Microsoft To Stop Sharing Revenue With OpenAI
Bloomberg reports that Microsoft is ending revenue-sharing payments to OpenAI (paywalled; alternative source) and making the partnership non-exclusive. “The rapid pace of innovation requires us to continue to evolve our partnership to benefit our customers and both companies,” Microsoft said Monday in a blog post. Bloomberg reports: The revised deal is meant to simplify a complicated rela … ⌘ Read more

California’s Billionaire Tax Has the Signatures to Make the Ballot
California’s proposed billionaire tax appears headed for the November ballot after backers said they gathered more than 1.5 million signatures, well above the threshold needed to qualify. SF Standard reports: Backers of the initiative announced this weekend that more than 1.5 million people signed a petition to bring the one-time, 5% wealth ta … ⌘ Read more

DeepSeek V4 Arrives With Near State-of-the-Art Intelligence At 1/6th the Cost
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: The whale has resurfaced. DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup offshoot of High-Flyer Capital Management quantitative analysis firm, became a near-overnight sensation globally in January 2025 with the release of its open source R1 model that matched proprietary U.S. giants … ⌘ Read more

America Now Has 70% More Bookstores Than in 2020, Says Bookshop.org Founder
“There are about 70% more bookstores now than there were six years ago in the United States,” says Andy Hunter, the founder/CEO of Bookshop.org.

Fast Company checks in on his site, which gives over 80% of its profit margin to independent bookstores, structuring itself as a B Corporation (a for-profit company certified for its s … ⌘ Read more

Two Hot Climate Tech Startups Just Raised $1 Billion+ in IPOs
Public stock exchanges “appear to be warming to climate tech startups,” reports TechCrunch. “Or at least some of them.”

This week, nuclear startup X-energy went public, raising $1 billion in an upsized share offering that appears to have delivered a windfall for its investors, including Amazon [and Google]. Retail investors apparently can’t get enough … ⌘ Read more

Naufrage budgétaire : l’État préfèrera vous taxer à mort plutôt que maigrir
Le printemps est là, les bourgeons éclosent, les petits oiseaux chantent et les cadavres budgétaires que le gouvernement avait hâtivement enterrés en début d’année remontent à la surface. Souvenez-vous : il y a quelques mois, nos dispensables parlementaires votaient dans l’urgence, entre deux portes et trois 49.3, des textes censés fournir une base de travail budgétaire […] ⌘ Read more

Right-to-Repair Laws Gain Political Momentum Across America
“California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Oregon and Washington have all passed comprehensive right-to-repair regulations,” reports CNBC, “covering everything from consumer electronics and farm equipment to wheelchairs and automobiles.”

And the consumer movement “continues to gain political momentum” across America…

As of this year, advo … ⌘ Read more

Bank Robber Challenges Conviction Based on His Cellphone’s Location Data
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Pres:

Okello Chatrie’s cellphone gave him away. Chatrie made off with $195,000 from the bank he robbed in suburban Richmond, Virginia, and eluded the police until they turned to a powerful technological tool that erected a virtual fence and allowed them collect the location … ⌘ Read more

Stacked in aisle 27 ⌘ Read more

[$] A more efficient implementation of Shor’s algorithm
Shor’s algorithm is the main practical example of an algorithm that runs more
quickly on a quantum computer than a classical computer — at least in theory.
Shor’s algorithm allows large numbers to be factored
into their component prime factors quickly.
In reality, existing quantum computers do not have nearly
enough memory to factor interesting numbers using Shor’s algorithm, despite
decades of research.
[A new paper](https://a … ⌘ Read more

Crooks Behind $27M in ‘Refund’ Scams Busted By YouTube Pranksters After Being Lured to Fake Funeral
One crime ring scammed 2,000 elderly people of more than $27 million between 2021 and 2023 using tech support/bank impersonation/refund scams. “Victims were in their 70s and 80s,” reports the U.S. Attorney’s office for California’s southern district. Victims were first told they’d r … ⌘ Read more

AV1’s Open, Royalty-Free Promise In Question As Dolby Sues Snapchat Over Codec
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) was invented by a group of technology companies to be an open, royalty-free alternative to other video codecs, like HEVC/H.265. But a lawsuit that Dolby Laboratories Inc. filed this week against Snap Inc. calls all that into question with claims … ⌘ Read more

