Disney and ABC are suing the FCC to block an early review of eight station licenses, arguing the Trump administration is using the agency's regulatory power to punish the network over programming and editorial decisions it dislikes. Reuters reports: In a lawsuit (PDF) filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Disney said the FCC was seeking to coerce and retaliate against "a network that refuses to bow to the administration's demands," calling the agency's actions an "extraordinary assault on free speech."

Trump has waged an aggressive series of attacks on the news media and the latest move follows a two-year-long battle between Trump and Disney. Last month, Trump again called for ABC stations to lose their licenses because the network refused to air a prime-time speech on elections. The court case will pose a key test of the free speech rights of media outlets. Disney and ABC asked the court (PDF) to quickly issue a temporary restraining order halting the license renewal proceedings and preventing the FCC from scheduling a hearing. The company said the public comment period ended earlier this month and the FCC could act at any time.

The lawsuit alleges that the administration is violating the company's First Amendment free speech rights, saying that the FCC "is using its regulatory power to retaliate against (Disney and ABC) for programming and editorial decisions the administration dislikes." The FCC said the move stemmed from a year-long investigation into whether Disney's diversity policies amounted to unlawful discrimination, an allegation the company denies. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan issued an order on Tuesday directing the company and the FCC to propose a schedule for considering the request for a temporary restraining order and told the agency to notify her if it moves to start the process of revoking the ABC licenses.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RAM prices have exploded over the past year, with some DDR5 kits approaching 500% year-over-year increases and a 128GB kit now selling for $3,399, which is more than 10 times its previous low. Tom's Hardware reports: Things improve as you step down the memory capacities and speed tiers, but not as much as we'd like. You're still looking at $392 for a memory kit that was just $72 last year. To reinforce the point, I pulled the latest average price data from PCPartPicker, comparing where we are today (August 2026) to exactly one year ago. This data is somewhat approximate, but it should be broadly accurate. [...] A standard 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-5600 kit that would have cost you under $200 last summer is now demanding over $1,100. It is a 5x multiplier on a component that used to be a fairly boring and predictable line item in a PC build budget.

If you plan to just wait it out on an older AM4 or LGA1700 motherboard with DDR4, you'd better hope your memory holds out too, because DDR4 isn't safe from the fallout. With DDR5 entirely out of reach for most builders, the resulting scramble for older platforms running DDR4 memory has created a massive knock-on effect, and as a result, DDR4 kits are up anywhere from 120% to nearly 180% across the board. Nowhere near as bad as DDR5 pricing, but it still stings when a kit that was $105 last year is $281 this year.

This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US, either. German tech site ComputerBase have also been tracking this global trend, reporting just this week that average RAM prices in Europe have skyrocketed by 345% compared to September 2025. Their data shows the squeeze is bleeding into other components too, with hard drive and SSD prices both climbing over 125% in that same timeframe. In fact, the situation is so severe that hyperscale buyers have reportedly already locked in almost all of the global DRAM production capacity for 2027, handing over advance deposits to guarantee their supply of precious DRAM, which is now among the highest-value commodities in the world by weight; mainstream DRAM chips are worth over half as much per kilogram as solid gold.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Your iPhone, SamsungGalaxy, andGoogle Pixel have a 1-year warranty. Unless you cough up extra dough for an extended service plan, you'll pay a hefty fee if you damage the screen and need a replacement (around $329 for aniPhone 17done directly fromApple). But it doesn't have to be this way. What if you could order the part from the manufacturer and do the repair yourself? That dream is finally being realized for American consumers, thanks to Fairphone.

The Dutch company is bringing its repairable and sustainably built Android smartphone -- the Fairphone (Gen 6+) -- to the US. Each one comes with a screwdriver. A replacement screen from Fairphone costs just $90. A new USB-C port is $20. A fresh battery is $40. In all, there are 12 modular elements you can swap yourself. It remains the only smartphone series with a 10/10 repairability scorefrom iFixit, not to mention an unmatched 5-year warranty and software updates through 2033.

The new Fairphone (Gen 6+) is a small upgrade over the Gen 6 that the company launched last year. It has a newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 processor and double the RAM at 12 GB, but is otherwise largely the same device (hence the "plus" in the name). It now comes in Cobalt Blue, a nod to the miners who extract the cobalt used to make phone batteries, and the company's efforts to improve working conditions in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The new Fairphone is available on Amazon and at Fairphone.com for $650, and it's officially certified to work on T-Mobile and AT&T's networks. While this will mark the U.S. debut of its flagship smartphone, the company first entered the stateside market last year with its repairable earbuds and headphones. It also plans to launch its next-generation Fairbuds 2 wireless earbuds later this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has agreed to pay $10 million for a massive trove of anonymized Spirit Airlines data following the carrier's shutdown, including internal communications, spreadsheets, booking and frequent-flyer records, transactions, and employee information. CNN reports: Did you ever fly on Spirit Airlines? Or work there? Or send an email to someone who worked there? Then your information will soon be feeding Google's artificial intelligence model. The discount airline halted all operations in May, and it's been selling off its remaining assets through the bankruptcy process ever since. While most of that is planes, equipment, and real estate, there's other things that are valuable, too.

