Recently, two juries hit Meta with back-to-back verdicts in 24 hours: $375 million in New Mexico for child exploitation, and $6 million in Los Angeles for engineering addictive products that harmed a minor. While those verdicts landed, a researcher published findings on GitHub tracing Meta's lobbying operation across 45 states, with over $25 million directly confirmed and estimates running as high as $2 billion, all designed to shift age verification responsibility onto Apple and Google. Then Apple released iOS 26.4, and UK iPhone users got a new prompt: "Confirm You Are 18+." California's law goes further, requiring every operating system to collect user age data, Linux included. GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused alternative to Android, told regulators to pound sand. Elsewhere: Nvidia unveiled DLSS 5 and the internet called it an AI beauty filter. A federal judge blocked the Pentagon's attempt to blacklist Anthropic as a national security threat. Microsoft admitted Windows 11 has a bloat problem. And the FCC banned all new foreign-made routers from the U.S. market, which covers basically every brand on store shelves.

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