is uncertain. In addition to landing weather concerns and resolving the FAA investigation, there is also the matter of launch pad availability.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Threads is deepening its ties to the fediverse, also known as the open social web, which powers services like X alternative Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Flipboard and other apps. On Wednesday, Meta announced that users on Threads will be able to see fediverse replies on other posts besides their own. In addition, posts that originated through the Threads API, like those created via third-party apps and scheduling services, will now be syndicated to the fediverse. The latter had previously been announced via an in-app message informing users that API posts would be shared to the fediverse starting on August 28. [...]

Since June, users have been able to see fediverse replies on their posts if they enabled fediverse sharing in the app's settings. Once enabled, the sharing option allows users to syndicate their posts across the wider social web and then see how people on other services have responded. Now users will be able to see the fediverse replies on other people's posts, too. This immediately brings more content into Threads, even without a sizable increase in Threads users.

A Meta engineer suggested testing the feature by viewing the replies of larger accounts, like YouTuber Marques Brownlee (@mkbhd), for example. Here, you'll notice a new section that shows how many "fediverse replies" are available above the replies posted to Threads itself. It's worth noting that you have to tap or click on the "fediverse replies" section to actually view what's being said on other servers and by who. Currently, Threads users can like the replies from other servers, but they can't yet reply to them, as the feature is still in beta and under development.

After 13 years of being exclusively available on the iPhone, Snapchat is finally introducing native support for the iPad. 9to5Mac reports: The latest version of the Snapchat app for iOS enables iPad support. This means that the app now runs full screen on iPadOS. "It's still the same Snapchat you know and love, but this time on the big screen," the company says in the update's release notes. However, it seems that Snapchat hasn't had time to fully optimize its app for tablets. That's because, at least for now, it can only run in portrait mode. There's no way to use the app in landscape mode. The iPad interface also seems a bit glitchy in this first version. The app is available to download from the App Store for devices running iOS 13 or later.

The Verge's Ash Parrish reports: Last week, as a part of the updates to Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition -- collectively known as the 2024 revision -- the publisher announced that it would update D&D Beyond, the tabletop RPG's official digital toolkit that players use to reference content and create characters using a host of official and third-party sources. The update would add the new 2024 rulebooks to the toolkit, mark outdated content with a "legacy" badge, and change players' character sheets to reflect all the new rules and features.

That last part is critical to understanding why some D&D players (including my own dungeon master) spent the last 72 hours in a state of panic. Though some of the 2024 revisions are essentially cosmetic in nature -- for example, "races" will be updated to "species" -- other updates like the ones to weapons, spells, and magic items fundamentally alter the game. Wizards of the Coast would have essentially overwritten every user's character sheet with the new information whether they wanted it or not. "All entries for mundane and magical items, weapons, armor, and spells will also be updated to their 2024 version," Wizards said in its initial announcement. The publisher did say that players would have the option to continue to use the 2014 version of spells and magic items. But doing so requires using the game's homebrew rules. which aren't known for being user-friendly.

Thankfully, Wizards of the Coast isn't in the car business, and after a weekend of backlash on social media, the company will no longer force the new changes on players. "We misjudged the impact of this change, and we agree that you should be free to choose your own way to play," Wizard's said in its latest announcement. Current character sheets will only be updated with new terminology while the older versions of spells, magic items, and weapons will be preserved. Also, players who have access to both the 2014 and 2024 digital versions will have the option to use both when creating new characters.

