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Finland suspects an oil tanker that is part of Russia’s shadow fleet of damaging an underwater electricity cable and three communication cables, opening an investigation into the vessel for aggravated sabotage. 

The Eagle S was stopped by Finnish authorities after the Estlink 2 subsea electricity cable in the Gulf of Finland was disconnected on Wednesday. The tanker, which is registered in the Cook Islands and is carrying oil from Russia to Egypt according to ship tracking data, was seen passing over the cable at the time of the incident.

Finnish police said on Thursday that they believe the vessel’s anchor, which they did not find on the ship, cut the cables.

If this Court prohibits Google from sharing revenue for search distribution, Apple would have two unacceptable choices. It could still let users in the United States choose Google as a search engine for Safari, but Apple could not receive any share of the resulting revenue, so Google would obtain valuable access to Apple's users at no cost. Or Apple could remove Google Search as a choice on Safari. But because customers prefer Google, removing it as an option would harm both Apple and its customers.

As reported by MacRumors, Cue said Apple making its own general search engine would be “economically risky” and suggests AI chatbots are the next big evolution to search. Apple also noted in the filing that it would have to adopt targeted advertising as a core service to make search viable, which would fit badly with its privacy-focused business model.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has traveled to within just 3.86 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface — a new record — on Christmas Eve. You can follow Parker’s landmark moment on NASA’s Eyes On The Solar System page.

In one of humankind’s most impressive feats of space exploration, Tuesday, Dec. 24 saw a heavily armored NASA spacecraft — no bigger than a small car — become the closest human-made object to the sun in history. It also saw humanity’s closest-ever approach to a star and the fastest-ever human-made object break its speed record.

In the last few years, Apple has been sending notifications to targets and victims of government spyware, alerting them that they may have been hacked, and directing them to get help. Crucially, Apple doesn’t tell the targets to get in touch with its own security engineers, but with the nonprofit Access Now, which runs a digital helpline for people in civil society who suspect they have been targets of government spyware.

“Apple detected that you are being targeted by a mercenary spyware attack that is trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple Account,” reads a recent alert, which Access Now shared with TechCrunch. “This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it’s never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning — please take it seriously.”

While it may look like Apple is abdicating its responsibility to protect its users, cybersecurity experts who work with human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents generally agree that Apple’s approach in alerting victims to spyware attacks is the right one.

Qualcomm Inc. prevailed at trial against Arm Holdings Plc’s claim that it breached a license for chip technology that the world’s largest maker of mobile-phone processors acquired when it bought a startup in 2021.

Jurors in federal court in Delaware concluded Friday that Qualcomm didn’t violate the terms of an agreement covering Arm’s chip products acquired in a $1.4 billion purchase of Nuvia Inc. by incorporating the technology in its chips without paying a higher licensing rate. Jurors weren’t able to agree on whether Nuvia breached the license and US District Judge Maryellen Noreika said that issue could be retried at a later date.

Oliver Darcy reported this fall in his newsletter, Status, that Swisher was "interested in assembling a consortium of wealthy investors to make a bid for the paper."

Since then, a banker who worked with Swisher in the past has been helping her think through how to move the idea forward. The storied paper would be run by a board of civic-minded people willing to write a big check to be part of something important. She'd be open to Bezos remaining a partial investor.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday sued the operator of the Zelle payments network and the three U.S. banks that dominant transactions on it, alleging that the firms failed to properly investigate fraud complaints or give victims reimbursement.

The CFPB said customers of the three banks — JPMorgan Chase , Bank of America and Wells Fargo — have lost more than $870 million since the launch of Zelle in 2017.

Zelle, a peer-to-peer payments network run by bank-owned fintech firm Early Warning Services, allows for instant payments to other consumers and businesses and has quickly surged to become the biggest such service in the country.

On Wednesday, that prediction looked spot on. Wielding the social media platform he purchased for $44 billion in 2022, Mr. Musk detonated a rhetorical nuclear bomb in the middle of government shutdown negotiations on Capitol Hill.

In more than 150 separate posts on X, Mr. Musk demanded that Republicans back away from a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. He vowed political retribution against anyone voting for the sprawling bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Apple Inc. has halted work on a project to build an iPhone hardware subscription service, according to people familiar with the matter, retreating from an attempt to change the way consumers buy its flagship device.

The idea was to make owning an iPhone like subscribing to an app — with consumers paying monthly fees and getting new phones each year — but Apple recently wound down the effort, according to people familiar with the matter. The team was disbanded and reassigned to other projects, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work was confidential.

U.S. authorities are investigating whether a Chinese company whose popular home-internet routers have been linked to cyberattacks poses a national-security risk and are considering banning the devices.

The router-manufacturer TP-Link, established in China, has roughly 65% of the U.S. market for routers for homes and small businesses. It is also the top choice on Amazon.com, and powers internet communications for the Defense Department and other federal government agencies.

As noted by Chris Carley, it’s now possible to use Look Around in the web version of Apple Maps. According to the Look Map website, which lets users check the coverage of the main map platforms, the feature was added by Apple around December 11.

For those unfamiliar, Look Around is Apple’s version of Street View. The feature was introduced in 2019 with iOS 13 and lets users explore their surroundings with 360-degree panoramic views. Where available, Look Around can be accessed by tapping or clicking on the binoculars icon in Apple Maps.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will take up a challenge to a new law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in the U.S, setting up a showdown over access to a widely popular app used by tens of millions of Americans.

Arguments will be heard by the high court on Jan. 10, an expedited timeline that allows for the court to consider the issue before the law takes effect on Jan. 19.

The Supreme Court said in a brief order that the Justice Department and lawyers for TikTok, as well as a group of users who separately challenged the law, should be prepared to argue whether the ban passed by Congress violates the First Amendment.

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The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday issued long-awaited rules requiring companies to display the full price of a hotel room, concert ticket or sporting event up front to customers, rather than hiding any extra charges — often called “junk fees” — until the very end of the checkout process.

The new regulations seek to crack down on “bait and switch” pricing practices, according to FTC Chair Lina Khan, who said the agency has received a groundswell of complaints about service charges, amenity fees and a raft of other potentially obscure, last-minute additions to consumers’ bills.