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Rockstar Games has released a 26-minute "extended look" at Grand Theft Auto VI, due for release November 19th. After one day the video had nearly 10 million views on YouTube, and when Netflix streamed the footage, "some viewers had to refresh the page after receiving error messages, indicating high usage levels," reports CNBC: "Some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered," the company told CNBC. Game streaming platform Twitch, where many viewers were posting their reactions, also experienced bandwidth issues when the trailer was released, according to analysts at Wells Fargo. CNBC notes predictions the game could become one of the most profitable entertainment products of all time, while the Washington Post predicting it's "about to be the biggest pop media event of the year, if not the decade." The data backs this up. The latest evidence arrived Thursday, when Netflix viewership surged for the long-awaited first look at gameplay footage, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The firm estimates "GTA VI" has already received about 4.6 million preorders. Box office blockbusters like "The Odyssey" take weeks to hit $1 billion. "GTA V" famously did it in three days. Analyst firm Newzoo projects the new game could generate between $3.3 billion and $5.2 billion by the end of its launch week in November... The influence of the series, created by Rockstar Games, extends beyond sales records. In 2025, "GTA V" accumulated 1.89 billion hours watched despite being a 12-year-old title, according to Stream Hatchet. Much of those hours are spent watching people role-play in "GTA Online," particularly through role-play servers managed by studio Cfx.re, which was acquired by Rockstar in 2023. By 2024, the studio said more than 20 million players used its platforms. GTA role-play involves players pretending to be cops, robbers, hapless retail workers or any functioning member of society within the online game... The game can lift up music sales and streams. Tom Petty's 1989 song "Love is a Long Road" saw stream numbers increased by nearly 37,000 percent on Spotify after it was the soundtrack to the debut "GTA VI" trailer in 2023, according to Universal Music Publishing Group. Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief and co-founder of analysis firm The Game Business, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" that GTA 5 is still in the top five bestselling video games every year, despite being released 13 years ago, reports CNBC: The response to Thursday's gameplay debut indicated that leaks of the content in advance would not impact the launch commercially, he continued. Rockstar Games, which makes the GTA franchise, had called the leaks "heartbreaking...." The GTA 6 preview follows a mixed reaction from players to the news that GTA 6 would only be released as a digital download, with no physical disc. The alleged source of the leaked content has claimed the leaks were a protest over Rockstar's release strategy, and Sony's plan to end to new PlayStation disc production in 2028. Speaking on the last earnings call on Aug. 7, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said discs did not make sense to the consumer, adding that its business was "well over 90% digitally distributed." Data from Circana shows the sale of physical game discs in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level on record, with spending at $85 million. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - As Backlash Grows, More Americans Now Oppose Automated Police License Plate Readers Than Support A new survey on police license plate cameras found that "more Americans oppose these surveillance cameras than support them," reports TechCrunch: According to a new YouGov survey of 20,000 people across the U.S. that was shared exclusively with The Washington Post, 46% of respondents opposed the company's surveillance cameras in their communities, while 38% supported them. This is a reversal from last year, when the majority of survey respondents said they were in favor... The survey also reported that more respondents said the surveillance would not make them feel any safer. TechCrunch reports that Flock CEO Garrett "faces a growing public outcry around concerns that Flock's surveillance cameras, drones, and license plate recognition technology could be misused." Responding to reports of police abusing Flock's system, Langley told CBS News " I don't think that Flock created police abuse. I think we're the first company to ever shine a light on it and build the tools to find it." But Futurism notes that "a grand jury in Ohio declined to bring felony charges against a man accused of destroying a Flock camera earlier this month — perhaps the clearest sign yet of the country's overwhelming hatred for the surveillance gadgets." And Newsweek documents more of the backlash: Flock Chief Executive Garrett Langley recently became the subject of a doxxing campaign after his home address was circulated online by opponents of the company's technology, underscoring how deeply divisive the issue has become. TechCrunch reports Flock's CEO is now calling for new laws — at the state level — regulating not Flock's cameras but the police officers who use them: Langley has said that state regulators should "pass bills that make [the illegal use of Flock data] a criminal offense." And during his Fox News interview, he pointed to the changes the company has already made, while also saying, "Today, it is too often that in Flock and in other technologies, there's no regulation. There's no accountability, and we think that's wrong." But Flock has its supporters. One local police department used a 3D printer to create a fake "decoy" camera, then monitored it for five days until they arrested a Florida man for knocking it down. 404 Media suggests that because the man told officers he believed it was a camera worth between $1,000 and $5,000, he was charged with three felonies including "grand theft" and criminal mischief of property damage worth over $1,000, plus property crimes against computer equipment supplies. Ironically, days earlier the City Council was already considering a resolution to end their city's use of Flock cameras altogether...
