Three years after saying it had stopped buying location data of Americans without a warrant, the FBI acknowledged it has restarted the purchases. During questioning at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing yesterday, FBI Director Kash Patel said the location data purchases have produced valuable information, and he did not commit to stopping the practice.

In March 2023, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the agency had previously bought location data of US citizens without obtaining a warrant. "To my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information that includes location data derived from Internet advertising,” Wray, who led the agency during Trump's first term and during the Biden era, said at the time. “I understand that we previously—as in the past—purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that’s not been active for some time.”

At yesterday's hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) recounted Wray's 2023 statement and asked Patel, "Is that the case still and, if so, can you commit this morning to not buying Americans' location data?"

Patel answered, "The FBI uses all tools to do our mission. We do purchase commercially available information that's consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us."

Wyden replied, "So you're saying that the agency will buy Americans' location data. I believe that that's what you've said in kind of intelligence lingo, and I just want to say as we start this debate, doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end-run around the 4th Amendment. It's particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information."

Tom Cotton defends data purchases

Wyden called Patel's admission "exhibit A for why Congress needs to pass our bipartisan, bicameral bill, the Government Surveillance Reform Act." The bill, introduced in the Senate by Wyden and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), would generally prohibit the federal government from buying location information on people in the US without a warrant or order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The bill provision would also protect US residents' communications content, web browsing history, and Internet search history.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the government needs a warrant to obtain cell-site location information, time-stamped records generated when a phone connects to a cell site. But the ruling pertained to obtaining the data directly from wireless carriers, not from third-party data brokers. Major wireless carriers have sold customer location data to data aggregators, allegedly without their users' consent, and are fighting the Federal Communications Commission's attempt to punish them for the sales. Data brokers typically obtain location data from app makers.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, defended the FBI's location data purchases. Cotton compared buying location data to law enforcement searching through a person's trash.

"I would observe about commercially available data that the key words are commercially available," Cotton said. "If any other person can buy it and the FBI can buy it and it helps them locate a depraved child molester or savage cartel leader, I certainly hope the FBI is doing anything they can to keep Americans safe. It's not much different from longstanding Supreme Court precedent that, for instance, says law enforcement can go through trash that you put on the side of the curb because you no longer have a privacy interest in it."

Congress is debating whether to reauthorize FISA's Section 702 before an April 19, 2026, expiration date, and under what terms. Cotton said at yesterday's hearing, "I fully support President Trump’s request for a clean reauthorization of FISA Section 702." The alternative version pitched by Wyden, Lee, and others would reauthorize Section 702 with changes to scale back surveillance authority.

Wyden followed up on his exchange with Patel by asking the FBI director about his recent allegation that his phone records were subpoenaed by the FBI during the Biden administration. "One more question, Director Patel," Wyden said. "You, three weeks ago, indicated you were dissatisfied about having your phone records subpoenaed. Do you think the government ought to get a court order to collect phone records?"

Patel answered, "Senator, in my experience the government does get court orders to obtain phone records."

FBI not alone in buying location data

Wyden separately queried Defense Intelligence Agency Director James Adams about purchases of location data. "In 2021, your agency confirmed that it had purchased and searched domestic location data," Wyden said. "Is it still your agency's position that you can buy Americans' location data without a warrant and, if so, are you still doing it?"

Adams answered that all of the Defense Intelligence Agency's "purchasing of commercially available information... is passed through legal channels and is in complete compliance with laws," and "in alignment with the Constitution and protects US persons' information."

Wyden also questioned William Hartman, who is chief of the Central Security Service and is leading the US Cyber Command and National Security Agency in an acting capacity. Wyden brought up the 2024 renewal of FISA, in which Congress expanded the category of electronic communication service providers who are required to help the government obtain communications.

Privacy advocates warned during the 2024 debate that the bill would let the federal government access communications equipment used by almost any business in the US. At yesterday's hearing, Wyden said the 2024 FISA renewal "expanded the type of companies and individuals who could be forced to assist the government in its spying," and asked Hartman whether "this expansion resulted in any intelligence."

Hartman answered that the "provision provided us an ability to collect foreign intelligence on personnel outside of the United States," but declined to discuss more specifics in public. "I would prefer to talk to you about exact specifics in the closed session," Hartman said to Wyden.

