On Wednesday, a ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee accused the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of "misusing law enforcement" to claw back climate funds and "humor" Donald Trump’s "vindictive political whims."

In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) requested information about a supposed criminal investigation into the EPA's $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF).

Whitehouse alleged that there was no basis to freeze the funding. He claimed that Bondi and Patel "reverted to a pretextual criminal investigation to provide an alternative excuse to interfere" after "EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced via social media that he had 'found' $20 billion in EPA funds at Citibank and falsely suggested that the use of a financial agent agreement—a commonly used financial tool that presidential administrations have used for centuries—was improper."

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The Federal Trade Commission is moving to push back a trial set to determine if Amazon tricked customers into signing up for Prime subscriptions.

At a Zoom status hearing on Wednesday, the FTC officially asked US District Judge John Chun to delay the trial. According to the FTC's attorney, Jonathan Cohen, the agency needs two months to prepare beyond the September 22 start date, blaming recent "staffing and budgetary shortfalls" stemming from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), CNBC reported.

"We have lost employees in the agency, in our division, and on our case team," Cohen said, explaining that "there is an extremely severe resource shortfall in terms of money and personnel," Bloomberg reported. Cuts are apparently so bad, Cohen told Chun that the FTC is stuck with a $1 cap on any government credit card charges and "may not be able to purchase the transcript from Wednesday’s hearing," Bloomberg reported.

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Authors think that Meta's admitted torrenting of a pirated books data set used to train its AI models is evidence enough to win their copyright fight—which previously hinged on a court ruling that AI training on copyrighted works isn't fair use.

Moving for summary judgment on a direct copyright infringement claim on Monday in a US district court in California, the authors alleged that "whatever the merits of generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI, stealing copyrighted works off the Internet for one’s own benefit has always been unlawful."

In their filing, the authors accused Meta of brazenly deciding to torrent terabytes of pirated book data after attempts to download pirated books one by one "posed an immense strain on Meta's networks and proceeded very slowly."

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Media Matters for America (MMFA) has a plan to potentially defuse Elon Musk's "thermonuclear" lawsuits filed so far in three cities around the world, which accuse the nonprofit media watchdog organization of orchestrating a very costly X ad boycott.

On Monday, MMFA filed a complaint in a US district court in San Francisco, alleging that X violated its own terms of service by suing MMFA in Texas, Dublin, and Singapore. According to the TOS, MMFA alleged, X requires any litigation over use of its services to be "brought solely in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County, California, United States."

"X Corp.’s decision to file in multiple jurisdictions across the globe is intended to chill Media Matters’ reporting and drive up costs—both of which it has achieved—and it is directly foreclosed by X’s own Terms of Service," MMFA's complaint said.

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Elon Musk is now claiming that bad actors in Ukraine are behind an alleged cyberattack that caused outages on his social media platform X on Monday.

In an interview, Musk told Fox Business that he believes the attack came from "IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area."

Musk admitted that "we don't know exactly what happened"—nodding as his comments were characterized as a suspicion and discussing no evidence—but alleged that the attackers were trying to take down the entire X platform.

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Donald Trump's sudden decision last week to attack the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act after he previously offered assurances that he wouldn't has sent shockwaves across the industry and has even given some Republicans whiplash.

Soon after Trump told Congress that the CHIPS Act is a "horrible, horrible thing," chip company executives rushed to consult their lawyers to see if Trump could possibly claw back funding or terminate their contracts, eight people familiar with the executives' moves told The New York Times. At least one expert told Ars that their fear isn't completely unfounded.

Signed into law by Joe Biden in 2022, the CHIPS Act sought to grant $52.7 billion in subsidies to bring the most advanced chipmakers into the US. The Commerce Department has already signed contracts granting a wide range of awards, including grants for chipmakers like Intel, Micron, Samsung, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), totaling more than $36 billion in federal subsidies.

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Elon Musk is now claiming that bad actors in Ukraine are behind an alleged cyberattack that caused outages on his social media platform X on Monday.

In an interview, Musk told Fox Business that he believes the attack came from "IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area."

Musk admitted that "we don't know exactly what happened"—nodding as his comments were characterized as a suspicion and discussing no evidence—but alleged that the attackers were trying to take down the entire X platform.

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A 55-year-old software developer faces up to 10 years in prison for deploying malicious code that sabotaged his former employer's network, allegedly costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.

The US Department of Justice announced Friday that Davis Lu was convicted by a jury after "causing intentional damage to protected computers" reportedly owned by the Ohio- and Dublin-based power management company Eaton Corp.

