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An anonymous reader quotes a report from France24: Fueled in part by anger over flashy lifestyles flaunted by elites, young anti-corruption demonstrators mainly in their 20s rallied on Monday. The loose grouping, largely viewed as members of "Gen Z", flooded the capital Kathmandu to demand an end to a ban on Facebook, YouTube and other popular sites. The rallies ended in chaos and tragedy, with at least 19 protesters killed in a police crackdown on Monday. The apps were restored, but protests widened in anger. On Tuesday, other Nepalis joined the crowds. Parliament was set ablaze, KP Sharma Oli resigned as prime minister, and the army took charge of the streets. Now, many activists are taking to the US group-chat app Discord to talk over their next steps. One server with more than 145,000 members has hosted feverish debate about who could be an interim leader, with many pushing 73-year-old former chief justice Sushila Karki. It is just one example of how social media has driven demands for change. [...] More than half of Nepal's 30 million people are online, according to the World Bank. Days before the protests, many had rushed to VPN services — or virtual private networks — to evade blocks on platforms. Fears of a wider internet shutdown also drove a surge in downloads for Bluetooth messaging app Bitchat, created by tech billionaire Jack Dorsey. "Tech played... an almost decisive role," journalist Pranaya Rana told AFP. "The whole thing started with young people posting on social media about corruption, and the lavish lives that the children of political leaders were leading." Hashtags such as #NepoKids, short for nepotism, compared the designer clothing and luxury holidays shown off in their Instagram posts to the difficulties faced by ordinary Nepalis. One post liked 13,000 times accused politicians' children of "living like millionaires," asking: "Where is the tax money going?" "NepoKids was trending all the time," including in rural areas where Facebook is popular, said rights activist Sanjib Chaudhary. "This fuelled the fire" of anger that "has been growing for a long time," he said. [...] Chaudhary said the government "seriously underestimated the power of social media." Nepal's first female prime minister was sworn in Friday as interim leader after protesters held an informal vote on Discord. "Former chief justice Sushila Karki, 73, was the unlikely choice of the 'Gen Z' protesters behind the movement that started out as a social media demonstration against the lavish lifestyles of 'Nepo Kids' but spilled out onto the streets and into the deadliest social unrest Nepal has seen in years," reports CNN World. "Karki has spent much of her career within the very establishment the youth are protesting against, yet her reputation as a fearless and incorruptible jurist has appealed to many young people in the country of 30 million."

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Intel's long-time Xeon chief architect Ronak Singhal is leaving the company after nearly 30 years, marking yet another high-profile departure amid Intel's leadership churn and intensifying competition from AMD and Arm-based cloud CPUs. The Register reports: The Carnegie Mellon alum holds degrees in electrical and computer engineering, along with at least 30 patents involving CPUs. Singhal joined Intel in 1997 after spending the previous summer as an intern at Cyrix. After a year in Intel's Rotation Engineers Program, he spent the remainder of his tenure helping to develop some of the chipmaker's most consequential and, at times, controversial processors. Most notably, Singhal oversaw the core development of Intel's 22nm Haswell and 14nm Broadwell processor architectures. His innovations aren't limited to the datacenter either, with his architectural contributions playing a significant role in the success of Intel's Core and Atom processor families as well. [...] Singhal is only the latest Xeon lead to jump ship since the start of the year. In January, Sailesh Kottapalli, another senior fellow, left for Qualcomm barely a month after former CEO Pat Gelsinger's unceremonious "retirement." Even before Gelsinger's eviction, Intel's datacenter group has been something of a revolving door. Last summer Singhal's long-time colleague Lisa Spelman departed the company, eventually landing a spot as CEO of HPC interconnect vendor Cornelis Networks. Her replacement, Ryan Tabrah, lasted seven months in the role, about half as long as Intel datacenter boss Justin Hotard, who defected for the forests of Finland to lead Nokia as its new President and CEO back in April. In fact, the churn now extends all the way to the top. On Monday, Intel announced its CEO of Products, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, would be leaving the business. The move is part of a broader executive shakeup that will see former Arm engineer Kevork Kechichian take over as head of Intel's datacenter engineering group. Jim Johnson, meanwhile, will take over as head of the chipmaker's client computing group while Srinivasan (Srini) Iyengar will head up a new central engineering division.