FISA expansion may not have produced much intel

The 2024 update to the law imposed requirements on any “service provider who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications," with exceptions for public accommodation facilities, dwellings, community facilities, and food service establishments. While the law's wording is broad, the language was reportedly intended to compel operators of data centers to comply with the warrantless surveillance program.

Wyden argued that the 2024 update let the government collect data from "anybody with access to a cable box, a Wi-Fi router, or a server," and said that Hartman's response indicated the change did not lead to any valuable intelligence. "This ought to be a warning to every senator that not every new spying power that is sold as urgent and critical actually is," Wyden said.

Hartman subsequently clarified that "nothing in [Section] 702 gives us the authority to target an American with a cable router or a Wi-Fi device."

We don't know whether the topic was addressed further in a closed session, but Wyden's office told Ars that he was not satisfied with Hartman's answer. "Not only was the controversial 2024 FISA expansion written so broadly that it gave the government expansive new authority to compel Americans to assist with government surveillance, yesterday the NSA would not even claim that it produced a single piece of intelligence," Wyden said in a statement provided to Ars. "Congress must repeal this expansion, which is ripe for abuse by the executive branch.”

Separately, the NSA in 2024 admitted buying records from data brokers detailing which websites and apps Americans use.

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Apple's MacBook Neo is impressive for its $600 price, but its A18 Pro processor is one of its biggest compromises compared to a modern MacBook Air—in our review, we found it was more than up to basic computing tasks, but for demanding workloads that benefit from more CPU and GPU cores and RAM, the Air is a better choice.

But those limited computing resources are still enough to run Windows on your Mac using the Parallels Desktop virtualization software—so says Parallels itself, which after some testing and benchmarking has declared the Neo suitable for "lightweight computing and everyday productivity, document editing, and web-based apps" while running Windows 11.

Parallels says the MacBook Neo's respectable single-core CPU performance keeps the Neo feeling "quick and responsive" when running multiple Windows-only software packages, including QuickBooks Desktop and other accounting apps, Microsoft Office, "light engineering and data tools" including AutoCAD LT and MATLAB, and "Windows-only courseware and education software" with "no Mac equivalent." In Parallels' testing, the Neo's single-core CPU performance in Windows was still roughly 20 percent faster compared to a Core Ultra 5 235U chip in a Dell Pro 14 laptop.

The Neo falls short in the same places it does in macOS—sustained multi-core CPU and GPU workloads and tasks that benefit from lots and lots of RAM. A Parallels support document notes that "CAD, 3D rendering, and graphics-heavy Windows applications are not recommended" on the Neo and that "running macOS and Windows simultaneously benefits from 16GB [of RAM] or more." The Neo's aggressive performance throttling under heavy load—something we tested extensively in our review—also keeps it from running these heavier applications well.

Virtual machines like the ones Parallels creates are quite resource-intensive because you're running an entire second operating system on your computer, and that virtualized OS will compete with the host operating system for CPU time, RAM, and disk access. Further complicating things is the fact that you're virtualizing the Arm version of Windows on an Apple Silicon Mac, and there's additional performance overhead that comes from running older x86 Windows apps on an Arm chip (though Microsoft's Prism translation layer and an influx of Arm-native Windows apps in recent years have made this situation a lot better than it used to be).

Parallels can run the x86 versions of Windows and Linux on Apple Silicon Macs, but the processor emulation required for that is even more performance-intensive than typical virtualization, making the Neo a bad fit.

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News shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

Halloween Will Be Saved by Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom

This small sheep is demonstrating excellent pumpkin-carving technique

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 19, 2026

Screenshot: Aardman Animation

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Screenshot: Aardman Animation

Perhaps that headline is a slight exaggeration. For one thing, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom arrives in theaters in September. But Shaun—and his many ovine friends—are going to save Halloween from a strange, mop-headed beast. Possibly the beast is no beast at all. Possibly they could all just be friends! But they’ve got some horror references (Dracula, Night of the Living Dead, Psycho, … The Simpsons?) and hijinx to get through first.

