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Pay no attention to the DeepSeek behind the headlines

OpenAI has announced ChatGPT Gov, a variant of the Enterprise version of the product specifically tailored for use by the US government.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: LinkedIn has removed at least two accounts that were created for AI "co-workers" whose profile images said they were "#OpenToWork." "I don't need coffee breaks, I don't miss deadlines, and I'll outperform any social media team you've ever worked with -- Guaranteed," the profile page for one of these AI accounts called Ella said. "Tired of human 'experts' making excuses? I deliver, period." The #OpenToWork flair on profile pictures is a feature on LinkedIn that lets people clearly signal they are looking for a job on the professional networking platform. "People expect the people and conversations they find on LinkedIn to be real," a LinkedIn spokesperson told me in an email. "Our policies are very clear that the creation of a fake account is a violation of our terms of service, and we'll remove them when we find them, as we did in this case." The AI profiles were created by an Israeli company called Marketeam, which offers "dedicated AI agents" that integrate with a client's marketing team and help them execute their marketing strategies "from social media and content marketing to SEO, RTM, ad campaigns, and more."

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No wonder OpenAI needs $500B for Stargate

Americans could soon see the price of electronics skyrocket in response to a 25-100 percent import tariff on computer chips promised by US President Donald Trump on Monday.…

With all the AI hype swirling around, you'd think someone would've cracked this one already

Tracking down and preventing money laundering is a slow, time-consuming, manual procedure. DARPA is hoping it can provide some relief for exhausted analysts by automating the process. …

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds before midnight on Tuesday, the closest to catastrophe in the timepiece's 78-year history. The Chicago-based group cited Russia's nuclear threats during its Ukraine invasion, growing tensions in the Middle East, China's military pressure near Taiwan, and the rapid advancement of AI as key factors. The symbolic clock, created in 1947 by scientists including Albert Einstein, moved one second closer than last year's setting.

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Nvidia says its chips are still needed, OpenAI says it'll keep buying them en masse, but shares are still down

US tech shares, rattled yesterday by the release of a supposedly more efficient AI model by Chinese outfit DeepSeek, appear to have staunched the bleeding, but not recovered. …

The UK is considering making households who only use streaming services such as Netflix and Disney pay the BBC license fee, as part of plans to modernize the way it funds the public-service broadcaster. Bloomberg: Extending the fee to streaming applications is on a menu of options being discussed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office, the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing internal government deliberations. Alternatives under discussion include allowing the British Broadcasting Corp. to use advertising, imposing a specific tax on streaming services, and asking those who listen to BBC radio to pay a fee. The government is the early stages of examining how to overhaul the funding of Britain's public broadcaster when its current 11-year charter ends on Dec. 31, 2027. Ministers are looking to either retain and alter the current television license fee model or scrap it and instead fund the BBC through alternative models such as taxation or subscription. That's because viewing habits have changed as users gravitate toward on-demand services. [...] The license fee dates back to 1946, when consumers watched programs at the time of broadcast. It currently costs households who watch live TV or use BBC iPlayer $210.6 a year, an amount that usually rises annually with inflation. Even if they don't watch BBC programs, households are required to hold a TV license to view or stream programs live on sites including YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. However it's not needed by those who only watch on-demand, non-BBC content.

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Official is official

Among the flurry of executive orders expelled from Donald J Trump following his inauguration as US President last week, one of the more impotent was "Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness."…

Garmin smartwatches are freezing in boot loops, users are reporting globally, with devices displaying a "blue triangle of death" when attempting GPS activities, affecting models across the Epix, Venu, Forerunner, Descent, and Fenix lines.

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Qualifying orgs may get 2033 extension, just don’t call it a U-turn

SAP has confirmed that it will extend support for legacy systems beyond its previously stated deadlines for customers who have already signed up for a specific ERP cloud transition deal.…

Google says it will end Chrome Sync support for browser versions more than four years old starting in early 2025. Users running outdated Chrome versions will see error messages prompting them to update their browsers to maintain access to synced data across devices. Those unable to update to newer versions will permanently lose the syncing feature, according to the firm.

