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Before yesterdayArs Technica

US official: Russia's stalker satellite sure looks like an orbital weapon

22 October 2026 at 14:29

Four years ago, a senior official in Russia's foreign ministry painted a bullseye on commercial satellite networks that assist Ukraine in its fight against invading Russian military forces.

On Wednesday, several days after a Russian military spacecraft moved within striking distance of one of those commercial satellites, the same Russian diplomat assured the world there's no reason to worry.

There's a sharp incongruity in those statements from Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy head of Russia's delegation to the United Nations. Vorontsov's comments Wednesday in the UN General Assembly's First Committee came moments after a US official called attention to recent maneuvers by Kosmos 2612, a Russian military craft that approached a US-registered commercial satellite some 340 miles (550 kilometers) above Earth.

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Β© UN General Assembly

Meta drops the word "train" from its commercial TOS after AI backlash

20 October 2026 at 16:07

Hoping to quell criticism, Meta has dropped the word β€œtrain” from its β€œstreamlined” commercial terms of service that kick in on October 30.

Last week, Meta faced backlash after legal experts warned that the tech giant’s sweeping new commercial terms of service seemed to give Meta permission to endlessly scrape websites linked on business pages. Talking to Nieman Lab, experts suggested that Meta could possibly use the policy to avoid millions in licensing fees from news organizations by requiring all business users to share a wealth of AI training data simply for running a business page.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that Meta did not alert users to the changed language following backlash. This potentially only adds to confusion ahead of the policy rollout. In response to backlash, Meta's spokesperson provided a statement to Ars, acknowledging Nieman Lab's initial report but not its follow-up report reiterating experts' concerns:

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Β© filo | DigitalVision Vectors

Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees

16 October 2026 at 11:41

Legal experts are sounding alarms that Meta will soon update its commercial terms to require business accounts to allow Meta to train AI on their linked website content, not just their social media posts.

Kicking in on October 30, the TOS update won’t allow businesses to opt out, instead suggesting that businesses stop using Meta services if they won’t agree to let Meta bots freely crawl their linked content.

As Nieman Lab reported Thursday, this will affect all business accounts but is particularly shocking for news publishers who could perhaps charge Meta millions in licensing fees to continually access their articles for AI training. Currently news organizations are fighting a battle with OpenAI over whether such training without licensing is fair use, and Meta's terms seemingly risk granting it sweeping permissions, no matter which way the court leans.

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Β© SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket

Super Scam Me documentary shows what it takes to catch a romance scammer

16 October 2026 at 10:00

If you got a DM from an unverified Jon Bon Jovi account after commenting on one of his official Instagram posts, what would it take to make you believe it was really the rock star hoping to connect? And at what point when he starts asking you to send moneyβ€”like lose-your-house kind of moneyβ€”would you snap out of the fantasy and stop draining your bank account?

In a documentary premiering Saturdayβ€”Super Scam Meβ€”investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller goes deep into this toxic love-bombing terrain. In a clip that Ars is exclusively debuting below, you can see how van Zeller worked with an ethical hacker, Arman the Cyber, to use a fake bitcoin receipt and bait the fake Bon Jovi, giving the victim some much-needed closure.

Sneak peek at National Geographic's Super Scam Me.

Scamming a romance scammer

Broadcasting on National Geographic at 9 pm ET and available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu, the documentary takes viewers on an empathetic quest to understand how the line between β€œlover” and β€œfraud victim” gets blurred in romance scams that the Federal Trade Commission says cost Americans nearly $1.5 billion in losses each year.

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Β© National Geographic

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