A quarter of young adults aged 18-34 never answer phone calls, according to a recent Uswitch survey. The study reveals a generational shift in communication preferences, with 70% of respondents in this age group favoring text messages over voice calls. Experts attribute this trend to the rise of mobile technology and social media. While avoiding calls, younger generations maintain constant contact through group chats and social media platforms. Voice notes have emerged as a compromise, with 37% of 18-34 year-olds preferring them to traditional calls. This communication shift extends to the workplace, causing challenges for some employers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: People in a quiet neighborhood in Carthage, a town in Moore County, North Carolina, heard a series of six loud pops a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2022. A resident named Michael Campbell said he ducked at the sound. Another witness told police they thought they were hearing fireworks. The noise turned out to be someone shooting a rifle at a power substation next door to Campbell's home. The substation, operated by the utility Duke Energy Corp., consists of equipment that converts electricity into different voltages as it's transported to the area and then steered into individual houses. The shots hit the radiator of an electrical transformer, a sensitive piece of technology whose importance would likely be understood only by utility company employees. It began dumping a "vast amount" of oil, according to police reports. A subsequent investigation has pointed to a local right-wing group, one of a wave of attacks or planned attacks on power infrastructure.

By 8:10 the lights in Carthage went out. Minutes later, a security alarm went off at a Duke Energy substation 10 miles away, this one protected from view by large pine trees. When company personnel responded, they found that someone had shot its transformer radiator, too. Police found shell casings on the ground at the site and noticed someone had slashed the tires on nearby service trucks. The substations were designed to support each other, with one capable of maintaining service if the other went down. Knocking out both facilities prevented the company from rerouting power. Police described the two incidents as a coordinated attack. About 45,000 families and businesses remained dark for four days. This was a burden for area grocery stores and local emergency services. One woman, 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli, died in the hours after the shooting when the blackout caused her oxygen machine to stop operating. The North Carolina Medical Examiner's office classified the death as a homicide.

The attack on Duke's facilities in Moore County remains unsolved, but law enforcement officials and other experts suspect it's part of a rising trend of far-right extremists targeting power infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos. The most ambitious of these saboteurs hope to usher in societal collapse, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the US government, according to researchers who monitor far-right communities. Damaging the power grid has long been a fixation of right-wing extremists, who have plotted such attacks for many years. They've been getting a boost recently from online venues such as "Terrorgram," a loose network of channels on the social media platform Telegram where users across the globe advocate violent white supremacism. In part, people use Terrorgram to egg one another on -- a viral meme shows a stick figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at electrical equipment. People on the forum have also seized on recent anti-immigration riots in the UK, inciting people there to clash with police. In June 2022, months before the Moore County shootings, users on the forum began offering more practical support in the form of a 261-page document titled "Hard Reset," which includes specific directions on how to use automatic weapons, explosives and mylar balloons to disrupt electricity. One of the document's suggestions is to shoot high-powered firearms at substation transformers.

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret for not being more vocal about "government pressure" to censor COVID-19-related content. He also acknowledged that Meta shouldn't have demoted a New York Post story about President Biden's family before the 2020 election. The Hill reports: Zuckerberg said senior Biden administration officials "repeatedly pressured" Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to "censor" content in 2021. "I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken," he wrote to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). "Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction -- and we're ready to push back if something like this happens again," Zuckerberg added.

The Meta CEO also said the company "shouldn't have demoted" a New York Post story about corruption allegations involving President Biden's family ahead of the 2020 election while waiting for fact-checkers to review it. The social media company has since updated its policies and processes, including no longer demoting content in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers, he noted. Zuckerberg also said in Monday's letter that he does not plan to make contributions to local jurisdictions to support election infrastructure this cycle, like he did during the 2020 election.

The contributions, which were "designed to be non-partisan," were accused of being unfairly distributed between left-leaning and right-leaning areas and labeled "Zuckerbucks" by Republicans. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other," Zuckerberg said. "My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another -- or to even appear to be playing a role." House Judiciary Republicans touted the letter as a "big win for free speech," writing on X: "Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. Biden-Harris Admin 'pressured' Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story."

"Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won't spend money this election cycle. That's right, no more Zuck-bucks. Huge win for election integrity," it added.

