The Supreme Court is taking up a case on whether Paramount violated the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by disclosing a user's viewing history to Facebook. The case, Michael Salazar v. Paramount Global , hinges on the law's definition of the word "consumer."

Salazar filed a class action against Paramount in 2022, alleging that it "violated the VPPA by disclosing his personally identifiable information to Facebook without consent," Salazar's petition to the Supreme Court said. Salazar had signed up for an online newsletter through 247Sports.com, a site owned by Paramount, and had to provide his email address in the process. Salazar then used 247Sports.com to view videos while logged in to his Facebook account.

"As a result, Paramount disclosed his personally identifiable information—including his Facebook ID and which videos he watched—to Facebook," the petition said. "The disclosures occurred automatically because of the Facebook Pixel Paramount installed on its website. Facebook and Paramount then used this information to create and display targeted advertising, which increased their revenues."

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One of NASA's three large WB-57 aircraft made an emergency landing at Ellington Field on Tuesday morning in southeastern Houston.

Video captured by KHOU 11 television showed the aircraft touching down on the runway without its landing gear extended. The pilot then maintains control of the vehicle as it slides down the runway, slowing the aircraft through friction. The crew was not harmed, NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said.

"Today, a mechanical issue with one of NASA’s WB-57s resulted in a gear-up landing at Ellington Field," she said. "Response to the incident is ongoing, and all crew are safe at this time. As with any incident, a thorough investigation will be conducted by NASA into the cause. NASA will transparently update the public as we gather more information."

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LG has launched a subscription program in the UK that allows people to make monthly payments in order to rent LG TVs, soundbars, monitors, and speakers.

LG Flex customers can sign up for one, two, or three-year subscriptions in order to get lower monthly payments.

“At the end of your subscription, you can apply for a free upgrade, keep paying monthly, or return your device,” the LG Flex website says. Subscribers will have to pay a £50 (about $69) fee for a “full removal service,” including dismounting and packaging, of rental TVs.

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Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and death. These can be the consequences for vulnerable kids who get addicted to social media, according to more than 1,000 personal injury lawsuits that seek to punish Meta and other platforms for allegedly prioritizing profits while downplaying child safety risks for years.

Social media companies have faced scrutiny before, with Congressional hearings forcing CEOs to apologize , but until now, they've never had to convince a jury that they aren't liable for harming kids.

This week, the first high-profile lawsuit—considered a "bellwether" case that could set meaningful precedent in the hundreds of other complaints—goes to trial. That lawsuit documents the case of a 19-year-old, K.G.M, who hopes the jury will agree that Meta and YouTube caused psychological harm by designing features like infinite scroll and autoplay to push her down a path that she alleged triggered depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality.

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Large swathes of the US were blanketed in snow and ice over the weekend, and what better way to spend a snow day than going down a YouTube rabbit hole? Everyone has their favorite oddity: ASMR , jazzy pop song covers , cooking channels , or what have you. But DIY enthusiasts in particular are missing out if they're not watching Drain Cleaning Australia , featuring an Australian plumber known only as Bruce as he goes about his daily business of shooting high-powered water jets into stubborn clogged drainage systems. It's "the YouTube channel you never knew you needed." And it's done so well that he's now launched a second channel, Bruce the Plumber .

I stumbled upon the Drain Cleaning Australia channel via Amy Poehler 's Good Hang podcast episode with Kate McKinnon, who is a big fan and does a dead-on delivery of Bruce's trademark lines ("You little rippah!"). Bruce never appears in his videos, apart from his hands and the occasional shadow as he films various challenging jobs with his intrepid smartphone. He seems to have struck a good balance between online popularity and protecting his personal privacy. (Bruce did not respond to our interview request. It's okay, mate, we know all those drains Down Under aren't going to unclog themselves.)

Armed with his trusty collection of jet nozzles and "Mister Plungey," Bruce has removed all manner of nasty things from drains over the years: masses of human hair from shower drains; tree roots ; plastic bags and other refuse that somehow found their way into drainage systems ; and the less said about the many clogged toilets , the better.

