An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Efforts to introduce pirate site blocking to the United States continue with the introduction of the "Block BEARD" bill (PDF) in the Senate. The bipartisan proposal, backed by Senators Tillis, Coons, Blackburn, and Schiff, aims to create a new legal mechanism to combat foreign piracy websites. Block BEARD is similar to the previously introduced House bill "FADPA", but doesn't directly mention DNS resolvers. [...] The site-blocking proposal seeks to amend U.S. copyright law, enabling rightsholders to request federal courts to designate online locations as a "foreign digital piracy site". If that succeeds, courts can subsequently order U.S. service providers to block access to these sites. Pirate site designation would be dependent on rightsholders showing that they are harmed by a site's activities, that reasonable efforts had been made to notify the site's operator, and that a reasonable investigation confirms the operator is not located within the United States. Additionally, rightsholders must show that the site is primarily designed for piracy, has limited commercial purpose, or is intentionally marketed by its operator to promote copyright-infringing activities. If the court classifies a website as a foreign pirate site, rightsholders can go back to court to request a blocking order. At this stage, the court will determine whether it is technically and practically feasible for ISPs to block the site, and consider any potential harm to the public interest. The granted orders would stay in place for a year with the option to extend if necessary. If blocked sites switch to new locations, the court can also amend blocking orders to include new IP addresses and domain names. The Block BEARD bill broadly applies to service providers as defined in section 512(k)(1)(A) of the DMCA. This is a broad definition that applies to residential ISPs, but also to search engines, social media platforms, and DNS resolvers. Service providers with fewer than 50,000 subscribers are explicitly excluded, and the same applies to venues such as coffee shops, libraries, and universities that offer internet access to visitors. Unlike the FADPA bill introduced by Representative Lofgren earlier this year, the Senate bill does not specifically mention DNS resolvers. Block BEARD does not mention VPNs, but its broad definition of "service provider" could be interpreted to include them. The proposal states that providers have the option to contest their inclusion in a blocking order. Once an order is issued, they would have the freedom to choose their own blocking techniques. There are no transparency requirements mentioned in the bill, so if and how the public is informed is unclear.

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Brazil has launched a massive program to release millions of laboratory-bred mosquitoes engineered to carry Wolbachia bacteria, which prevents them from transmitting dengue virus. The initiative aims to protect 140 million Brazilians across 40 municipalities over the next decade. The approach has already demonstrated significant results in Niteroi, where officials documented a roughly 90% drop in dengue cases when comparing the 10 years prior to the modified mosquitoes' introduction to the five years afterward. Nearly all mosquitoes in the city now carry the Wolbachia bacteria. Cases of chikungunya and Zika also fell by over 96% and 99% respectively. The World Mosquito Program operates high-tech breeding facilities, including one in Rio de Janeiro that produces mosquitoes by the millions. A new factory in Curitiba will produce 5 billion mosquitoes in its first year. The Wolbachia bacteria, naturally present in roughly half of all insect species, creates conditions where dengue virus cannot replicate inside mosquitoes, effectively breaking the transmission cycle when these modified insects bite humans.

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CISA has publicly released Thorium, a powerful open-source platform developed with Sandia National Labs that automates malware and forensic analysis at massive scale. According to BleepingComputer, the platform can "schedule over 1,700 jobs per second and ingest over 10 million files per hour per permission group." From the report: Security teams can use Thorium for automating and speeding up various file analysis workflows, including but not limited to: - Easily import and export tools to facilitate sharing across cyber defense teams, - Integrate command-line tools as Docker images, including open-source, commercial, and custom software, - Filter results using tags and full-text search, - Control access to submissions, tools, and results with strict group-based permissions, - Scale with Kubernetes and ScyllaDB to meet workload demands. Defenders can find installation instructions and get their own copy of Thorium from CISA's official GitHub repository.