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Xylitol Linked To Strokes and Heart Attacks, Study Finds An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A common sweetener used in products such as chewing gum, toothpaste, jam, yoghurts and ice-cream has been linked to an increased risk of strokes, heart attacks and death. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol present in some natural foods in very low amounts. It is also added -- often in amounts 1,000 times higher -- to artificially sweeten foods, beverages and oral care products. Despite its growing use, the long-term health impacts of xylitol have never been widely studied. In the largest study of its kind, researchers found high blood levels of xylitol were associated with an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events. The findings were presented in Munich at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) annual congress, the world's largest heart conference. Researchers looked at 17,710 people and compared the 25% with the highest levels of xylitol in their blood against the 25% with the lowest. Those who had the highest amount were 57% more likely to die or suffer a heart attack or stroke, than those with the least, within six years. Even after 30 years, they were still 18% more likely to have suffered one of these cardiac events. Taken with data from the middle quartiles, the results from both cohorts suggested a dose-dependent relationship: the higher the xylitol blood levels, the higher the cardiovascular event rate. Furthermore, the researchers showed that there was consistent increase in cardiovascular events with xylitol irrespective of baseline characteristics, such as age and sex. The researchers also highlighted that the association was independent of underlying factors such as body mass index, hypertension, diabetes and lipid levels, which might predispose people to low-calorie products.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - The World's Busiest Spaceport Is About To Get a Lot Quieter, At Least For Now SpaceX is significantly reducing Falcon 9 launches from Florida this year, ending the Space Coast's decade-long run as the world's busiest spaceport as more missions shift to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The slowdown is expected to continue until Starship begins flying regularly from Florida. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: A Falcon 9 launch early Tuesday was the last planned Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral until SpaceX begins flying Starship missions from Florida, according to Kiko Dontchev, the company's vice president of launch. For at least the rest of the year, and maybe longer, this means the launch rate at the Florida spaceport will drop from eight or nine per month to perhaps two per month. It wasn't long ago when two launches per month was the norm, an indication of just how quickly SpaceX's launch cadence has grown. Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center sit on adjoining property and share the same range on Florida's east coast, so it is worth considering them a single spaceport. The last time the Florida spaceport did not lead the world in space launches was in 2015. "From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship," Dontchev wrote on X. "The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg." "Yep, that'll be louder -- but everybody knows the real action will be in Louisiana, starting in 2029 or so," writes schwit1. SpaceX on Tuesday announced plans to spend up to $100 billion building a new Starship launch facility in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, which the state says could eventually "support thousands of launches annually." Further reading: Musk's other unstated reasons for shutting down Falcon 9 in Florida (Behind The Black)
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Trump Creates a Space Academy and Honors the Artemis Astronauts President Trump awarded the four-member Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and signed an executive order directing the creation of a new U.S. Space Academy. The proposed academy would train engineers, scientists, technicians, operators, and astronauts for NASA, the Space Force, and the commercial space industry. Houston Public Media reports: The Artemis II crew -- NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen -- retraced history as they flew around the moon and back in April, the first time humans have been in lunar territory since the 1970s. He had previously hosted the crew members at the White House following their mission and called them during the mission while the crew was tens of thousands of miles away. "The one thing that really sticks out to us [from that call] is you said how proud you are and how proud our nation is for the job that we've just accomplished," Wiseman said during Friday's ceremony. "And for us, that is what we set out to do. We wanted to inspire this nation to learn." During the ceremony, Trump also signed an executive order to create the "United States Space Academy." Under the order, a Presidential Commission on the U.S. Space Academy has 120 days to create a report with guidelines for the U.S. Space Academy. The Commission will include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman as its Chair, as well as other NASA and space officials. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president for science and technology. In effect, it allows the Trump Administration to build the U.S. Space Academy to its liking. "It will serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry," Trump said. "And it will attract, train, graduate the very best that our nation and our nation really has to offer." As for where the academy will be located, Trump said he was "going to be choosing a location very shortly."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Is China Secretly Fueling America's Data Center Rage? alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy," the team said in a tweet. The posts included content on how AI strains the electricity grid and increases utility prices and "cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense." It's unclear what, if any, action X will take to suspend or delete accounts from the bot farm. One of the reports mentioned in the article estimates that opposition campaigns have delayed or obstructed roughly $45.8 billion in data center projects in Virginia alone. Jim Prosser, a former Twitter communications executive, pushed back on Silicon Valley claims that opposition to data centers is a "Chinese psyop," arguing that Big Tech is using the label to dismiss legitimate local concerns. "If you can get both Greg Abbott and Kathy Hochul agreeing on something, it's probably not a Chinese psyop," he told Axios. Prosser said the industry needs to spend more time listening to affected communities rather than dismissing them from afar: "If you're a [venture capitalist] in Atherton or Menlo Park opining about how somebody in Ohio should feel, and you've never been to Ohio, that's a problem."