Damage to two undersea fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea this month points to growing vulnerability of critical submarine infrastructure, with German officials suspecting sabotage and Swedish police investigating a Chinese cargo vessel's involvement.

The incident highlights escalating risks to the global submarine cable network, which carries 99% of international telecommunications traffic through 530 cable systems spanning 850,000 miles. These garden hose-thick cables facilitate trillions in daily financial transactions and vital government communications.

Security experts warn that Russia has increased monitoring of undersea cables amid tensions over Ukraine. Taiwan reported 36 cable damages by foreign vessels since 2019, while Houthi rebels denied targeting Red Sea cables this year. Though most of the 100-plus annual cable faults are accidental, deliberate sabotage remains a concern. Repairs are costly, with new transatlantic cables running up to $250 million.

Longtime Slashdot reader Zarhan writes: On Sunday and Monday, two undersea cables in Baltic sea were cut. There is talk of a hybrid operation by Russia against Europe, and a Chinese ship has been detained by Danish Navy. However, the interesting part is did the cuts really have any effect, or does the internet actually route around damage? RIPE Atlas tests seem to indicate so. RIPE Atlas probes did not observe any noticeable increase of packet loss and only a minimal and perfectly expected increase of latency as traffic automatically switched itself to other available paths. While 20-30% of paths experienced latency increases, the effects were modest and no packet loss was detected. That said, questions remain about the consequences of further cable disruptions. "We are blind on what would happen if another link would be severed, or worse, if many are severed," reports RIPE Labs.

The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to propose new rules governing undersea internet cables in the face of growing security concerns, as part of a review of regulations on the links that handle nearly all the world's online traffic. From a report: The FCC voted 5-0 on proposed updates to address the national security concerns over the global network of more than 400 subsea cables that handle more than 98% of international internet traffic. [...]

Baltic nations said this week they are investigating whether the cutting of two fiber-optic undersea telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea was sabotage. Rosenworcel noted that in 2023 Taiwan accused two Chinese vessels of cutting the only two cables that support internet access on the Matsu Islands and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea may have been responsible for the cutting of three cables providing internet service to Europe and Asia.

A new six-episode Dune series premiers tonight on HBO and Max — a prequel to the Denis Villeneuve-directed Dune movies set 10,000 years before the birth f Paul Atreides. The Hollywood Reporter writes that it "draws on source material from the 2012 novel Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, the origin of the Dune universe." Cord-cutters can stream Dune: Prophecy online without cable on Max, with subscriptions starting at $9.99 per month through both Prime Video and the Max website directly. Amazon offers a seven-day free trial to the Max channel. Those who want to watch Dune: Prophecy online without a traditional cable service can also get Max as an add-on to existing streaming services, including Hulu and DirecTV Stream.
The San Francisco Chronicle describes the series as "">all palace intrigues, agonizing deaths and magical mind games." Taking a further cue from the network's top-rated Game of Thrones, this show indulges more sex and nudity than the Dune movies allow. It could be argued that elements like this introduce a liveliness often missing from the portentous big-screen behemoths, marking an improvement. Another fun touch here: Many characters are constantly baked.

Set a millennium before Frank Herbert's novels and the films' events, and a century after humans overthrew their "thinking machine" overlords, the psychoactive "Spice" from the desert planet Arrakis is already the most valued substance in the universe. It's not only vital for spaceship navigation and to expand the mental powers of sorceressy sisterhoods like the Bene Gesserit, it's the club drug of choice for younger members of the galaxy-ruling Great Houses. As ever with "Dune" business, control of the Spice trade fuels much of the conflict and character motivations.

Of which there are just enough to keep things interesting without becoming confusing... While the show can't match the outsize visual scope of Denis Villeneuve's films, it does pleasingly approximate those vast alien landscapes, Brutalist edifices and high-ceilinged chambers on a TV budget. For those who find Villeneuve's formal gigantism oppressive, the series' more human scale might be another welcome change of pace... There may not be an original thought in this "Dune" product's Spice-soaked head, but it is one professionally put-together piece of this sort of entertainment.
"Tasked with making more material with less money and time, Prophecy cannot hope to equal Villeneuve's aesthetic accomplishments," writes Variety. "But at its best, the show does justice to the intricate politics and ethical debates that form a cornerstone of Frank Herbert's fictional universe... The primary Dune plot finds many echoes throughout Prophecy..."

