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Big Blue eyes integration with its AI development studio

IBM plans to buy DataStax, the AI and data biz that supports and contributes to the open source Cassandra wide column database.…

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you're not really buying an ebook or video game. From a report: Wyden's letter, shared with The Verge, requests guidance to "ensure that consumers who purchase or license digital goods can make informed decisions and understand what ownership rights they are obtaining." Wyden wants the guidance to include how long a license lasts, what circumstances might expire or revoke the license, and if a consumer can transfer or resell the license. The letter also calls for the information "before and at the point of sale" in a way that's easily understandable. "To put it simply, prior to agreeing to any transaction, consumers should understand what they are paying for and what is guaranteed after the sale," Wyden says.

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Google has launched a free version of Gemini Code Assist, offering developers substantially higher usage limits than competing services. From a report: The AI coding assistant, powered by the fine-tuned Gemini 2.0 model, allows up to 180,000 code completions monthly -- 90 times more than GitHub Copilot's free tier limit of 2,000. The release comes just one day after Anthropic introduced Claude Code, underscoring intensifying competition in AI-powered development tools. Gemini Code Assist integrates with popular environments including Visual Studio Code, JetBrains IDEs, and GitHub, where it performs code reviews on both public and private repositories. Google's offering features a 128,000-token context window, enabling developers to work with larger codebases. The service supports all public domain programming languages and requires only a Gmail account to register, with no credit card needed. According to Ryan Salva, Google Cloud's senior director of product management, more than 75% of developers now rely on AI in their daily work, with over 25% of new code at Google being AI-generated. For developers wanting advanced features like private repository integration or Google Cloud service connections, premium tiers remain available.

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Scientists pool data from ESA and NASA spacecraft to come up with a ferrihydrite theory

Scientists reckon the red hue of Mars might have originated in an earlier period in the planet's past when liquid water was widespread on the surface.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Activision has finally admitted to using AI-generated content in its games and Call of Duty players aren't the least bit surprised. [...] After years of suspicions from the CoD community, it's now been confirmed by Activision directly that AI-generated content has indeed been featured throughout the FPS franchise. Upon visiting the Black Ops 6 Steam page, fans will notice a new change. Activision has now been forced to disclose its use of Artificial Intelligence in the game's creation. "Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets," Activision said in a statement provided to the platform.

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Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is speeding up the release of its R2 model following the success of January's R1, which outperformed many US competitors at a fraction of the cost and triggered a $1 trillion-plus market selloff. The Hangzhou-based firm had planned a May release but now wants R2 out "as early as possible," Reuters reported Tuesday. The upcoming model promises improved coding capabilities and reasoning in multiple languages beyond English. DeepSeek's competitive advantage stems from its parent company High-Flyer's early investment in computing power, including two supercomputing clusters acquired before U.S. export bans on advanced Nvidia chips. The second cluster, Fire-Flyer II, comprised approximately 10,000 Nvidia A100 chips. DeepSeek's cost-efficiency comes from innovative architecture choices like Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) and multihead latent attention (MLA). According to Bernstein analysts, DeepSeek's pricing was 20-40 times cheaper than OpenAI's equivalent models. The competitive pressure has already forced OpenAI to cut prices and release a scaled-down model, while Google's Gemini has introduced discounted access tiers.

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More than a dozen women came forward with accusations

Details about the harassment allegations leveled at DEF CON veteran Christopher Hadnagy have now been revealed after a motion for summary judgment was filed over the weekend.…

Only a test at the moment, but a sign of things to come?

Microsoft is quietly testing the waters with an ad-supported version of its Office suite.…

Apple Fellow Phil Schiller testified in court Monday that he initially objected to the company's plan to charge a 27% commission on purchases made outside the App Store, court documents showed. Schiller, who oversees the App Store, warned the fee would create an "antagonistic relationship" with developers and transform Apple into "some kind of a collection agency" that might need to audit developers for nonpayment. "I had great concerns about the collections of funds from developers," Schiller said, worrying about "how all of those things change the relationship between Apple and developers in a way I thought would be detrimental." Despite these objections, a pricing committee including CEO Tim Cook ultimately approved the commission structure. The 27% fee resulted from the 2021 Epic Games ruling that required Apple to allow developers to link to external payment options, slightly lower than the standard 30% in-app purchase commission. Internal documents revealed Apple analyzed how a "less seamless experience" of web-based payments would affect transaction completion rates.

