#SpaceX #launches #Super #HeavyStarship #test #flight #concerns #space #race
In a world driven by screens, one North Texas nonprofit is making sure no one gets left behind.
Computers for the Blind, based in Dallas, is opening doors for people across the country who are blind or visually impaired.
The nonprofit refurbishes donated computers and equips them with powerful accessibility software, providing life-changing technology to thousands who would otherwise go without it.
For Antoinette McDonald Ellis, receiving one of these computers was nothing short of transformational.
“I can send that email myself. I can look things up myself. Whatever I need to do on that computer, I have the ability now to go in there and do it. And not only that, I have the confidence,” she said.
Inside an office space off North Central Expressway, shelves are lined with more than machines—they’re gateways to independence.
The organization installs specialized software like JAWS, which converts text into speech, and ZoomText, which magnifies on-screen content. These tools allow users who are blind or have low vision to navigate the digital world with confidence and ease.
“What makes them different is they’re loaded with software that either makes the computer speak, or magnifies the screen,” explained Marci Duty, a Computers for the Blind employee who is herself completely blind.
Duty knows the impact firsthand. She previously trained others in Texas to use JAWS, and now plays a key role in helping ship computers across the country.
“We’ve almost shipped 22,000 computers,” Duty said. “And each one of them makes a big difference in a person’s life.”
The impact of the program isn’t just in the tech—it’s in the training and support that comes with it.
“When I first opened it and turned it on, and it spoke to me… I just kind of felt like I grew three or four inches,” Ellis recalled.
Computers for the Blind’s mission is about more than just providing hardware—it’s about bridging the digital divide and restoring a sense of community, creativity, and confidence for people who are often underserved in today’s fast-paced, tech-driven world.
“It gave me freedom,” Ellis said. “It’s given me the ability to go and feel like I’m part of this 21st-century world.”
With every computer shipped, Computers for the Blind brings more than technology—they bring independence, opportunity and a renewed sense of possibility.
#North #Texas #nonprofit #transforms #lives #bringing #technology #blind
A fintech startup that raised $40 million based on the premise of its artificial intelligence capabilities was fueled by human labor, allegedly defrauding investors lured by the new technology of millions, federal prosecutors said this week in a statement.
Albert Saniger, 35, the former CEO and founder of nate in 2018, who is from Barcelona, Spain, was indicted in the Southern District of New York for engaging in a scheme to allegedly defraud investors and making false statements about his company’s AI capabilities.
Nate, an e-commerce company, launched the nate app that claimed to streamline the online shopping checkout process via a single AI-powered tap option. But the app was not powered by advanced AI technology at all, according to the indictment.
With the promise of custom-built “deep learning models” that would allow the app to directly purchase goods on product pages in fewer than three seconds, Saniger raised over $40 million. While instructing employees to keep nate’s reliance on overseas workers secret, he pitched investors an AI-driven product capable of 10,000 daily transactions.
Instead, the app allegedly relied heavily on overseas workers in two different countries who manually processed transactions, mimicking what users believed was being done by automation. Saniger, meanwhile, allegedly told investors and the public that the transactions were being completed by AI.
“Saniger allegedly abused the integrity associated with his former position as the CEO to perpetuate a scheme filled with smoke and mirrors,” the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.
In the technology’s absence, Saniger allegedly relied heavily on hundreds of workers at a call center in the Philippines, court documents said. When a deadly tropical storm struck the country in October 2021, the indictment said, nate established a new call center in Romania to handle the backlog of customer services. Investors were likely never exposed to the lull in transactions because Saniger directed that transactions by investors be prioritized to avoid suspicion.
The aftermath of the company’s fallout in 2023, left investors with near-total losses, the indictment said.
U.S. private AI investment grew to $109.1 billion last year — and the U.N. trade and development arm said market share is poised to climb to $4.8 trillion by 2033.
AI is widely perceived as being free from human intervention but the reality paints a more complicated picture. Nate is not the only company that has capitalized on AI through cheap labor overseas.
In 2023, The Washington Post exposed ‘digital sweatshops’ in the Philippines where employees worked on content to refine American AI models for a company called Scale AI, which multinational technology conglomerates like Meta, Microsoft and OpenAi utilize.