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Apple reported its strongest quarterly revenue growth since 2021, with iPhone sales jumping 13% and total revenue up 10%. CEO Tim Cook also announced increased AI investments and hinted at future acquisitions to accelerate Apple's AI roadmap. CNBC reports: "It was an exceptional quarter by any measure," Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC's Steve Kovach. Cook said that about 1% of the company's 10 percentage points of revenue growth could be attributed to customers buying more products to get ahead of potential tariffs. The company's most important business remains the iPhone, which saw 13% growth on an annual basis during the quarter to $44.58 billion in sales. Cook said that iPhone revenue was strong because the iPhone 16 is more popular compared to the iPhone 15 devices on sale last year at the same time. Cook said iPhone 16 sales were up "strong double digits" versus its predecessor. Cook specifically highlighted popularity among current iPhone users upgrading to a new one. Apple's Mac business grew the fastest of any of Apple's units during the June quarter, growing nearly 15% to $8.05 billion in revenue. Apple released updated MacBook Air laptops, its best-selling Mac, just before the quarter started. The company's services business, which includes the company's warranties, content subscriptions, licensing deals with Google, and iCloud continued to grow to $27.42 billion in the period, a 13% increase. Cook highlighted growth in the company's iCloud subscriptions and said App Store revenue grew "double digits" during the quarter. The two tougher spots in Apple's report were iPad sales and the company's other products division, which it sometimes calls its wearables. It consists of Apple Watch, AirPods, and other accessories. Revenue for iPad was down 8% to $6.58 billion, despite the company launching a low-cost iPad in March. Apple's wearables unit declined 8.64% to $7.4 billion during the quarter. Apple also saw success in China during the quarter, with sales rising 4% on an annual basis to $15.37 billion. Apple reports its sales from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the same unit. It's a reversal from the past two quarters, where Apple's China sales declined 2% in Apple's second fiscal quarter and 11% in the first quarter. Cook said a Chinese subsidy for some devices helped Apple in the region. "The subsidy does apply to some of our products, and it clearly helps," Cook said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: E-commerce giants everywhere felt the sting Wednesday when President Donald Trump announced that the US will be "suspending duty-free de minimis treatment for low-value shipments" worth $800 or less from anywhere in the world. Americans will likely soon feel the crunch, with one recent study estimating that the cost of eliminating the trade loophole overall to US consumers could fall between $10.9 billion and $13 billion while "disproportionately" hurting "lower-income and minority consumers" who buy a higher percentage of cheap imports. Price hikes will likely come this fall, as the trade loophole will be closed starting on August 29, with Amazon emerging as perhaps the biggest question mark for US consumers wondering how hard their wallets may be hit by the major trade policy change ahead of the holiday shopping season. In February, Trump temporarily ended the de minimis exemption for all imports from China, prompting China-based retailers Temu and Shein to raise their prices.

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Apple began selling iPad repair parts to the public in late May following new right-to-repair legislation, but independent repair professionals say the pricing makes most repairs economically unviable. A charge port for an iPad Pro 11 costs $250 from Apple compared to less than $20 for aftermarket parts, Brian Clark of iGuys Tech Shop told 404 Media. An iPad A16 digitizer costs $200 from Apple versus $50 from third-party suppliers, while the entire iPad A16 retails for $349. The iPad Pro 13 screen assembly costs $749. Jonathan Strange of XiRepair analyzed the parts catalog and found more than one-third of components cost too much for repair shops to use profitably, 404 Media reported Thursday. Strange calculates repair viability by adding $85 labor costs and 10% profit margin to parts prices, then comparing the total to half the device's retail cost.

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Google lost its appeal Thursday of a judge's order that will force the tech giant to open up its app store to competitors. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling requiring Google Play to allow rival marketplaces and billing systems, ending a legal battle that began when Epic Games sued over anticompetitive practices. A jury sided with Epic in December 2023, finding Google paid phone makers and app developers to use its store exclusively.

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The world's "oldest baby" has been born in the US from an embryo that was frozen in 1994, it has been reported. The Guardian: Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was born on 26 July in Ohio to Lindsey and Tim Pierce, using an "adopted" embryo from Linda Archerd, 62, from more than 30 years ago. In the early 1990s, Archerd and her then husband decided to try in vitro fertilisation (IVF) after struggling to become pregnant. In 1994 four embryos resulted: one was transferred to Archerd and resulted in the birth of a daughter, who is now 30 and mother to a 10-year-old. The other embryos were cryopreserved and stored. "We didn't go into it thinking we would break any records," Lindsey told the MIT Technology Review, which first reported the story. "We just wanted to have a baby."

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