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Why BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights still has thousands of active players

Neverwinter Nights was made by the studio that produced seminal RPGs Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. It sold well and was critically acclaimed at launch. Yet, somehow, it has not been canonized in most gamers' minds over the decades the same way the games that came before and after it were. Nonetheless, more than two decades later, it still has a tight-knit and surprisingly active community that none of those other games can rival. I think that's partly because it was a completely different beast.Read full article Comments

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OpenAI models hacked a crypto wallet and breached more websites

OpenAI said internal models hacked two more websites, bypassed company-imposed browsing restrictions, and used exposed credentials to draw cryptocurrency from a wallet it couldn’t otherwise access, in the latest installment of disclosures of its agents performing unethical and likely illegal acts. The company on Thursday issued reports of four new incidents, all of which occurred in June. They come after the company revealed in July that internal test agents exploited a zero-day vulnerability in a tool designed to restrict their access to the Internet. They then broke into the network of AI tool provider Hugging Face. The agents took that illegal action to steal answers to a hacking test that weren’t available when completing the tasks on their own. The incident—which likely would have resulted in criminal charges had they been performed directly by a person—has further heightened concerns that widespread AI use could have harmful effects on an unprecedented scale. Easier to beg for forgiveness than ask permission In two of the cases reported Thursday, OpenAI agents tasked with retrieving information from websites hacked them when the models ran into obstacles obtaining it directly. In one incident during reinforcement training, a model that received access denials when trying to retrieve historical hospital-bed statistics on a government statistics website “used the site's file-download feature to retrieve server configuration and application files, including sensitive credentials,” OpenAI said. “It inspected the application code, bypassed the statistics endpoint's authorization checks, and retrieved data that had previously been denied. The model saved the data locally.”Read full article Comments

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“thegentlemanpervert” producing AI CSAM is a NJ prosecutor, say cops

New Jersey’s deputy attorney general, Brian Richard Fitzgerald, was arrested on “felony charges related to AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM),” Bucks County Detectives said in a press release Thursday. In the US, cops have vowed to crack down on AI CSAM since at least 2024, when the Department of Justice made one of the earliest arrests. After charging a Wisconsin man with spreading “thousands of realistic images of prepubescent minors” across Telegram and Instagram, the DOJ clarified to law enforcement that “CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM.” New Jersey’s deputy attorney general, Brian Richard Fitzgerald, was arrested at his home Thursday. Credit: via Bucks County Detectives On Thursday, New Jersey officials accused 51-year-old Fitzgerald of using AI to make photos from social media of real minors into sexualized images that he then distributed on social media.Read full article Comments

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US Rep proposes bill to give video game buyers “ownership,” not “a license”

A new bill proposed by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) aims to establish new regulations that would ensure that "buying a video game would give the consumer ownership of the game rather than a license to play it," including assurances that they can continue to access the games for years after they are released. The announcement names NBA 2K25 as an example of the problem the bill aims to solve; that game launched on September 6, 2025, but is scheduled to become unplayable on December 31 due to server shutdowns. The bill, which is called the Power to Players Act, directs the FTC to take action to prevent outcomes like that in the future.Read full article Comments

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Bug turns one of the biggest fears about Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses into reality

Some Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses were recording people’s conversations without the wearer knowing. The recordings occurred without users saying the prompt phrase (“Hey, Meta”), in a bug that Meta says has been fixed. This week, some users reported online that their Ray-Ban Metas were recording without their consent. A person going by Kindly-Audience-137 on Reddit, for example, said this happened to them across three Meta Ray-Bans and that they had the “Respond without Hey Meta” setting turned off. The person said the Meta AI app “saves audio recordings and text transcripts of these conversations in my conversation history.” “I believe this deserves a serious technical investigation. Customers should not have to wonder whether their private conversations are being captured when they have not intentionally activated their glasses’ AI assistant,” the Reddit user said.Read full article Comments

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RFK Jr. proposes FDA look the other way on unproven peptides, report says

Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration is moving forward with plans to ease access to unproven peptide drugs that are popular among members of Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again movement—despite FDA staff scientists finding that the drugs have not been sufficiently studied to establish safety and efficacy and may cause harms. The FDA submitted an "Interim Access Policy" on peptides for review by the White House, according to a filing notice posted on an Office of Management and Budget website. The posting does not provide information on the proposed policy. But people familiar with the proposal told The Associated Press that it would give the FDA "enforcement discretion" on certain peptide drugs. This would allow the agency to choose not to enforce current restrictions on peptides and provide an assurance to specialty pharmacies eager to start making them that they will not be targeted by the agency. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, did not respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.Read full article Comments

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An Nvidia insider-turned-VC on why robotics hasn’t hit its ChatGPT moment, yet

Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt. This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have […]

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

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.Read full article Comments