CBS News reached out to the U.S. attorney’s office and Saniger for comment.
#nate #CEO #human #workers #allegedly #defrauded #investors #lured #tech #millions
Editor’s note: This article contains descriptions and an image of hate speech found on the Roblox servers and might be triggering to some readers.
In Roblox, one of the world’s largest online gaming platforms, users join to play, create, and be themselves in a virtual world — but some might be there for a more insidious purpose: to expose youth to hate speech.
Players of “Spray Paint!” — a popular game on Roblox, with over a billion visits, in which players skate and create graffiti art in a virtual skatepark setting — can bypass moderation by spray painting hate messages across walls, ramps and other virtual game settings, a CBS News investigation found.
CBS News documented dozens of swastikas and at least a dozen instances of hate speech targeting minority groups across Spray Paint! servers, which host multiplayer games. There are millions of games on Roblox where players can join servers to play with friends and strangers.
What’s happening in “Spray Paint!” is not uncommon — nor surprising. Roblox currently has at least 18 active lawsuits pending nationwide due to inappropriate content found on its games, attorney Matthew Dolman, whose firm is representing individuals in cases against Roblox, told CBS News.
Roblox said in an emailed statement to CBS News that its 24/7 moderation system closely monitors the platform, and that the company takes “swift action against any content or users found to be in violation.”
However, hate speech still appears in Roblox games, like Spray Paint, CBS News found. “Within three minutes of getting in there for the first time, I also saw a swastika,” said Rachel Franz, the early childhood advocacy program director at the nonprofit Fairplay, which advocates for children’s online safety.
Hate can run rampant across various Roblox games. A group called Active Shooter Studios recreates school shootings at Columbine, Uvalde and Parkland and consistently evades efforts to take down recreations, the Anti-Defamation League found in an April report. A lawsuit filed this month alleges that Roblox hosted hundreds of Sean “Diddy” Combs-themed games, as well as more than 900 user accounts registered across Roblox with variations of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s name.
“Roblox is fully aware that these experiences pervade its app, and it allows them to continue to exist unchecked despite the ability to control or eliminate them,” the lawsuit alleges, and said the effects on children can be devastating.
Last week, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed a child protection lawsuit against the platform.
“Roblox is overrun with harmful content and child predators because it prioritizes user growth, revenue, and profits over child safety,” Murrill, a Republican, alleged in a press release. “Every parent should be aware of the clear and present danger posed to their children by Roblox so they can prevent the unthinkable from ever happening in their own home.”
In a statement to CBS News, Roblox said, “We share Attorney General Murrill’s urgency to help keep kids safe because safety has always been our priority,” adding that it looks forward to working with Murrill to help keep children safe.
“We share the critically important goal of keeping kids safe online and any assertion otherwise is categorically untrue,” Roblox’s statement said. “We hold ourselves to the highest standard and work constantly to remove violative content and bad actors.”
What children are encountering
Predators can troll Roblox, experts say, and other similar gaming platforms, to recruit young players for extremist groups or possibly sexual exploitation.
Children and teens make up more than half of Roblox players, and about 40% of players are under the age of 13, according to a 2024 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Roblox attracts an average of 97.8 million daily active users.
“If you are a predator, it’s very clear that there are opportunities to access vulnerable folks on these platforms,” Franz said.
When children play the Spray Paint! game, they might see slurs targeting Black and Jewish people and phrases like “KKK” and “Jew” etched in graffiti on virtual brick walls. In one server, there were over 14 instances of this speech, CBS News found, as well as a reference to the “Third Reich.”
The phrase “I can’t breathe,” the words uttered by George Floyd, who died in 2020 in police custody by an officer later convicted of murder, was written across a virtual brick wall in one server. Some servers had graphic sexual drawings, and in another, there was an instance of suicidal language, CBS News found.
CBS News 
Roblox’s chat feature, available in some games, has a filtering system that prevents inappropriate content, like discriminatory speech, from being visible, but in Spray Paint! players can bypass filtering mechanisms by scrawling text via the game’s paint feature as opposed to writing in the chat, where content is filtered.