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested Saturday night by French authorities on allegations that his social media platform was being used for child pornography, drug trafficking and organized crime. The move sparked debate over free speech worldwide from prominent anti-censorship figures including Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy. Jr. and Edward Snowden. However, "the immediate freakout came from Russia," reports Politico. "That's because Telegram is widely used by the Russian military for battlefield communications thanks to problems with rolling out its own secure comms system. It's also the primary vehicle for pro-war military bloggers and media -- as well as millions of ordinary Russians." From the report: "They practically detained the head of communication of the Russian army," Russian military blogger channel Povernutie na Z Voine said in a Telegram statement. The blog site Dva Mayora said that Russian specialists are working on an alternative to Telegram, but that the Russian army's Main Communications Directorate has "not shown any real interest" in getting such a system to Russian troops. The site said Durov's arrest may actually speed up the development of an independent comms system. Alarmed Russian policymakers are calling for Durov's release.

"[Durov's] arrest may have political grounds and be a tool for gaining access to the personal information of Telegram users," the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Duma Vladislav Davankov said in a Telegram statement. "This cannot be allowed. If the French authorities refuse to release Pavel Durov from custody, I propose making every effort to move him to the UAE or the Russian Federation. With his consent, of course." Their worry is that Durov may hand over encryption keys to the French authorities, allowing access to the platform and any communications that users thought was encrypted.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the arrest of Durov was "in no way a political decision." The Russian embassy has demanded that it get access to Durov, but the Kremlin has so far not issued a statement on the arrest. "Before saying anything, we should wait for the situation to become clearer," said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. However, officials and law enforcement agencies were instructed to clear all their communication from Telegram, the pro-Kremlin channel Baza reported. "Everyone who is used to using the platform for sensitive conversations/conversations should delete those conversations right now and not do it again," Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan said in a Telegram post. "Durov has been shut down to get the keys. And he's going to give them."

Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire co-founder of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested in France in connection with an investigation into criminal activity on the platform and a lack of cooperation with law enforcement, prosecutors announced on Monday. From a report: Durov, who has French citizenship, was detained at Le Bourget airport, just outside Paris, on Saturday evening after arriving from Azerbaijan on his private jet. His surprise arrest has sparked debate over free speech worldwide and led to an outcry in Moscow. The Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the investigation concerned crimes related to illicit transactions, child sexual abuse, fraud and the refusal to communicate information to authorities.

Earlier in the day the French president, Emmanuel Macron, gave the first confirmation that Durov had been arrested as part of a judicial inquiry in relation to Telegram. "In a state governed by the rule of law, freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights," Macron wrote on X, adding that the arrest was "in no way a political decision." "It is up to the judiciary, in full independence, to enforce the law," he said. A senior official at Ofmin, a French agency set up last year to prevent violence against children, said Durov's arrest was linked to Telegram's failure to properly fight crime on the app, including the spread of child sexual abuse material.

theodp writes: Typos happen to the best of us, but spelling still counts when it comes to software development. So, it's kind of surprising to see that both Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky failed to notice an embarrassing typo in a demo video they offered to their millions of followers on social media as evidence of Amazon Q AI's Java upgrade capabilities, which Amazon has been trumpeting for months in SEC filings, shareholder communication, and Amazon's latest earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

Just 37 seconds into the demo of the software that Amazon says saved it 4,500 developer-years of work and provided an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains, Amazon Q kicks off the Java upgrade conversation by saying, "I can help you upgrade your Jave [sic] 8 and 11 codebases to Java 17." The embarrassing misspelling did prompt Twitter user @archo5dev to alert Jassy to the typo, but there's been no response yet from Jassy, who boasted that Amazon developers were unable to find any mistakes in Q's work in "79% of the auto-generated code reviews."

It's probably worth noting that both Jassy and Selipsky opted to showcase a drop-dead simple demo of Amazon Q Code Transformation rather than some of the lengthier and less-magical demos of the product.

President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the French government was not involved in the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov. From a report: "The arrest of Telegram's president on French territory took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide," Macron said. Durov was detained Saturday night after his private jet arrived in Paris. The Paris prosecutor has not yet communicated the reasons for the arrest of Durov, who founded the messaging app in 2013.