On the other hand, Vulture argues the six-episode series is "stuck in prequel quicksand," even calling it "an act of cowardice and abdication of creativity" (while also noting moments where it "feels like it's stretching itself to be something other than what we expect..."

This week Alphabet CEO Sundar Picahi assured investors that their long-term AI focus and investment (and a "commitment to innovation") "are paying off," reports the Associated Press. Alphabet's stock has already soared 20% this year, and it's "still thriving" as the company "navigates through a pivotal shift to AI and battles regulators..." Alphabet earned $26.3 billion, or $2.12 per share during the most recent quarter, a 34% increase from a year ago. Revenue rose 15% from the same time last year to $88.27 billion... The profits would have been even higher if Google wasn't pouring so much money into building up its AI arsenal in a technological arms race that includes other industry heavyweights Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook parent Meta Platforms and rising star OpenAI. The AI investments are the primary reason Google's capital expenditures in the past quarter soared 62% from the same time last year to $13.1 billion. The AI spending will likely stay at roughly the same level during the current October-December period, and the rise even higher next year, according to Anat Ashkenazi, Alphabet's chief financial officer.

But Ashkenazi also emphasized the Mountain View, California, company will act on cost-cutting opportunities in other areas to help boost profits. Alphabet already has trimmed its payroll from more than 190,000 worldwide employees early last year to about 181,000 workers now. In an example of how AI can perform tasks that once required human brainpower, Pichai said the technology is now writing more than 25% of the company's new computer coding.
After the results, investors sent Alphabet's stock price up 5% in extended trading, the article points out. "Both Alphabet's profit and revenue increased at a brisker pace than industry analysts anticipated, thanks primarily to a moneymaking machine powered by Google's ubiquitous search engine... [Google's digital search-engine ads earned $49.39 billion, 12% more than the same quarter of 2023.] And Google's cloud division is growing at an even more robust rate, thanks to demand for AI services. The cloud division generated $11.35 billion in revenue during the past quarter, a 35% increase from last year."

And meanwhile over at Microsoft, quarterly sales surged 16% to $65.6 billion, reports the Associated Press. But again, "the company sought to assure investors its huge spending on artificial intelligence is paying off." The company has spent billions of dollars to expand its global network of data centers and other physical infrastructure required to develop AI technology... As a result, AI-related products are now on track to contribute about $10 billion to the company's annual revenue, the "fastest business in our history to reach this milestone," CEO Satya Nadella said on a call with analysts Wednesday. [Though Microsoft "hasn't yet formally reported revenue specifically from AI products," the article notes later, with Microsoft instead saying it's infused AI and Copilot into all its business segments.]
Just in the last quarter, Microsoft spent $20 billion "mostly for its cloud computing and AI needs," the article points out.

But there's still making plenty of money... The software maker also reported an 11% increase in quarterly profit to $24.7 billion, or $3.30 per share, which beat Wall Street expectations for the July-September period... Leading in sales for the quarter was Microsoft's productivity business segment, which includes its Office suite of email and other workplace products, growing 12% to $28.3 billion. Microsoft's cloud-focused business segment grew 20% from the same time last year to $24.1 billion for the three months ending Sept. 30. Its personal computing business, led by its Windows division, grew 17% to $13.2 billion. A big part of that growth came from Microsoft's Xbox video game business, which was boosted by its purchase of game publishing giant Activision Blizzard a year ago.

On a small network of islands north of Seattle, Washington, San Juan County just completed its first full year of 32-hour workweeks, reports CNN.