Google Moves Post-Quantum Encryption Timeline Up To 2029
Google has moved up its post-quantum encryption migration target to 2029. “This new timeline reflects migration needs for the PQC era in light of progress on quantum computing hardware development, quantum error correction, and quantum factoring resource estimates,” said vice president of security engineering Heather Adkins and senior staff cryptology engineer Sop … ⌘ Read more

European Commission Investigating Breach After Amazon Cloud Account Hack
The European Commission is investigating a breach after a threat actor allegedly accessed at least one of its AWS cloud accounts and claimed to have stolen more than 350 GB of data, including databases and employee-related information. AWS says its own services were not breached. BleepingComputer reports: Sources familiar with the i … ⌘ Read more

Windows PCs Crash Three Times As Often As Macs, Report Says
A workplace-device study says Windows PCs crash significantly more often than Macs, lag further behind on patching and encryption in some sectors, and are typically replaced sooner. TechSpot reports: Omnissa’s 2026 State of Digital Workspace report outlines the IT challenges that various organizations face from the growing use of AI and the heterogeneous d … ⌘ Read more

Austria Plans Social Media Ban For Under-14s
Austria plans to restrict under-14s from using social media platforms over concerns about addictive algorithms and harmful content. The government says draft legislation should be ready by the end of June, though details around enforcement and age verification have yet to be finalized. The BBC reports: Announcing the plans, Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler of the Social Democrats said th … ⌘ Read more

Iran-Linked Hackers Breach FBI Director’s Personal Email
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Iran-linked hackers have broken into FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday. On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel “will now find his name among the list of succes … ⌘ Read more

Popular LiteLLM PyPI Package Backdoored To Steal Credentials, Auth Tokens
joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: The TeamPCP hacking group continues its supply-chain rampage, now compromising the massively popular “LiteLLM” Python package on PyPI and claiming to have stolen data from hundreds of thousands of devices during the attack. LiteLLM is an open-source Python library that serves as a gat … ⌘ Read more

No sign of April weather today, though. The setting sun was gorgeous: https://lyse.isobeef.org/abendhimmel-2026-03-27/

Number of AI Chatbots Ignoring Human Instructions Increasing, Study Says
A new study found a sharp rise in real-world cases of AI chatbots and agents ignoring instructions, evading safeguards, and taking unauthorized actions such as deleting emails or delegating forbidden tasks to other agents. According to the Guardian, the study “identified nearly 700 real-world cases of AI scheming and charted a five-fold … ⌘ Read more

California Bill Would Require Parent Bloggers To Delete Content of Minors On Social Media
A California bill would let adults demand the removal of social media posts about them that were created by paid family content creators when they were minors. Supporters say Senate Bill 1247 addresses privacy, dignity, and safety harms caused when parents monetize their children’s lives online. Th … ⌘ Read more

Judge Blocks Pentagon’s Effort To ‘Punish’ Anthropic With Supply Chain Risk Label
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A federal judge in California has indefinitely blocked the Pentagon’s effort to “punish” Anthropic by labeling it a supply chain risk and attempting to sever government ties with the AI company, ruling that those measures ran roughshod over its constitutional rights. “Not … ⌘ Read more

Le cocktail ibérique ? C’était du vent !
Le 28 avril 2025, vers 12h33, l’intégralité de la péninsule ibérique plongeait dans le noir. Plus de courant, plus d’Internet, plus de réseau mobile, plus de feux de signalisation, plus de terminaux bancaires : 60 millions de personnes ont brutalement expérimenté le Net Zéro jusqu’à seize heures dans certaines zones. Des raffineries à l’arrêt pour une […] ⌘ Read more

AI Economy Is a ‘Ponzi Scheme,’ Says AI Doc Director
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vanity Fair: Focus Features is releasing The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist in theaters on March 27. If you’re even slightly interested in what’s going on with AI, it’s required viewing: The film touches on all aspects of the technology, from how it’s currently being used to how it will be used in the near future … ⌘ Read more