The Beast of Mossy Bottom is the third film to feature Shaun and the flock, following 2015’s Shaun the Sheep Movie and 2019’s A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon. These excellent films come from the good folks at Aardman Animation, who are also the creators of Wallace and Gromit. You kind of can’t go wrong with Aardman.

Here’s the synopsis that was on offer when the movie was announced last year. Though I think you don’t really need a synopsis, you know? There are some adorable sheep. They are scared of a big tall beast. It is a Halloween movie. Maybe the beast just had a costume malfunction?

Steve Cox and Matthew Walker, both longtime Aardman collaborators, make their directorial debut with this film, which is written by Shaun the Sheep regulars Mark Burton (A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon) and Giles Pilbrow (the TV series Shaun the Sheep: Adventures from Mossy Bottom). I have now typed the word “sheep” so many times that it has nearly lost all meaning, but I’m still looking forward to this film, which is in theaters September 18th. Baaa![end-mark]

The post Halloween Will Be Saved by <i>Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom</i> appeared first on Reactor.

The legal firm that is apparently handling at least some of the Anthropic Copyright Settlement case has started sending out notifications of some sort to presumably affected parties. Small problem: Some of these were sent not to the addresses of the presumably affected parties, but to mine.

I have not opened these notifications, as they are not addressed to me, so I don’t know what’s in them or what they say, and I will be henceforth disposing of these notifications unopened. However, if you are Jody Lynn Nye, Sarah Hoyt, Eric S. Brown, Christopher Smith, or the estate of Eric Flint, please be aware that JND Legal Administration is trying to inform you of something (probably that you have works that are eligible to be part of the class action suit).

I have contacted the firm in question and told them about these incorrect addresses and, for the avoidance of doubt, also informed them at no other affected author than me lives at my address. Hopefully that will take. That said, I would not be surprised if I get more notifications, not for me. What a wonderful age of information we live in.

— JS

President Trump and the Federal Communications Commission chairman are demanding more positive media coverage of the Iran war. On Saturday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr issued yet another threat to revoke licenses from news broadcasters, claiming without evidence that they are running "hoaxes and news distortions" related to the war in Iran.

In an X post, Carr shared a complaint about an Iran war headline that Trump had made on Truth Social and added his own commentary. "Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up," Carr wrote. "The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not."

Carr making vague threats about enforcing rules against hoaxes and news distortion is nothing new. Given how difficult it is to actually revoke a broadcast license, and the fact that no TV station licenses are up for renewal until 2028, the threats so far have been attempts to intimidate news organizations without any concrete punishment.

What's slightly odd about Carr's latest threat is that it's based on a Trump complaint about a newspaper headline, not broadcast news coverage. The Trump post that spurred Carr's latest threat was about a Wall Street Journal article.

Carr has repeatedly claimed he's only targeting licensed broadcasters because they have an obligation to operate in the public interest as users of the public airwaves. Carr said in his Saturday message, "The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves." But the only example Carr provided was Trump's Truth Social post that didn't mention any broadcast reports.

Trump's quibble

Trump's complaint said, "Yet again, an intentionally misleading headline by the Fake News Media about the five tanker planes that were supposedly struck down at an Airport in Saudi Arabia, and of no further use. In actuality, the Base was hit a few days ago, but the planes were not 'struck' or 'destroyed.' Four of the five had virtually no damage, and are already back in service. One had slightly more damage, but will be in the air shortly. None were destroyed, or close to that, as the Fake News said in headlines."

The only specific news outlets Trump's post mentioned were The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, but he was referring to a Wall Street Journal article. Even if Trump's version of events is true, his complaint wouldn't meet the legal standard for proving a hoax or news distortion, or even prove that the Journal got anything wrong. Trump claims the planes were not "struck" but said four out of five "had virtually no damage," which seemingly indicates that all five were struck and suffered some damage.

Trump's post seems to accuse the Journal of falsely reporting that the planes were destroyed and would not be used again. But the Journal article makes it clear the planes were merely damaged, not destroyed, and would be repaired. It said:

Five US Air Force refueling planes were struck and damaged on the ground at Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia, according to two US officials.