And Tuesday the county released a report touting "a host of positive outcomes — from recruiting to retention to employee happiness — and a cost savings of more than $975,000 compared to what the county would have paid if it met the union's pay increase demands." The county said the 32-hour workweek has attracted a host of new talent: Applications have spiked 85.5% and open positions are being filled 23.75% faster, while more employees are staying in their jobs — separation (employees quitting or retiring) dropped by 48%. And 84% of employees said their work-life balance was better. "This is meeting many of the goals that we set out to do when we implemented it," County Manager Jessica Hudson said. said, noting the county is looking for opportunities to expand the initiative...

Departments across San Juan County have implemented the 32-hour workweek differently, some staggering staffing to maintain their previous availability to the public while others have shortened schedules to be open just four days a week... "I tell people, you're not going to see things change from your perspective," said Joe Ingman, a park manager in the county. "Offices are going to stay open, bathrooms are going to get cleaned, grass is going to get mowed." His department adjusted schedules to stay staffed seven days a week, and while communication across shifts was an initial hurdle, issues were quickly ironed out. "It was probably the smoothest summer I've had, and I've been working in parks for over a decade," he said, crediting the new schedule as a boon for recruiting. While job postings used to languish unfilled for months, last summer the applicant pool was not only bigger but more qualified, and the two staffers he hired both cited coming to the county because of the 32-hour workweek.

"It's no more cost to the public to work 32 hours — but we have better applicants," he said. Ingman also said the four-day workweek has done wonders for his job satisfaction; he'd watched colleagues burn out for years, but now sees a path for his own future in the department... County employees have used their extra time off to spend less money on childcare, volunteer in their kids' schools, and contribute to the community... While San Juan County's motivation in adopting a shortened workweek was financial, the benefits its employees cite speak to a larger trend, as workplaces around the country increasingly explore flexible schedules to combat burnout and attract and retain talent.

A survey of CEOs this spring found nearly one third of large US companies were looking into solutions like four-day or four-and-a-half-day workweeks... Even without a reduction in total hours, a Gallup poll last year found a third day off would be widely embraced: 77% of US workers said a 4-day, 40-hour workweek would have a positive impact on their wellbeing.
One worker shared their thoughts with CNN. "Life shouldn't be about just working yourself into the ground..." And they added that "So far, I feel happy; I feel seen as an employee and as a human, and I feel like it could be a beautiful step forward for other people if we just trust it and try it."

They even had some advice for other employers. "Change happens by somebody actually doing the change. The only way we're going to find out if it works is by doing."

Bluesky, the social network surging in popularity, says it has "no intention" of training AI tools on users content. "The social network made the announcement on the same day that X (formerly Twitter) is implementing its new terms of service that allow the platform to use public posts to train AI," notes TechCrunch. From the report: "A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns with other platforms training on their data," Bluesky said in a post on its app. "We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so." The company went on to note that it uses AI internally to help with content moderation and that it also uses the technology in its "Discover" algorithmic feed. However, Bluesky says "none of these are Gen AI systems trained on user content."

ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: [...] At KubeCon North America 2024 this week, CNCF executive director Priyanka Sharma said in her keynote, "Patent trolls are not contributors or even adopters in our ecosystem. Instead, they prey on cloud-native adopters by abusing the legal system. We are here to tell the world that these patent trolls don't stand a chance because CNCF is uniting the ecosystem to deter them. Like a herd of musk oxen, we will run them off our pasture." CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk added: "The reason trolls can make money is that many companies find it too expensive to fight back, so they pay trolls a settlement fee to avoid the even higher cost of litigation. Now, when a whole herd of companies band together like musk oxen to drive a troll off, it changes the cost structure of fighting back. It disrupts their economic model."

How? Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's executive director, said, "We don't negotiate with trolls. Instead, with United Patents, we go to the PTO and crush those patents. We strive to invalidate them by working with developers who have prior art, bringing this to the attention of the USPTO, and killing patents. No negotiation, no settlement. We destroy the very asset that made patent trolls' business work. Together, since we've started this effort, 90% of the time, we've been able to go in there and destroy these patents." "It's time for us to band together," said Joanna Lee, CNCF's VP of strategic programs and legal. "We encourage all organizations in our ecosystem to get involved. Join the fight, enhance your own company's protection, protect your customers, enhance our community defense, and save money on legal expenses."

