news aggregator

Google is offering U.S. employees in its Platforms & Devices division a voluntary exit program with severance packages, following last year's merger of its Pixel hardware and Android software teams. The program affects staff working on Android, Chrome, Google Photos, Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest products, according to a memo from Senior Vice President Rick Osterloh. The move comes after the hardware division cut hundreds of roles last January when it reorganized into a functional model. Google said the program aims to retain employees committed to the combined organization's mission, though it does not coincide with any product changes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Merger would kill competition, jack up wireless LAN prices, officials argue

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has sued to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise's $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.…

‘No one was kicked off the NTSB in the middle of investigating a crash’

interview Gutting the Cyber Safety Review Board as it was investigating how China's Salt Typhoon breached American government and telecommunications networks was "foolish" and "bad for national security," according to retired US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery.…

Distilled version for Copilot+ PCs on the way, too – 太棒了!!

Microsoft has added the open source DeepSeek R1 LLM to Azure AI Foundry and GitHub, showing that even a lumbering tech giant can be nimble when it needs to be.…

Nearly 90% of Oracle Java customers are looking to abandon the software maker's products following controversial licensing changes made in 2023, according to research firm Dimensional Research. The exodus reflects growing frustration with Oracle's shift to per-employee pricing for its Java platform, which critics called "predatory" and could increase costs up to five times for the same software, Gartner found. The dissatisfaction runs deepest in Europe, where 92% of French and 95% of German users want to switch to alternative providers like Bellsoft Liberica, IBM Semeru, or Azul Platform Core.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's AI disruptor rattles industry watchers with unproven claims

In a busy week for GenAI, the tech industry is weighing the impact of the latest interloper on the LLM scene. China's DeepSeek shocked stock markets on Monday, slashing $600 billion off the value of erstwhile AI golden child Nvidia.…

The Authors Guild -- one of the largest associations of writers in the US -- has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence. From a report: The Guild says its "Human Authored" certification aims to make it easier for writers to "distinguish their work in increasingly AI-saturated markets," and that readers have a right to know who (or what) created the books they read. Human Authored certifications will be listed in a public database that anyone can access.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft fixes DAC woes and makes good on its New Outlook threat for Windows 10

There is mixed news for Windows users. Microsoft has released a patch it claims fixes the DAC problem. The bad news – for some users – is that the new Outlook for Windows app has reached Windows 10.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: SoftBank is in talks to invest as much as $25 billion into OpenAI [non-paywalled source], in a deal that would make it the ChatGPT maker's biggest financial backer, as the pair partner on a huge new artificial intelligence infrastructure project. The two companies announced last week they would lead a joint venture that would spend $100 billion on Stargate -- a sprawling data centre project touted by US President Donald Trump -- with the figure rising to as much as $500 billion over the next four years. SoftBank is in talks to invest $15 billion to $25 billion directly into OpenAI on top of its commitment of more than $15 billion to Stargate, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Workforce rebalancing? Yes, but on the plus side, the next 12 months are all about AI, AI, and more AI

IBM is again forecasting cost savings in the coming calendar year, which likely means one thing for its legions of workers – pedal fast and keep your heads down because headcount reductions may be on the way once more.…

France's Mistral AI is facing mounting pressure over its future as an independent European AI champion, as competition intensifies from U.S. tech giants and China's emerging players. The Paris-based startup, valued at $6.5 billion and backed by Microsoft and Nvidia, has struggled to keep pace with larger rivals despite delivering advanced AI models with a fraction of their resources. The pressure increased this week after China's DeepSeek released a cutting-edge open-source model that challenged Mistral's efficiency-focused strategy. Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch dismissed speculation about selling to Big Tech companies, saying the firm hopes to go public eventually. However, one investor told the Financial Times that "they need to sell themselves." The stakes are high for Europe's tech ambitions. Mistral remains the region's only significant player in large language models, the technology behind ChatGPT, after Germany's Aleph Alpha pivoted away from the field last year. The company has won customers including France's defense ministry and BNP Paribas, but controls just 5% of the enterprise AI market compared to OpenAI's dominant share.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

