Pocket's AI made my game ideas real. Now Meta controls the results.

Pocket's AI made my game ideas real. Now Meta controls the results.

fivenewscrypto    août 31, 2026   

The relatively recent rise of AI-assisted coding tools and the whole concept of "vibe coding" have effectively upended entire software development workflows. While these tools have been available to novice coders willing to put in the work to set them up, those with little to no coding experience could still be a little put off by the CLIs, IDEs, and terminal-based tinkering needed to create a complex AI-coded project these days.

Meta's latest AI-based project launch wants to make that kind of vibe coding as instantly accessible as posting on social media. Pocket—which launched in the US last Friday, August 21, after Meta acquired the staff behind the now-defunct vibe-coding app Gizmo in March—is a mobile app that lets users create fully functional interactive "gizmos" just by typing prompts into a text box, without even the option to look at a line of code. Those gizmos can then be shared with the world in a TikTok-style endless scroll complete with likes, comments, reposts, and all the other hallmarks of social media addiction.

After playing around with Pocket for the better part of a week, I found myself getting hooked on the simple process of quickly standing up functional, relatively feature-rich game prototypes simply by chatting with an LLM. But the result of all that time and AI effort is a couple of interactive toys that are effectively trapped in Meta's new walled garden, without any real way to turn them into something separate.

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A 12TB Steam “teraleak” spills more than a decade of lost PC gaming history

A 12TB Steam “teraleak” spills more than a decade of lost PC gaming history

fivenewscrypto    août 31, 2026   

Here at Ars, we're intimately familiar with data leaks surrounding Valve's games, hardware, and the workings of Steam itself. But nothing could have prepared us for this weekend's "terarelease" encompassing more than 12TB of content related to seemingly every title available on Steam between 2003 and 2013.

What's being sold as an "as-complete-as-possible ... content server dump" of Steam's defunct "Steam2" server architecture from that time period is now circulating around via a BitTorrent tracker that Valve seems unlikely to ever completely purge from the Internet. The massive collection includes thousands of "depots" representing what seems to be every version of every game uploaded to those old Steam2 servers. That includes public release builds, of course, but in many cases also covers previously unseen pre-release, prototype, and playtest versions of popular titles published by Valve and third-party Steam publishers.

Steam2: Electric Boogaloo

The reason this weekend's leaked content cuts off abruptly in 2013 is because that's when Valve updated its content distribution system from "Steam2" to the current SteamPipe system. In moving from a proprietary file distribution format to standard HTTP file trees, the new system removed various update approval bottlenecks on Valve's end and streamlined update and patch downloads so they only reflected file differentials.

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Why it matters that President Trump just dialed in to a NASA news conference

Why it matters that President Trump just dialed in to a NASA news conference

fivenewscrypto    août 31, 2026   

As is standard procedure for major NASA missions, the US space agency held a post-launch news conference on Sunday morning at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to provide information about how the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was faring during its initial maneuvers.

What was not standard, however, is what happened in the middle of the news conference. A little less than half an hour in, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked down at his mobile phone, and then stood up and walked away from the dais where he had been seated behind a table along with other NASA officials. He briefly left the room.

Isaacman returned about a minute later, phone in hand, apologizing for interrupting NASA's chief of science, Nicky Fox, as she was speaking about the mission. "The President of the United States of America would like to address and congratulate everyone on this mission," Isaacman said, returning to his seat.

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Inside Meta’s push to put robots to work in data centers

Inside Meta’s push to put robots to work in data centers

fivenewscrypto    août 31, 2026   

Meta is testing robots that can plug in cables, reset servers, and handle other tasks inside its data centers, according to several current and former workers familiar with the projects. The ongoing effort, which has not been previously reported, may eventually allow Meta to operate its rapidly expanding data center footprint with fewer humans, keeping labor costs in check as its spending on AI infrastructure soars.

Meta is using robots and related hardware from several different vendors, including Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB, according to the same workers, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media. Kinova and ABB declined to comment. Watney didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In one experiment, Meta is evaluating whether a Kinova Gen3 robotic arm could be used for power cycling or cutting off electricity to servers. The company is also testing a different robot to swap networking cables. One Meta data center worker estimates that if it’s successful, the bot could replace up to 80 percent of some people’s workloads. “We thought those of us performing the physical tasks were safe for a while, but not anymore,” says the worker. “It’s coming for us all, unfortunately.”

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I asked 100 companies for my data. Some deleted it instead.

I asked 100 companies for my data. Some deleted it instead.

fivenewscrypto    août 31, 2026   

I filed a request with McDonald’s earlier this month to access all of the personal data the fast food company collected about me, and I received a stunning 515-page report a few days later that detailed my app interactions in granular detail and predicted I would never stop eating there.

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, I have the legal right to request access to information from large companies that collect personal data. So I was curious what others might have on me, and I spent the next week filing more than 100 requests.

The CCPA went into effect in 2020, and three of its key provisions are the right to opt out of the selling of personal information, the right to delete that info, and the right to request a copy for yourself.

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Court rules Kalshi sports bets aren't "swaps," just gambling with a different name

Court rules Kalshi sports bets aren't "swaps," just gambling with a different name

fivenewscrypto    août 31, 2026   

Kalshi today lost a major ruling over whether it can evade state gambling laws, as a federal appeals court found that Nevada can stop the prediction market from allowing sports bets. While the Trump administration is trying to help prediction markets avoid state regulation, a panel of three Trump-appointed judges unanimously ruled against Kalshi in today's decision from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board today said the 9th Circuit "emphatically reject[ed] the view that the federal Commodity Exchange Act preempts application of Nevada’s gaming laws to sports-event contracts offered by Kalshi, Crypto.com, and Robinhood." Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, a Republican, said that "prediction markets offering sports-event contracts constitute gambling and must comply with Nevada’s gaming laws and regulatory framework."

The judges affirmed a district court order that let Nevada enforce state laws against Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts.

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Cities terminate Flock contracts at record pace in August

Cities terminate Flock contracts at record pace in August

fivenewscrypto    août 31, 2026   

New data compiled by a Bay Area anti-surveillance advocacy group shows that not only are American localities dropping cameras from Flock Safety, but they are doing it at an accelerating rate.

Communities from Lansing, Michigan, to Pflugerville, Texas, are ending their relationship with Flock, largely over concerns regarding out-of-control surveillance, unwanted data sharing, high expenses, and reports of police abusing the tool.

Secure Justice, an Oakland-based advocacy group, has recorded 214 cities and counties that have dropped Flock since 2021. Of those, 90 ended their relationship with Flock in August 2026 alone, a fourfold increase compared to the previous month.

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