Users must enter their birthday when creating a Roblox account, but the platform doesn’t require authentication, meaning adults can pose as children and children can pose as older than they actually are. Kids can converse with other players via the voice chat feature — which has a minimum age requirement of 13 —but also doesn’t require age verification.
Roblox says the company has implemented what it calls a “trusted flagger program,” where trusted partners can report “terrorist content” in an effort to crack down on hate messages.
Roblox also says on its website that content uploaded to be incorporated into games is evaluated in a multi-step review process to screen for child sexual abuse material and other inappropriate content. If it is identified as fodder for possible child sexual abuse, Roblox says it is automatically reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit organization focusing on finding missing children and reducing child exploitation.
Roblox has developed an artificial intelligence system that the company says helped submit about 1,200 reports of potential attempts at child exploitation to NCMEC — and last year, Roblox submitted 24,522 reports to NCMEC overall.
Roblox says it has a human review team continuously evaluating flagged games and encourages users to report concerning activity. Spray Paint! players have the option to play in “safe mode,” which allows them to only view art created by other players who are on their “friends” list in the app.
A Roblox spokesperson told CBS News in an emailed statement that “while no system is perfect,” the company has implemented safeguards including “restrictions on sharing personal information, links, and user-to-user image sharing, as well as content maturity [l]abels and parental controls.”
“We share with our community the critically important goal of keeping everyone safe online and ensuring users have positive experiences on Roblox that align with our strict Community Standards,” the statement said, adding, “We continuously innovate to deter bad actors and have launched over 50 safety features since last year.”
Despite efforts to curb extremism and the targeting of young players, experts and CBS News found that protections remain easy to override.
“There’s a larger question of how you regulate and moderate something that is supposed to encourage creativity and freedom of expression, but actually ends up introducing some really unsafe and truly harmful and disgusting practices,” Franz said.
A double-edged sword
Allegations in several cases suggest Roblox has also been used to exploit teens and children. A Florida teenager was arrested in April for allegedly targeting children on Roblox, where he would demand child sexual abuse material over text messages or the messaging platform Discord. In Texas, a lawsuit filed in April alleges a 13-year-old girl was groomed and sexually exploited on Roblox and later, Discord. Roblox has recently been hit by a spate of lawsuits with similar claims. Dolman said his firm currently has seven cases and is investigating 400 more. Another firm filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Roblox and Discord representing over 400 people.
A man in California was arrested in April on kidnapping and sexual misconduct charges in connection with a 10-year-old he is believed to have met through Roblox. Last year, a woman in Florida was arrested for allegedly using Roblox to instruct a 10-year-old to kill an infant by dropping the 2-month-old on a tile floor. The infant was seriously injured.
When asked for a response to the lawsuits, Roblox said in an email that the company is “deeply troubled” by any incident that endangers its users, noting that safety is a top priority.
“Roblox is committed to empowering parents and caregivers to help ensure a safe online experience for their children.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced in April that he issued a subpoena to Roblox.
“There are concerning reports that this gaming platform, which is popular among children, is exposing them to harmful content and bad actors,” he said in a press release. “We are issuing a subpoena to Roblox to uncover how this platform is marketing to children and to see what policies they are implementing—if any—to avoid interactions with predators.”
Open-world games like Spray Paint!, where users can roam a virtual space in relative anonymity, can be a double-edged sword. Doris Chang, a psychologist and associate professor at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work, says that these spaces can be affirming for queer youth.
“They can be whoever they want. Gender fluidity is really common,” Chang said, adding it can also put those groups at risk for exposure to hate speech and predatory individuals.
“You’re just interacting with people that you wouldn’t normally interact with. It’s completely wide open,” Chang said.
Chang said when children play a game like Spray Paint! without parental supervision, they may have to navigate problematic scenarios that might be confusing or upsetting.
“It brings up the larger question about how much parents know about what their kids are getting exposed to online,” she said. “Broadly speaking, Roblox is just one corner of the internet that our kids are navigating.”