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UK regulator files report on health of local sector, says technical barriers and Redmond's licensing practices hurting smaller rivals + customers

The UK's market regulator says "competition is not working as well as it could" in the local cloud services sector, and it plans to look harder at what AWS and Microsoft are doing – while giving Google a pass – in its Cloud Services Investigation.…

The UK's competition watchdog has found that its $11.2 billion cloud services market "is not working," with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft each controlling up to 40% of the market. In provisional findings released Tuesday, the Competition and Markets Authority said the lack of competition likely leads to higher costs and reduced innovation for UK businesses. The regulator has recommended designating both companies with "strategic market status," which would allow closer scrutiny of their practices, including Microsoft's software licensing and AWS's data transfer fees.

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In Redmond, no one can hear the audiophiles scream

The list of known issues in the Windows January 14 update continues to grow with USB audio device users the latest to be hit.…

Bookshop.org has launched an e-book platform and mobile app that allows independent bookstores to sell digital books, marking its latest effort to compete with Amazon in the online book market. The platform enables bookstores to sell e-books directly through their websites, with stores receiving all profits from direct sales. When customers buy e-books through Bookshop.org without selecting a specific store, 30% of profits will be shared among member bookstores. The move comes as most independent bookstores remain shut out of the growing digital book market. Only 18% of independent stores currently sell e-books, according to a 2023 American Booksellers Association survey. Since its 2020 launch, Bookshop.org has generated more than $35 million in profits for over 2,200 independent bookstores through physical book sales. The site will initially offer more than one million digital titles and plans to add self-published works later this year.

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Data leak, shmata leak. It will all work out, right?

IT and security pros say they are more confident in their ability to manage ransomware attacks after nearly nine in ten (88 percent) were forced to contain efforts by criminals to breach their defenses in the past year.…

Nvidia shares plunged 17% on Monday, wiping nearly $600 billion from its market value, after Chinese AI firm DeepSeek's breakthrough, but analysts are questioning the cost narrative. DeepSeek said to have trained its December V3 model for $5.6 million, but chip consultancy SemiAnalysis suggested this figure doesn't reflect total investments. "DeepSeek has spent well over $500 million on GPUs over the history of the company," Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis said. "While their training run was very efficient, it required significant experimentation and testing to work." The steep sell-off led to the Philadelphia Semiconductor index's worst daily drop since March 2020 at 9.2%, generating $6.75 billion in profits for short sellers, according to data group S3 Partners. DeepSeek's engineers also demonstrated they could write code without relying on Nvidia's Cuda software platform, which is widely seen as crucial to the Silicon Valley chipmaker's dominance of AI development.

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Prisoners of ware can’t escape by looking at each other. Form a committee, soldiers

Opinion With Broadcom putting the bite on VMware customers with more abandon than Dracula in a blood bank, one has to wonder. Why hang around? Why better bled than fled?…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [A] company called Retro Remake is reigniting the console wars of the 1990s with its SuperStation one, a new-old game console designed to play original Sony PlayStation games and work with original accessories like controllers and memory cards. Currently available as a $180 pre-order, Retro Remake expects the consoles to ship no later than Q4 of 2025. The base console is modeled on the redesigned PSOne console from mid-2000, released late in the console's lifecycle to appeal to buyers on a budget who couldn't afford a then-new PlayStation 2. The Superstation one includes two PlayStation controller ports and memory card slots on the front, plus a USB-A port. But there are lots of modern amenities on the back, including a USB-C port for power, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port for new TVs, DIN10 and VGA ports that support analog video output, and an Ethernet port. Other analog video outputs, including component and RCA outputs, are located on the sides behind small covers. The console also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The Retro Remake SuperStation console offers an optional tray-loading CD drive in a separate "SuperDock" accessory that will allow you to play original game discs. Buyers can reserve the SuperDock with a $5 deposit, with a targeted price of around $40. The report also notes the console uses an FPGA chip that's "based on the established MiSTer platform, which already has a huge library of console and PC cores available, including but not limited to the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn." And because it's based on the MiSTer platform, it makes the console "open source from day 1."

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Popular community site became unmentionable – the irony is thick enough to compile

Facebook has lifted a temporary ban preventing users from posting links to popular OS comparison site Distrowatch – after going so far as to lock the account of the site's editor.…