The tech chief currently remains in policy custody. The arrest follows probes "accusing Telegram of being complicit in numerous affairs linked to drug trafficking, apology for terrorism and cyberbullying," French daily Le Monde reported. In a statement, Telegram said that its CEO -- a Russian-born French-Emirati citizen -- had "nothing to hide" and that the company abided by EU law.

[...] "More than anything else, France is committed to freedom of expression and communication, innovation and entrepreneurship," Macron said Monday. "In a state governed by the rule of law, on social networks as in real life, freedoms are exercised within a framework established by law to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights."

After announcing it had 200 million active users earlier this month, Threads is now "testing the option for users to put a 24-hour expiration timer on their posts," writes Engadget: A spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature is being tested among a group of users after it was first spotted earlier this summer by developer Alessandro Paluzzi...

It comes a few months after Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared that Threads was experimenting with auto-archiving. That optional feature would let users designate a date for their posts to be hidden from the feed. But Threads users in the past have indicated that they largely aren't into the idea of automatic archiving, and such a feature hasn't yet shown up on a wider scale.

Six months after going public, Reddit "is winning over advertisers," reports Bloomberg, "by showing that it's different than other internet platforms, which often rely on users' identities and personal information to target ads." Instead, Reddit is targeting people based on their interests, relying on the site's [100,000+] deeply detailed communities — called subreddits — to match advertisers with potential customers... Early returns on that strategy have been promising. The text-based site easily surpassed expectations in its first two earnings reports this year, disclosing strong sales and better-than-expected projected growth. The stock is up 66% from its $34 initial public offering price in March.

Beyond targeting subreddits, the company also can use specific keywords to sell what it calls conversation ads. If a Redditor in r/HydroHomies — a community about the benefits of drinking water that has more than 1.2 million users — asks for advice about a specific brand of water bottle, an ad for that exact product could appear next to that user's post. These conversation ads are the fastest-growing ad format on the platform, the company said. They also give marketers a chance to appear in subreddits where customers are already talking about them...

Despite being around for close to 20 years, Reddit only started investing heavily in its advertising business in 2018, and is now hoping that marketers and investors are ready to acknowledge the site has grown up. Executives often point to its unique form of content moderation as proof that it's a safer place for brands than other sites. Reddit largely relies on a group of more than 60,000 human moderators — users who volunteer to serve as a sort of content police — to flag or take down unsavory content. On top of that, the site has a voting system so users can rate the quality of content. "From everything we're seeing, they have a level of brand safety and content safety for advertisers that is very comparable to most other social platforms," said Jack Johnston, senior social innovation director at performance marketing agency Tinuiti, which buys ads on Meta, Pinterest, X and Reddit. "That wasn't necessarily the case a couple years ago."

Those improvements have paid dividends. Reddit recently signed new content partnerships with major sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA and MLB, and the majority of Reddit's advertising revenue comes from Fortune 500 companies. Last year, the site made close to $800 million in ad sales, and counts marquee brands like Toyota, Disney, Samsung and Ulta Beauty among its advertisers. This year, analysts expect Reddit's overall advertising business to eclipse $1.1 billion in revenue and see the company reaching $2 billion in sales as soon as 2027, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. To get there, Reddit will need to court smaller marketers, too. The company makes more than 25% of its revenue from just 10 advertisers, meaning any unexpected pullback from a key partner could have a significant impact on the company's business, said Dan Salmon, lead analyst at New Street Research. "This army of small businesses — that's the most important thing for all of those platforms, for Reddit, for Pinterest, for X," he said...

Advertisers large and small say they're already planning to spend more on Reddit in the coming quarters.
The article points out that more than 90 million people visit Reddit each day.