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It can be hard sometimes to keep up with the deluge of generative AI in Google products. Even if you try to avoid it all, there are some features that still manage to get in your face. Case in point: AI Overviews. This AI-powered search experience has a reputation for getting things wrong, but you may notice some improvements soon. Google says AI Overviews is being upgraded to the latest Gemini 3 models with a more conversational bent.

In just the last year, Google has radically expanded the number of searches on which you get an AI Overview at the top. Today, the chatbot will almost always have an answer for your query, which has relied mostly on models in Google's Gemini 2.5 family. There was nothing wrong with Gemini 2.5 as generative AI models go, but Gemini 3 is a little better by every metric.

There are, of course, multiple flavors of Gemini 3, and Google doesn't like to be specific about which ones appear in your searches. What Google does say is that AI Overviews chooses the right model for the job. So if you're searching for something simple for which there are a lot of valid sources, AI Overviews may manifest something like Gemini 3 Flash without running through a ton of reasoning tokens. For a complex "long tail" query, it could step up the thinking or move to Gemini 3 Pro (for paying subscribers).

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Volvo provided flights from Austin, Texas, to Stockholm, Sweden, and accommodation so Ars could learn about its new seatbelt. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

With the launch of its all-new, all-electric EX60 , Volvo has put lessons learned from the EX30 and EX90 to use. The EX60 is built on Volvo’s new SPA3 platform, made only for battery-electric vehicles. It boasts up to 400 miles (643 km) of range, with fast-charging capabilities Volvo says add 173 miles (278 km) in 10 minutes. Mega casting reduces the number of parts of the rear floor from 100-plus to one piece crafted of aluminum alloy, reducing complexities and weld points.

Inside the cabin, however, the real achievement is Volvo’s new multi-adaptive safety belt. Volvo has a history with the modern three-point safety belt, which was perfected by in-house engineer Nils Bohlin in 1959 before the patent was shared with the world. Today at the Volvo Cars Safety Center lab, at least one brand-new Volvo is crashed every day in the name of science. The goal: to test not just how well its vehicles are protecting passengers but what the next frontier is in safety technology.

Senior Safety Technical Leader Mikael Ljung Aust is a driving behavior specialist with 20 years under his belt at Volvo. He says it’s easy to optimize testing toward one person or one test point and come up with a good result. However, both from the behavioral perspective and from physics, people are different. What’s not different, he points out, is how people drive.

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When Apple stops supporting older iPhones and iPads with the latest version of iOS or iPadOS, it usually isn't the end of the line—Apple keeps releasing new security-only patches for those devices for another year or two, keeping them usable while their hardware is still reasonably capable.

Once those updates dry up, it's rare for Apple to revisit those older operating systems, but the company does sometimes make exceptions. That was the case yesterday, when the company released a batch of updates for long-retired iOS and iPadOS versions that otherwise hadn't seen a new patch in months or years. Those updates include iOS 12.5.8, available for devices as old as 2013's iPhone 5S and 2014's iPhone 6; iOS 15.8.6, available for devices like the iPhone 6S, iPhone 7, and iPad Air 2; and iOS 16.7.13, available for devices like the iPhone 8 and iPhone X.

Both iOS 15 and iOS 16 were last patched in mid-2025, but iOS 12's last patch was released in January of 2023.

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Gen. Michael Guetlein, the senior officer in charge of the US military's planned Golden Dome missile defense shield, has laid out an audacious schedule for deploying a network of space-based sensors and interceptors by the end of President Donald Trump's term in the White House.

The three-year timeline is aggressive, with little margin for error in the event of budget or technological setbacks. The shield is designed to defend the US homeland against a range of long-range weapons, including Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), cruise missiles, and newer threats like hypersonic weapons and drones.

"By the summer of '28, we will be able to defend the entire nation against ballistic missiles, as well as other generation aerial threats, and we will continue to grow that architecture through 2035," Guetlein said Friday in a presentation to representatives from the US defense industry.

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