It was disclosed late Monday that the company agreed to sell its data to Google for $10 million. That includes emails and internal communications, spreadsheets, transactions with the public including bookings and frequent flyer information as well as human resources information on its employees. The data has been stripped of anything that would allow individuals to be identified, according to the court filing. But it is still a massive amount of useful intelligence.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s impossible not be be enraged by this story of Indigenous children who were taken from their families. This heartbreaking show has been a hit in Canada – it would be a crime for the rest of the world to miss it

Few dramas will enrage you as much as Little Bird. Not because it’s in any way hokey or problematic. On the contrary. Based on the real story of the Sixties Scoop – a period in Canada from the mid-1950s to the 1980s, when an estimated 20,000 First Nations children were forcibly removed from their families and adopted by non-Indigenous families – this heartbreaking tale is restrained and carefully measured. Melodrama is swerved, letting the injustice at this story’s core slowly metastasise.

Spread across six episodes, the series juggles two timelines – 1968 in Saskatchewan; 1985 in Montreal – tracking one family’s rupture; and the decades-long reckoning that follows. We meet Esther Rosenblum (Darla Contois), a first-year law student, at her engagement party, where her fiance David (Rowen Kahn), a doctor, mingles with his wealthy Jewish family. When his mother describes her as “exotic”, the word lodges like shrapnel. She was transplanted when she was five from the (fictional) and raised in the Jewish faith by a Canadian family.

Little Bird aired on Sky Atlantic and is on Now

Continue reading...

Firm said it was overhauling its research and training and will require greater safety parameters of AI after hack

OpenAI on ⁠Tuesday said it had slowed down the ⁠pace of ⁠its ​AI development while it overhauled its ⁠research and training systems.

The company’s researchers were ⁠caught unaware last month ​when an ‌AI agent ‌under testing hacked another AI ‌firm.

Continue reading...

Tributes paid to ‘great friend and collaborator’ who played with band for 56 years and died in hospice care in Texas

The ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard has died at the age of 77.

A spokesperson for the band confirmed that Beard died on 17 August in hospice care at his ranch in Richmond, Texas. His family were by his side.

Continue reading...

• Musiala reveals ‘neurological dysfunction’ diagnosis

• Winger has fallen to floor during two recent friendlies

The Bayern Munich winger Jamal Musiala has revealed he is suffering from “treatable absence seizures” after he collapsed on the pitch for the second time in four days.

Musiala fell to the floor eight minutes after coming on as a substitute in Bayern’s friendly with Heidenheim on Tuesday night. The 23-year-old experienced a similar incident during Saturday’s friendly against RB Leipzig, but Musiala has insisted there is no long-term health risk.

Continue reading...

Dr Max Pemberton isn’t uncompassionate or especially radical, but he assembles a team of medics whose stance on the condition is clear from the off. This is a documentary that will incense and offend many

Presenter Max Pemberton, a psychiatrist in the NHS, Daily Mail columnist and author, and the experts he has assembled, waste no time in setting out their stall in The Great ADHD Myth?. This is a documentary that will incense and offend some of its viewers, and its scepticism regarding ADHD is clear from the outset. “It’s certainly not a medical condition as far as I’m concerned,” says the former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Dr Iona Heath. “We’re going to look back and think: did we actually put a chemical cosh on an entire developing generation of brains?” says a neurophysiological psychologist. “The industry around ADHD is about making money at the cost of the misery of others,” says a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

These represent the three main questions raised by Pemberton. The first is whether ADHD is a neuro-developmental disorder – ie do those diagnosed with the condition have different brains from those without – or whether it is a way of suppressing natural tendencies (especially those of children) and inducing behaviours that society deems acceptable. The second is how doctors should approach treatment, which most often involves amphetamines. “These are controlled drugs,” says consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Sami Timimi. “There’s good reason why we warn the rest of the population [about them].” The third question is – who benefits from the increase in diagnoses we have seen in the past decade or so? How has ADHD moved from a relatively unknown condition 10 years ago to affecting about 2.5 million people in the UK today (including a 200% increase in people being referred for diagnosis in the past five years)??

Continue reading...

ABU DHABI (ANP/RTR) - De Verenigde Arabische Emiraten (VAE) zeggen dinsdag twee ballistische raketten vanuit Iran te hebben gedetecteerd. Beide projectielen kwamen neer in zee, meldt het ministerie van Defensie. De laatste keer dat het land een Iraanse aanval meldde, was in mei.