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - New York City 911 System Missed 1,700 Calls Due To Software Update Longtime Slashdot reader belmolis writes: Part of New York City's 911 emergency system was offline from about 3:13 a.m. to 10 a.m. on August 18th due to a software update, according to Medical Daily. Of 5,659 calls to the Bronx call center during that period, about 1,700 calls connected but could not be heard by emergency operators. Some were rerouted to other call centers, but an estimated 400 human callers never got through. The potentially serious consequences of delayed response to emergencies are not yet known. The city did not notify the public and only released information when journalists inquired. How buggy software came to be installed on a running system is not yet known. The early-morning software update was pushed by Motorola, though exactly what it changed or why it caused the failure remains unknown. The city is still investigating whether the update was adequately tested and whether the same software release was deployed elsewhere.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - States Can Regulate Prediction Markets As Gambling, Federal Appeals Court Rules A federal appeals court has ruled that states can regulate prediction markets like Kalshi as gambling, handing state regulators their biggest legal victory yet against the booming industry. "There are still related lawsuits pending across the country, and legal experts believe the matter will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court," reports CNN. "But Friday's ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the largest courtroom victory to date for the states as they seek to regulate prediction sites." CNN reports: The 3-0 ruling came from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges. The case originated from Nevada, where regulators tried to shut down the Kalshi prediction site. [...] "The substance of the sports event contracts offered on Kalshi's (exchange) is sports gambling, regardless of whether Kalshi calls them swaps," the appeals panel wrote Friday, adding that "Kalshi's attempts to distinguish its sports event contracts from sportsbooks betting are unpersuasive." The judges also said it was "disingenuous" for Kalshi to argue in court that its products weren't sports-betting when it previously used that phrasing in marketing materials. Kalshi spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement: "Despite the Ninth Circuit's opinion, we still believe the CFTC regulations as written do not prohibit sports contracts, and in any event, the CFTC is working to clarify those regulations. We will be seeking further review." "It's the first ruling against Kalshi at the appellate level, and the opinion seemed to be pretty brutal for the company," said Dustin Gouker, an independent journalist who covers the prediction industry. "This gets us one step closer to an almost inevitable Supreme Court case on the legality of sports event contracts."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 100 Other Companies Call For Action To Defend Against Rogue AI An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Over a hundred tech companies -- including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft -- have signed an open letter urging both the private and public sectors to work together to defend themselves from AI-related cyber threats. The letter -- which was also signed by prominent cyber firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Fortinet, as well as prominent financial institutions and internet infrastructure firms -- calls for the adoption of new forms of cyber defense, while also encouraging governments at the "local, national, and international levels" to collaborate on security. "In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable," the letter states. "The companies and public services our communities depend on -- from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet -- are at risk." [...] The letter further suggests the mobilization of a "collective response," one in which "new partnerships" are formed "to raise security standards and find new solutions to emerging cyber threats." Several of the AI companies that have signed the letter are still actively developing ever more advanced AI models, highlighting their conflicted position. At the same time, they are also offering programs to use frontier AI models for defensive purposes, including OpenAI's Daybreak program, Anthropic's Mythos, and Microsoft's new cyber platform Perception.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Songs Created By AI Banned From Australia's Music Charts Australia's official music charts will no longer accept songs that are largely or entirely AI-generated, requiring eligible releases to be "substantially human made." The BBC reports: The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said the new code would help "promote the human nature of artistry." It follows a controversy around a cover of Madonna's Like A Prayer by Australian DJ Josh Fawaz which recently topped the ARIA dance singles chart and peaked at number 2 on the country's overall chart. The song has become a staple of commercial radio station playlists and been streamed more than 48 million times on Spotify alone. Fawaz later added generative AI credits to the song after a backlash. ARIA said that Australian artists were competing for attention "in the most crowded market in history" and that it was "not interested in promoting or celebrating the success of AI-generated music that does not contain human artistry." Under the new rules, AI assistance can still be used, but humans must have written the song, and have performed the lead vocal and primary instruments. AI can also still be used for mastering songs and, for example, using drum machines and auto tune. [...] Artists will be required to declare AI use when they submit a song for chart consideration. ARIA said that if it later emerged music was largely AI-generated it could retrospectively adjust chart positions, and if the piece topped the charts, it may request that awards given for reaching Number One were returned. Artists and their representatives will be able to challenge their exclusion. ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd said: "These changes reflect our intent to remain dynamic and promote the human nature of artistry in what is, to say the least, a rapidly developing space. Artists already use AI tools in their work, the charts can and should evolve to keep room for that, but music generated wholesale by services built on artists' recordings is a different matter." She added: "A chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Apple TV and Apple One Subscription Prices Increase By Up To 20% Apple is raising Apple TV's U.S. price to $14.99 per month, up from $12.99, while the annual plan jumps from $99 to $119. It's the service's fourth price hike in four years and means the monthly cost has now tripled from its $4.99 launch price in 2019. Apple One's Individual plan is also rising from $19.95 to $21.95 per month.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Pentagon's Blacklisting of Anthropic Was Unlawful, US Judge Rules An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A US judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration broke the law when it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, finding that the government had unlawfully targeted the AI firm for refusing to comply with defense department demands. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision. Lin's ruling barred the federal agencies named in the lawsuit from enforcing Donald Trump's order to stop using Anthropic's tools and overturned the designation of the company as a "supply chain risk" by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. The status, usually reserved for foreign firms, would have blocked government agencies from doing business with Anthropic. The case emerged out of a months-long feud between Anthropic and the Pentagon at the start of the year. Anthropic refused to allow the government to use its Claude AI model for fully autonomous lethal weapons or domestic mass surveillance, resulting in Hegseth accusing the company of "arrogance and betrayal". Lin put a temporary pause on the government's punitive measures in March, stating that the government's actions looked like an attempt to "cripple Anthropic" for exercising its first amendment rights. The ruling this week makes that temporary suspension permanent, although the government may appeal. "We welcome the court's ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful," an Anthropic spokesperson said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Stripe and Advent Ditch $50 Billion PayPal Takeover Bid Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have ditched their $53 billion pursuit of PayPal, ending a deal that would have been the largest fintech acquisition ever. "Stripe last week agreed to pay $8 billion for AI model marketplace OpenRouter, but a source said that the OpenRouter and PayPal deals were operating on independent tracks," reports Axios.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - Roblox Is Cracking Down On Games That Reward Kids For Doomscrolling Roblox is restricting games that reward younger players for endlessly consuming autoplaying media feeds. The new restrictions are specifically targeting Roblox experiences like "Steal an Egg," which encouraged players to watch TikTok-style clips for in-game benefits. "Roblox's official alert does not expressly mention SAE, but the new policy is most certainly targeting the viral game first and foremost," reports TechSpot. From the report: The company said games that reward ongoing media consumption are now unavailable to players with a Roblox Kids (ages 5 to 8) or Roblox Select (ages 9 to 15) account. The policy will affect games designed to combine media feeds, autoplay, infinite scrolling, and systems that reward players for doomscrolling through TikTok videos of questionable value. "Steal an Egg" fits perfectly into this new category. The game tasks players with raising eggs, but they can also steal eggs from other NPCs. Players are incentivized to increase their characters' speed either by spending in-game currency (Robux) or by watching a video feed on a virtual treadmill. "Steal an Egg" was recently removed from Roblox but is now back in the store without its troublesome video-feed feature. [...] Roblox also highlights that the new anti-doomscrolling restriction does not apply to the rewarded video ads feature, which rewards players for watching a short clip but does not include autoplay or other infinite-scroll-like design choices.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. - US Considers Fresh Round of Tariffs On Semiconductors An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is reportedly considering new tariffs on semiconductors used in the U.S., as tech giants race to beat China in the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. The duties will be imposed on an expanded range of tech products made alongside chips, including laptops, data center servers and gaming hardware, eight people familiar with the matter told Politico in a report published Thursday. The measures, which are still in the early phases and subject to significant changes over the next few months, will be introduced via a staggered rollout period, according to the report. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC, but told Politico: "Reshoring semiconductor manufacturing is a top priority for President Trump, whose policies have already secured hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in this key sector." The tech industry is pushing back on the tariffs, warning they could raise chip costs, slow data-center construction, and undermine the very AI expansion the administration wants to promote. "This may be the single dumbest way imaginable to pursue American dominance in AI," said one tech official from a major industry group that also served in the first Trump administration. "It's like kneecapping yourself at the starting line." Lobbyists say they have repeatedly urged officials to "tread carefully" because U.S. demand is surging while domestic chip capacity remains far too limited. The industry argues that factories take years to build and current domestic production cannot come close to satisfying demand. One tech representative said "the math literally just does not work," noting that proposed duty-free allowances "wouldn't cover the hyperscalers alone." Meanwhile, the Computer and Communications Industry Association warned that higher costs and uncertainty could put the massive data-center buildout "in jeopardy."
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