ULA aimed to launch up to 10 Vulcan rockets this year—it will fly just once

The company is closer to increasing its Vulcan launch cadence, but it won’t happen this year.

Around this time last year, officials at United Launch Alliance projected 2025 would be their busiest year ever. Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, told reporters the company would launch as many as 20 missions this year, with roughly an even split between the legacy Atlas V launcher and its replacementthe Vulcan rocket.

Now, it’s likely that ULA will close out 2025 with six flights—five with the Atlas V and just one with the Vulcan rocket the company is so eager accelerate into service. Six flights would make 2025 the busiest launch year for ULA since 2022, but it falls well short of the company’s forecast.

Last week, ULA announced its next launch is scheduled for December 15. An Atlas V will loft another batch of broadband satellites for the Amazon Leo network, formerly known as Project Kuiper, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This will be ULA’s last launch of the year.

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Share-Online Operator Gets Two Years Probation in Landmark ‘Cyberlocker’ Verdict

Six years after massive raids shut down the German cyberlocker Share-Online.biz, this week the site’s operator was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison term. The case is seen as a landmark victory in Germany, as it indicates that operators of seemingly “neutral” cyberlocker platforms can be held liable. At the same time, €50 million in revenue and evaporated threats against users leave unanswered questions.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

share online logoIn October 2019, an international police operation brought an abrupt end to Share-Online.biz, the largest file-hosting platform in Germany at the time.

The raids, which targeted data centers in the Netherlands and France as well as residential addresses in Germany, resulted in the seizure of many servers and the shutdown of a platform that served more than a million registered users.

Files stored on Share-Online were typically promoted through third-party sites such as DDL-Warez, Boerse, Movie-Blog, and MyGully. As a host/cyberlocker, Share-Online did not actively promote pirated content to the public.

Suspended Prison Sentence for ‘Neutral’ Host

That seemingly neutral stance did not prevent a criminal investigation or the subsequent prosecution of the site’s operator. This week, the Aachen Regional Court sentenced the defendant to a two-year suspended prison term.

While the suspended sentence means the unnamed defendant will not serve prison time, the legal precedent is significant. Historically, cyberlockers have operated in somewhat of a legal gray area, claiming they are neutral service providers who merely offer storage space.

The Aachen court rejected this defense, FAZ reports, concluding that the operator facilitated copyright infringement with a profit-motive.

Seizure banner(2019)

Details on the ruling are scarce, and we have yet to see a copy of the verdict. However, according to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which supported the anti-piracy action, it is a key victory.

“This ruling makes clear that operators of ostensibly neutral platforms cannot rely on liability privileges or professed ignorance. For a platform like Share-Online, it is not sufficient to merely acknowledge abuse notifications from rights holders,” says Geerart Bourlon, MPA’s Vice President of Content Protection and Legal Counsel.

“Anyone whose business model promotes or supports copyright-infringing acts is not only liable for injunctive relief and damages but also commits a criminal offense,” Bourlon adds.

What Happened to the €50 Million?

The MPA/ACE press release specifically credits Gregory Skavron, the prosecutor at the Nordrhein-Westfalen Cybercrime Unit (ZAC NRW). However, there is no mention of the now-bankrupt German anti-piracy outfit GVU, which carried out the investigation of Share-Online.

Similarly, while the press release prominently features the €50 million revenue figure to illustrate the scale of the piracy operation, what happened to this money isn’t made clear. Were any of these funds actually recovered? And if so, were rightsholders compensated?

The absence of any mention concerning damages suggests that, while the “revenue” was massive, the actual recoverable assets may have been much lower or hidden from law enforcement.

The “User” Threat Evaporates

Finally, it is worth mentioning that a spokesperson of the cybercrime police previously suggested that Share-Online users were also at risk, with high-volume uploaders as the prime target.

“If identification is possible, subsequent investigations against the uploaders and possibly also against downloaders are realistic scenarios. For reasons of capacity, we will certainly proceed in a layered manner in the investigations and, in due course, may initially focus on the top uploaders,” the spokesperson said in 2020.

This threat never materialized, as far as we know. This may be in part due to the complex investigation that spanned many terabytes of files. If it takes six years to convict the operator, going after uploaders may have turned out to be too much.

Ultimately, the Share-Online outcome is somewhat of a mixed bag for rightsholders. The movie industry secured a major legal victory and defeated the “neutral host” defense. However, the fact that the site’s operator, who presumably earned millions, can avoid a prison sentence must be seen as a disappointment.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Solar’s growth in US almost enough to offset rising energy use

Over the course of 2025, electricity demand has gradually declined.