While getting your company and its legal department involved in the effort to fend off patent trolls is important, developers can also help. CNCF announced the Cloud Native Heroes Challenge, a patent troll bounty program in which cloud-native developers and technologists can earn swag and win prizes. They're asking you to find evidence of preexisting technology -- referred to by patent lawyers as "prior art" -- that can kill off bad patents. This could be open-source documentation (including release notes), published standards or specifications, product manuals, articles, blogs, books, or any publicly available information. All entrants who submit an entry that conforms to the contest rules will receive a free "Cloud Native Hero" t-shirt that can be picked up at any future KubeCon+CloudNativeCon. The winner will also receive a $3,000 cash prize.

In the inaugural contest, the CNCF is seeking information that can be used to invalidate Claim 1 from US Patent US-11695823-B1. This is the major patent asserted by Edge Networking Systems against Kubernetes users. As is often the case with such patents, it's much too broad. This patent describes a network architecture that facilitates secure and flexible programmability between a user device and across a network with full lifecycle management of services and infrastructure applications. That describes pretty much any modern cloud system. If you can find prior art that describes such a system before June 13, 2013, you could be a winner. Some such materials have already been found. This is already listed in the "known references" tab of the contest information page and doesn't qualify. If you care about keeping open-source software easy and cheap to use -- or you believe trolls shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of companies that make or use programs -- you can help. I'll be doing some digging myself.

Francois Chollet, an AI pioneer and creator of the Keras framework, announced that he's leaving Google to co-found a new company. Neowin reports: In his parting message, Chollet assured that he would still be active with Keras and participate in its development on GitHub. His successor, Jeff Carpenter, will now lead Keras at Google, and Chollet expressed his full confidence in the team's future direction.

Keras has come a long way since Chollet released it in 2015, initially as a high-level neural network API meant for simplicity and accessibility. Keras quickly gained traction in the AI community for its user-friendly Python interface and compatibility with frameworks like TensorFlow, simplifying machine learning model building for developers across various levels. Google published a blog post praising Chollet and reaffirming their commitment to Keras.

Last year, Google lost the "Godfather of AI," Geoffrey Hinton, who left the company after nearly a decade. He said he quit his job at Google so he can freely speak out about the risks of AI.

The European Union has fined Meta $840 million for unfairly tying its Facebook Marketplace classified ads service to its social network, marking the company's first EU antitrust penalty.

The European Commission ruled Meta must stop bundling Marketplace with Facebook's social platform and cease imposing unfair conditions on competing classified ads services. Regulators found Meta exploited Facebook's massive user base to disadvantage rivals and used competitors' advertising data to enhance Marketplace.

EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said Meta "tied its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and imposed unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers."

Wi-Fi 8 (also known as IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability) is expected to arrive around 2028, prioritizing an enhanced user experience over speed by optimizing interactions between devices and access points. While it retains similar bandwidth specifications as the previous standard, Wi-Fi 8 aims to improve network efficiency, reducing interference and congestion for a more reliable and adaptive connection. PCWorld's Mark Hachman reports: As of Nov. 2024, MediaTek believes that Wi-Fi 8 will look virtually identical to Wi-Fi 7 in several key areas: The maximum physical layer (PHY) rate will be the same at 2,880Mbps x 8, or 23Gbits/s. It will also use the same four frequency bands (2, 4, 5, and 6GHz) and the same 4096 QAM modulation across a maximum channel bandwidth of 320MHz. (A Wi-Fi 8 router won't get 23Gbps of bandwidth, of course. According to MediaTek, the actual peak throughput in a "clean," or laboratory, environment is just 80 percent or so of the hypothetical peak throughput, and actual, real-world results can be far less.)

