Fiverr is laying off 250 employees, or about 30% of its workforce, as it restructures to become an "AI-first" company. "We are launching a transformation for Fiverr, to turn Fiverr into an AI-first company that's leaner, faster, with a modern AI-focused tech infrastructure, a smaller team, each with substantially greater productivity, and far fewer management layers," CEO Micha Kaufman said. Reuters reports: While it isn't clear what kinds of jobs will be impacted, Fiverr operates a self-service digital marketplace where freelancers can connect with businesses or individuals requiring digital services like graphic design, editing or programming. Most processes on the platform take place with minimal employee intervention as ordering, delivery and payments are automated.

The company's name comes from most gigs starting at $5 initially, but as the business grew, the firm has introduced subscription services and raised the bar for service prices. Fiverr said it does not expect the job cuts to materially impact business activities across the marketplace in the near term and plans to reinvest part of the savings in the business.

The Internet Archive has reached a confidential settlement with Universal Music Group and other major labels, "ending a closely watched copyright battle over the nonprofit's effort to digitize and stream historic recordings," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. From the report: The case (PDF), UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Internet Archive, targeted the Archive's Great 78 Project, an initiative to digitize more than 400,000 fragile shellac records from the early 20th century. The collection includes music by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, and has been made available online for free public access. Record labels including Universal, Sony Music Entertainment and Capitol Records had sought $621 million in damages, arguing the Archive's streaming of these recordings constituted copyright infringement.

The Internet Archive, based in San Francisco's Richmond District, describes itself as a digital library dedicated to providing "universal access to all knowledge." Its director of library services, Chris Freeland, acknowledged the settlement in a brief statement. "The parties have reached a confidential resolution of all claims and will have no further public comment on this matter," he wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: In roughly six weeks, three California Democrats, a labor head and two ride-hailing leaders managed to pull off what would have been unthinkable just one year prior: striking a deal between labor unions and their longtime foes, tech giants Uber and Lyft. California lawmakers announced the agreement in late August, paving a path for ride-hailing drivers to unionize as labor wanted, in exchange for the state drastically reducing expensive insurance coverage mandates protested by the companies. It earned rare public support from Gov. Gavin Newsom and received final approval from state lawmakers this week.

The swift speed of the negotiating underscores what was at risk: the prospect of yet another nine-figure ballot measure campaign or lengthy court battle between two deeply entrenched sides, according to interviews with five people involved in the talks. Their accounts shed new light on how the deal came together: how the talks started, who was in the room, and the lengths they went to in order to turn around such a quick proposal -- from taking video meetings while recovering from surgery to the unexpected aid of one lawmaker's newborn baby.

"This was really quite fast," said Ramona Prieto, Uber's chief policy expert in Sacramento. "It wasn't like this was months of negotiating." The landmark proposal is only the second time a state has reached such a framework for Uber and Lyft drivers, after Massachusetts did so in 2024. And unlike Massachusetts, it came together without reverting to a ballot fight. California already saw its most expensive ballot measure effort to date in 2020, when Uber and Lyft spent more than $200 million backing an initiative to bar app-based workers from being classified as traditional employees, known as Proposition 22. Its passage sparked a legal challenge from labor leaders that wasn't resolved until July 2024, when California's Supreme Court affirmed the ballot measure's constitutionality. [...]

But the compromise still faces hurdles ahead. A recent lawsuit has raised fresh scrutiny of how the deal came together and what truly motivated it. Further criticism from those left out of the negotiating room is putting dealmakers on the defense as they try to sell it more widely. Plus, the final deal isn't what some labor leaders hoped when they first set out to strengthen drivers' rights in 2019. [...] And while the deal allows gig workers to unionize, that doesn't guarantee the necessary 10 percent of the state's 800,000 ride-hailing drivers actually will. Many who drive for Uber and Lyft do so part-time, and labor leaders acknowledge the challenge of organizing a disparate population that doesn't have a space to meet one another.

