Judge blocks first state law that would have banned prediction markets

Judge blocks first state law that would have banned prediction markets

fivenewscrypto    juillet 29, 2026   

Minnesota, the first US state to prohibit prediction markets, was prevented from enforcing the law by a federal court ruling just days before the ban was scheduled to take effect. But while Minnesota was stopped from enforcing a total ban, the state may ultimately be allowed to prohibit some types of prediction-market wagers.

The Trump administration and the two largest prediction markets—Kalshi and Polymarket—sued Minnesota after the state enacted the law in May. The cases were consolidated, and a ruling issued yesterday imposed a preliminary injunction blocking the law that was scheduled to take effect on August 1.

Minnesota lawmakers saw prediction markets as indistinguishable from gambling, but the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) argues it has exclusive authority to regulate the platforms under federal law. One of the primary legal questions is whether event contracts are "swaps," which are regulated by the CFTC.

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Trump admin exempts SpaceX's Starlink from FCC ban on foreign-made routers

Trump admin exempts SpaceX's Starlink from FCC ban on foreign-made routers

fivenewscrypto    juillet 29, 2026   

The Trump administration today exempted SpaceX's Starlink routers from the Federal Communications Commission ban on foreign-made routers.

A public notice issued by the FCC said Starlink routers received approval from the Department of War (also known as the Department of Defense). SpaceX's exemption is good until February 1, 2028.

The FCC kicked off an industry-wide scramble when it updated the Covered List to include all consumer-grade routers made at least partly outside the US, except those that are granted exemptions. The Covered List includes devices deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to national security. Given that routers are generally built outside the US or at least contain foreign-made components, all major vendors need exemptions.

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A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

fivenewscrypto    juillet 29, 2026   

One missing underscore in a Skyrim-themed username put an innocent Nova Scotia man in prison for 18 months.

A 2018 child-luring investigation, which began in Madison, Wisconsin, and eventually extended to Halifax, Canada, was based on a false premise.

Police were looking for a man using the Kik messaging service under the name "fus__ro_dah" (two underscores after "fus"), but they accidentally requested records for the username "fus_ro_dah" (one underscore after "fus"). This one-character difference led them not to the perpetrator but to a Canadian man named Brandon Klayme.

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“Google and Reddit do not own the Internet," web scraper says after court win

“Google and Reddit do not own the Internet," web scraper says after court win

fivenewscrypto    juillet 29, 2026   

After a big court loss last week, Google has confirmed that it won’t give up its fight to block AI bots from scraping its search results. And Reddit is weirdly along for the ride.

Curiously invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Google sued SerpApi last December. The search giant accused the web scraper of circumventing its anti-scraping technology and then selling content scraped from Google search results through an unauthorized “Google Search API” software service.

According to Google, the anti-scraping tech was in place to protect copyrighted content in search results. Allegedly, SerpApi’s circumvention threatened to disrupt Google’s relationships with rights holders, including some who license content to Google to appear in so-called “knowledge panels” that are displayed in some search results for well-known people or entities.

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5th Circuit blocks Texas law requiring websites to filter "harmful" speech

5th Circuit blocks Texas law requiring websites to filter "harmful" speech

fivenewscrypto    juillet 28, 2026   

Texas cannot enforce a law's requirement that websites block minors from seeing harmful speech, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled on Friday.

Big Tech lobby groups challenged the Texas "law’s requirement that certain social media-based 'digital service providers' (DSPs) monitor and filter content accessible to known minors to prevent exposure to several categories of potentially harmful speech," judges wrote. In a 2-1 ruling in favor of the tech groups' challenge, judges said the monitoring and filtering requirement is preempted by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice challenged portions of the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (SCOPE Act), which applies to websites and online applications that collect or process personally identifying information. The tech groups won a preliminary injunction from a district court. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed to the 5th Circuit but wasn't able to convince judges to reverse the injunction that prevents enforcement of the monitoring and filtering rules.

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Verizon touts $1B dark fiber deal for Google data centers as first of many

Verizon touts $1B dark fiber deal for Google data centers as first of many

fivenewscrypto    juillet 28, 2026   

Verizon is seeking to tap into Silicon Valley’s AI spending in a big way. The telecom giant revealed a deal worth more than $1 billion to link Google data centers using Verizon’s dark fiber routes—and it’s also tearing copper wiring out of central offices as it converts them into small data centers suitable for supporting AI inference workloads.

The telecom company publicly disclosed the Google partnership and data center conversion efforts as part of a new “AI Connect” business initiative during an earnings conference call covering the second quarter of 2026. Verizon also expects to announce additional AI-related deals by the end of the year that would be “worth multiple billions of dollars in revenue over the next several years,” said Dan Schulman, CEO of Verizon Communications, during the earnings call.

“Now it really is about, 'how do you connect data center to data center to assure that you can optimize to maximize the ever-exploding need for compute?'” Schulman said. “And while that data center connectivity demand is exploding, there's an equal amount of desire and demand to power inference models and applications that need ultra-low latency, like robotics or remote surgery, autonomous driving, and move that out into the edge, as opposed to these big, massive data centers.”

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Experts warn current Starship heat shield tech is a "dead end" for rapid reuse

Experts warn current Starship heat shield tech is a "dead end" for rapid reuse

fivenewscrypto    juillet 28, 2026   

SpaceX successfully launched its Starship vehicle on Friday and appeared to demonstrate important and credible steps toward fulfilling the massive rocket's immense promise. As soon as the vehicle's next flight, Starship could go orbital, begin delivering satellites into space, and potentially return to the launch site to be 'caught' by the tower.

All of this is impressive engineering on a gigantic scale. But despite the marked progress with the 13th test flight of Starship, one key issue—probably the key issue when it comes to Starship's future—remains unresolved.

This concerns Starship's heat shield, the roughly 18,000 ceramic tiles that protect the vehicle's underbelly during its fiery return through Earth's atmosphere. And some experts say SpaceX's current approach may not get Starship to its ultimate goal of flying frequently, at low cost.

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