Still, put simply, Wi-Fi 8 should deliver the same wireless bandwidth as Wi-Fi 7, using the same channels and the same modulation. Every Wi-Fi standard has also been backwards-compatible with its predecessors, too. What Wi-Fi 8 will do, though, is change how your client device, such as a PC or a phone, interacts with multiple access points. Think of this as an evolution of how your laptop talks to your home's networking equipment. Over time, Wi-Fi has evolved from communications between one laptop and a router, across a single channel. Channel hopping routed different clients to different bands. When Wi-Fi 6 was developed, a dedicated 6GHz channel was added, sometimes as a dedicated "backhaul" between your home's access points. Now, mesh networks are more common, giving your laptop a variety of access points, channels, and frequencies to select between. For a detailed breakdown of the upcoming advancements coming to Wi-Fi 8, including Coordinated Spatial Reuse, Coordinated Beamforming, and Dynamic Sub-Channel Operation, read the full article.

Federal authorities are grappling with the aftermath of an illegal sheep cloning operation that has scattered hundreds of contraband hybrid animals across multiple states, following the sentencing of the scheme's mastermind. Montana rancher Arthur Schubarth received a six-month prison term for cloning a near-threatened Marco Polo argali sheep from tissue illegally imported from Kyrgyzstan.

The cloned animal, named Montana Mountain King, was used to inseminate over 100 ewes, creating a network of unauthorized hybrid offspring. Court documents reveal that Schubarth sold these hybrids to big game hunting enthusiasts, with prices reaching $10,000 per animal. While the original cloned sheep is now housed at New York's Rosamond Gifford Zoo, authorities cannot account for most of its descendants.

Apple was notified by the European Union that its geo-blocking practices are potentially in breach of consumer protection rules, adding to the iPhone maker's regulatory issues in the bloc. From a report: Apple's App Store, iTunes Store and other media services unlawfully discriminate against European customers based on their place of residence, according to a European Commission statement on Tuesday.

The notification comes as Apple is facing the first-ever fine under the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, for failing to allow app developers to steer users to cheaper deals, Bloomberg News reported last week. That penalty is set to come months after the Cupertino, California-based company was hit with a $1.9 billion fine for similar abuses under the bloc's traditional competition rules.

The geo-locating investigation was conducted together with a network of national consumer authorities and found Apple media services only allow users to use payment cards issued in the countries they registered their Apple accounts, according to the statement. The App Store also blocks users from downloading apps offered in other countries, the investigation found.

D-Link confirmed no fix will be issued for the over 60,000 D-Link NAS devices that are vulnerable to a critical command injection flaw (CVE-2024-10914), allowing unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands through unsanitized HTTP requests. The networking company advises users to retire or isolate the affected devices from public internet access. BleepingComputer reports: The flaw impacts multiple models of D-Link network-attached storage (NAS) devices that are commonly used by small businesses: DNS-320 Version 1.00; DNS-320LW Version 1.01.0914.2012; DNS-325 Version 1.01, Version 1.02; and DNS-340L Version 1.08. [...] A search that Netsecfish conducted on the FOFA platform returned 61,147 results at 41,097 unique IP addresses for D-Link devices vulnerable to CVE-2024-10914.

In a security bulletin today, D-Link has confirmed that a fix for CVE-2024-10914 is not coming and the vendor recommends that users retire vulnerable products. If that is not possible at the moment, users should at least isolate them from the public internet or place them under stricter access conditions. The same researcher discovered in April this year an arbitrary command injection and hardcoded backdoor flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-3273, impacting mostly the same D-Link NAS models as the latest flaw.

GIMP 3.0, the long-awaited upgrade from the popular open-source image editor, has entered the release candidate phase, signaling that a stable version may be available by the end of this year or early 2025. Tom's Hardware reports: So, what has changed with the debut of GIMP 3? The new interface is still quite recognizable to classic GIMP users but has been considerably smoothed out and is far more scalable to high-resolution displays than it used to be. Several familiar icons have been carefully converted to SVGs or Scalable Vector Graphics, enabling supremely high-quality, scalable assets.

