News of the Cyber World

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aPPLE

5 Apple products just became obsolete — leaving users without tech support or updates

Apple Watches may count your steps, but for some models, they should be counting down the days until they’re obsolete.

Nothing makes an Apple product feel more out of date than the announcement of its next software update. At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the tech giant revealed that its upcoming watchOS 27 update will drop support for several older Apple Watch models, including the SE (2nd gen), Series 6, 7 and 8, and the original Ultra.

Only newer watches equipped with Apple’s S9 and S10 chips will support the latest software, meaning owners of unsupported devices will miss out on new AI-powered features and future updates. Many watch owners are now feeling pressured to upgrade watches they bought only a few years ago.

The upcoming watchOS 27 update, according to Apple, includes Siri, a conversational AI assistant that lets users ask open-ended questions and brainstorm new ideas in a more natural way. The update will also feature a new tap gesture to select a widget in the Smart Stack, with a dynamic new app grid, and overall aesthetic design refinements throughout the system. The intention is to make the Apple Watch more responsive and easier to use, according to its marketing.

The decision has frustrated users because Apple typically supports its watches with major software updates for about 6 years. Owners of the first-generation Apple Watch Ultra, which retailed for $799.99 according to reports, at launch in September 2022, could receive less than 4 years of support.
Apple hasn’t explicitly explained the cutoff. It’s estimated that the shift is tied to the S9 chip upgrade in the newer watch series, which aligns with Apple’s broader vision of greater integration with AI capabilities.

The rollout caused even more confusion when Apple’s website initially suggested that the three-year-old Series 9 would also lose compatibility. The error was later corrected after users discovered they could install a test version of watchOS 27, leaving five older models officially without support.

For many Apple fans, though, the issue isn’t just technology — it’s timing. Reddit threads quickly filled with frustrated owners pointing out that some of the affected watches are only a few years old and still work perfectly.

“Unfortunately, my beloved SE 2 didn’t survive Apple’s ‘Night of the Long Knives’ either. Neither did my mom’s Series 8,” one Reddit user wrote. “Luckily, I bought both of them for a steal right after their 2022 release; otherwise, I’d be really upset.”

While others fumed that Apple just wants money, and others questioned the company’s sustainability promises, arguing that pushing customers toward upgrades clashes with its environmental messaging.

IRAN

Iran planning to treat Elon Musk’s companies in Middle East as military targets: Iranian state media

Iran is planning to treat all of Elon Musk’s companies as military targets, according to Iranian state media, which alleged the billionaire’s holdings were used by the US military to carry out war crimes.

The nation will add all of Musk’s assets in the region to its list of military targets, including Starlink ground stations in Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Oman, as well as SpaceX partners, according to a post by Iranian state media outlet Fars on Telegram.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to attack all facilities related to [Musk]-managed holdings in the region and occupied territories,” an unnamed source told Fars — alleging Musk’s companies were used to carry out attacks on water infrastructure in southern Iran this week.

SpaceX, which owns Starlink, and a lawyer for Musk did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.

Musk’s satellite internet service provider, Starlink, has become a major government contractor, snapping up billions of dollars in federal contracts for the use of its network to support aerial attack drones and unmanned surveillance and strike vessels.

According to Reuters, the US military has used Starlink to operate “kamikaze” drone attacks on Iran.

The Fars media report broke around the same time President Trump warned in a Truth Social post Thursday morning that the US will attack Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT.”

He added that the US will soon “be taking Kharg Island,” an energy hub for 90% of Iranian crude oil exports, along with “other oil infrastructure points.”

Later on Thursday, the president signaled that a tentative peace deal has been reached and called off his planned strikes on Iran.

The US and Iran exchanged strikes for a second consecutive day Wednesday, after Trump said Iran shot down a US Army helicopter patrolling the Strait of Hormuz Monday evening.

California water systems hit by Iranian hackers in terrifying threat to drinking supply

An Iranian hacker group is claiming it infiltrated water systems serving several California cities in an apparent act of retaliation against the United States — though cybersecurity experts are casting doubt on whether the hackers can actually do any damage.

The group, known as Handala, alleged Thursday that it breached systems tied to Bakersfield, Visalia and Chico, posting screenshots that appeared to show residents’ water bills. The hackers said the cyberattack was payback after US forces struck two reservoirs in Iran.

“Only two days ago, [Trump] destroyed the water sources of the oppressed people of Sirik with multi-million-dollar rockets, inflicting forced thirst and suffering in 50-degree heat,” Handala said in a statement to Iranian news outlets. “Today, retribution has reached the heart of America.”

