An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post. (Alternate URL here): The American patrol satellite had the targets in its sights: two recently launched Chinese spacecraft flying through one of the most sensitive neighborhoods in space. Like any good tactical fighter, the American spacecraft, known as USA 270, approached from behind, so that the sun would be at its back, illuminating the quarry.

But then one of the Chinese satellites countered by slowing down. As USA 270 zipped by, the Chinese satellite dropped in behind its American pursuer, like Maverick's signature "hit-the-brakes" move in the movie "Top Gun." The positions reversed, U.S. officials controlling their spacecraft from Earth were forced to plot their next move. The encounter some 22,000 miles above Earth in 2022 was never acknowledged publicly by the Pentagon or Beijing. Happening out of sight and little noticed except by space and defense specialists, this kind of orbital skirmishing has become so common that defense officials now refer to it as "dogfighting..."

Much of the "dogfighting" activity in space is simply for spying, defense analysts say, with specifics largely classified — snapping photos of each other's satellites to learn what kind of systems are on board and their capabilities. They monitor the signals and data emitted by satellites, listening to communications between space and the ground. Many can even jam those signals or interfere with orbiting craft that provide missile warnings, spy or relay critical information to troops... Traditionally, once a satellite was in orbit, it largely stayed on a fixed path, its operators reluctant to burn precious fuel. But now, the Pentagon and its adversaries, notably China and Russia, are launching satellites designed to fly in more dynamic ways that resemble aircraft — banking hard, slowing down, speeding up, even flying in tandem.

"Traditionally satellites weren't designed to fight, and they weren't designed to protect themselves in a fight," said Clinton Clark, the chief growth officer of ExoAnalytic Solutions, a company that monitors activity in space. "That is all changing now."
"Unlike dogfights between fighter jets, the jockeying-for-position encounters in orbit take place over several hours, even days," the article points out.

But it also notes that recently Germany's defense minister "complained about a Russian satellite that had been flying close to a commercial communications satellite used by the German military. 'They can jam, blind, manipulate or kinetically disrupt satellites,' he said."

"Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms," the Washington Post reported in August, noting its intial funding over $100 million from "some of Silicon Valley's most powerful investors and executives" including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, his wife, and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. The group's goal was "to quash a philosophical debate that has divided the tech industry on the risk of artificial intelligence overpowering humanity," according to the article — and to support "pro-AI" candidates in America's next election in November of 2026 and "oppose candidates perceived as slowing down AI development."

Their first target? State assemblyman Alex Bores, now running to be a U.S. representative. While in the state legislature Bores sponsored a bill that would "require large AI companies to publish safety data on their technology," notes the Washington Post. So the attack ad charges that Bores "wants Albany bureaucrats regulating AI," excoriating him for sponsoring a bill that "hands AI to state regulators and creates a chaotic patchwork of state rules that would crush innovation, cost New York jobs, and fail to keep people safe! And he's backed by groups funded by convicted felon Sam Bankman-Fried. Is that really who should be shaping AI safety for our kids? America needs one smart national policy that sets clear stands for safe AI not Albany politicians like Alex Bores."

The Post calls it "the opening skirmish in a battle set to play out across the country" as tech moguls (and an independent effort receiving "tens of millions" from Meta) "try to use the 2026 midterms to reengineer Congress and state legislatures in favor of their ambitions for artificial intelligence" and "to wrest control of the narrative around AI, just as politicians in both parties have started warning that the industry is moving too fast." By knocking down candidates such as Bores, who favor regulations, and boosting industry sympathizers, the tech-backed groups could signal to incumbents and candidates nationwide that opposing the tech industry can jeopardize their electoral chances. "Bores just happened to be first, but he's not the last, and he's certainly not the only," said Josh Vlasto, co-head of Leading the Future, the bipartisan super PAC behind the ad.