400 hospitals and med centers across 15 states rely on its products

New York Blood Center Enterprises (NYBCe) is currently in its fifth day of handling a ransomware attack that has led to system disruption.…

India's IT minister on Thursday praised DeepSeek's progress and said the country will host the Chinese AI lab's large language models on domestic servers, in a rare opening for Chinese technology in India. From a report: "You have seen what DeepSeek has done -- $5.5 million and a very very powerful model," IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday, responding to criticism New Delhi has received for its own investment in AI, which has been much less than many other countries. Since 2020, India has banned more than 300 apps and services linked to China, including TikTok and WeChat, citing national security concerns. The approval to allow DeepSeek to be hosted in India appears contingent on the platform storing and processing all Indian users' data domestically, in line with India's strict data localization requirements. [...] DeepSeek's models will likely be hosted on India's new AI Compute Facility. The facility is powered by 18,693 graphics processing units (GPUs), nearly double its initial target -- almost 13,000 of those are Nvidia H100 GPUs, and about 1,500 are Nvidia H200 GPUs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows vendor posts more bumper financials, but markets shrug

Microsoft's latest earnings results exceeded expectations, yet comments from CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood signaled turbulence in AI and execution, alongside signs of waning cloud demand.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: While most of our conversations about Nintendo recently have focused on the somewhat bizarre patent lawsuit the company filed against Pocketpair over the hit game Palworld, traditionally our coverage of the company has focused more on the very wide net of IP bullying it engages in. This is a company absolutely notorious for behaving in as protectionist a fashion as possible with anything even remotely related to its IP. That reputation is so well known, in fact, that it serves the company's bullying purposes. When smaller entities get threat letters or oppositions to applied-for trademarks and the like, some simply back down without a fight. But not the Super Mario shop in Costa Rica, it seems. The supermarket store owned by a man named Mario (hence the name), has had a trademark on its name since 2013. But when Mario's son, Charlito, went to renew the registration, Nintendo's lawyers suddenly came calling. Last year it was time to renew the registration, Charlito stated, which prompted Nintendo to get involved. While Nintendo has trademarked the use of Super Mario worldwide under numerous categories, including video games, clothing and toys, it appears the company did not specifically state anything about the names of supermarkets. This, Charlito says, was the key factor in the decision by Costa Rica's trademark authority, the National Register, to side with the supermarket. "As you will see from the picture [here], it is extremely clear, based on the rest of the store's signage and branding, that there is absolutely no attempt in any of this to draw any kind of association with Nintendo's iconic character," writes Techdirt's Timothy Geigner. "The shop already had the name for over a decade, and had a trademark on the name for over a decade, all apparently without any noticeable effect on Nintendo's enormous business. For a renewal of that mark to trigger this kind of conflict is absurd."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Space 5G should reach regular smartphones in rural area notspots

Vodafone claims it has made the first mobile video call using a satellite connection and standard 4G/5G smartphones, and said it aims to offer a commercial direct-to-cell satellite service in Europe starting later this year.…

Neither Labour, Conservatives, nor the Lib Dems offered a retort to rights org's report

The Open Rights Group (ORG) has raised concerns about a number of security issues it found in all three of the canvassing apps developed on behalf of the UK's three major political parties.…

Breakthrough could – eventually – impact smartphone and mobile computing

A new approach to materials engineering promises to overcome the limitation of capacitors commonly used in smartphones, displays and electric vehicles, according to a study published in Nature.…

Employers remain blissfully unaware/wilfully ignorant of the impact of surveillance on staff

More than three-quarters of UK employers admit to using some form of surveillance tech to spy on their remote workers' productivity.…

Mr. Dollar Ton shares a report from the BBC: The chemical building blocks of life have been found, among many other complex chemical compounds, in the grainy dust of an asteroid called Bennu, an analysis reveals. Samples of the space rock, which were scooped up by a Nasa spacecraft and brought to Earth, contain a rich array of minerals and thousands of organic compounds. These include amino acids, which are the molecules that make up proteins, as well as nucleobases -- the fundamental components of DNA. The findings are published in two papers in the journal nature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.