Iranian state media reported that the US strikes hit water storage facilities, while a local official said more than 20,000 people lost access to water.

Despite the alarming claims, Handala said it would not shut off water service in California, describing the breach as a warning to President Donald Trump. The group also claimed to possess 5 gigabytes of data allegedly stolen during the intrusion.

California Water Service said it found no evidence that its systems were compromised.

“We have conducted a preliminary scan of our internal IT and OT networks and have no signs of any compromise within our IT, water production, and delivery systems at this time,” a spokesperson for CalWater told news site SJV Water.

An investigation is still underway, the spokesperson said.

Security experts said that there is no evidence or indication Handala actually has the capability to shut off water supplies in America.

“Handala has a record of overstating its capabilities. The boast about choosing to spare the water supply reads as the psychological operation itself,” said Sean Malone, chief information security officer at BeyondTrust.

Still, experts warned that water utilities remain attractive targets for foreign adversaries and cybercriminals.

SOCIAL MEDIA BAN

Canada considering social media ban for kids under 16 in global effort to tighten online protections

Canada introduced legislation on Wednesday that could bar children younger than 16 from having social media accounts unless the companies show they can make their platforms safe.

Canada is joining a growing global effort to tighten safety protections.

Canadian government officials said social media platforms can obtain an exemption if they have put in place sufficient safeguards.

“We are failing our children. Enough is enough,” Marc Miller, Canada’s culture minister, said. “We need basic protection in place.”

The legislation covers seven types of harmful content including content that induces children to harm themselves, content that incites violence and foments hatred and non-consensual intimate images.

A new regulator, the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, will be created.

Criteria for what exemptions would look like will be announced at a later date. Miller said setting up the regulator could take up to 18 months.

Miller said platforms will need to prove they are safe. Age verification will also be established.

Countries including Australia, Brazil and Indonesia have introduced or announced age-based restrictions or requirements for children’s access to social media.

Others including Britain, France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are studying or developing similar approaches.

Platforms in Canada that offer adult content would not be able to obtain an exemption.

The legislation would also regulate the companies behind artificial intelligence chatbots by imposing on them a duty to act responsibly through measures such as crisis intervention protocols.

In Australia, social media companies have revoked access to about 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children since the country banned use of the platforms by those under 16, officials said.

The law provoked intense debate in Australia about technology use, privacy, child safety and mental health and has prompted other countries to consider similar measures.

Over a month ago, the United Kingdom had discussed a similar proposal.

AI

OpenAI weighs slashing prices in attempt to lure users from rival Anthropic: report

OpenAI is considering slashing prices in an effort to win customers from its rival Anthropic – potentially igniting a price war ahead of planned public listings this year by both companies.

The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence giant is contemplating big price cuts for its tokens, the unit of measurement AI companies use to charge for their products, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The potential price cuts come in response to similar reductions in pricing it’s expecting from Anthropic.

Businesses have acknowledge they’re thinking twice about using costly AI tools and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman has said this year that high prices are a growing challenge.

“I think we’ll have a lot of ways we can help people get more value for less spend,” Altman said at a tech conference this year.

Big price cuts could eat into profit margins for the competing companies, adding more pressure to their businesses which already burn through billions of dollars. AI requires costly computing to process queries and perform tasks.

Anthropic’s business lately has been surging, fueling perceptions that it’s pulling ahead of OpenAI. Led by CEO Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s valuation reached a whopping $965 billion in its latest $65 billion financing round — surpassing OpenAI to become the most valuable AI startup.

Anthropic’s coding tool Claude Code has surged in popularity with software engineers, powering revenue to new heights.

Signs of Anthropic’s valuation run-up flashed last month on so-called secondary markets, where shares of still-private companies are traded. Buyers scooping up coveted Anthropic shares vaulted the AI giant’s valuation on some trading platforms to $1 trillion.

According to the report, some company leaders are now seeking to rein in AI spending after pouring huge sums into Anthropic’s tools – top brass are debating whether so-called tokenmaxxing where companies go all in on AI to boost productivity is worth it. 

Such comments from many executives have triggered a debate within Silicon Valley about tokenmaxxing, or the practice of using as many tokens as possible to boost productivity, including in ways that don’t generate returns on investment.

Rural Louisiana teachers set to get $50K bonuses — all thanks to Meta’s AI data center

Some teachers in a tiny Louisiana parish are reportedly poised to pocket bonuses of more than $50,000 — a windfall powered partly by Meta’s massive AI data-center buildout.

Richland Parish School Board said teachers will receive bonuses of up to $50,935 this year, a staggering jump from last year’s maximum of $10,200, after sales-tax receipts surged during construction of Meta’s 4 million-square-foot Hyperion data center.