Het ministerie verklaart dat het land in de hoogste staat van paraatheid verkeerde. Inwoners ontvingen via hun telefoon een waarschuwing voor een raketdreiging. Later volgde een tweede melding dat de situatie veilig was en dat mensen hun normale activiteiten konden hervatten.

Het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken heeft gezegd alle handelsactiviteiten en financiële transacties met Iran tot nader order op te schorten. Het verwijst daarbij naar de regionale escalatie, die volgens hen de regionale en internationale vrede en veiligheid ondermijnt.

De VAE hebben sinds het uitbreken van de Iranoorlog te maken met Iraanse aanvallen. Iran heeft onder meer Amerikaanse militaire bases in de Golfregio aangevallen.

RICHMOND (ANP) - Frank Beard, de drummer van rockband ZZ Top, is op 77-jarige leeftijd overleden. Dat heeft een woordvoerder van de muzikant dinsdag bekendgemaakt. Beard kampte de afgelopen tijd met gezondheidsproblemen.

De drummer overleed in een hospice op een ranch in Richmond, Texas, omringd door zijn familie. Zijn doodsoorzaak is niet bekendgemaakt. Eerder deze maand werden meerdere optredens van ZZ Top afgezegd vanwege de gezondheid van Beard.

"Vandaag hebben Elwood en ik een goede vriend en samenwerkingspartner verloren", laat bandlid Billy Gibbons weten in een verklaring aan Variety. "Zijn kenmerkende ritme was essentieel om ZZ Top aan de top te houden. De band waar hij zes decennia lang deel van uitmaakte, zal doorgaan zoals hij dat gewild had."

Beard maakte sinds 1969 deel uit van ZZ Top, samen met gitarist en zanger Gibbons en bassist Dusty Hill, die in 2021 op 72-jarige leeftijd overleed. ZZ Top werd bekend met nummers als Gimme All Your Lovin', Sharp Dressed Man en Rough Boy.

NEW YORK (ANP) - De beurzen op Wall Street noteerden dinsdag opnieuw verliezen. Beleggers wachten de ontwikkelingen in het Midden-Oosten af, waar het vredesakkoord tussen de Verenigde Staten en Iran verder uit zicht raakt.

De Dow-Jonesindex eindigde 0,2 procent lager op 53.343,40 punten. De breder samengestelde S&P 500-index sloot met een verlies van 0,7 procent op 7691,76 punten en techgraadmeter Nasdaq zakte 1,3 procent tot 26.289,71 punten. Maandag sloten de beurzen in New York al met verliezen tot 0,5 procent.

De vrees dat de hogere olie- en gasprijzen door het aanhoudende conflict de inflatie verder zullen opdrijven, zorgde voor een stijging van de rentes op de obligatiemarkten. Zo steeg de rente op Amerikaanse staatsleningen met een looptijd van dertig jaar tot het hoogste niveau sinds 2007. Ook de zorgen over de Amerikaanse begroting en de grote staatsschuld joegen de rentes omhoog.

Techbedrijven

De hogere rentes op obligaties dreigen de leenkosten voor bedrijven te verhogen, wat slecht nieuws is voor de techbedrijven die fors investeren in AI. Chipbedrijven als Micron Technology, Marvell Technology, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) en Intel zakten daardoor tot 7,8 procent. Bedrijven als SanDisk en Western Digital, die actief zijn in dataopslag, daalden 9 en 7,4 procent. Nvidia, het grootste chipbedrijf ter wereld, daalde 2,3 procent.

Aandelen van Meta, het moederbedrijf van Facebook, daalden 4,4 procent. De rechtszaak tussen het bedrijf en tientallen Amerikaanse staten ging dinsdag van start met de openingsverklaringen van de partijen. Volgens Meta's eigen berekeningen zou het, als het de rechtszaak verliest, boetes kunnen krijgen van maar liefst 1,4 biljoen (1000 miljard) dollar, een bedrag dat bijna gelijk is aan de marktwaarde van het bedrijf.

Klarna

Klarna verloor 22,8 procent. De achterafbetaaldienst maakte de resultaten bekend en kwam met een omzetwaarschuwing. Het Zweedse bedrijf rekent nu op een jaaromzet van 4,1 miljard tot 4,2 miljard dollar, waar eerder nog van 4,3 miljard werd uitgegaan.

Home Depot daalde 0,1 procent in New York. De keten van bouwmarkten boekte afgelopen kwartaal meer omzet en winst dan verwacht. De financieel directeur vertelde wel dat de "bevroren huizenmarkt" ertoe heeft geleid dat Home Depot de jaarverwachtingen heeft bevestigd in plaats van verhoogd.