While PNGs, or Portable Network Graphics, are also known to be high-quality due to their lack of compression, they are still suboptimal compared to SVGs when SVGs are applicable. The work of converting GIMP's tool icons to SVG is still in progress per the original blog post, but it's good that developer Denis Rangelov has already started on the work.

Many aspects of the GIMP 3.0 update are almost wholly on the backend for ensuring project and plugin compatibility with past projects made with previous versions of GIMP. To summarize: a public GIMP API is being stabilized to make it easier to port GIMP 2.10-based plugins and scripts to GIMP 3.0. Several bugs related to color accuracy have been fixed to improve color management while still maintaining compatibility with past GIMP projects. You can read the GIMP team's blog post here.

NASA hopes to stimulate in-space manufacturing through a multi-year "laser beam welding collaboration" with Ohio State University. The project "seeks to understand the physical processes of welding on the lunar surface," according to NASA.gov, "such as investigating the effects of laser beam welding in a combined vacuum and reduced gravity environment." The goal is to increase the capabilities of manufacturing in space to potentially assemble large structures or make repairs on the Moon, which will inform humanity's next giant leap of sending astronauts to Mars and beyond. "For a long time, we've used fasteners, rivets, or other mechanical means to keep structures that we assemble together in space," said Andrew O'Connor, a Marshall materials scientist who is helping coordinate the collaborative effort and is NASA's technical lead for the project. "But we're starting to realize that if we really want strong joints and if we want structures to stay together when assembled on the lunar surface, we may need in-space welding."

The ability to weld structures in space would also eliminate the need to transport rivets and other materials, reducing payloads for space travel. That means learning how welds will perform in space. To turn the effort into reality, researchers are gathering data on welding under simulated space conditions, such as temperature and heat transfer in a vacuum; the size and shape of the molten area under a laser beam; how the weld cross-section looks after it solidifies; and how mechanical properties change for welds performed in environmental conditions mimicking the lunar surface. "Once you leave Earth, it becomes more difficult to test how the weld performs, so we are leveraging both experiments and computer modeling to predict welding in space while we're still on the ground," said O'Connor.

In August 2024, a joint team from Ohio State's Welding Engineering and Multidisciplinary Capstone Programs and Marshall's Materials & Processes Laboratory performed high-powered fiber laser beam welding aboard a commercial aircraft that simulated reduced gravity. The aircraft performed parabolic flight maneuvers that began in level flight, pulled up to add 8,000 feet in altitude, and pushed over at the top of a parabolic arc, resulting in approximately 20 seconds of reduced gravity to the passengers and experiments. While floating in this weightless environment, team members performed laser welding experiments in a simulated environment similar to that of both low Earth orbit and lunar gravity. Analysis of data collected by a network of sensors during the tests will help researchers understand the effects of space environments on the welding process and welded material.
They performed that laser-beam welding in a vacuum chamber during the parabolic flight (on a Boeing 727), according to the article — and successfully completed 69 out of 70 welds in microgravity and lunar gravity conditions. "The last time NASA performed welding in space was during the Skylab mission in 1973...

"Practical welding and joining methods and allied processes, including additive manufacturing, will be required to develop the in-space economy."

Law enforcement officers are warning other officials and forensic experts that iPhones which have been stored securely for forensic examination are somehow rebooting themselves, returning the devices to a state that makes them much harder to unlock, 404 Media is reporting, citing a law enforcement document it obtained. From the report: The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone.

"The purpose of this notice is to spread awareness of a situation involving iPhones, which is causing iPhone devices to reboot in a short amount of time (observations are possibly within 24 hours) when removed from a cellular network," the document reads. Apple did not provide a response on whether it introduced such an update in time for publication.

With the debut of the Pirate Bay TV series in Sweden, international viewers are finding it surprisingly difficult to pirate. TorrentFreak reports: The series premiered at the on-demand platform of the Swedish national broadcaster SVT a few hours ago. International deals haven't been announced, but pirates can generally get access anyway. Soon after the first two episodes of The Pirate Bay series came out, scene release copies started circulating online. As one would expect.