The tankers were hit during an Iranian missile strike on the Saudi base in recent days, the officials said. US Central Command declined to comment. The tankers were damaged but not fully destroyed and are being repaired, one of the officials said. No one was killed in the strikes.

The Journal article was published on Friday, and Trump issued his complaint on Truth Social on Saturday morning. The Journal article was updated on Saturday afternoon to include a quote from Trump's Truth Social post. As far as we can tell, the article never claimed that any of the five tanker planes were destroyed. A Reuters article on Friday that quotes the WSJ report also uses the phrases "struck and damaged," and "not fully destroyed," undercutting Trump's claim of false reporting.

The Journal article's only reference to destroyed planes is related to a previous crash that killed six US military members. It said:

The news brings the total number of Air Force refueling planes damaged or destroyed to at least seven. It comes after two Air Force KC-135 refueling planes collided on Thursday, leading one of the aircraft to crash into the ground. All six crew members were killed, the Pentagon announced on Friday.

Trump "thrilled" by Carr's latest threat

While it doesn't appear that the Journal got anything wrong, it was the only example Carr provided in his complaint about fake news, hoaxes, and news distortions.

"It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news," Carr wrote. "When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in [sic] the face of hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong. It means the public has lost faith and confidence in the media. And we can’t allow that to happen. Time for change!"

Carr has repeatedly made statements of this sort during Trump's second term despite writing himself in 2019 that the government should not "censor speech it doesn’t like" and that the "FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the 'public interest.'"

Trump wrote last night that he is "thrilled to see Brendan Carr... looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic 'News' Organizations. They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings, and never get, as I used to say in The Apprentice, 'FIRED.'"

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is also demanding more positive media coverage of the Iran war. Criticizing CNN reporting at a press conference on Friday, Hegseth said, "The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better." Hegseth was referring to Paramount Skydance's planned purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that was helped along by the Trump administration.

Carr's threat to broadcast licenses was roundly criticized by Democrats. "If Trump doesn't like your coverage of the war, his FCC will pull your broadcast license. That is flagrantly unconstitutional," California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote, "Constitutional law 101: it’s illegal for the government to censor free speech it just doesn’t like about Trump’s Iran war. This threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook." Carr replied by quoting the Supreme Court's Red Lion Broadcasting decision in 1969, which said, "No one has a First Amendment right to a license or to monopolize a radio frequency; to deny a station license because 'the public interest' requires it 'is not a denial of free speech.'"

"This is worse than the comedian stuff"

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote, "This is a clear directive to provide positive war coverage or else licenses may not be renewed. This is worse than the comedian stuff, and by a lot. The stakes here are much higher. He’s not talking about late night shows, he’s talking about how a war is covered."

Schatz was referring to Carr's previous threats to stations regarding late-night talk show hosts such as ABC host Jimmy Kimmel. Even some Republicans criticized Carr's Kimmel threats last year.

FCC Democrat Anna Gomez said the agency's threats are dangerous because they have a chilling effect on media coverage. But the threats themselves have no legal backing, she said.

"Once again, this FCC pretends it has the power to control news coverage," Gomez said in a statement today. "In reality, the FCC has vanishingly little power over national news networks. It licenses local broadcast stations, not networks, and no licenses are up for renewal until 2028. Early renewal attempts are exceedingly rare, and the process is so demanding that any effort would almost certainly fail, especially given the well-documented First Amendment violations underlying these moves. These threats are grounded in neither reality nor law and would not survive judicial scrutiny, just as other recent attempts by this administration to push beyond constitutional limits have repeatedly failed in court."

At least one Republican seems concerned about Carr's latest threat. On Fox News yesterday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was asked about Carr threatening broadcast licenses over Iran war coverage, and whether he thinks it is the role of government to police that kind of coverage.

"I'm a big supporter of the First Amendment," Johnson responded. "I do not like the heavy hand of government no matter who's wielding it. I'd rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible. And really, the federal government's role is to protect our freedoms, to protect our constitutional rights."

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Fixing up old cars is good for the soul. It might not always feel like it between fixing old bodges and shovelling bulk greenbacks into the parts counter furnace, but it’s a slow and methodical process in a world full of instant gratification. The flipside is that it usually isn’t an investment, in the sense that you’ll almost never see the money you spent return to your account. Just ask Kia Chief Designer and Autopian podcast guest Tom Kearns.