Reuters reports that the Iranian hacking team which compromised the campaign of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump "is known for placing surveillance software on the mobile phones of its victims, enabling them to record calls, steal texts and silently turn on cameras and microphones, according to researchers and experts who follow the group." Known as APT42 or CharmingKitten by the cybersecurity research community, the accused Iranian hackers are widely believed to be associated with an intelligence division inside Iran's military, known as the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC-IO. Their appearance in the U.S. election is noteworthy, sources told Reuters, because of their invasive espionage approach against high-value targets in Washington and Israel. "What makes (APT42) incredibly dangerous is this idea that they are an organization that has a history of physically targeting people of interest," said John Hultquist, chief analyst with U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant, who referenced past research that found the group surveilling the cell phones of Iranian activists and protesters... Hultquist said the hackers commonly use mobile malware that allows them to "record phone calls, room audio recordings, pilfer SMS (text) inboxes, take images off of a machine," and gather geolocation data...

APT42 also commonly impersonates journalists and Washington think tanks in complex, email-based social engineering operations that aim to lure their targeting into opening booby-trapped messages, which let them takeover systems. The group's "credential phishing campaigns are highly targeted and well-researched; the group typically targets a small number of individuals," said Josh Miller, a threat analyst with email security company Proofpoint. They often target anti-Iran activists, reporters with access to sources inside Iran, Middle Eastern academics and foreign-policy advisers. This has included the hacking of western government officials and American defense contractors. For example, in 2018, the hackers targeted nuclear workers and U.S. Treasury department officials around the time the United States formally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), said Allison Wikoff, a senior cyber intelligence analyst with professional services company PricewaterhouseCoopers.
"APT42 is still actively targeting campaign officials and former Trump administration figures critical of Iran, according to a blog post by Google's cybersecurity research team."

Alien: Romulus director Fede Ãlvarez "briefly dropped into an Alien franchise subreddit this week to chat with fans about his new sequel," reports Deadline. "But the moderators weren't having it, flagging Ãlvarez as an imposter in a notice that he is 'permanently banned' from the subreddit." The moderator shared an update that Ãlvarez "was immediately reinstated and had a very friendly conversation with us. Awesome guy." They also shared the filmmaker's response. "I'm sorry, just found it hilarious," wrote Ãlvarez. "My bad. Not harm done. Thanks again for such great work moderating my favorite subreddit."
Fangoria notes this might not be the last Alien movie from director Alvarez: Talking with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week, the Evil Dead and Don't Breathe director teased that ideas are in the pipeline for an Alien: Romulus sequel, which would — if it comes to fruition — be the eighth instalment in the legendary sci-fi horror franchise."
The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Ash, the "calculating synthetic character" from the original 1979 movie Alien (played by the late Ian Holm) got a kind of reprise in 2024 with another character named Rook: According to Ãlvarez, Rook was a collaborative decision with [Ridley] Scott, who also wanted to see another version of the artificial person he introduced 45 years ago. The Romulus team then received approval from Holm's estate, and using the English actor's headcast from The Lord of the Rings as a foundation, Legacy Effects built Rook's torso and head as an animatronic. The practical character was then enhanced by CG and deepfake AI technology for certain shots as needed... "There might be some deepfake in the eyes because it's the best when it comes to creating the likeness of the eyes, but it's a whole bag of tricks from 1970s and 1980s technology to technology from yesterday."
The article also notes one horrifying plot twist "received some respectful opposition to this unsettling choice from 20th Century and Disney, but that's precisely when [director Alvarez] knew he was on the right course." "If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it,' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did."
Alvarez's social media feed also explores what Alien: Romulus would look like as trading cards or as 1950s comic book, shares posts from the movie's poster designer, and admits that "everything I do is influenced by Terminator / Alien / Predator."

The Verge's Adi Robertson reports: An appeals court revived a lawsuit against the anonymous messaging service Yolo, which allegedly broke a promise to unmask bullies on the app. In a ruling (PDF) issued Thursday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shouldn't block a claim that Yolo misrepresented its terms of service, overruling a lower court decision. But it determined the app can't be held liable for alleged design defects that allowed harassment, letting a different part of that earlier ruling stand.

