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Meta's $25B penalty, Pentagon sabotage unit, PHP attacks · Newslit Daily

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's Thursday,
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: October 22nd,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: and you are listening to Newslit Daily,
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: to supercharge your mornings.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: In today's edition,
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  SPEAKER_00: a New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion in penalties over
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  SPEAKER_00: the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
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  SPEAKER_00: The ruling follows a September jury verdict That found Meta liable for more
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  SPEAKER_00: than 43 million violations of the state's consumer protection laws
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  SPEAKER_00: for misleading Facebook users about privacy and content moderation.
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  SPEAKER_00: At the center of the case is a personality quiz app that collected data from
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  SPEAKER_00: about 87 million profiles, which was later sold to Cambridge Analytica.
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  SPEAKER_00: The state had asked for between 35 and 45 billion dollars.
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  SPEAKER_00: Meta says it will appeal,
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  SPEAKER_00: with its chief legal officer arguing the ruling makes it all but impossible
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  SPEAKER_00: to do business in New Mexico.
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  SPEAKER_00: The state's attorney general called it one of the largest verdicts ever against
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  SPEAKER_00: the company and says the money will go to education.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Pentagon has quietly built a new office whose job is to covertly disrupt
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  SPEAKER_00: and sabotage foreign technology programs seen as threats
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  SPEAKER_00: to American military superiority.
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  SPEAKER_00: Called the Technology Support Office,
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  SPEAKER_00: it was established in April through a memo signed
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  SPEAKER_00: by Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it was built by reorganizing two classified intelligence programs
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  SPEAKER_00: that had run similar efforts since 2023.
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  SPEAKER_00: Its toolkit reportedly includes custom hacking tools and deception operations meant
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  SPEAKER_00: to trick adversaries into installing faulty components in weapons.
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  SPEAKER_00: The budget has not been disclosed,
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  SPEAKER_00: though a former official estimates classified contracting could top $1.5 billion.
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  SPEAKER_00: Critics worry about secrecy and oversight,
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  SPEAKER_00: since only a few congressional staffers have been briefed.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Pentagon disputes the reporting and calls the conflict of interest concerns baseless.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hackers were going after two critical PHP flaws before the patches even shipped.
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  SPEAKER_00: Known as PHP 2 Shell,
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  SPEAKER_00: the bugs let attackers take over a server remotely,
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  SPEAKER_00: with no login required, on almost any PHP version from the last decade.
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  SPEAKER_00: Amazon spotted an exploitation attempt on October 17th,
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  SPEAKER_00: four days before the planned disclosure,
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  SPEAKER_00: and technical details leaked online on October 20th.
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  SPEAKER_00: PHP runs close to 70% of websites whose server language is known,
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  SPEAKER_00: including WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
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  SPEAKER_00: Cloudflare's chief executive said the company saw thousands of attempts in
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  SPEAKER_00: the 10 hours before disclosure and millions soon after.
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  SPEAKER_00: Patches are out, but PHP 8.1 and older will not get one, so those sites need to migrate.
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  SPEAKER_00: Meta reported third quarter revenue of $64.6 billion, up 26% and above what analysts expected.
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  SPEAKER_00: Net income was $9.86 billion, held down by a $9.9 billion charge tied to a legal settlement.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the United States
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  SPEAKER_00: and Canada have set up accounts for Muse,
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  SPEAKER_00: Meta's personal AI agent that launched in August.
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  SPEAKER_00: Meta also unveiled Muse Wonder, which it calls its first frontier model.
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  SPEAKER_00: For the fourth quarter, the company expects revenue between $73 and $76 billion.
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  SPEAKER_00: Its apps now reach 3.64 billion people every day, while headcount fell 15% over the year.
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  SPEAKER_00: Apple is adding a Made for iPhone Duo badge to App Store product pages,
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  SPEAKER_00: a day before the foldable goes on sale.
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  SPEAKER_00: The badge marks apps built for the new form factor,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Apple plans curated collections of apps and games for early buyers.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are three tiers,
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  SPEAKER_00: apps designed for the foldable,
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  SPEAKER_00: apps updated for iOS 27 that adapt automatically on the inner screen,
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  SPEAKER_00: and regular iPhone apps that behave a bit like iPhone apps on an iPad.
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  SPEAKER_00: Netflix,
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  SPEAKER_00: Prime Video, Word,
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  SPEAKER_00: Outlook, Zoom, Slack,
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  SPEAKER_00: Salesforce,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Fantastical are highlighted for the best experience,
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  SPEAKER_00: though optimized apps are a minority at launch.
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  SPEAKER_00: The phone starts at $1,999, and Apple says it is sold out through the end of January.
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  SPEAKER_00: Before we go, a quick look at what's happening in AI.
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  SPEAKER_00: Anthropic introduced Claude Douay,
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  SPEAKER_00: a proactive assistant that watches your connected apps,
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  SPEAKER_00: Flags priorities and handles tasks in the background,
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  SPEAKER_00: asking for approval before sending messages or paying for anything.
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  SPEAKER_00: OpenAI, Perturb AI,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Scripps Research used thousands of AI agents to analyze data from millions
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  SPEAKER_00: of mouse brain cells, finishing in 32 minutes work that would take months by hand.
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  SPEAKER_00: HuggingFace released CarbonX,
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  SPEAKER_00: an open model that lets researchers ask questions about DNA in plain language.
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  SPEAKER_00: Walmart opened its doors to approved AI shopping agents, While Amazon is blocking them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a new essay by Niall Ferguson and Eric Schmidt argues the world is splitting
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  SPEAKER_00: into two AI empires, the United States and China.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today.
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  SPEAKER_00: See you tomorrow.