Lu had worked at Eaton Corp. for about 11 years when he apparently became disgruntled by a corporate "realignment" in 2018 that "reduced his responsibilities," the DOJ said.

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A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies' scheduled release dates.

According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole "numerous 'pre-release' DVDs and Blu-rays" between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly "ripped" the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying," and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with "two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods," the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.

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On Thursday, music labels sought to add nearly 500 more sound recordings to a lawsuit accusing the Internet Archive (IA) of mass copyright infringement through its Great 78 Project, which seeks to digitize all 3 million three-minute recordings published on 78 revolutions-per-minute (RPM) records from about 1898 to the 1950s.

If the labels' proposed second amended complaint is accepted by the court, damages sought in the case—which some already feared could financially ruin IA and shut it down for good—could increase to almost $700 million. (Initially, the labels sought about $400 million in damages.)

IA did not respond to Ars' request for comment, but the filing noted that IA has not consented to music labels' motion to amend their complaint.

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Ahead of the first-ever White House Crypto Summit Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve that a factsheet claimed delivers on his promise to make America the "crypto capital of the world."

Trump's order requires all federal agencies currently holding bitcoins seized as part of a criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceeding to transfer those bitcoins to the Treasury Department, which itself already has a store of bitcoins. Additionally, any other digital assets forfeited will be collected in a separate Digital Assets Stockpile.

But while Trump likely anticipates that bitcoin fans will be over the moon about this news—his announcement of the reserve and looser crypto regulations helped send bitcoin's price to its all-time high of $109,000 in January, Reuters noted—some cryptocurrency enthusiasts were clearly disappointed that Trump's order confirmed that the US currently has no plans to buy any more bitcoins at this time.

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On Wednesday, the Senate voted to block the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from monitoring digital payments companies for fraud and privacy concerns—which Democratic lawmakers Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff said gave Elon Musk a "get out of jail free card."

The vote advanced a proposed joint resolution to the House of Representatives that "disapproves" of a final rule Republicans introduced last year that was supposed to bring consumer protection regulation of digital payments companies in line with traditional financial institutions.

At that time, lawmakers were concerned about tech companies spying on consumers' transactions, preventing valid transaction disputes over incorrect or fraudulent money transfers, and other potential harms to consumers "when they lose access to their app without notice or when their ability to make or receive payments is disrupted."

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On Tuesday, Donald Trump finally made it clear to Congress that he wants to kill the CHIPS and Science Act—a $280 billion bipartisan law Joe Biden signed in 2022 to bring more semiconductor manufacturing into the US and put the country at the forefront of research and innovation.

Trump has long expressed frustration with the high cost of the CHIPS Act, telling Congress on Tuesday that it's a "horrible, horrible thing" to "give hundreds of billions of dollars" in subsidies to companies that he claimed "take our money" and "don't spend it," Reuters reported.

"You should get rid of the CHIPS Act, and whatever is left over, Mr. Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt," Trump said.

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Striking a four-year deal with President Donald Trump, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plans to invest $100 billion in chip manufacturing plants in the US, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

According to "people familiar with the matter," Trump will officially announce the deal later today. While still unconfirmed, TSMC's supposed investment comes after OpenAI and Apple announced similarly vague plans to each invest $500 billion into the US in apparent efforts to get on Trump's good side. It's hard to tell if these plans are actually new or if companies had already planned to invest heavily without outside pressure, WSJ noted.

It's undeniable that expanding TSMC's US presence has long been a goal for the US. TSMC announced its first fab in 2020, initially committing $12 billion over 10 years. Since then, TSMC's investments over time have expanded, reaching $40 billion by 2022. Last year, its investments notched up again when TSMC was awarded $6.6 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS Act to "support the company’s planned investment of more than $65 billion in three greenfield leading-edge fabs in Phoenix, Arizona," the Commerce Department press release said. At that time, Joe Biden had promised those fabs would "manufacture the most advanced chips in the world," putting the US "on track to produce 20 percent of the world’s leading-edge semiconductors by 2030."

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Teens increasingly traumatized by deepfake nudes clearly understand that the AI-generated images are harmful.

And apparently so do many of their tormentors, who typically use free or cheap "nudify" apps or web tools to "undress" innocuous pics of victims, then pass the fake nudes around school or to people they know online. A surprising recent Thorn survey suggests there's growing consensus among young people under 20 that making and sharing fake nudes is obviously abusive.

That's a little bit of "good news" on the deepfake nudes front, Thorn's director of research, Melissa Stroebel, told Ars. Last year, The New York Times declared that teens are now confronting an "epidemic" of fake nudes in middle and high schools that are completely unprepared to support or in some cases even acknowledge victims.