AI is transforming corporate America, yet the boom remains understated in government growth statistics, according to Goldman Sachs. From a report: Analysts at Goldman pointed to the scale of the boom in a Saturday note: "Revenue at US companies providing AI infrastructure has risen by $400 billion since 2022, which at first glance seems to suggest that AI has been a meaningful driver of economic growth recently." But official numbers tell a different story.

AI technology has lifted real US economic activity by about $160 billion since 2022, or 0.7% of GDP, the analysts calculated. Yet only around $45 billion, or 0.2% of GDP, of AI-spurred growth has been recorded in official statistics. That leaves roughly $115 billion uncounted, according to the analysts. That gap highlights the difference between what companies report and what the government measures due to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis method for calculating growth.

An anonymous reader shares a column: After nearly 30 years of USB-A connectivity, the market is now transitioning to the convenient USB-C standard, which makes sense given that it supports higher speeds, display data, and power delivery. The symmetrical connection is also smaller and more user-friendly, as it's reversible and works with smartphones and tablets. I get that USB-C is inevitable, but tech brands should realize that the ubiquitous USB-A isn't going anywhere soon and stop removing the ports we need to run our devices.

[...] It's premature for brands to phase out USB-A when peripheral brands are still making compatible products in 2025. For example, Logitech's current wireless pro gaming mice connect using a USB-A Lightspeed dongle, and most Seagate external drives still use USB-A as their connection method. The same can be said for other memory sticks, keyboards, wireless headsets, and other new devices that are still manufactured with a USB-A connection.

I have a gaming laptop with two USB-A and USB-C ports, and it's a constant struggle to connect all my devices simultaneously without needing a hub. I use the two USB-A ports for my mouse and wireless headset dongles, while a phone charging cable and portable monitor take up the USB-Cs. This setup stresses me out because there's no extra space to connect anything else without losing functionality.

TechCrunch reports: Thanks to a pledge to unbundle its corporate messaging app Teams from its productivity suites, Microsoft has managed to slip unscathed through a major antitrust investigation by the European Commission that could have resulted in massive fines for the tech giant.

The Commission on Friday okayed Microsoft's concessions to address the EU's competition concerns over the company including Teams along with the rest of its Office productivity suite for free, concluding a multi-year investigation that was sparked by complaints from rival office messaging app Slack in 2020. Microsoft has promised that for the next seven years, it will provide Microsoft 365 and Office 365 without Teams at a lower price and will let customers choose whether they want to pay more to add the collaboration app to the suites...

Microsoft is voluntarily offering some versions of both its productivity suites without Teams at a 50% lower price compared to versions that bundle the app, worldwide. And Microsoft dodged punitive measures and a big fine, as the Commission's penalties for breaching competition rules can reach up to 10% of annual global revenue — which, considering the tech giant last year recorded $245 billion in revenue, would have been truckloads of money.
The article adds one more interesting detail. "The Commission has also managed to get Microsoft to agree to open up its APIs to enable interoperability for key features between its suite and third-party messaging and collaboration tools, as well as let them export their data out of teams for the next five years..." The Commission's official announcement says this will "open up the market for other providers of communication and collaboration tools in Europe."

And Microsoft will also allow customers with long-term licenses the option of switching to a suite switch without Teams...

"Facebook users who filed a claim in parent company Meta's $725 million settlement related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal may soon get a payment," reports CNN, since "on August 27, the court ordered that settlement benefits be distributed." It's been over two years since Facebook users were able to file claims in Meta's December 2022 settlement. The class-action lawsuit began after the social media giant said in 2018 that as many as 87 million Facebook users' private information was obtained by data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica...

Meta was accused of allowing Cambridge Analytica and other third parties, including developers, advertisers and data brokers, to access private information about Facebook users. The social media giant was also accused of insufficiently managing third-party access to and use of user data. Meta did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement. Following the Cambridge Analytica incident, Facebook restricted third-party access to user data and "developed more robust tools" to inform users about how data is collected and shared, according to court documents...

Any US Facebook user who had an active account between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, was eligible to file a claim, even if they have deleted the account. The deadline to file was August 25, 2023. Almost 29 million claims were filed and about 18 million were validated as of September 2023, according to Meta's response in a 2024 legal document... Payments will either be sent directly to the bank account provided on the claim form, or via PayPal, a virtual prepaid Mastercard, Venmo or Zelle. Unsuccessful or expired payments will receive a "second chance email" to update the payment method.