#Roblox #worlds #popular #gaming #platforms #bans #hate #speech #Users #spread
Restaurateur Tommy Fello was driving from his Ohio establishment to his house on Christmas Eve when he started veering off the road. Fello, then 71, had been awake since 4 a.m. local time preparing a holiday buffet for his family. He chalked the disturbance up to a flat tire. Driving slowly and relying on the vehicle’s autocorrect feature, he was able to complete his journey home safely.
But when Fello stepped out of the truck, he couldn’t get his balance.
“I finally realized it wasn’t the truck that was veering. It was me that was veering,” Fello said. He went indoors and talked to his wife and daughter, who said he looked unwell. About five minutes later, they called 911. Paramedics took him to an area hospital, where he lost all movement in his left arm and leg.
“They were literally just like appendages on me. I could not feel them and could not do anything,” Fello said.
A clot-busting drug reversed the stroke, but the numbness on the left side of his body, including his face, remained. He struggled to swallow, eat or drink. Physical and occupational therapy produced only minor improvements.
Thomas Fello 
Dr. Sharon Covey, Fello’s occupational therapist and the founder of the Center for Stroke and Hand Recovery, Inc., told CBS News that his arm was essentially stuck in a bent position with his fingers curled when he met her in January 2024. The position and tension in the limb caused Fello constant pain. Working in his restaurant was out of the question.
“It was very scary. You take for granted so many of the things you do, and even the common, simplest things become like a chore,” Fello said. “We mark all these small victories … Being able to lift up your arm or pick up a cup is a gigantic accomplishment. Those little accomplishments are gigantic to a stroke victim. They encouraged me to keep going on. But there was always a thought in the back of my mind: ‘Is this as good as it’s going to get?'”
A “first-of-its-kind technology”
One day, another recovering stroke patient suggested Fello look into an implant called the Vivistim System. The FDA-approved implant, developed by the medical device company MicroTransponder Inc., uses vagus nerve stimulation during rehabilitation to improve hand and arm function for stroke victims. The vagus nerves are the body’s longest cranial nerve, with one on each side of the body, according to the Cleveland Clinic. They regulate the body’s involuntary functions.
The Vivistim Therapy system involves a physical or occupational therapist sending wireless signals to the device. That signal delivers a brief, gentle pulse to the vagus nerve while the stroke patient performs rehabilitative tasks. The stroke patient also does at-home exercises.
Dr. Erez Nossek, a neurosurgeon and director of the cranial bypass program at NYU Langone, told CBS News that the vagus nerve stimulation can enhance the brain’s ability to rewire itself, known as neuroplasticity. That increased neuroplasticity can result in “greater and faster improvements in motor function for stroke survivors,” Nossek said in emailed remarks.
MicroTransponder, Inc. 
“There is no other FDA-approved technology proven to boost neuroplasticity for stroke survivors, creating new connections in the brain, which is theirs to keep, even after the device is no longer in use,” Nossek said. “This is (a) first-of-its-kind technology that is redefining what is possible for this patient population.”
A 108-person trial published in The Lancet in 2021 found that the device generated two to three times greater improvement in hand and arm function for stroke survivors when compared with just rehab. Stroke patients who have limited hand and arm function six months or more after their stroke and are considered to have “moderate to severe deficits” qualify for the device, the company said in a fact sheet.
Implant aids in recovery
Fello turned to the Cleveland Clinic, where he met cerebrovascular neurosurgeon Dr. Mark Bain. He studies stroke recovery, especially in the cases of patients like Fello, whose rehab progress has plateaued months after the stroke. Bain determined that Fello was a candidate for the Vivistim System. Fello became the first Cleveland Clinic patient to receive the implant on April 29, 2025.
“It didn’t really scare me to try and do it. I was anxious to see how it worked,” Fello said.
The device was placed during an hour-long procedure. The vagus nerve sits just below the carotid artery, so Bain and his surgical team made a small incision to place the leads of the implant and hid the scar in a fold of Fello’s neck. The key-fob sized implant was placed under Fello’s clavicle. Bain said the procedure itself is low-risk, with “less than 1% chance of any complications.” Two weeks after the surgery, the device was turned on and Fello returned to his rehabilitative work with Covey.