GNUnet 0.27 Released For Those With “Some Reasonable Pain Tolerance”
Version 0.27 of GNUnet is now available for this free software framework for constructing decentralized, peer-to-peer networking. But it comes with some big caveats before use… ⌘ Read more

Meta Signs $27 Billion AI Infrastructure Deal With Nebius
AI infrastructure company Nebius signed a deal to provide up to $27 billion in AI computing capacity to Meta over the next five years, including a guaranteed $12 billion purchase by 2027. Reuters reports: Under the agreement, Meta will also buy an additional $15 billion worth of capacity planned by Nebius over the coming five years if it is not sold to other cu … ⌘ Read more

To whoever is operating this “xt” client, there might be a misconfiguration. My feed is often, but not always, pulled twice within a few seconds:

2026-03-14T15:31:02+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T15:31:31+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T15:41:19+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T15:41:31+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T15:51:04+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:01:25+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T16:01:27+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:11:51+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T16:11:54+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:21:53+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:32:19+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T16:32:22+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:52:28+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T16:52:31+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

Maybe this is caused by a development and a production setup, no idea. Since this client is sending the If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match request header, I’m good with that, though. Looking forward to discover a new feed hopefully soon. :-)

v2.27.2 ⌘ Read more

America Used Anthropic’s AI for Its Attack On Iran, One Day After Banning It
Engadget reports:

In a lengthy post on Truth Social on February 27, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to “immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology” following strong disagreements between the Department of Defense and the AI company. A few hours later, the U.S. conducted a major air attack on Iran with … ⌘ Read more

Southern California Air Board Rejects Pollution Rules After AI-Generated Flood of Comments
Southern California’s air quality board rejected proposed rules to phase out gas-powered appliances after receiving more than 20,000 opposition comments generated through CiviClick, “the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform.” Phys.org reports: A Southern California-based public a … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Fires an Employee For Prediction Market Insider Trading
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: OpenAI has fired an employee following an investigation into their activity on prediction market platforms including Polymarket, WIRED has learned. OpenAI CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, disclosed the termination in an internal message to employees earlier this year. The employee, she said, “used confidenti … ⌘ Read more

Human Brain Cells On a Chip Learned To Play Doom In a Week
Researchers at Cortical Labs used living human neurons grown on a chip to learn how to play Doom in about a week. “While its performance is not up to par with humans, experts say it brings biological computers a step closer to useful real-world applications, like controlling robot arms,” reports New Scientist. From the report: In 2021, the Australian compan … ⌘ Read more

Hyperion Author Dan Simmons Dies From Stroke At 77
Author Dan Simmons, best known for the epic sci-fi novel Hyperion and its sequels, has died at 77 following a stroke. Ars Technica’s Eric Berger remembers Simmons, writing: Simmons, who worked in elementary education before becoming an author in the 1980s, produced a broad portfolio of writing that spanned several genres, including horror fiction, historical fiction, and sc … ⌘ Read more

CISA Replaces Bumbling Acting Director After a Year
New submitter DeanonymizedCoward shares a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is reportedly in crisis following major budget cuts, layoffs, and furloughs under the Trump administration, says TechCrunch. The agency has now replaced its acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, after a turbulent year marked by controversy and i … ⌘ Read more

Perplexity Announces ‘Computer,’ an AI Agent That Assigns Work To Other AI Agent
joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity has introduced “Computer,” a new tool that allows users to assign tasks and see them carried out by a system that coordinates multiple agents running various models. The company claims that Computer, currently available to Perplexity Max subscribers, is “a system that … ⌘ Read more

South Korea Set To Get a Fully Functioning Google Maps
South Korea has reversed a two-decade policy and approved the export of high-precision map data, paving the way for a fully functional Google Maps in the country. Reuters reports: The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement. Those conditions include blurrin … ⌘ Read more

Trump Orders Federal Agencies To Stop Using Anthropic AI Tech ‘Immediately’
President Donald Trump has ordered all U.S. federal agencies to “immediately cease” using Anthropic’s AI technology, escalating a standoff after the company sought limits on Pentagon use of its models. CNBC reports: The company, which in July signed a $200 million contract with Pentagon, wants assurances that the Defense Depar … ⌘ Read more

US Military Accidentally Shoots Down Border Protection Drone With Laser
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The U.S. military used a laser Thursday to shoot down a “seemingly threatening” drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said. The case of mistaken identity prompted the Federal Aviation Admini … ⌘ Read more

White House Stalls Release of Approved US Science Budgets
An anonymous reader shares a report: Weeks after the U.S. Congress rejected unprecedented cuts to science budgets that the administration of US President Donald Trump had sought for 2026, funding to several agencies that award research grants is still not freely flowing.