They stole a woman's phone in Barcelona. Unfortunately, her husband was security consultant/penetration tester Martin Vigo, reports Spain's newspaper El Pais.

"His weeks-long investigation coincided with a massive two-year police operation between 2022 and 2024 in six countries where 17 people were arrested: Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru...." In Vigo's case, the phone was locked and the "Find my iPhone" feature was activated... Once stolen, the phones are likely wrapped in aluminum foil to prevent the GPS from tracking their movements. "Then they go to a safe house where they are gathered together and shipped on pallets outside of Spain, to Morocco or China." This international step is vital to prevent the phone from being blocked if the thieves try to use it again. Carriers in several European countries share lists of the IMEIs (unique numbers for each device) of stolen devices so they can't be used. But Morocco, for example, doesn't share these lists. There, the phone can be reconnected...

With hundreds or thousands of stored phones, another path begins: "They try to get the PIN," says Vigo. Why the PIN? Because with the PIN, you can change the Apple password and access the device's content. The gang had created a system to send thousands of text messages like the one Vigo received. To know who to target with the bait message, the police say, "the organization performed social profiling of the victims, since, in many cases, in addition to the phone, they also had the victim's personal belongings, such as their ID." This is how they obtained the phone numbers to send the malicious SMS...

Each victim received a unique link, and the server knew which victim clicked it... With the first click, the attackers would redirect the user to a website they believed was credible, such as Apple's real iCloud site... [T]he next day you receive another text message, and you click on it, more confidently. However, that link no longer redirects you to the real Apple website, but to a flawless copy created by the criminals: that's where they ask for your PIN, and without thinking, full of hope, you enter it... "The PIN is more powerful than your fingerprint or face. With it, you can delete the victim's biometric information and add your own to access banking apps that are validated this way," says Vigo. Apple Wallet asks you to re-authenticate, and then everything is accessible...

In the press release on the case, the police explained that the gang allegedly used a total of 5,300 fake websites and illegally unlocked around 1.3 million high-end devices, about 30,000 of them in Spain.
Vigo tells El Pais that if the PIN doesn't unlock the device, the criminal gang then sends it to China to be "dismantled and then sent back to Europe for resale. The devices are increasingly valuable because they have more advanced chips, better cameras, and more expensive materials."

To render the phone untraceable in China, "they change certain components and the IMEI. It requires a certain level of sophistication: opening the phone, changing the chip..."

It was "little more than empty fields" five years ago — but it's now "a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres)," reports the Guardian, "the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence." Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates running scam centres such as KK Park, which use enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate huge profits. There have been some attempts to crack down on the centres and rescue the workers, who can be subjected to torture and trapped inside. But drone images and new research shared exclusively with the Guardian reveal that the number of such centres operating along the Thai-Myanmar border has more than doubled since Myanmar's military seized power in 2021, with construction continuing to this day.

Data from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi), a defence thinktank in Canberra, shows that the number of Myanmar scam centres on the Thai border has increased from 11 to 27, and they have expanded in size by an average of 5.5 hectares a month. Drone images and photographs of KK Park and other Myanmar scam centres, Tai Chang and Shwe Kokko, taken by the Guardian in August show new features and active building work... Myanmar's military junta has allowed the spread of scam centres inside the country as these criminal enterprises have become an essential part of the country's conflict economy since the coup, helping it rise to the top of the global list of countries harbouring organised crime. According to Aspi's analysis, Myanmar's military, which has lost huge swathes of territory since the coup and is struggling to retain its grip on power, cannot take meaningful measures against the scam compounds without endangering its precarious relations with the crucial armed militias who are profiting from them.
While 7,000 people were freed from the compounds earlier this year, "Thai police estimated earlier this year that as many as 100,000 people were held inside Myanmar scam centres," the article notes.