The group plans to support and oppose candidates in congressional and state elections next year. It will also fund rapid response operations against voices in the industry pushing for more oversight... The strategy aims to replicate the success of the cryptocurrency industry, which used a super PAC to clear a path for Congress this summer to boost the sector's fortunes with the passage of the Genius Act... But signs that voters are increasingly wary of AI suggest that approach may be challenging to replicate. More than half of Americans believe AI poses a high risk to society, Pew Research Center found in a June survey. As AI usage continues to grow, more people are being warned by chief executives that AI will disrupt their jobs, seeing power-hungry data centers spring up in their towns or hearing claims that chatbots can harm mental health.
The article also notes there's at least two other groups seeking to counter this pro-AI push, raising money through a nonprofit called "Public First."

CNN calls the new pro-AI ads "a likely preview of the vast amounts of money the technology industry could spend ahead of next year's elections," noting that the ads are first targeting the candidate-choosing primary elections

echo123 shares a report from PBS: The Trump administration is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, moving to dissolve a research lab that a top White House official described as "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country." White House budget director Russ Vought criticized the lab in a social media post Tuesday night and said a comprehensive review of the lab is underway. "Vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location, Vought said.

The research lab, which houses the largest federal research program on climate change, supports research to predict, prepare for and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters. The research lab is managed by a nonprofit consortium of more than 130 colleges and universities on behalf of the National Science Foundation. A senior White House official cited two instances of the lab's "woke direction" that wastes taxpayer funds on what the official called frivolous pursuits and ideologies. One funded an Indigenous and Earth Sciences center that aimed to "make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered," while another experiment traced air pollution to "demonize motor vehicles, oil and gas operations." The lab "is quite literally our global mothership," said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech University, in a post on X. "Nearly everyone who researches climate and weather -- not only in the U.S., but around the world -- has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources."

She continued: "NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes -- the largest community climate model in the world. That too. Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."

alternative_right writes: Grocery delivery service Instacart will refund $60 million to settle FTC claims that it misled customers with false advertising and unlawfully enrolled them in paid subscriptions. Instacart partners with over 1,800 retailers to provide online shopping, delivery, and pickup services from nearly 100,000 stores across North America. Its platform serves millions of customers and is also used by roughly 600,000 independent shoppers across thousands of cities in Canada and the United States.

In a complaint filed on Thursday, the FTC claimed Instacart engaged in multiple deceptive tactics that raised costs for customers, including failing to provide advertised refunds and falsely advertising "free delivery" while still charging mandatory service fees that added up to 15% to order costs. The FTC said Instacart also advertised a "100% satisfaction guarantee," but typically offered only small credits toward future orders rather than full refunds to customers experiencing problems with deliveries or service. The company allegedly hid refund options from "self-service" menus, leading customers to believe credits were their only option.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in his Wednesday Senate testimony that the agency he governs "is not an independent agency, formally speaking." Axios: During his testimony, the word "independent" was removed from the FCC's mission statement on its website. The extraordinary statement speaks to a broader trend of regulatory agencies losing power to the executive branch during the Trump era. Last week, the Supreme Court appeared poised to allow President Trump to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission during oral arguments over the issue.

Sen. Ben Ray LujÃn (D-N.M.) began the line of questioning, citing the FCC's website, which said the agency was independent as of Wednesday morning. By Wednesday afternoon, the FCC's mission statement no longer said it was independent. Chairman Carr would not respond directly to questions about whether he believed the president was his boss. He would not answer whether it's appropriate if the president were to pressure him to go after media companies. He suggested the president has the power to fire him and other FCC commissioners.

U.S. officials excoriated the European Union for discriminating against American technology companies and threatened to penalize European tech companies in return, in a social media post on Tuesday. From a report: The pronouncement appeared to signal a rockier period for U.S.-E.U. trade relations, as the two governments work to finalize a trade framework they announced this year. The United States has been pushing Europe to open up its tech sector to American firms. But U.S. officials have complained that the European Union has not walked back broader regulation of company business practices while also proceeding with investigations of major American tech firms like Google, X, Amazon and Meta.