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Lack of skills left Birmingham officials unable to challenge suppliers and with a system incapable of managing finances

Council officers heading up a disastrous Oracle implementation that left Europe's largest local authority unable to manage its finances lacked an understanding of the cloud-based solution they had chosen to buy.…

Online-education company Chegg said it is conducting a business review and exploring alternatives such as selling the company or taking it private as it continues to lose subscribers to artificial-intelligence-enabled rivals. From a report: Chegg and other virtual-learning companies have ceded ground to generative-AI companies such as ChatGPT, which provides free alternatives to the homework help that Chegg charges $19.95 for to its subscribers. Although Chegg built its own AI products, the company has faced scores of canceled subscriptions. The business review comes as the company swung to a loss in the fourth quarter, with revenue falling 24%, and guided for lower-than-expected revenue for the first quarter. In November, Chegg said it would cut its workforce by an additional 21%. Chegg's shares have fallen 99% since its peak in 2021.

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Chegg has filed suit in federal district court against Google, claiming that AI summaries of search results have hurt the online education company's traffic and revenue. From a report: The legal move come nearly two years after former CEO Dan Rosensweig said students engaging with OpenAI's ChatGPT assistant were cutting into Chegg's new customer growth. Chegg is worth less than $200 million, and in after-hours trading Monday, the stock was trading just above $1 per share. Chegg has engaged Goldman Sachs and will look at strategic options, including getting acquired and going private, President and CEO Nathan Schultz told analysts on a Monday earnings call. Chegg's shares have fallen 99% since its peak in 2021.

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Sly like a PRC cyberattack

A Chinese government-backed group is spoofing legitimate medical software to hijack hospital patients' computers, infecting them with backdoors, credential-swiping keyloggers, and cryptominers.…

Plus: Fandroid alert – Android devices sometimes say '5G' when connecting to 4G

London is bottom of the table when it comes to 5G mobile service, according to a report gauging major European cities on the overall quality of user experience. And, Europe itself lags behind other regions in 5G SA deployment.…

What is it with high-powered execs and their love for U2?

Ex-Apple design whiz Sir Jony Ive appeared on the BBC's long-running Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs over the weekend. Despite his storied career and close friendship with the late Steve Jobs, his picks were pedestrian even for a Brit in his late 50s.…

Fuxnet and FrostyGoop were both used in the Russia-Ukraine war

Two new malware variants specifically designed to disrupt critical industrial processes were set loose on operational technology networks last year, shutting off heat to more than 600 apartment buildings in one instance and jamming communications to gas, water, and sewage network sensors in the other.…

Dispute settled, but not the causes

A clash over different Flatpak-packaged versions of OBS Studio highlights problems with distro-maintained software repositories versus external ones.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.K. government is pushing forward with plans to attract more AI companies to the region through changes to copyright law that would allow developers to train AI models on artists' content on the internet -- without permission or payment -- unless creators proactively "opt out." Not everyone is marching to the same beat, though. On Monday, a group of 1,000 musicians released a "silent album," protesting the planned changes. The album -- titled "Is This What We Want?" -- features tracks from Kate Bush, Imogen Heap, and contemporary classical composers Max Richter and Thomas Hewitt Jones, among others. It also features co-writing credits from hundreds more, including big names like Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn, Billy Ocean, The Clash, Mystery Jets, Yusuf / Cat Stevens, Riz Ahmed, Tori Amos, and Hans Zimmer. But this is not Band Aid part 2. And it's not a collection of music. Instead, the artists have put together recordings of empty studios and performance spaces -- a symbolic representation of what they believe will be the impact of the planned copyright law changes. "You can hear my cats moving around," is how Hewitt Jones described his contribution to the album. "I have two cats in my studio who bother me all day when I'm working." To put an even more blunt point on it, the titles of the 12 tracks that make up the album spell out a message: "The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies." [...] The solution, say the artists, is to produce work in other markets where there might be better protections for it. Hewitt Jones -- who threw a working keyboard into a harbor in Kent at an in-person protest not long ago (he fished it out, broken, afterwards) -- said he's considering markets like Switzerland for distributing his music in the future.

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Leaked chats and spilled secrets as AI helps decode circa 200K private talks

Southern Water neither confirms nor denies offering Black Basta a $750,000 ransom payment following its ransomware attack in 2024.…

Bureau of Labor Statics warns lawyers and customer service reps to brace for change, says techies will be fine

Developers worried about their careers in the age of AI might be able to relax a little after the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicted employers will hire another 300,000 coders by 2033.…