The payouts could exceed some teachers’ annual salaries, the Wall Street Journal reported.

District pay ranges from $29,504 to $52,335, according to the latest available school data cited in the report.

The rural parish collected $42.9 million in sales and use tax during the first nine months of the current fiscal year — more than double last year’s total, according to the Northwest Louisiana Finance Authority.

Meta separately made a $22.4 million tax payment to the parish in May, the authority said.

The teacher bonuses are funded through a 1% sales tax approved under a 1968 ordinance.

“As you can see, things like this are huge benefits to our people here,” said Scott Franklin, a director of the parish’s chamber of commerce who sold land for the data center to Meta.

“Anybody that complains about teachers getting a $50,000 check, they just instantly lose all credibility with me,” Franklin added.

Meta’s Louisiana project has become a potent counterpoint for tech giants battling rising opposition to data centers, as critics warn of strains on housing, power and affordability.

When the project was announced, Louisiana’s economic-development agency said the $10 billion facility would create 500 direct local jobs, 1,000 indirect jobs and employ 5,000 construction workers.

It remains unclear how many jobs will last after construction ends. Data centers typically require far fewer workers once operational.

Friday Ellis, mayor of nearby Monroe, estimated the project has brought about 8,000 new workers to the area.

The boom has poured money into local businesses as workers buy food, supplies and services across the region. Meta also pays taxes on construction costs through a state and local data-center equipment tax-break program.

Under that setup, Meta makes one annual payment to Richland Parish equal to 1% of its purchases. The local school district receives more than half of that payment.

MUSK

Elon Musk becomes world’s first trillionaire as SpaceX shares begin trading in biggest IPO ever

Elon Musk became the world’s first-ever trillionaire Friday as shares of his rocket company SpaceX blasted off on the stock market.

The price of the firm’s shares soared, opening at $150, on its first day of public trading — bringing the visionary-but-volatile tech titan’s net worth to nearly $1.1 trillion.

Musk’s mind-blowing 13-digit financial status means he now has more money than the gross domestic product of 197 countries — and could buy every single NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA team and all 10 of the world’s most valuable soccer teams and still have a cool $392 billion left over.

The 54-year-old entrepreneur and dad of 14 marked the occasion with a ceremonial stock market bell ringing at SpaceX’s southern Texas home, known as Starbase.

“That’s what SpaceX is all about — it’s to take the fiction out of science fiction and create an exciting, inspiring future for everyone,” he said.

To the general public, he added, “SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ultimately beyond.”

Musk grew up in an upper-middle class family in South Africa and got rich, beginning in the 1990s, by building and investing in high-growth companies such as the online payment service PayPal.

The brash businessman’s first big break was the sale of Zip2, a software startup he co-founded in 1995, which was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million.

Musk reportedly made $22 million when he sold the company in 1999.

He then used $10 million of those earnings to launch an online financial services company, known as X.com, which later became PayPal.

Musk was PayPal’s largest shareholder during its sale to eBay in 2002, reportedly netting him roughly $165 million after taxes.

The same year, he founded SpaceX using $100 million of his PayPal fortune.

He then invested $6.35 million in the electric car company Tesla in 2004 and has since raked in tens of billions of dollars in stock from the company.

Shocking three-word tweet aimed at Elon Musk unearthed that critics claim cost California billions

A profane tweet aimed at Elon Musk that eventually led him to leave California has resurfaced after the SpaceX founder became a trillionaire with his company’s record-breaking IPO.

Experts say the Golden State lost out on billions when Musk relocated his multi-trillion business empire, which includes Tesla and X, to Texas.

Now, a six-year-old tweet by the head of California’s labor unions is getting new attention for the effect it had on Musk taking his electric-car company out of the state.

“F— Elon Musk,” California Federation of Labor Unions President Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher tweeted in May 2020.

A day later, Musk replied simply: “Message received.”

He later appeared to confirm that Fletcher’s post convinced him to relocate Tesla to Texas, replying “Exactly” to an article stating that her attack caused him to make the move.

“This single tweet cost California hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes, revenue, and jobs,” investment banker John LeFevre wrote on X Friday.

“Costliest tweet in California’s history,” another said.

“‘Message received’ may be the most expensive political own-goal in California history,” a third wrote.

“How you feeling about this post today, Lorena? You screwed California,” another chimed in.

Musk left the Golden State for a variety of reasons as his politics diverged away from Democrats. He said California had become too “complacent” in trying to win over businesses and claimed the “final straw” was a California law banning school districts from requiring parents to be notified of a change in their child’s gender identification.