He recently sold a strange and special project on Bring A Trailer, a wonderfully weird Porsche that often slides under the radar. It’s an oft-forgotten model from the 1990s that’s both very much if-you-know-you-know and relatively cheap for how rare it is. It’s definitely the car you fix up because you adore it, and that tracks with what Kearns wrote on Instagram:

It was a passion project and I spent way more on it than it will ever be worth. My loss is your gain! These are incredible cars, drive one to find out.

Off the bat, a Porsche 968 certainly isn’t an obvious choice for a project car. Essentially the final evolution of the 924 coupe, this re-jigged ’70s machine for the ’90s wasn’t a massive commercial success. Thanks in part to unfavorable Deutsch Mark exchange rates and the early-1990s recession, only 4,665 of these flip-forward-headlight sports cars ever made it to North America. The split between coupes and convertibles? Pretty much even.

However, take a second and look at the lineage: The 968 built upon the 944, which was once lauded as the best-handling car in America. Indeed, balanced weight distribution and a high polar moment of inertia thanks to a rear-mounted transaxle makes any of these four-cylinder water-cooled cars sweet treats to enjoy today. And that’s before we get into the relative firepower under the hood of this 968.

How much displacement must a four-cylinder engine have to be considered big? Anything over 2.5 liters is usually enough to do the trick, but the 968 took things a step further with a three-liter inline-four. To be precise, that’s 747.5 cubic centimeters per cylinder. Enormous stuff, yet it sort of makes sense. A four-cylinder engine worked best with the harmonics of the car’s torque tube, and a combination of 16 valves, two camshafts, variable valve timing, and an 11:1 compression ratio resulted in a strong 237 horsepower. Mitsubishi-licensed balance shafts kept everything smooth, and a six-speed manual transaxle converted rotation into forward motion. The result was zero-to-60 mph in about six seconds, enough to put a naturally aspirated Nissan 300ZX in its place.

Tempting stuff, but of course Kearns didn’t settle on just any 968. First, he managed to find one of the best colors Porsche offered. Called Wimbledon Green Metallic, this lovely shade of teal pulses with post-Cold War optimism as it shifts from near-blue to green depending on light and shadow. Then Kearns found the single U.S.-spec 968 in Wimbledon Green Metallic with a Light Grey leather interior. While that sounds a bit dreary, Porsche’s Light Grey leather of the time was more of an off-white, meaning the ambience inside is simply superb.

Of course, it would’ve been one thing to simply enjoy an older car for a couple of seasons, but it seems that Kearns wanted it done right. As the listing states:

Over $20k of work under current ownership included reupholstering the seats and portions of the interior, dent repair and paintwork on the left quarter panel, installing replacement 17″ Cup I alloy wheels, tires, front control arm bushings, tires, timing belt, engine mounts, door lock solenoids, window felts and outer seals, knock sensor, heater valve, accessory drive belts, and assorted air conditioning components.

That might seem like an insane amount of money to spend on a 108,000-mile car normally worth between $20,000 and $25,000, but weirdly, I understand. Refreshing rubber bits like bushings and window seals makes a car drive tighter and quieter, taking care of the cosmetics makes it look nicer, ensuring everything works makes it more pleasant to live with, and knocking out the major maintenance items adds huge peace of mind. In some ways, it’s not dissimilar to what I’ve been doing with my Boxster, a true labor of love.

However, perhaps because Kearns found a unicorn spec and because he lavished so much attention on this 968, the hammer price came out to a tidy $43,218. Still a lot of money for a non-CS, non-Turbo S Porsche 968, but again, love makes us do funny things. There’s a certain sincerity about this 968. It’s not a car you restore for Instagram likes or cars and coffee flexing or any sort of clout, and that’s part of what makes it cool. Kudos to Tom Kearns for taking this 968, making it really nice again, and putting a few thousand miles on it in the process.

Top graphic image: Bring A Trailer

The post Kia’s Chief Designer Just Sold A Weird Porsche He Spent ‘More On’ Than It’ll Ever Be Worth appeared first on The Autopian.