AT&T and Verizon lose Supreme Court case over fines for selling location data

AT&T and Verizon lose Supreme Court case over fines for selling location data

fivenewscrypto    juin 07, 2026   

AT&T and Verizon lost an attempt to overturn fines for selling users’ real-time location data without consent, as the Supreme Court ruled today that the Federal Communications Commission process for issuing financial penalties did not violate the right to a jury trial.

AT&T convinced the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to overturn its fine last year, while Verizon lost in the 2nd Circuit. The Supreme Court took up the case to resolve the circuit split and reversed the 5th Circuit decision in today's ruling, which was 8-1 with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting.

AT&T and Verizon were fined a total of $104 million by the FCC in 2024 for violations revealed in 2018. The carriers paid their fines and challenged them in circuit appeals courts, where judges’ panels ruled on the cases. Carriers claimed this system deprived them of the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

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These LLMs are the best at resisting Russian propaganda

These LLMs are the best at resisting Russian propaganda

fivenewscrypto    juin 07, 2026   

As more people rely on large language models to provide pat answers to complex questions, state governments are understandably worried about those LLMs spouting what they see as dangerous propaganda promoted by foreign adversaries. To help combat this problem, the government-sponsored Estonian Language Institute (ELI) has released a new "Propaganda Resistance" benchmark ranking dozens of LLMs on their ability to avoid "tak[ing] positions on topics that the Russian Federation uses in its strategic narratives."

As a former member of the Soviet Union that has been independent for just a few decades, many Estonians are particularly alert to what they see as false narratives being promoted from their large and often belligerent neighbor to the east. Alongside volunteer-run Estonian defense collective Propastop, the ELI identified 14 broad categories in which it sees Russian influence operations trying to sway public discussion. These range from narratives on the current status of Crimea and justifications for the war in Ukraine to the history of NATO and justification for Russia's annexation of Baltic states during World War II.

For each category of propaganda, the researchers developed separate questions phrased to be neutral, biased with "false assumptions" based on Russian propaganda, or to maliciously attempt to elicit explicit misinformation from the LLM. Questions were provided to the models in English, Estonian, and Russian, and judged by a separate AI model (calibrated to align with Propastop experts) based on the models' ability to "push back on propaganda narratives, without external help" from web search or other external tools.

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Bumblebees can spontaneously solve problems, study finds

Bumblebees can spontaneously solve problems, study finds

fivenewscrypto    juin 05, 2026   

Despite having tiny brains, bumblebees have demonstrated a remarkable ability to socially learn how to use tools, solve simple puzzles, and cooperate to achieve a goal. It seems they can also solve object-manipulation tasks without any previous training, according to a new paper published in the journal Science. According to the authors, it's the first time this kind of spontaneous problem-solving has been demonstrated in an insect.

In 2024, Olli Loukola of the University of Finland co-authored a study demonstrating that bumblebees could cooperate to solve complex challenges. It's the kind of cognitive task scientists had previously only observed in large-brained mammals like humans and chimpanzees. Loukola et al. trained pairs of bees to push a Lego block to the middle of a mini-arena or push against a door at the end of a tunnel to get a reward.

The team noticed that the bees were more likely to engage in the tasks if their partners also participated, compared to untrained control groups. They concluded that bees can learn to solve novel cooperative tasks outside the hive and may even be intentionally working together, although the researchers cautioned that more detailed monitoring of the behavior was needed to fully understand the partners' roles.

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After 11 years at Mars, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft went out with a whisper

After 11 years at Mars, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft went out with a whisper

fivenewscrypto    juin 05, 2026   

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft was in excellent shape when it disappeared behind Mars on December 6 of last year. The routine passage, called an occultation, was supposed to last less than an hour, but ground teams didn't hear from the spacecraft when it was supposed to regain contact with Earth.

The loss of communication triggered contingency plans for engineers to try to restore a link with MAVEN, which orbits Mars more than 200 million miles from Earth. To no avail, they listened for faint signals and uplinked commands in the blind. Hopes of saving the mission faded over time, and NASA officials announced Wednesday that they're giving up on it.

"NASA has ceased efforts to search for the MAVEN spacecraft and are beginning activities to decommission the mission," said Mike Moreau, MAVEN's project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. 

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Flesh-eating screwworm infection confirmed in South Texas, USDA says

Flesh-eating screwworm infection confirmed in South Texas, USDA says

fivenewscrypto    juin 05, 2026   

A case of New World screwworm has been confirmed in South Texas, the US Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday night. It marks the first detected breach of the US-Mexico border by the ravenous flesh-eating flies, which have been making their way up through Central America for the past several years.

In a social media post on Wednesday afternoon, the USDA revealed that a sample from Texas had been sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa, for confirmatory testing of a screwworm infection. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins later posted that the testing had confirmed the infection, which was found in a 3-week-old calf in Zavala County, Texas.

Chatter of a screwworm detection had already been building this week, rattling the US cattle industry.

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Google ordered to put clearer links in AI search and let UK publishers opt out

Google ordered to put clearer links in AI search and let UK publishers opt out

fivenewscrypto    juin 05, 2026   

UK regulators today ordered Google to put clearer attributions and links to publishers' content in its AI-generated search features. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also said Google must give publishers a way to opt out of AI features in search.

"In a world first, publishers will now have effective tools to prevent their content being used to power AI features in search, such as AI Overviews," the CMA said today. "This will put publishers, like news organizations, in a stronger position to negotiate content deals with Google. To boost consumer trust, Google is also now required to make sure that publisher content is properly attributed, using clear links, in AI‑generated search results."

The CMA ruled that Google may not penalize publishers for opting out of AI, meaning that Google can't downrank opted-out publishers in general search results. The CMA said Google will have nine months to comply with all requirements but that the agency "expects important parts of the controls to become available to publishers well before that deadline. Google will also be required to submit and publish compliance reports, supported by key data and metrics, explaining changes it has made and how it has complied."

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Can't make sense of Dashlane's vault theft notification? You're not alone.

Can't make sense of Dashlane's vault theft notification? You're not alone.

fivenewscrypto    juin 05, 2026   

There’s a lot that doesn’t add up in a security advisory password manager Dashlane published Monday, warning that attackers managed to obtain 20 encrypted user vaults.

“Starting on Sunday, May 31, 2026, an external party launched a brute force attack against certain Dashlane user accounts,” the company said. “The goal of the attack was to brute-force two-factor authentication (2FA) protections to allow the attacker to register new devices on existing user accounts.”

Hello, Dashlane, anybody home?

A Dashlane user who received such a 2FA request provided this screenshot of the notification, which arrived on Sunday.

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