links for 14 September 2025

Oil Giant Saudi Arabia Is Emerging as a Solar Power by Ed Ballard. Until recently, Nishant Kumar, an analyst at Rystad, didn’t think the kingdom could get close to the 50% target. But new projects keep popping up. He now thinks low-carbon energy could represent a third or more of Saudi Arabia’s power mix by 2030, up from 2% last year. That would put the kingdom in the world’s top five markets for new solar capacity over that period, Rystad forecasts.

Meta ran 4,000 more ads for AI nudifiers. That may not be the worst part. by Alexios Mantzarlis and Benjamin Shultz. We also found that Meta’s implementation of European Union transparency requirements has allowed the companies behind the ads to hide behind gibberish aliases like ddd, Potozmgz, and 111. (Sounds like some of the line-noise advertiser names we found in the Who shares your information with Facebook? research. Facebook ads are designed for deceptive advertising)

How Bitcoin ATMs Are Helping Scammers Steal Millions by Sam Blum. Last month, Avalon Hardy, a gas station clerk at a Stinker Store in Boise, Idaho, noticed something strange. Over the course of a week, three elderly women walked cautiously into the store and headed to a lonely Bitcoin ATM by the front door.

On Firefox for iOS, summarize a page with a shake or a tap (When I jostle my phone, I want the web page I’m on to be automatically replaced with AI slop. — no one ever)

We all dodged a bullet by Xe Iaso. Yesterday one of the biggest package ecosystems had very popular packages get compromised….Getting code into these packages means that it’s almost guaranteed a free path to production deployments….We all dodged a massive bullet because all the malware did was modify the destination addresses of cryptocurrency payments mediated via online wallets like MetaMask.

Meta Suppressed Research on Kids in VR by Kelly Stonelake. This morning, Naomi Nix and Jon Swaine at The Washington Post published an investigation confirming what I haven’t stopped making noise about: Meta knew kids were in Horizon Worlds, knew they were at risk, and chose legal strategy over child safety.

Researchers Discover 18 Popular VPNs Are Connected: Why This Matters by Alex Valdes. The peer-reviewed study by the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium found that these VPNs, despite calling themselves independent businesses, are actually grouped into three separate families of companies.