One reason is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been slow to … ⌘ Read more

‘The Death of Spotify: Why Streaming is Minutes Away From Being Obsolete’
An anonymous reader shares a column: I’m going to take the diplomatic hat off here and say with brutal honesty: basically everybody in the music business hates Spotify except for the people who work there. It’s a platform that sucks artists for everything they have, it actively prevents community building, and, despite all … ⌘ Read more

AI Mistakes Are Infuriating Gamers as Developers Seek Savings
The $200 billion video game industry is caught between studios eager to cut ballooning development costs through AI and a player base that has grown openly hostile to the technology after a string of visible blunders.

As Bloomberg news, Arc Raiders, a surprise hit from Stockholm-based Embark Studios that sold 12 million copies in three months, was br … ⌘ Read more

Smartphone Market To Decline 13% in 2026, Marking the Largest Drop Ever Due To the Memory Shortage Crisis
An anonymous reader shares a report: Worldwide smartphone shipments are forecast to decline 12.9% year-on-year (YoY) in 2026 to 1.1 billion units, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. This decline will bring … ⌘ Read more

Nasa Announces Artemis III Mission No Longer Aims To Send Humans To Moon
Nasa announced on Friday radical changes to its delayed Artemis III mission to land humans back on the moon, as the US space agency grapples with technical glitches and criticism that it is trying to do too much too soon. From a report: The abrupt shift in strategy was laid out by the space agency’s recently confirmed administr … ⌘ Read more

A Chinese Official’s Use of ChatGPT Accidentally Revealed a Global Intimidation Operation
A sprawling Chinese influence operation – accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official’s use of ChatGPT – focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. From a report: The Chines … ⌘ Read more

Metacritic Will Kick Out Media Attempting To Submit AI Generated Reviews
An anonymous reader shares a report: While some see AI as a tool to be used, its specific use and how it is deployed responsibly is being heavily debated online across a wide range of industries. In terms of journalistic content, and in this particular instance, reviews, review aggregator Metacritic has taken a firm stance on con … ⌘ Read more

Sam Altman Says OpenAI Shares Anthropic’s Red Lines in Pentagon Fight
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo to staff that he will draw the same red lines that sparked a high-stakes fight between rival Anthropic and the Pentagon: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. If other leading firms like Google follow suit, this could massively complicate the Pentag … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Ditches deal for Warner Bros. Discovery After Paramount’s Offer is Deemed Superior
Netflix is walking away from a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets after the WBD board on Thursday deemed a revised bid by Paramount Skydance to be a superior offer. From a report: Earlier this week, Paramount raised its bid to buy the entirety of WBD to $31 p … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft: Computer Programming Is Dying, Long Live AI Literacy
theodp writes: On Tuesday, Microsoft GM of Education and Workforce Policy (and former Code.org Chief Academic Officer) Pat Yongpradit posted an obituary of sorts for coders. “Computer programmers and software developers are codified differently in the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] data,” Yongpradit wrote. “The modern AI-infused world needs less … ⌘ Read more

Your Smart TV May Be Crawling the Web for AI
Bright Data, a company that operates one of the world’s largest residential proxy networks, has been running an SDK inside smart TV apps that turns those devices into nodes for web crawling – collecting data used by AI companies, among other clients – and most consumers have had no idea it was happening.

The company has published more than 200 first-party apps to LG’s app s … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Raises $110 Billion in the Largest Private Funding Round Ever
OpenAI has closed what is now the largest private financing in history – a $110 billion round at a $730 billion pre-money valuation that more than doubles the $40 billion raise it completed just a year ago, itself a record for a private tech company at the time.

Amazon invested $50 billion, SoftBank put in $30 billion, and Nvidia committed $3 … ⌘ Read more