In a social media post, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which has carried out the negotiations, said that the European Union and some member states had "persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines and directives" against American companies.

The United States had raised concerns with the European Union about these issues for years "without meaningful engagement," all while allowing European companies to operate freely in the United States, it said. If the European Union continues these policies, the United States would "have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures," the U.S.T.R. said. It named fees and restrictions on service companies among the possibilities, and said it would use the same approach against other countries that echoed Europe's strategy.

The post singled out potential European service providers that could be targeted by name, listing Accenture, DHL, Mistral, SAP, Siemens and Spotify, among others.

The Trump administration announced Monday the United States Tech Force, a new program to recruit around 1,000 technologists for two-year government stints starting as soon as March -- less than a year after dismantling several federal technology teams and driving thousands of tech workers out of their jobs.

The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers and data scientists, paying between $150,000 and $200,000 annually. About 20 companies have signed on to participate, including Palantir, Meta, Oracle and Elon Musk's xAI. Some engineering managers will be allowed to take leaves of absence from their private-sector employers to join the program without divesting their stock holdings.

The initiative follows the March closure of 18F, General Services Administration's internal tech consultancy, and the shuttering of the Social Security Administration's Office of Transformation in February. The IRS had lost over 2,000 tech workers by June.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC: A billionaire investor keen on buying TikTok's US operations has told the BBC he has been left in limbo as the latest deadline for the app's sale looms.

The US has repeatedly delayed the date by which the platform's Chinese owner, Bytedance, must sell or be blocked for American users. US President Donald Trump appears poised to extend the deadline for a fifth time on Tuesday. "We're just standing by and waiting to see what happens," investor Frank McCourt told BBC News...

The president...said "sophisticated" US investors would acquire the app, including two of his allies: Oracle chairman Larry Ellison and Dell Technologies' Michael Dell. Members of the Trump administration had indicated the deal would be formalised in a meeting between Trump and Xi in October — however it concluded without an agreement being reached. Neither TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance nor Beijing have since announced approval of a sale, despite Trump's claims. This time there are no such claims a deal is imminent, leading most analysts to conclude another extension is inevitable.
Other investors besides McCourt include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Shark Tank entrepreneur Kevin O'Leary.

America's solar industry "just delivered another huge quarter," reports Electrek, "installing 11.7 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in Q3 2025. That makes it the third-largest quarter on record and pushes total solar additions this year past 30 GW..." According to the new "US Solar Market Insight Q4 2025" report from Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, 85% of all new power added to the grid during the first nine months of the Trump administration came from solar and storage. And here's the twist: Most of that growth — 73% — happened in red [Republican-leaning] states. Eight of the top 10 states for new installations fall into that category, including Texas, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, Kentucky, and Arkansas...

Two new solar module factories opened this year in Louisiana and South Carolina, adding a combined 4.7 GW of capacity. That brings the total new U.S. module manufacturing capacity added in 2025 to 17.7 GW. With a new wafer facility coming online in Michigan in Q3, the U.S. can now produce every major component of the solar module supply chain...

SEIA also noted that, following an analysis of EIA data, it found that more than 73 GW of solar projects across the U.S. are stuck in permitting limbo and at risk of politically motivated delays or cancellations.

U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said Friday he was moving to file a bipartisan bill to repeal Section 230 of America's Communications Decency Act.