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Although it hasn't been seen in the wild yet

A new ransomware strain dubbed HybridPetya was able to exploit a patched vulnerability to bypass Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Secure Boot on unrevoked Windows systems, making it the fourth publicly known bootkit capable of punching through the feature and hijacking a PC before the operating system loads.…

Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a non-binding deal to restructure their partnership, paving the way for OpenAI to shift into a conventional for-profit model and potentially go public. Reuters reports: Details on the new commercial arrangements were not disclosed, but the companies said they were working to finalize terms of a definitive agreement. [...] Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and another $10 billion at the beginning of 2023. Under their previous agreement, Microsoft had exclusive rights to sell OpenAI's software tools through its Azure cloud computing platform and had preferred access to the startup's technology. Microsoft was once designated as OpenAI's sole compute provider, though it lessened its grip this year to allow OpenAI to pursue its own data center project, Stargate, including signing $300 billion worth of long-term contracts with Oracle, as well as another cloud deal with Google. As OpenAI's revenue grows into the billions, it is seeking a more conventional corporate structure and partnerships with additional cloud providers to expand sales and secure the computing capacity needed to meet demand. Microsoft, meanwhile, wants continued access to OpenAI's technology even if OpenAI declares its models have reached humanlike intelligence - a milestone that would end the current partnership under existing terms. OpenAI said under current terms, its nonprofit arm will receive more than $100 billion -- about 20% of the $500 billion valuation it is seeking in private markets -- making it one of the most well-funded nonprofits, according to a memo from Bret Taylor, chairman of OpenAI's current nonprofit board. The companies did not disclose how much of OpenAI Microsoft will own, nor whether Microsoft will retain exclusive access to OpenAI's latest models and technology. Regulatory hurdles remain for OpenAI, as attorneys general in California and Delaware need to approve OpenAI's new structure. The company hopes to complete the conversion by year's end, or risk losing billions in funding tied to that timeline.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For millions of Spotify users, the "Wrapped" feature -- which crunches the numbers on their annual listening habits -- is a highlight of every year's end, ever since it debuted in 2015. NPR once broke down exactly why our brains find the feature so "irresistible," while Cosmopolitan last year declared that sharing Wrapped screenshots of top artists and songs had by now become "the ultimate status symbol" for tens of millions of music fans. It's no surprise then that, after a decade, some Spotify users who are especially eager to see Wrapped evolve are no longer willing to wait to see if Spotify will ever deliver the more creative streaming insights they crave. With the help of AI, these users expect that their data can be more quickly analyzed to potentially uncover overlooked or never-considered patterns that could offer even more insights into what their listening habits say about them. Imagine, for example, accessing a music recap that encapsulates a user's full listening history -- not just their top songs and artists. With that unlocked, users could track emotional patterns, analyzing how their music tastes reflected their moods over time and perhaps helping them adjust their listening habits to better cope with stress or major life events. And for users particularly intrigued by their own data, there's even the potential to use AI to cross data streams from different platforms and perhaps understand even more about how their music choices impact their lives and tastes more broadly. Likely just as appealing as gleaning deeper personal insights, though, users could also potentially build AI tools to compare listening habits with their friends. That could lead to nearly endless fun for the most invested music fans, where AI could be tapped to assess all kinds of random data points, like whose breakup playlists are more intense or who really spends the most time listening to a shared favorite artist. In pursuit of supporting developers offering novel insights like these, more than 18,000 Spotify users have joined "Unwrapped," a collective launched in February that allows them to pool and monetize their data. Voting as a group through the decentralized data platform Vana -- which Wired profiled earlier this year -- these users can elect to sell their dataset to developers who are building AI tools offering fresh ways for users to analyze streaming data in ways that Spotify likely couldn't or wouldn't. In June, the group made its first sale, with 99.5 percent of members voting yes. Vana co-founder Anna Kazlauskas told Ars that the collective -- at the time about 10,000 members strong -- sold a "small portion" of its data (users' artist preferences) for $55,000 to Solo AI. While each Spotify user only earned about $5 in cryptocurrency tokens -- which Kazlauskas suggested was not "ideal," wishing the users had earned about "a hundred times" more -- she said the deal was "meaningful" in showing Spotify users that their data "is actually worth something." Spotify responded to the collective by citing both trademark and policy violations. The company sent a letter to Unwrapped developers, warning that the project's name may infringe on Spotify's Wrapped branding, and that Unwrapped breaches developer terms. Specifically, Spotify objects to Unwrapped's use of platform data for AI/ML training and facilitating user data sales. "Spotify honors our users' privacy rights, including the right of portability," Spotify's spokesperson said. "All of our users can receive a copy of their personal data to use as they see fit. That said, UnwrappedData.org is in violation of our Developer Terms which prohibit the collection, aggregation, and sale of Spotify user data to third parties." Unwrapped says it plans to defend users' right to "access, control, and benefit from their own data," while providing reassurances that it will "respect Spotify's position as a global music leader."

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