BOO SONY — Sony Kills the PS5 Disc
Sony confirmed it will discontinue physical disc production for all new PlayStation games starting January 2028, shifting to digital-only distribution and closing out PS3/Vita store access in the same announcement — a shift that lands harder alongside two PS5 price hikes in the past year (disc PS5 now $649.99) and reports of PlayStation testing dynamic, account-based pricing across regions, which gets a lot more worrying once there's no physical copy left to shop around for.
Iran-Suspected Hackers Breach US Water Systems
A wave of intrusions hit roughly thirty Minnesota water systems in a single 48-hour window in late July before spreading to Michigan, New Jersey, Georgia, South Dakota, and other states — hackers targeted the programmable logic controllers that manage water flow and treatment, forcing at least two New Jersey systems to lose remote monitoring and run pumps by hand. Federal authorities reportedly suspect Iran-linked actors (unconfirmed on the record), and the wave echoes the confirmed 2023 "CyberAv3ngers" campaign against US utilities, underscoring a soft-target problem at scale: 97% of the roughly 150,000 public water systems nationwide serve small communities with no full-time cybersecurity staff.
The Federal Government Deputizes Corporate Hackers
On August 12th — notably right after the water-sector advisories above — a new federal memorandum authorized vetted private companies to run offensive cyber operations against foreign criminal networks (ransomware crews, pig-butchering rings, not nation-states) under DOJ/DHS oversight and a $1 million bond, explicitly barring loss-of-life operations or targeting foreign governments directly. It's a federal contract vehicle rather than a true constitutional letter of marque — critics argue it sidesteps Congress's Article I authority to grant those — and it raises real escalation risk if a company hits a target that turns out to be state-controlled rather than criminal, plus a legal gray zone for contractors themselves under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Watch & Listen
VOD: https://youtu.be/zcZrnMq-PHg
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Hosts & Credits
- Hosts: Brent, Matt, Brandon
- Technical Design / Production: Brent
Sources
- PlayStation.Blog — Physical disc production ending January 2028
- Forbes — Sony Raises PlayStation Prices By $100 Or More
- GameSpot — PlayStation's Digital-Only Future Makes Dynamic Pricing Harder To Ignore
- Foreign Policy — Iran-Suspected Hacks of U.S. Water Systems Hit 12 States
- TIME — What to Know About the U.S. Water Systems Cyberattacks
- The Hill — America's Water Systems Are Under Attack. Iran May Be to Blame
- Control Systems Security — Cyberteering: The Return of the Letter of Marque in Cyberspace
- EPA — EPA, FBI, CISA, NSA Issue Joint Cybersecurity Advisory to Water Systems Regarding Iranian-Affiliated Cyber Attacks (April 7, 2026)