"The law prevents most civil suits against users or services that are based on what others say," explains an EFF blog post. "Experts argue that a repeal of Section 230 could kill free speech on the internet," writes LiveMint — though America's last two presidents both supported a repeal: During his first presidency, U.S. President Donald Trump called to repeal the law and signed an executive order attempting to curb some of its protections, though it was challenged in court. Subsequently, former President Joe Biden also voiced his opinion against the law.
An EFF blog post explains the case for Section 230: Congress passed this bipartisan legislation because it recognized that promoting more user speech online outweighed potential harms. When harmful speech takes place, it's the speaker that should be held responsible, not the service that hosts the speech... Without Section 230, the Internet is different. In Canada and Australia, courts have allowed operators of online discussion groups to be punished for things their users have said. That has reduced the amount of user speech online, particularly on controversial subjects. In non-democratic countries, governments can directly censor the internet, controlling the speech of platforms and users. If the law makes us liable for the speech of others, the biggest platforms would likely become locked-down and heavily censored. The next great websites and apps won't even get started, because they'll face overwhelming legal risk to host users' speech.
But "I strongly believe that Section 230 has long outlived its use," Senator Whitehouse said this week, saying Section 230 "a real vessel for evil that needs to come to an end." "The laws that Section 230 protect these big platforms from are very often laws that go back to the common law of England, that we inherited when this country was initially founded. I mean, these are long-lasting, well-tested, important legal constraints that have — they've met the test of time, not by the year or by the decade, but by the century.

"And yet because of this crazy Section 230, these ancient and highly respected doctrines just don't reach these people. And it really makes no sense, that if you're an internet platform you get treated one way; you do the exact same thing and you're a publisher, you get treated a completely different way.

"And so I think that the time has come.... It really makes no sense... [Testimony before the committee] shows how alone and stranded people are when they don't have the chance to even get justice. It's bad enough to have to live through the tragedy... But to be told by a law of Congress, you can't get justice because of the platform — not because the law is wrong, not because the rule is wrong, not because this is anything new — simply because the wrong type of entity created this harm."

A January order blocking wind energy projects in America has now been vacated by a U.S. judge and declared unlawful, reports the Associated Press: [Judge Saris of the U.S. district court for the district of Massachusetts] ruled in favor of a coalition of state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington DC, led by Letitia James, New York's attorney general, that challenged President Trump's day one order that paused leasing and permitting for wind energy projects... The coalition that opposed Trump's order argued that Trump does not have the authority to halt project permitting, and that doing so jeopardizes the states' economies, energy mix, public health and climate goals.

The coalition includes Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state and Washington DC. They say they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars collectively to develop wind energy and even more on upgrading transmission lines to bring wind energy to the electrical grid...

Wind is the United States' largest source of renewable energy, providing about 10% of the electricity generated in the nation, according to the American Clean Power Association.
But the BBC quotes Timothy Fox, managing director at the Washington, DC-based research firm ClearView Energy Partners, as saying he doesn't expect the ruling to reinvigorate the industry: "It's more symbolic than substantive," he said. "All the court is saying is ... you need to go back to work and consider these applications. What does that really mean?" he said. Officials could still deny permits or bog applications down in lengthy reviews, he noted.

New England's last coal-fired power plant "has ceased operations three years ahead of its planned retirement date," reports the New Hampshire Bulletin.

"The closure of the New Hampshire facility paves the way for its owner to press ahead with an initiative to transform the site into a clean energy complex including solar panels and battery storage systems." "The end of coal is real, and it is here," said Catherine Corkery, chapter director for Sierra Club New Hampshire. "We're really excited about the next chapter...." The closure in New Hampshire — so far undisputed by the federal government — demonstrates that prolonging operations at some facilities just doesn't make economic sense for their owners. "Coal has been incredibly challenged in the New England market for over adecade," said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association.

Merrimack Station, a 438-megawatt power plant, came online in the1960s and provided baseload power to the New England region for decades. Gradually, though, natural gas — which is cheaper and more efficient — took over the regional market... Additionally, solar power production accelerated from 2010 on, lowering demand on the grid during the day and creating more evening peaks. Coal plants take longer to ramp up production than other sources, and are therefore less economical for these shorter bursts of demand, Dolan said. In recent years, Merrimack operated only a few weeks annually. In 2024, the plant generated just0.22% of the region's electricity. It wasn't making enough money to justify continued operations, observers said.

