Iranian strikes have reportedly knocked out key AWS availability zones in Bahrain and Dubai, leaving parts of both regions effectively offline for an extended period and forcing Amazon to urge teams and customers to shift workloads elsewhere. “These two regions continue to be impaired, and services should not expect to be operating with normal levels of redundancy and resiliency,” an internal...

Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in Japan from 2026 to 2029 to expand AI infrastructure, boost local cloud capacity, train 1 million engineers and developers, and deepen cybersecurity cooperation with the Japanese government. Reuters reports: The investment includes the training of 1 million engineers and developers by 2030, Microsoft said, which was unveiled during a visit to Tokyo by...

A Rome court ruled that several Netflix price hikes in Italy were unlawful because the company’s contracts didn’t adequately explain or justify future pricing changes. As a result, Netflix has been ordered to issue refunds that could total roughly 500 euros for some long-term subscribers. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit was brought by Italian consumer advocacy group Movimento Consumatori,...

The astronauts traveling in the Artemis II spacecraft were allowed to bring smartphones with them. Sadly, they can’t connect to the internet.

Archive of Our Own (AO3) is officially dropping its “beta” label after 17 years. The Organization for Transformative Works, the nonprofit behind the fanfiction site, said the site will keep evolving with new improvements even though it’s no longer technically in beta. “As the AO3 software has been stable for a long time, the change is mostly cosmetic and does not indicate that everything is...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Today at a hearing of the Colorado Senate Business, Labor, and Technology committee, lawmakers voted unanimously to move Colorado state bill SB26-090 — titled Exempt Critical Infrastructure from Right to Repair — out of committee and into the state senate and house for a vote. The bill modifies Colorado’s Consumer Right to Repair Digital...

The Wall Street Journal shares the “wild behind-the-scenes story” of how the world’s largest and most destructive botnet was uncovered and taken down, writes Slashdot reader sturgeon. “At times, the network known as Kimwolf included more than a million compromised home Android devices and digital photo frames — enough DDoS firepower to disrupt internet traffic across the U.S. and beyond.” From...

Mr. Musk is requiring Wall Street firms to purchase subscriptions to his A.I. chatbot if they want to advise on one of the largest initial public offerings in history.

Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: When it comes to using AI, it seems some lawyers just can’t help themselves. Last year saw a rapid increase in court sanctions against attorneys for filing briefs containing errors generated by artificial intelligence tools. The most prominent case was that of the lawyers for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who were fined $3,000 each for filing briefs containing...

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, nearly half of planned U.S. data center projects are being delayed or canceled. “One major reason behind these setbacks is the availability of key electrical components — such as transformers, switchgear, and batteries — that are used both at data center sites and outside of them,” reports Tom’s Hardware. “Meanwhile, grid infrastructure is...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity’s AI search engine encourages users to go deeper with their prompts by engaging in chat sessions that a lawsuit has alleged are often shared in their entirety with Google and Meta without users’ knowledge or consent. “This happened to every user regardless of whether or not they signed up for a Perplexity account,” the lawsuit...

Watching Love Story brought back a surreal evening in 1994.