OAKLAND (ANP/AFP) - Meta wist dat sommige gebruikers negatief werden beïnvloed door Facebook en Instagram, maar heeft geprobeerd de risico's te verminderen. Dat zei de advocaat van het bedrijf in de Californische rechtbank bij het begin van een proces aangespannen door tientallen Amerikaanse staten.

Een groep staten had het grote techbedrijf aangeklaagd, omdat de socialemediaplatforms Facebook en Instagram zo zouden zijn ontworpen dat ze de geestelijke gezondheid van jonge gebruikers schaden.

"We hebben geprobeerd de ervaringen te verbeteren en tools te ontwikkelen om hen te helpen", zei de advocaat tegen de achtkoppige jury in de rechtbank in Oakland. Volgens hem kan er geen twijfel over bestaan dat Meta heeft erkend dat mensen problemen kunnen ondervinden met het gebruik van sociale media.

Het oordeel van de jury zal naar verwachting een advies vormen. Rechter Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers beslist uiteindelijk over de zaak en kan boetes opleggen en verplichtingen om de platforms aan te passen.

BertvB posted a photo:

A crisp and beautifully detailed profile macro shot of a Lime Butterfly (Papilio demoleus) resting on a vibrant green leaf inside the Butterfly Pavilion at Artis Zoo, Amsterdam.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

“Scientists have found that people are being exposed to more toxins than previously known, and beyond damaging lungs, wildfire smoke may affect hearts, brains and other organs.” (Research is preliminary & ongoing but sheesh…)

Het is vandaag National Couple's Day in de VS maar omdat ze daar nog nooit van het Nederlandse volksfeest Valentijnsdag hebben gehoord en wij daar in Nederland wel helemaal gek van zijn nu het niet meer over verborgen liefdes gaat maar om zoveel mogelijk cadeautjes kopen, grijpen we deze Couple's Day gewoon aan om het te hebben over koppels. Maar dan niet per se liefdeskoppels. Meer koppels als in duo's, partners in crime. Soms is er wrijving tussen duo's, zoals bij Tom & Jerry, soms zijn duo's ronduit vijanden, zoals Neil McCauley en Vincent Hanna in Heat, leeftijd maakt niet eens uit bij duo's, zoals bij de Cock (etc.) en Vledder, er bestaan zelfs heel stomme duo's, zoals Acda en De Munnik, de Mario & Luigi van de muziek. Maar veeleer zijn ze onafscheidelijk, zoals Koot en Bie, Bassie en Adriaan, Starsky en Hutch, Xavi en Iniesta en Jip en Janneke. Af en toe delen ze zelfs onromantisch het bed (Bert en Ernie). Er zijn ontelbaar veel duo's, en ongetwijfeld heeft u een favoriet. Maar weet u, eigenlijk kunnen al die duo's ons gestolen worden. Want er is ook een duo dat geen duo meer is, terwijl het zo'n goed duo was. Vandaag is Maarten Brante overleden, en dat is niet alleen niet leuk, dat is ook nog eens heel erg kut. In dit StamCafé proosten we daarom op Maarten, die veel te kort leefde, maar wel het leukste duo dat wij kenden vormde met Immink, en in alles een topgozer was. U begrijpt hoeveel biertjes we vanavond opdrinken: twee.

Een duet dan maar

Social

Alejandro Aguilar Canela finds profound value in what may be seen as some of our bleakest emotions. Delving into subject matters such as depression, anger, abandonment, fear, individuality, sexuality, and more, Canela strives to understand the multitudes within each, and how their shadowy paths have the ability lead us somewhere brighter.

Though occasionally venturing into sculpture, the Austin, Texas-based artist specializes in drawing. His works range in size, with many of his compositions spanning two to four feet wide on both traditional paper and vellum. Canela largely employs graphite and fine line mechanical pencil, welcoming “mistakes” or inadvertent motifs—such as smudges and unplanned marks—that mirror his personal philosophy of embracing adverse emotions.

“There is another side to our own darkness, one that can reveal new perspectives and accelerate personal transformation,” the artist says. “It’s more about not discarding what might be considered unwanted, but instead finding some use for it.” As a result, these innermost feelings often manifest through unique characters, as Canela creates human-like forms to give them shape.

Several of Canela’s works are included in this year’s Critic’s Choice exhibition at Ki Smith Gallery in New York, which is on view through September 6. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Dark Emotions Evoke Growth in Alejandro Aguliar Canela’s Graphite Drawings appeared first on Colossal.

De Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Marco Rubio zegt dat de nieuwe sancties „onderdeel zijn van onze onwrikbare missie om Amerikanen te beschermen tegen deze schijnrechtbank”.