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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.…

Blueprints shared for jail-breaking models that expose their chain-of-thought process

Analysis AI models like OpenAI o1/o3, DeepSeek-R1, and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking can mimic human reasoning through a process called chain of thought.…

All 50 U.S. states have now introduced some form of right to repair legislation, marking a significant milestone that "shows the power of the grassroots political movement," reports 404 Media. From the report: Thursday, Wisconsin became the final state in the country to introduce a right to repair bill. So far, right to repair laws have been passed in Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon. Another 20 states are formally considering right to repair bills during this current legislative session. The rest have previously introduced bills that have not passed; so far we have seen that many states take several years to move a given right to repair bill through the legislative process. iFixit's Kyle Wiens said covering the entire map is a "tipping point" for the movement: "We've gone from a handful of passionate advocates to a nationwide call for repair autonomy. People are fed up with disposable products and locked-down devices. Repair is the future, and this moment proves it."

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The small pool of suppliers understand their market power

APRICOT 2025 The market for dielectric liquid required for immersion cooling is dominated by a small number of players that are aware of their market power.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In France, rightsholders have taken legal action to compel large VPN providers to support their pirate site blocking program. The aim is to reinforce existing blocking measures, but VPN providers see this as a dangerous move, leading to potential security issues and overblocking. As a result, some are considering leaving France altogether if push comes to shove. [...] Earlier this month, sports rightsholders Canal+ and LFP requested blocking injunctions that would require popular VPNs to start blocking pirate sites and services. The full requests are not public, but the details available show that Cyberghost, ExpressVPN, NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and Surfshark are listed as respondents. [...] The blocking request has yet to be approved and several of the targeted VPN providers have reserved detailed commentary, for now. That said, the VPN Trust Initiative (VTI), which includes ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Surfshark as members, has been vocal in its opposition. VTI is part of the i2Coalition and while it doesn't speak directly for any of the members, the coalition's Executive Director Christian Dawson has been in regular discussions with VPN providers. From this, it became clear that VPN providers face difficult decisions. If VPN providers are ordered to block pirate sites, some are considering whether to follow in the footsteps of Cisco, which discontinued its OpenDNS service in the country, to avoid meddling with its DNS resolver. Speaking with TorrentFreak, VTI's Dawson says that VPNs have previously left markets like India and Pakistan in response to restrictive requirements. This typically happens when privacy or security principles are at risk, or if the technical implementation of blocking measures is infeasible. VTI does not rule out that some members may choose to exit France for similar reasons, if required to comply with blocking measures. "We've seen this before in markets like India and Pakistan, where regulatory requirements forced some VPN services to withdraw rather than compromise on encryption standards or log-keeping policies," Dawson says. "France's potential move to force VPN providers to block content could put companies in a similar position -- where they either comply with measures that contradict their purpose or leave the market altogether." "This case in France is part of a broader global trend of regulatory overreach, where governments attempt to control encrypted services under the guise of content regulation. We've already seen how China, Russia, Myanmar, and Iran have imposed VPN restrictions as part of broader censorship efforts." "The best path forward is for policymakers to focus on targeted enforcement measures that don't undermine Internet security or create a precedent for global Internet fragmentation," concludes Dawson. "As seen in other cases, blanket blocking measures do not effectively combat piracy but instead create far-reaching consequences that disrupt the open Internet."

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Sunk cost fallacy? No, I just need a little more cash for this AGI thing I’ve been working on

Comment Despite persistent worries that vast spending on AI infrastructure may not pay for itself, cloud providers, hyperscalers, and datacenter operators have continued to shovel billions of dollars into ever-larger GPU clusters.…

Microsoft has updated its CPU compatibility list for Windows 11 24H2, excluding pre-11th-generation Intel processors for OEMs building new PCs. The Register reports: Windows 11 24H2 has been available to customers for months, yet Microsoft felt compelled in its February update to confirm that builders, specifically, must use Intel's 11th-generation or later silicon when building brand new PCs to run its most recent OS iteration. "These processors meet the design principles around security, reliability, and the minimum system requirements for Windows 11," Microsoft says. Intel's 11th-generation chips arrived in 2020 and were discontinued last year. It would be surprising, if not unheard of, for OEMs to build machines with unsupported chips. Intel has already transitioned many pre-11th generation chips to "a legacy software support model," so Microsoft's decision to omit the chips from the OEM list is understandable. However, this could be seen as a creeping problem. Chips made earlier than that were present very recently, in the list of supported Intel processors for Windows 11 22H2 and 23H2. This new OEM list may add to worries of some users looking at the general hardware compatibility specs for Windows 11 and wondering if the latest information means that even the slightly newer hardware in their org's fleet will soon no longer meet the requirements of Microsoft's flagship operating system. It's a good question, and the answer -- currently -- appears to be that those "old" CPUs are still suitable. Microsoft has a list of hardware compatibility requirements that customers can check, and they have not changed much since the outcry when they were first published.

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Chegg has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of using AI-generated overviews to undermine publishers by reducing site traffic and eroding financial incentives for original content. Chegg claims this practice violates antitrust laws and threatens the integrity of the online information ecosystem. Reuters reports: This will eventually lead to a "hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust," the company said. The Santa Clara, California-based company has said Google's AI overviews have caused a drop in visitors and subscribers. Chegg was trading at around $1.63 on Monday, down more than 98% from its peak price in 2021. The company announced it would lay off 21% of its staff in November. Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg, said on Monday that Google is profiting off the company's content for free. "Our lawsuit is about more than Chegg -- it's about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries," he said. Publishers allow Google to crawl their websites to generate search results, which Google monetizes through advertising. In exchange, the publishers receive search traffic to their sites when users click on the results, Chegg said. But Google has started coercing publishers to let it use the information for AI overviews and other features that result in fewer site visitors, the company said. Chegg argued the conduct violates a law against conditioning the sale of one product on the customer selling or giving its supplier another product.

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