The closure "is emblematic of the transition that has been occurring in the generation fleet in New England for many years," Dolan said. "The combination of all those factors has meant that coal facilities are no longer economic in this market."
Meanwhile Los Angeles — America's second-largest city — confirmed that the last coal-fired power plant supplying its electricity stopped operations just before Thanksgiving, reports the Utah News Dispatch: Advocates from the Sierra Club highlighted in a news release that shutting down the units had no impact on customers, and questioned who should "shoulder the cost of keeping an obsolete coal facility on standby...." Before ceasing operations, the coal units had been working at low capacities for several years because the agency's users hadn't been calling on the power [said John Ward, spokesperson for Intermountain Power Agency].
The coal-powered units "had a combined capacity of around 1,800 megawatts when fully operational," notes Electrek, "and as recently as 2024, they still supplied around 11% of LA's electricity. The plant sits in Utah's Great Basin region and powered Southern California for decades." Now, for the first time, none of California's power comes from coal. There's a political hiccup with IPP, though: the Republican-controlled Utah Legislature blocked the Intermountain Power Agency from fully retiring the coal units this year, ordering that they can't be disconnected or decommissioned. But despite that mandate, no buyers have stepped forward to keep the outdated coal units online. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is transitioning to newly built, hydrogen-capable generating units at the same IPP location, part of a modernization effort called IPP Renewed. These new units currently run on natural gas, but they're designed to burn a blend of natural gas and up to 30% green hydrogen, and eventually100% green hydrogen. LADWP plans to start adding green hydrogen to the fuel mix in 2026.
"With the plant now idled but legally required to remain connected, serious questions remain about who will shoulder the cost of keeping an obsolete coal facility on standby," says the Sierra Club.

One of the natural gas units started commerical operations last Octoboer, with the second starting later this month, IPP spokesperson John Ward told Agency].
the Utah News Dispatch.

A former Chinese official who fled to the U.S. says Beijing has used advanced surveillance technology from U.S. companies to track, intimidate, and punish him and his family across borders. ABC News reports: Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: Don't return to China, a friend warned. You're now a fugitive. Days later, a stranger snapped a photo of Li in a cafe. Terrified South Korea would send him back, Li fled, flew to the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for asylum. But even there -- in New York, in California, deep in the Texas desert -- the Chinese government continued to hunt him down with the help of surveillance technology.

Li's communications were monitored, his assets seized and his movements followed in police databases. More than 40 friends and relatives -- including his pregnant daughter -- were identified and detained, even by tracking down their cab drivers through facial recognition software. Three former associates died in detention, and for months shadowy men Li believed to be Chinese operatives stalked him across continents, interviews and documents seen by The Associated Press show.

The Chinese government is using an increasingly powerful tool to cement its power at home and vastly amplify it abroad: Surveillance technology, much of it originating in the U.S., an AP investigation has found. Within China, this technology helped identify and punish almost 900,000 officials last year alone, nearly five times more than in 2012, according to state numbers. Beijing says it is cracking down on corruption, but critics charge that such technology is used in China and elsewhere to stifle dissent and exact retribution on perceived enemies.

Outside China, the same technology is being used to threaten wayward officials, along with dissidents and alleged criminals, under what authorities call Operations "Fox Hunt" and "Sky Net." The U.S. has criticized these overseas operations as a "threat" and an "affront to national sovereignty." More than 14,000 people, including some 3,000 officials, have been brought back to China from more than 120 countries through coercion, arrests and pressure on relatives, according to state information.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of Ukrainian civilians filed a series of lawsuits in Texas this week, accusing some of the biggest US chip firms of negligently failing to track chips that evaded export curbs. Those chips were ultimately used to power Russian and Iranian weapon systems, causing wrongful deaths last year. Their complaints alleged that for years, Texas Instruments (TI), AMD, and Intel have ignored public reporting, government warnings, and shareholder pressure to do more to track final destinations of chips and shut down shady distribution channels diverting chips to sanctioned actors in Russia and Iran.

