Last year, special counsel Jack Smith asked X (formerly Twitter) to hand over Donald Trump's direct messages from his presidency without telling Trump. Refusing to comply, X spent the past year arguing that the gag order was an unconstitutional prior restraint on X's speech and an "end-run" around a record law shielding privileged presidential communications. Under its so-called free speech absolutist owner Elon Musk, X took this fight all the way to the Supreme Court, only for the nation's highest court to decline to review X's appeal on Monday. It's unclear exactly why SCOTUS rejected X's appeal, but in a court filing opposing SCOTUS review, Smith told the court that X's "contentions lack merit and warrant no further review." And SCOTUS seemingly agreed. Read full article

The Central Consumer Protection Authority, India’s consumer rights regulator, has sent a show-cause notice to Ola Electric over alleged violation of consumer rights, escalating troubles for the leading electric vehicle maker whose shares dropped 9% earlier on Monday, The notice, issued on Monday, gives the Bengaluru-headquartered firm 15 days to respond to allegations that include […]

The legal saga over Martin Shkreli's infamous 5,000 percent price hike of a life-saving anti-parasitic drug has ended with a flat denial from the highest court in the land. On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected Shkreli's petition to appeal an order to return $64.6 million in profits from the pricing scheme of Daraprim, a decades-old drug used to treat toxoplasmosis. The condition is caused by a single-celled parasite that can be deadly for newborns and people with compromised immune systems, such as people who have HIV, cancer, or an organ transplant. Federal prosecutors successfully argued in courts that Shkreli orchestrated an illegal anticompetitive scheme that allowed him to dramatically raise the price of Daraprim overnight. When Shkreli and his pharmaceutical company, Vyera (formerly Turing), bought the rights to the drug in 2015, the price of a single pill jumped to $750 after being priced between $13.50 and $17.50 earlier that year. And Shkreli quickly came to epitomize callous greed in the pharmaceutical industry. Read full article

Qualcomm has released security patches for a zero-day vulnerability in the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) service that impacts dozens of chipsets....

The Federal Communications Commission gave Starlink and T-Mobile emergency authority to provide satellite-to-phone coverage in areas hit by Hurricane Helene. "SpaceX and T-Mobile have been given emergency special temporary authority by the FCC to enable Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability to provide coverage for cell phones in the affected areas of Hurricane Helene," SpaceX said yesterday. "The satellites have already been enabled and started broadcasting emergency alerts to cell phones on all networks in North Carolina. In addition, we may test basic texting (SMS) capabilities for most cell phones on the T-Mobile network in North Carolina." SpaceX warned of limits since the service isn't ready for a commercial rollout. "SpaceX's direct-to-cell constellation has not been fully deployed, so all services will be delivered on a best-effort basis," the company said. Read full article

Jalal O., the 35-year-old man suspected of causing a devastating explo

The companies behind the streaming industry, including smart TV and streaming stick manufacturers and streaming service providers, have developed a "surveillance system" that has "long undermined privacy and consumer protection," according to a report from the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) published today and sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Unprecedented tracking techniques aimed at pleasing advertisers have resulted in connected TVs (CTVs) being a "privacy nightmare," according to Jeffrey Chester, report co-author and CDD executive director, resulting in calls for stronger regulation. The 48-page report, How TV Watches Us: Commercial Surveillance in the Streaming Era [PDF], cites Ars Technica, other news publications, trade publications, blog posts, and statements from big players in streaming—from Amazon to NBCUniversal and Tubi, to LG, Samsung, and Vizio. It provides a detailed overview of the various ways that streaming services and streaming hardware target viewers in newfound ways that the CDD argues pose severe privacy risks. The nonprofit composed the report as part of efforts to encourage regulation. Today, the CDD sent letters to the FTC [PDF], Federal Communications Commission (FCC), California attorney general [PDF], and California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) [PDF], regarding its concerns. "Not only does CTV operate in ways that are unfair to consumers, it is also putting them and their families at risk as it gathers and uses sensitive data about health, children, race, and political interests,” Chester said in a statement. Read full article

Tesla has lost a top executive to Waymo in the lead-up to the EV maker’s robotaxi unveiling on Thursday.  Daniel Ho, Tesla’s former head of vehicle programs and new product integration, last week announced his new role as programs director at Waymo.  Ho, who previously reported directly to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, oversaw the development […]

On Monday, the Nobel Committee announced that two US researchers, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, will receive the prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of a previously unknown mechanism for controlling the activity of genes. They discovered the first of what is now known to be a large collection of MicroRNAs, short (21-23 bases long) RNAs that bind to and alter the behavior of protein-coding RNAs. While first discovered in a roundworm, they've since been discovered to play key roles in the development of most complex life. The story behind the discovery is typical of a lot of the progress in the biological sciences: genetics helps identify a gene important for the development of one species, and then evolutionary conservation reveals its widespread significance. Ambros and Ruvkun started on the path to discovery while post-doctoral fellows in the lab of earlier Nobel winner Robert Horvitz, who won for his role in developing the roundworm C. elegans as an experimental genetic organism. As part of the early genetic screens, people had identified a variety of mutations that caused developmental problems for specific lineages of cells. These lin mutations included lin-4, which Ambros was characterizing. It lacked a number of specialized cell types, as well as the physical structures that depended on them. Read full article

American Water, the largest publicly traded U.S. water and wastewater utility company, was forced to shut down some of its systems after a Thursday cyberattack....

In less than a day, Hurricane Milton has rapidly intensified over the southern Gulf of Mexico, exploding from a small Category 1 hurricane into a Category 5 storm. Unfortunately, the hurricane is likely to strengthen further as it tracks eastward toward Florida. The National Hurricane Center reported that Milton had reached sustained winds of 160 mph as of 11:44 pm ET on Monday, with a central pressure of 925 millibars. The storm is moving steadily eastward and is likely to reach the west coast of Florida on Wednesday evening as a major hurricane. Based upon Atlantic basin records, Milton has tied Hurricane Maria (2017) for the second-fastest intensification from a Category 1 to Category 5 hurricane, taking just 18 hours. Only Hurricane Wilma (2005) did so more rapidly, in just 12 hours. Read full article