He also had a spat with California lawmakers over restarting his Tesla factory in California during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Friday, California Democrats including Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized Musk’s new trillionaire status.

FRAUD

Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to overturn crypto fraud conviction, 25-year prison sentence

Sam Bankman-Fried on Friday lost his bid to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence over the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded.

In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals said prosecutors’ evidence against Bankman-Fried “was, conservatively stated, robust.”

“While he was publicly reassuring customers, investors and regulators that FTX customer funds were safe, he was simultaneously using FTX as his own personal piggy bank, spending customer funds on real estate, political contributions, and investments,” Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote on behalf of the panel.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

They may next ask all the active judges on the 2nd Circuit to hear the case, or ask the US Supreme Court to take up the case.

Bankman-Fried is also seeking a pardon from President Trump, according to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Neither the White House nor the Justice Department immediately responded to requests for comment.

‘Fraud of epic proportions’

Bankman-Fried, who had been one of the cryptocurrency sector’s most influential figures and a multibillionaire before FTX’s spectacular collapse in 2022, was found guilty on seven felony charges by a federal jury in Manhattan in 2023.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan US Attorney’s office said he stole $8 billion from FTX customers to plug losses at his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research, in what they termed a “fraud of epic proportions.”

Bankman-Fried had pleaded not guilty to the two counts of fraud and five counts of conspiracy that he faced. At his trial, he admitted to making mistakes running FTX, but testified that he never stole funds.

In appealing the conviction, Bankman-Fried’s defense lawyers argued that US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the trial, improperly prevented Bankman-Fried from introducing evidence to back up his belief that FTX had enough funds to cover customer withdrawals.

The appeals court disagreed, pointing to legal precedent holding that fraud occurs the moment a defendant tricks someone into handing over money or property, even if the defendant intends to eventually make the victim whole.

PAPER OR DIODES?

Paper or pixel? Science settles divisive debate over best way to read — real books or screens

Here’s the word on the best medium for reading

A new study may have settled the contentious debate over the efficacy of digital readers versus hard copy books by observing the brain processes behind reading for each format.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, revealed that the brain may process and connect story details more efficiently by reading content printed on a page, whereas an e-reader presents letters and pictures on a static screen, thus providing fewer physical cues to help the reader grasp a story.

Researchers at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo used Japanese comic books, called manga, for their investigation of how the brain builds a “story schema,” a mental framework that organizes characters, timelines and relationships described in a narrative.

The results suggested that printed works provide tactile and spatial cues, such as the thickness of or placement of events on a page, that may better help readers mentally map a story than digital tablets can.

The research was conducted in partnership with COAMIX INC., a Japanese publisher of manga whose most popular titles include “Record of Ragnarok” and “Wakako Sake.”

Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Department of Basic Science, told PsyPost in a statement that the team was “surprised” by the results.

Researchers enlisted 25 Japanese college students, all of whom were right-handed — a parameter that would likely reduce variability in brain organization, according to the American Academy of Neurology.

Since digital devices would interfere with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) — the gold standard for observing brain activity — the participants were asked to enter the fMRI scanner just after reading the first half of a manga story, either with a physical book or on a screen. Upon entering the machine, participants then read the second half of the story through specialized goggles.

At the end of the experiment, readers took a quiz concerning the plot — some that focused on just the first half of the story, and others that required integration of the first and second parts.

Both groups earned high marks for accuracy and reading comprehension overall, but those who read from a tablet for the first half of the assigned comic took longer to answer the more complex questions that required combining information from different parts of the narrative.

“We found that both left and right hemispheres, which work during reading mostly for proper linguistic functions and supportive roles, respectively, are less engaged when manga contents are well understood through reading on paper, compared with digital reading,” Sakai told PsyPost. “This neuroscientific result is the first to show such an immediate effect of reading on paper, which would eventually change your brain.”

Researchers also found that participants who read real manga showed lower brain activity in the areas involved in language processing and narrative integration, which they interpreted as a sign that the brain is performing a task more efficiently. On the other hand, tablet readers showed more activity in those areas, as well as the areas that help support difficult cognitive tasks and spatial processing.

This indicates that device users needed more brain power to later reconstruct the story during the final test, leading to the conclusion that paper readers had built a stronger “schema” in their minds during the initial reading.
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Though research on the effects of digital reading formats is ongoing, it’s not the first study to pit tablets against printed books. A 2019 study in the journal Pediatrics also found that parents and children who read from real books together — allowing them to grasp and hold the media — bonded better than with e-readers.

“The print book is really the gold standard in eliciting positive interactions between parents and their children,” said lead researcher, University of Michigan professor Dr. Tiffany Munzer, at the time.