Putting profits over human lives, tech firms continued using "high-risk" channels, Ukrainian civilians' legal team alleged in a press statement, without ever strengthening controls. All that intermediaries who placed bulk online orders had to do to satisfy chip firms was check a box confirming that the shipment wouldn't be sent to sanctioned countries, lead attorney Mikal Watts told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday, according to the Kyiv Independent. "There are export lists," Watts said. "We know exactly what requires a license and what doesn't. And companies know who they're selling to. But instead, they rely on a checkbox that says, 'I'm not shipping to Putin.' That's it. No enforcement. No accountability." [...]

Damages sought include funeral expenses and medical costs, as well as "exemplary damages" that are "intended to punish especially wrongful conduct and to deter similar conduct in the future." For plaintiffs, the latter is the point of the litigation, which they hope will cut off key supply chains to keep US tech out of weapon systems deployed against innocent civilians. "They want to send a clear message that American companies must take responsibility when their technologies are weaponized and used to commit harm across the globe," the press statement said. "Corporations must be held accountable when its unlawful decisions made in the name of profit directly cause the death of innocents and widespread human suffering." For chip firms, the litigation could get costly if more civilians join, with the threat of a loss potentially forcing changes that could squash supply chains currently working to evade sanctions. "We want to make this process so expensive and painful that companies are forced to act," Watts said. "That is our contribution to stopping the war against civilians."

Chandler, Arizona unanimously rejected a proposed AI data center despite heavy lobbying from Big Tech interests and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Politico reports: The Chandler City Council last night voted down a request by a New York developer to rezone land to build a data center and business complex. The local battle escalated in October after Sinema showed up at a planning commission meeting to offer public comment warning officials in her home state that federal authority may soon stomp on local regulations. "Chandler right now has the opportunity to determine how and when these new, innovative AI data centers will be built," she told local officials. "When federal preemption comes, we'll no longer have that privilege."

Explaining her no vote, Chandler Vice Mayor Christine Ellis said that she had long framed her decision about the local benefits rather than the national push to build AI. She recalled a meeting with Sinema where she asked point-blank, "what's in it for Chandler?" "If you can't show me what's in it for Chandler, then we are not having a conversation," Ellis said before voting against the project. [...]

The project, along with Sinema's involvement, attracted significant community opposition, with speakers raising concerns about whether the project would use too much water or raise power prices. Residents packed the council chambers, with many holding up signs reading "No More Data Centers." According to the city's planning office, more than 200 comments were filed against the proposal compared to just eight in favor.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. government will require artificial intelligence vendors to measure political "bias" to sell their chatbots to federal agencies, according to a Trump administration statement (PDF) released on Thursday. The requirement will apply to all large language models bought by federal agencies, with the exception of national security systems, according to the statement.

President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies in July to avoid buying large language models that he labeled as "woke." Thursday's statement gives more detail to that directive, saying that developers should not "intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments" into a chatbot's outputs. Further reading: Trump Signs Executive Order For Single National AI Regulation Framework, Limiting Power of States

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has almost entirely upheld a scathing April ruling that found Apple in willful violation of a 2021 injunction meant to open up iOS App Store payments in its long-running legal battle against Epic Games. A three-judge panel affirmed that Apple's 27% fee for developers using outside payment options had a "prohibitive effect" and that the company's design restrictions on external payment links were overly broad.

The appeals court also agreed that Apple acted in "bad faith" by rejecting viable, compliant alternatives in internal discussions. One divergence from the lower court: the appeals court ruled that Apple should still be able to charge a "reasonable fee" based on its actual costs to ensure user security and privacy, rather than charging nothing at all. What qualifies as "reasonable" remains to be determined.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney told reporters he believes those fees should be "super super minor," on the order of "tens or hundreds of dollars" every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review. "The Apple Tax is dead in the USA," he wrote on social media. Sweeney also alleged that a widespread "fear of retaliation" has kept many developers paying Apple's default 30% fees, claiming the company can effectively "ghost" apps by delaying reviews or burying them in search results.