Yolo was a Snapchat-integrated app that let users send anonymous messages, but in 2021, it was hit with a lawsuit after a teenage user died by suicide. The boy, Carson Bride, had received harassing and sexually explicit messages from anonymized users that -- he believed -- he likely knew. Bride and his family attempted to contact Yolo for help, but Yolo allegedly never answered, and in some cases, emails to the company simply bounced. Snap banned Yolo and another app targeted in the lawsuit, and a year later, it banned all anonymous messaging integration. Bride's family and a collection of other aggrieved parents argued that Yolo broke a legally binding promise to its users. They pointed to a notification where Yolo claimed people would be banned for inappropriate use and deanonymized if they sent "harassing messages" to others. But as the ruling summarizes, the plaintiffs argued that "with a staff of no more than ten people, there was no way Yolo could monitor the traffic of ten million active daily users to make good on its promise, and it in fact never did." Additionally, they claimed Yolo should have known its anonymous design facilitated harassment, making it defective and dangerous.

A lower court threw out both of these claims, saying that under Section 230, Yolo couldn't be held responsible for its users' posts. The appeals court was more sympathetic. It accepted the argument that families were instead holding Yolo responsible for promising users something it couldn't deliver. "Yolo repeatedly informed users that it would unmask and ban users who violated the terms of service. Yet it never did so, and may have never intended to," writes Judge Eugene Siler, Jr. "While yes, online content is involved in these facts, and content moderation is one possible solution for Yolo to fulfill its promise, the underlying duty ... is the promise itself." The Yolo suit built on a previous Ninth Circuit ruling that let another Snap-related lawsuit circumvent Section 230's shield. In 2021, it found Snap could be sued for a "speed filter" that could implicitly encourage users to drive recklessly, even if users were responsible for making posts with that filter. (The overall case is still ongoing.) On top of their misrepresentation claim, the plaintiffs argued Yolo's anonymous messaging capability was similarly risky, an argument the Ninth Circuit didn't buy -- "we refuse to endorse a theory that would classify anonymity as a per se inherently unreasonable risk," Siler wrote.

Former President Donald Trump is about to launch a crypto platform called "The DeFiant Ones," according to a post of his on Truth Social. "For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites," Trump wrote. "It's time we take a stand -- together." From a report: The post marks the first time the Republican nominee for president has used his personal platform to promote the as yet unactivated digital bank. Within minutes, his son Donald Trump Jr., shared the post with his 12 million X followers. Trump's post includes a link to a Telegram channel called "The DeFiant Ones," which had approximately 29,000 followers as of Thursday morning, and climbing. An Aug. 15 post describes the group chat as "the only official Telegram channel for the Trump DeFi project" which is building "the future of finance."

Two of Trump's sons, Eric Trump and and Donald Jr., have spent weeks teasing the forthcoming platform, which Eric recently described as "digital real estate." "It's equitable. It's collateral anyone can get access to and do so instantly," Eric told the New York Post earlier this month. "I don't know if people realize what a shake up that is for the world of banking and finance. I hope we can help change that." The Trump brothers have also promoted the project with posts declaring that "decentralized finance is the future" and asking people to "stay tuned for a big announcement."

The mention of digital real estate could be a reference to selling digitized versions of assets in the metaverse, a concept which peaked in popularity in 2021 during the last bull market cycle in crypto. Digitized real estate could also mean that the project would tokenize real-world assets. [...] Trump's eldest son recently said that the family wasn't launching a memecoin and instead, was working to develop a crypto platform that would rival the traditional banking system. "What we want to do is take on a lot of the banking world," he said Aug. 8. "I think there has been a lot of inequality in that only certain people can get financing [...] so this notion of decentralized finance is obviously very appealing to guys like me who have been debanked," Donald Trump Jr. said in the interview on Locals.

Instagram is adding a new feature today that will "allow users to add a song on their profile -- much like Myspace in the early 2000s," writes The Verge's Mia Sato. From the report: The music added to a user's profile shows up in the bio area, according to screenshots shared by Instagram. A song will be featured on a profile until the user removes or replaces it. But unlike Myspace, songs won't autoplay -- people viewing a profile with a song can play and pause the track. Users can add a song by going to the "edit profile" page, where they'll be able to search for and select a track from Instagram's library of licensed music that's also available for things like Reels or posts. From there, users will be able to select a 30-second-long portion of the song to add.

Security researcher Brian Krebs writes: New details are emerging about a breach at National Public Data (NPD), a consumer data broker that recently spilled hundreds of millions of Americans' Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that another NPD data broker which shares access to the same consumer records inadvertently published the passwords to its back-end database in a file that was freely available from its homepage until today. In April, a cybercriminal named USDoD began selling data stolen from NPD. In July, someone leaked what was taken, including the names, addresses, phone numbers and in some cases email addresses for more than 272 million people (including many who are now deceased). NPD acknowledged the intrusion on Aug. 12, saying it dates back to a security incident in December 2023. In an interview last week, USDoD blamed the July data leak on another malicious hacker who also had access to the company's database, which they claimed has been floating around the underground since December 2023.

Following last week's story on the breadth of the NPD breach, a reader alerted KrebsOnSecurity that a sister NPD property -- the background search service recordscheck.net -- was hosting an archive that included the usernames and password for the site's administrator. A review of that archive, which was available from the Records Check website until just before publication this morning (August 19), shows it includes the source code and plain text usernames and passwords for different components of recordscheck.net, which is visually similar to nationalpublicdata.com and features identical login pages. The exposed archive, which was named "members.zip," indicates RecordsCheck users were all initially assigned the same six-character password and instructed to change it, but many did not. According to the breach tracking service Constella Intelligence, the passwords included in the source code archive are identical to credentials exposed in previous data breaches that involved email accounts belonging to NPD's founder, an actor and retired sheriff's deputy from Florida named Salvatore "Sal" Verini.

Reached via email, Mr. Verini said the exposed archive (a .zip file) containing recordscheck.net credentials has been removed from the company's website, and that the site is slated to cease operations "in the next week or so." "Regarding the zip, it has been removed but was an old version of the site with non-working code and passwords," Verini told KrebsOnSecurity. "Regarding your question, it is an active investigation, in which we cannot comment on at this point. But once we can, we will [be] with you, as we follow your blog. Very informative." The leaked recordscheck.net source code indicates the website was created by a web development firm based in Lahore, Pakistan called creationnext.com, which did not return messages seeking comment. CreationNext.com's homepage features a positive testimonial from Sal Verini.

Indian influencers It's the largest country on earth — home to 1.4 billion people. But "The Indian government has plans to classify social media creators as 'digital news broadcasters,'" according to the nonprofit site RestofWorld.org.

While there's "no clarity" on the government's next move, the proposed legislation would require social media creators "to register with the government, set up a content evaluation committee that checks all content before it is published, and appoint complaint handlers — all at their own expense. Any failures in compliance could lead to criminal charges, including jail term." On July 26, the Hindustan Times reported that the government plans to tweak the proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, which aims to combine all regulations for broadcasters under one law. As per a new version of the bill, which has been reviewed by Rest of World, the government defines "digital news broadcaster" as "any person who broadcasts news and current affairs programs through an online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or other similar medium as part of a systematic business, professional or commercial activity."

Creators and digital rights activists believe the potential legislation will tighten the government's grip over online content and threaten the last bastion of press freedom for independent journalists in the country. Over 785 Indian creators have sent a letter to the government seeking more transparency in the process of drafting the bill. Creators have also stormed social media with hashtags like #KillTheBill, and made videos to educate their followers about the proposal.
One YouTube creator told the site that if the government requires them to appoint a "grievance redressal officer," they might simply film themselves, responding to grievances — to "make content out of it".