Worries about the US grid’s ability to handle the surge in demand due to data center growth have made headlines repeatedly over the course of 2025. And, early in the year, demand for electricity had surged by nearly 5 percent compared to the year prior, suggesting the grid might truly be facing a data center apocalypse. And that rise in demand had a very unfortunate effect: Coal use rose for the first time since its recent collapse began.

But since the first-quarter data was released, demand has steadily eroded. As of yesterday’s data release by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which covers the first nine months of 2025, total electricity demand has risen by 2.3 percent. That slowdown means that most of the increased demand could have been met by the astonishing growth of solar power.

Better than feared

If you look over data on the first quarter of 2025, the numbers are pretty grim, with total demand rising by 4.8 percent compared to the same period in the year prior. While solar power continued its remarkable surge, growing by an astonishing 44 percent, it was only able to cover a third of the demand growth. As a result of that and a drop in natural gas usage, coal use grew by 23 percent.

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RFK Jr.’s new CDC deputy director prefers “natural immunity” over vaccines

Ralph Abraham is “dangerous,” but somehow not the worst among those considered.

Under ardent anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has named Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham as its new principal deputy director—a choice that was immediately called “dangerous” and “irresponsible,” yet not as bad as it could have been, by experts.

Physician Jeremy Faust revealed the appointment in his newsletter Inside Medicine yesterday, which was subsequently confirmed by journalists. Faust noted that a CDC source told him, “I heard way worse names floated,” and although Abraham’s views are “probably pretty terrible,” he at least has had relevant experience running a public health system, unlike other current leaders of the agency.

But Abraham hasn’t exactly been running a health system the way most public health experts would recommend. Under Abraham’s leadership, the Louisiana health department waited months to inform residents about a deadly whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak. He also has a clear record of anti-vaccine views. Earlier this year, he told a Louisiana news outlet he doesn’t recommend COVID-19 vaccines because “I prefer natural immunity.” In February, he ordered the health department to stop promoting mass vaccinations, including flu shots, and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns.

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Telekom zu Partnerschaften: Andere Netze “nicht stabil und zuverlässig” genug

Die Telekom kaufe kaum Vorleistungen ein, weil man “ein stabiles und zuverlässiges Netzerlebnis bieten” wolle. Man setze “zuallererst auf den Eigenausbau”. (Telekom, DSL)

Die Telekom kaufe kaum Vorleistungen ein, weil man "ein stabiles und zuverlässiges Netzerlebnis bieten" wolle. Man setze "zuallererst auf den Eigenausbau". (Telekom, DSL)

OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide

OpenAI’s response to teen suicide case is “disturbing,” lawyer says.

Facing five lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths, OpenAI lobbed its first defense Tuesday, denying in a court filing that ChatGPT caused a teen’s suicide and instead arguing the teen violated terms that prohibit discussing suicide or self-harm with the chatbot.

The earliest look at OpenAI’s strategy to overcome the string of lawsuits came in a case where parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine accused OpenAI of relaxing safety guardrails that allowed ChatGPT to become the teen’s “suicide coach.” OpenAI deliberately designed the version their son used, ChatGPT 4o, to encourage and validate his suicidal ideation in its quest to build the world’s most engaging chatbot, parents argued.

But in a blog, OpenAI claimed that parents selectively chose disturbing chat logs while supposedly ignoring “the full picture” revealed by the teen’s chat history. Digging through the logs, OpenAI claimed the teen told ChatGPT that he’d begun experiencing suicidal ideation at age 11, long before he used the chatbot.

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Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is a compute module with a SpacemiT K1 RISC-V processor

The Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is a computer-on-a-module that’s the same size and shape as a Raspberry Pi CM4 and even uses the same board-to-board connectors. But while Raspberry Pi’s compute module has an ARM-based processor, the BPI-CM6 is powere…

The Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is a computer-on-a-module that’s the same size and shape as a Raspberry Pi CM4 and even uses the same board-to-board connectors. But while Raspberry Pi’s compute module has an ARM-based processor, the BPI-CM6 is powered by a SpacemiT K1 octa-core RISC-V chip. Basically it has the same capabilities as the Banana Pi BPI-F3 […]

The post Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is a compute module with a SpacemiT K1 RISC-V processor appeared first on Liliputing.

HP plans to save millions by laying off thousands, ramping up AI use

Product development, internal operations among teams expected to be hit hardest.

HP Inc. said that it will lay off 4,000 to 6,000 employees in favor of AI deployments, claiming it will help save $1 billion in annualized gross run rate by the end of its fiscal 2028.

HP expects to complete the layoffs by the end of that fiscal year. The reductions will largely hit product development, internal operations, and customer support, HP CEO Enrique Lores said during an earnings call on Tuesday.

Using AI, HP will “accelerate product innovation, improve customer satisfaction, and boost productivity,” Lores said.

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