The Scene group OLLONBORRE, which specializes in Swedish content, was the first to pick the show up. Within minutes, the first 1080p WEB-rips were posted on private scene servers and 720p copies followed a few hours later. Interestingly, pirate releases have yet to make their way to The Pirate Bay. We haven't seen any other copies on other public pirate sites either, which is surprising given the topic of the series.

It's common knowledge that The Scene -- a secretive network of release groups -- prefers to keep its releases private. Therefore, it wasn't happy with The Pirate Bay's public nature and rise to prominence in the early 2003s, which is highlighted in the first episodes of the TV series. However, we expected non-scene release groups would be eager to pick up the show. Apparently that's not the case, yet.

IBM is facing a new lawsuit alleging that its Weather Channel website shared users' personal data with third-party ad partners without consent, violating the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The Register reports: In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, the complaint [PDF] claims Big Blue violated America's Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), enacted in 1988 in response to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's videotape rental records. IBM was sued in 2019 (PDF) by then Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer over similar allegations: That its Weather Channel mobile app collected and shared location data without disclosure. The IT titan settled that claim in 2020. A separate civil action against IBM's Weather Channel was filed in 2020 and settled in 2023 (PDF).

This latest legal salvo against alleged Weather Channel-enabled data collection takes issue with the sensitive information made available through the company's website to third-party ad partners mParticle and AppNexus/Xandr (acquired by Microsoft in 2022). The former provides customer analytics, and the latter is an advertising and marketing platform. The complaint, filed on behalf of California plaintiff Ed Penning, contends that by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge.

It explains that the plaintiff's counsel retained a private research firm last year to analyze browser network traffic during video sessions on the Weather Channel website. The research firm is said to have confirmed that the website provided the third-party ad firms with information that could be used to identify people and the videos that they watched. The VPPA prohibits video providers from sharing "personally identifiable information" about clients without their consent. [...] The lawsuit aspires to be certified as a class action. Under the VPPA, a successful claim allows for actual damages (if any) and statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the law, as well as attorney's fees.

U.S. Cellular has agreed to sell $1.02 billion worth of spectrum licenses to AT&T as part of its strategy to monetize its spectrum assets that were not included in an earlier $4.4 billion deal with T-Mobile. Reuters reports: Last month, U.S. Cellular agreed to sell select spectrum licenses for $1 billion to Verizon. It also signed deals with two other mobile network operators, but did not disclose the details. The latest agreement "adds a fourth mobile network operator, in addition to T-Mobile, to the list of those whose subscribers will benefit from the sale of our spectrum licenses," U.S. Cellular CEO Laurent Therivel said on Thursday. From a press release: Following this transaction, as well as those previously announced, UScellular will have reached definitive agreements to monetize approximately 55%, measured on a MHz-Pops basis, of the spectrum holdings (excluding mmWave) that were excluded from the proposed sale to T-Mobile, for a total consideration of approximately $2.02 billion. Including the proposed T-Mobile transaction, UScellular will have reached agreements to monetize approximately 70% of its total spectrum holdings (excluding mmWave), measured on a MHz-Pops basis.

"After our proposed sales, we will be left with 1.86 billion MHz-Pops of low and mid-band spectrum, as well as 17.2 billion MHz-Pops of mmWave spectrum, with the substantial majority of retained value in the C-band spectrum," [said Laurent C. Therivel, President and CEO]. "The C-band licenses have a number of attributes that we believe are favorable to their long-term value. First, our C-band licenses are positioned in an attractive mid-band frequency that can deliver outstanding speed and capacity. Second, there is a substantial 5G ecosystem of equipment vendors and existing infrastructure that uses C-band. Finally, they have a lengthy build-out timeline, with first and second build-out dates of 2029 and 2033, respectively. This provides ample time and optionality for us to either monetize or deploy the spectrum in the future. We will continue to look for ways to opportunistically monetize the C-band, as well as the other remaining spectrum."