The SEC has granted the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., or DTCC, a no-action letter allowing it to custody and recognize tokenized stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries on approved blockchains for three years. "Although this program is a pilot subject to various operational limitations, it marks a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain," SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said in a statement. Bloomberg reports: With the permission, DTCC will also extend their record-keeping to the blockchain, Michael Winnike, global head of strategy and market solutions at DTCC Clearing & Securities Services, said in an interview. "It's the same legal entitlement, the same stock that you would hold in your account from the DTCC in traditional form," Winnike said. [...] The SEC's authorization of tokenization services only applies to a specific set of securities that trade often. The approval includes the Russell 1000 index which represents the 1,000 largest publicly traded US companies, as well as exchange-traded funds that track major indices and US Treasury bills, bonds and notes, Winnike said. "This allows us both to create value for the markets, while staying in a pre-defined pool of highly-liquid securities to start," said Winnike. The firm's ultimate aspiration is to add its entire depository, which represents $100 trillion in securities, to the blockchain, a move that would require further expansion of the no-action relief from the SEC, he said.

Winnike said the tokenization service will help bridge the traditional and digital worlds in part because the new technology will have the same legal entitlements and controls as traditional markets, including freezing or forced transfers if assets are stolen. "This enables participants to adopt and integrate, because they know there is a trusted party that can recover their securities as needed" and can address potential errors, he said. The new blockchain service will also allow investors to move assets all the time, not just Monday through Friday when traditional markets are open. "That creates a lot of new utility," Winnike said. "It brings the two ecosystems together."

During the company's first "Autonomy & AI Day" event today, Rivian unveiled a major autonomy push featuring custom silicon, lidar, and a "large driving model." It also hinted at a potential entry into the self-driving ride-hail market, according to CEO RJ Scaringe. TechCrunch reports: Rivian said it will expand the hands-free version of its driver-assistance software to "over 3.5 million miles of roads across the USA and Canada" and will eventually expand beyond highways to surface streets (with clearly painted road lines). This expanded access will be available on the company's second-generation R1 trucks and SUVs. It's calling the expanded capabilities "Universal Hands-Free" and will launch in early 2026. Rivian says it will charge a one-time fee of $2,500 or $49.99 per month.

"What that means is you can get into the vehicle at your house, plug in the address to where you're going, and the vehicle will completely drive you there," Scaringe said Thursday, describing a point-to-point navigation feature. After that, Rivian plans to allow drivers to take their eyes off the road. "This gives you your time back. You can be on your phone, or reading a book, no longer needing to be actively involved in the operation of vehicle." Rivian's driver assistance software won't stop there; the EV maker laid out plans on Thursday to enhance its capabilities all the way up to what it's calling "personal L4," a nod to the level set by the Society of Automotive Engineers that means a car can operate in a particular area with no human intervention.

After that, Scaringe hinted that Rivian will be looking at competing with the likes of Waymo. "While our initial focus will be on personally owned vehicles, which today represent a vast majority of the miles driven in the United States, this also enables us to pursue opportunities in the ride-share space," he said. To help accomplish these lofty goals, Rivian has been building a "large driving model" (think: an LLM but for real-world driving), part of a move away from a rules-based framework for developing autonomous vehicles that has been led by Tesla. The company also showed off its own custom 5nm processor, which it says will be built in collaboration with both Arm and TSMC.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Thursday signed two bills aimed at regulating the use of AI in entertainment, requiring disclosure when ads feature AI-generated performers and mandating consent from heirs before a deceased person's likeness can be used commercially. Hochul described both measures as "first in the nation" policies during a signing ceremony at SAG-AFTRA's New York City offices.

The first bill compels ad producers to disclose the use of synthetic performers, and the second requires companies to obtain consent from heirs or executors before using a person's name, image, or likeness for commercial purposes after their death. "We will have responsible AI policies in the state of New York," Hochul said. "It's a time where we do want to embrace innovation. But not to the detriment of people."

The signing came the same day Disney announced a partnership allowing users of OpenAI's Sora to create clips featuring Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters.