“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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ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author's style

ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author's style

fivenewscrypto    juillet 28, 2026   

OpenAI's ChatGPT is now refusing requests to generate text that directly mimics the style of famous authors. When asked to do so, the popular LLM instead offers a response that draws on the "broad qualities" of those authors "while remaining distinct in its own voice," for example.

This morning, Ars received the following response to a test prompt asking for a story introduction in the style of Stephen King:

I can definitely write with the hallmarks of atmospheric, character-driven horror and small-town dread, but I can't write in Stephen King's exact style or closely imitate his distinctive voice. Here's an original opening that captures a similar feeling while remaining its own...

In testing, ChatGPT generated similar dodges for other authors both living (J.K. Rowling, Amy Tan) and dead (Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway). An analysis published by No Latency earlier this month found the same behavior for living authors but found ChatGPT complied with style-copying requests for deceased authors.

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Activist charged with felony after giving border agent "duress code" that wiped his phone

Activist charged with felony after giving border agent "duress code" that wiped his phone

fivenewscrypto    juillet 28, 2026   

In early 2025, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick was on his way home following a trip abroad. After landing in the US, customs agents demanded access to his Pixel phone, which was running an alternative version of Android called GrapheneOS. Rather than hand over his data, Tunick used a clever feature of the software to delete everything. Now, he's facing federal charges.

The first hearing in this case happened last week, according to The Guardian, during which government attorneys and agents claimed that Tunick was subjected to a standard secondary interrogation at an international airport. During that encounter, agents were "looking for anything that’s prohibited." However, Tunick's legal team alleges he was targeted for his activism.

Tunick was involved with a group called Defend the Atlanta Forest, which opposed the construction of an enormous law enforcement training facility in the area often known as Cop City. What Tunick didn't know, according to his lawyers, was that he'd been placed on a watch list for his actions and that Customs and Border Protection had discussed over email plans to detain him upon his arrival back in the US for "suspected terrorism activities."

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Framework Laptop 13 Pro review: Much better battery, much worse price

Framework Laptop 13 Pro review: Much better battery, much worse price

fivenewscrypto    juillet 28, 2026   

I've liked the Framework Laptop 13 since the first time I used it, partly because I just think the idea of a repairable and upgradeable laptop is cool and partly because it's not Yet Another Ultraportable Trying To Be A MacBook Air Clone. But the design has always had real shortcomings—the most noticeable and serious being its mediocre battery life.

Enter the Framework Laptop 13 Pro. While all previous Laptop 13 refreshes have tinkered around the edges with the original design (a tweaked lid design here, new hinges or new speakers there), the Laptop 13 Pro is as close as we've gotten to a second-generation revision for the original design.

This means that it breaks backward compatibility for some (but not all) Laptop 13 components, most notably the bottom case, the keyboard and trackpad, and the original 55 WHr and 61 WHr battery designs. But by allowing itself to make larger changes to the design, Framework has made major strides in battery life and general fit and finish.

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