Cleveland Clinic 
Covey said Fello has made huge progress since the device was implanted four months ago. She said he has no pain or tension in the limb, and is beginning to practice using his left arm to carry items. The task is difficult, she said, but isn’t “something he could have done before.” Fello, now 72, said he’s been thrilled by the progress he’s made in a short time.
“I’m very, very happy to do it, very proud to do it, and I’m glad I did it,” he said.
“The sky’s the limit”
About 800,000 people in the United States experience an ischemic stroke each year, Bain said. Vivistim and other new technologies may offer hope to the patients like Fello who struggle to recover with just rehabilitation, Bain said.
“I think over the next probably five to 10 years, what you’re going to see is an explosion of procedures, devices and things in rehab that will help people, once they’ve had strokes, to get their lives back,” Bain said. “In the future, I think the sky’s the limit for what we can expect for stroke recovery.”
At the time of his conversation with CBS News, Bain had given seven other stroke patients a Vivistim implant. Covey said at her practice, there are eight patients with the implant receiving the paired therapy course. MicroTransponder Inc. declined to say how many patients have received the implant, but shared a map that shows dozens of surgeons and rehabilitation therapists that provide the therapy.
“I think this is the newest, most effective strategy for people getting their affected limbs back,” Covey said. “This is the first real technique that has been available, at least in the last 20 years, for stroke rehab. The theories that we use as practitioners to increase somebody’s use of their affected arm are 50 to 75 years old. So this is a new technology that’s really going to turn the stroke recovery world upside down.”
#restaurant #owner #wasnt #regaining #function #stroke #technology #changed
Attorneys general in 14 states and Washington, D.C., accuse TikTok of designing its app to keep users hooked. Court-released edited video shows some company staff discussing the toll it can take on children and teens.
#TikTok #faces #lawsuits #mental #health #risks
#Scanning #heavens #Vatican #Observatory
Newly unsealed and edited video shows TikTok employees and consultants expressing concern that potentially addictive features of the app could harm users’ mental health.
The video compilation, which was shared with CBS News by the North Carolina Department of Justice, is part of the evidence in a 2024 lawsuit the state’s former attorney general filed against TikTok alleging the company misled the public about the safety of the social media platform.
North Carolina Special Superior Court Judge Adam Conrad on Tuesday ordered that the video and complaint be unsealed. In a separate ruling, he also denied a motion by TikTok’s parent company, China-based ByteDance, to dismiss the North Carolina lawsuit.
“These clips clearly show that social media companies know they’re designing their apps to hook our children even at the expense of their health,” said North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson in a statement to CBS News. “That’s why the company fought so hard to keep the video out of the public eye.”
In a statement to CBS MoneyWatch, a TikTok spokesperson called the video a “shameful attempt to distort an open internal conversation about making the platform safer when TikTok was just beginning five years ago.”
“This manipulation relies on conversations taken out of context with the sole purpose of misleading the public and grandstanding,” he added.
The spokesperson also said TikTok has over 70 features and settings designed to support the safety and well-being of teens and other app users. Those features include a 60-minute daily screen time limit and another that automatically triggers a guided meditation exercise after 10 p.m. for teen users scrolling on TikTok.
In a complaint issued in October 2024, former North Carolina Attorney General Joshua Stein alleged TikTok’s design fosters “excessive, compulsive and addictive use” and that the company knew about the harm it was causing. Stein also claimed TikTok ignored the addictive nature of the app “because their business model and desire for advertising revenue require keeping consumers on the app as much as possible.”
The lawsuit is part of broader litigation brought by 14 state attorneys general last year over allegations that TikTok harms children’s mental health. Minnesota’s attorney general joined the fight this week with a separate lawsuit.
TikTok has denied the claims.
“We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch at the time. “We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product.”
“Never want to leave”
The 3 1/2-minute video released this week features a series of clips of internal company meetings, with speakers describing what they viewed as harmful features of the TikTok app, including some that promote “compulsive use.”
The meetings featured in the video took place a few years ago, according to a spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Justice, who said they were unable to disclose the exact dates.
“We obviously wanted people to spend as much time as possible on TikTok, which can be in contrast to what is best for your mental health,” said Ally Mann, whose LinkedIn profile lists her as a creator marketing and events lead at TikTok.