Elsewhere the Guardian reports that "The centres are run by Chinese criminal gangs," and describes people who unwittingly came to Thailand for customer service jobs, only to be trafficked to Myanmar's guarded "cyberslavery compounds" and "forced to send thousands of messages from fake social-media profiles, posing as a rich American investor to swindle US real estate agents into cryptocurrency scams." Since 2020, south-east Asia's cyber-slavery industry has entrapped hundreds of thousands of people and forced them to perform "pig butchering" — the brutal term for building trust with a fraud target before scamming them. At first, the industry mostly captured Chinese and Taiwanese people, then it moved on to south-east Asians and Indians — and now Africans.

Criminal syndicates have been shifting towards scamming victims in the US and Europe after Chinese efforts to prevent its citizens being targeted, experts told the Guardian. That has led some trafficking networks to seek recruits with English-language and tech skills — including east Africans, thousands of whom are now estimated to be trapped inside south-east Asian compounds, says Benedikt Hofmann, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's representative for south-east Asia and the Pacific.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

The Washington Post notes that past research "indicates that exercise helps some cancer survivors avoid recurrence of their disease."

But a new study "offers an explanation of how, showing that exercise changes the inner workings of our muscles and cells, although more study is still needed..." The study, published last month, involved 32 women who'd survived breast cancer. After a single session of interval training or weightlifting, their blood contained higher levels of certain molecules, and those factors helped put the brakes on laboratory-grown breast cancer cells. "Our work shows that exercise can directly influence cancer biology, suppressing tumor growth through powerful molecular signals," said Robert Newton, the deputy director of the Exercise Medicine Research Institute at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, and senior author of the new study. His group's experiment adds to mounting evidence that exercise upends the risks of not only developing but also surviving cancer...

Scientists know contracting muscles release a slew of hormones and biochemicals, known as myokines, into our bloodstreams and have long suspected these myokines fight cancer. In some past studies with mice and healthy people, blood drawn after exercise and added to live cancer cells killed or suppressed the cancer's growth... [The new study tested cancer cells in high-tech petri dishes with blood drawn from cancer survivors.] Drenched in plasma from either the interval trainers or the lifters, many cancer cells quit growing. Quite a few died. (The blood drawn before exercise had no effects.) The cancer-fighting impacts were greatest with the blood drawn after interval training. Why? Additional testing showed this blood contained the highest concentrations of certain, beneficial myokines, especially IL-6, a protein that affects immune responses and inflammation...

What these results mean, Newton said, is that "exercise doesn't just improve fitness and well-being" in people who've had cancer. "It also orchestrates a complex biological response that includes direct anticancer signals from muscles..." Questions remain, of course. Can any type of exercise fight cancer? Newton and other researchers have doubts. The exercise in this study was strenuous, by design. "Earlier studies suggested that the stronger the exercise stimulus, the greater the release of anticancer myokines," Newton said... Even the weight training in this study was less potent than the intense intervals. But Newton believes weight training remains key to cancer fighting. "People with cancer who increase their muscle mass through resistance training also experience greater rises in circulating myokines," he said. More muscle means more myokines.

"Freelance developers and entire companies are making a business out of fixing shoddy vibe coded software," writes 404 Media, interviewing one of the "dozens of people on Fiverr... now offering services specifically catering to people with shoddy vibe coded projects."

Hamid Siddiqi, who offers to "review, fix your vibe code" on Fiverr, told the 404 Media that "Currently, I work with around 15-20 clients regularly, with additional one-off projects throughout the year. ("Siddiqi said common issues he fixes in vibe coded projects include inconsistent UI/UX design in AI-generated frontends, poorly optimized code that impacts performance, misaligned branding elements, and features that function but feel clunky or unintuitive," as well as work o color schemes, animations, and layouts.)

And others coders are also pursuing the "vibe coded mess" market: Swatantra Sohni, who started VibeCodeFixers.com, a site for people with vibe coded projects who need help from experienced developers to fix or finish their projects, says that almost 300 experienced developers have posted their profiles to the site. He said so far VibeCodeFixers.com has only connected between 30-40 vibe code projects with fixers, but that he hasn't done anything to promote the service and at the moment is focused on adding as many software developers to the platform as possible...