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Europe is cracking down on AI-generated sex images of minors. So far, Europol has arrested 25 people in a large-scale ongoing probe called Operation Cumberland and confirmed that more arrests are expected in the coming weeks.

In a press release, Europol said that the 24 arrests occurred simultaneously on February 26 after Danish law enforcement arrested a main suspect in November. That suspect is accused of running "an online platform where he distributed the AI-generated material he produced" for others willing to pay to "watch children being abused," Europol alleged. The network was hidden from casual lurkers and required a "symbolic payment" to access, Europol said.

While fully AI-generated images may not depict real kids, at least one AI model (now scrubbed) has been trained on actual CSAM and images of real kids, so child safety experts fear outputs could potentially depict or resemble a known victim or actual child. And there's growing consensus globally that, in general, AI-generated CSAM harms kids by normalizing child sex abuse through the increased prevalence of CSAM online.

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At a time when many analysts are declaring memecoins dead, the most popular memecoin of all time, Dogecoin, not only perseveres but appears likely to become more mainstream than ever in 2025.

Most memecoins—cryptocurrencies inspired by Internet memes—remain controversial. Their prices can suddenly skyrocket before abruptly crashing, causing extreme gains and losses at a moment's notice, often triggered by a celebrity mention that tenuously amplifies short-term interest.

Donald Trump's memecoin is a recent example. Within two days of its launch, it peaked at above $70 before falling to $17 shortly after, Reuters reported. Seeing that politically backed token take off apparently inspired Argentine President Javier Milei to endorse another memecoin called Libra, which seemed to set off a brief price surge before a devastating crash that caused most traders to endure losses. Only about 34 investors in total reportedly profited $124.6 million from Milei's endorsement, which a federal judge is now investigating as an alleged "rug pull" scheme, Reuters reported.

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Microsoft is pushing the Trump administration to change last-minute export controls implemented by Joe Biden on his way out of office that were largely designed to limit access to advanced AI chips so that less surplus could find its way into the hands of China or other foreign adversaries.

Considered critical for US national security, the AI Diffusion rule divides the world into three tiers. At the top are countries that can access US-made AI chips without restrictions, including key chip ally Taiwan and 17 other countries. Access is completely restricted for about 20 countries in the bottom tier, including China, Russia, and North Korea. But stuck in the middle tier are 150 countries that must endure artificial limits on computing supply chains that are kept at least a generation behind US technology accessible by the top tier.

In a Thursday blog, Microsoft President Brad Smith warned that the rule will hurt US businesses by placing heavy restrictions on some of America's "friends"—including countries like Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. He cautioned that the rule makes "uncertain" their "ability to buy more American AI chips in the future," and this will inevitably force US allies to seek supply chains outside the US. And "it’s obvious where they will be forced to turn" if Trump doesn't intervene, Smith suggested.

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The company behind WordPress, Automattic Inc., and its founder, Matt Mullenweg, continue to face backlash over a "nuclear war" started with WP Engine (WPE) that allegedly messed with maintenance and security of hundreds of thousands of websites.

In a proposed class action lawsuit filed this weekend, a WPE customer, Ryan Keller, accused Automattic and Mullenweg of "deliberately abusing their power and control over the WordPress ecosystem to purposefully, deliberately, and repeatedly disrupt contracts"—all due to a supposed trademark infringement claim. If granted, the class would include "all persons in the United States who had ongoing active WPE WordPress Web Hosting Plans on or before September 24, 2024 through December 10, 2024."

WPE had previously sued Automattic and Mullenweg, alleging that the attack on WPE was actually an attempt to extort what Keller alleged was "tens of millions of dollars" in payments from WPE for using the WordPress trademark. Mullenweg made it clear that the value of the payments was "based on what he thought WPE could afford, rather than what the value of the trademark actually was," Keller's complaint alleged.

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On Monday, Apple announced plans to invest more than $500 billion in the US over the next four years.

This is the "largest-ever" spending commitment that Apple has made in the US, supporting "a wide range of initiatives" focused on artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing, advanced research and development, and worker training. About 20,000 jobs will be created over those four years, Apple said, "of which the vast majority will be focused on R&D, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning."

Apple's plans include building a 250,000-square-foot server-manufacturing facility in Houston—which will open in 2026 and "play a key role in powering Apple Intelligence" and supporting AI cloud computing, Apple said. The tech giant will also "continue expanding data center capacity in North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada," Apple's blog said.

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