In a separate clip, Ashlen Sepulveda, who is labeled in the video as working on trust and safety at the company, explains potential pitfalls of the TikTok algorithm that she said selects content based on users’ searches.
“Let’s say for eating disorders, for example,” Sepulveda said in the video. “The more the user looks up things about fitness or diet, it turns into losing weight and then soon enough the entire ‘for you’ feed for this user is really soft disordered eating behavior that is being discussed by their peers with no opportunity to remove themselves from that bubble.”
In another clip, Brett Peters, who according to his LinkedIn profile is global head of creator advocacy and reputation at TikTok, said TikTok’s goal is to produce such a diversity of content that “you never want to leave” the app.
Sixty-three percent of teens said they used TikTok in 2023, according to a Pew Research Center poll.
Meanwhile, TikTok continues to face an uncertain future as it stares down an approaching deadline, recently extended to Sept. 17 by President Trump, requiring the app to separate from its China-based parent company or be banned in the U.S.
#TikTok #employees #raised #concerns #app #addictive #unsealed #edited #video #shows
Apple is raising the price of a subscription to its Apple TV+ streaming service for U.S. customers.
The technology giant said Thursday that an Apple TV+ subscription will now cost $12.99 a month, up from $9.99. The annual cost for Apple TV+ will remain $99.99.
The new pricing takes effect for new subscribers on Aug. 21, while existing customers will see the change 30 days after their next service renewal date.
Apple’s original content includes programs like “The Morning Show,” and “Severance.” The company last hiked Apple TV+ prices in October 2023, when a monthly subscription rose from $6.99 to $9.99 in the U.S.
The move comes after both Netflix and NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service also raised their prices earlier this year. In January, Netflix boosted the cost of a standard plan with ads from $6.99 to $7.99 a month. Peacock in July raised its subscription rates by $3, increasing the cost of a Premium Plus plan to $16.99 per month.
#Apple #hikes #cost #monthly #Apple #subscription
If you look up at the sky in Texas and see what could be a flying burrito, you may not be imagining things: Chipotle on Thursday launched an autonomous aerial delivery service for digital orders in the Dallas area.
Through a partnership with Zipline, a drone delivery and logistics provider, Chipotle is introducing Zipotle, new delivery service for its customers. With Zipotle, small aircrafts called Zips can deliver digital orders directly to customers’ homes in just a few minutes, Chipotle said in an announcement on Thursday.
Initially, just “a small number” of customers will be able to experience Zipotle, according to Chipotle, which said that it would expand the service in the coming weeks.
The burrito chain is touting Zipotle as a superior delivery service that helps customers get their food faster, so that it stays fresh. Everything on Chipotle’s menu is available for drone delivery in the Dallas area, the company added. Orders for Zipotle delivery need to be placed through the Zipline app, available through the Apple and Android app stores.
Here’s how it works
Once a customer places an order, a Chipotle worker then packs it and places it at a Zipping Point where a Zip drone picks up the order and delivers it to the customer. When the autonomous aircraft arrives at a customer’s home, it hovers about 300 feet in the air while lowering and “gently” placing the order on the ground, the company states.
Chipotle said the first location to offer Zipotle delivery is at 3109 Lakeview Pkwy, in Rowlett, a suburb in the eastern part of Dallas.
“Zipotle is a quick and convenient source of delivery that lets guests enjoy our real food from places that are traditionally challenging to serve, including backyards and public parks,” Curt Garner, president and chief strategy and technology officer at Chipotle said in the announcement.
“With Zipline, you tap a button, and minutes later food magically appears — hot, fresh, and ultra-fast,” Zipline CEO and co-founder Rinaudo Cliffton said in the same announcement. “What once felt like science fiction is soon going to become totally normal,” he added.
For now, each autonomous aircraft can carry orders of up to 5.5 pounds in weight. That will increase eventually to 8 pounds, Chipotle said.
Last year, Chipotle was criticized by some customers who alleged certain restaurants were skimping on portions. The company initially denied the claims, before then CEO Brian Niccol acknowledged that about 10% of Chipotle’s 3,500 locations had indeed been underserving customers.
#Chipotle #Zipline #drone #delivery #fly #orders #customers