"Most of these vibe coders, either they are product managers or they are sales guys, or they are small business owners, and they think that they can build something," Sohni told me. "So for them it's more for prototyping..." Another big issue Sohni identified is "credit burn," meaning the money vibe coders waste on AI usage fees in the final 10-20 percent stage of developing the app, when adding new features breaks existing features.

Sohni told me he thinks vibe coding is not going anywhere, but neither are human developers. "I feel like the role [of human developers] would be slightly limited, but we will still need humans to keep this AI on the leash," he said.
The article also notes that established software development companies like Ulam Labs, now say "we clean up after vibe coding. Literally."

"Built something fast? Now it's time to make it solid," Ulam Labs pitches on its site," suggesting that for their potential customers "the tech debt is holding you back: no tests, shaky architecture, CI/CD is a dream, and every change feels like defusing a bomb. That's where we come in."

A former Memphis disc manufacturing employee has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison after stealing pre-release Blu-rays from his employer and leaking them online. While he received 21 months for copyright infringement, a concurrent firearm charge extended his total prison term to 57 months. TorrentFreak reports: In February, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted 37-year-old Steven Hale from Tennessee, a former employee of a disc manufacturing and distribution company in Memphis. While working at the unnamed company between 2021 and 2022, Hale allegedly stole numerous "pre-release" DVD and Blu-ray discs from his employer. These stolen discs contained many high-profile movie titles including "Spider-Man: No Way Home." In addition to the copyright infringement charge, Hale was also indicted for a firearm offense. When raiding his premises, law enforcement found a gun in a car that was registered in his name, which, for a felon, is a separate criminal offense.

Hale was sentenced at a federal court in Memphis yesterday, where Chief Judge Sheryl H. Lipman handed down a 57-month prison term, exactly in line with the U.S. government's recommendation. Two separate sentences will be served concurrently. Hale received 21 months for the theft and distribution of hundreds of pre-release movie discs. A longer sentence of 57 months was handed down for the firearm charge, which ultimately defines the total prison term. Judge Lipman also granted several requests by the defense. The court recommended that Hale be housed in a facility as close to Memphis as possible so he can be near his family. In addition, the defendant will be allowed to remain on bond and self-surrender to prison at a later date.

The 21-month sentence for the copyright infringement charge is substantially lower than the maximum of 60 months. This is in part the result of a guilty plea the defendant signed in May. After accepting responsibility, the prosecution agreed to drop other charges and recommend a sentence at the low end of the guideline range. Hale entered his guilty plea to Count Two of the indictment. The charge relates to his distribution of ten or more copies of copyrighted works, including pre-release movies, for commercial advantage and private financial gain. This includes the pre-release 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' disc, which is likely the source of the public leak.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from France24: Fueled in part by anger over flashy lifestyles flaunted by elites, young anti-corruption demonstrators mainly in their 20s rallied on Monday. The loose grouping, largely viewed as members of "Gen Z", flooded the capital Kathmandu to demand an end to a ban on Facebook, YouTube and other popular sites. The rallies ended in chaos and tragedy, with at least 19 protesters killed in a police crackdown on Monday. The apps were restored, but protests widened in anger.

On Tuesday, other Nepalis joined the crowds. Parliament was set ablaze, KP Sharma Oli resigned as prime minister, and the army took charge of the streets. Now, many activists are taking to the US group-chat app Discord to talk over their next steps. One server with more than 145,000 members has hosted feverish debate about who could be an interim leader, with many pushing 73-year-old former chief justice Sushila Karki. It is just one example of how social media has driven demands for change. [...]

More than half of Nepal's 30 million people are online, according to the World Bank. Days before the protests, many had rushed to VPN services — or virtual private networks — to evade blocks on platforms. Fears of a wider internet shutdown also drove a surge in downloads for Bluetooth messaging app Bitchat, created by tech billionaire Jack Dorsey. "Tech played... an almost decisive role," journalist Pranaya Rana told AFP. "The whole thing started with young people posting on social media about corruption, and the lavish lives that the children of political leaders were leading."

Hashtags such as #NepoKids, short for nepotism, compared the designer clothing and luxury holidays shown off in their Instagram posts to the difficulties faced by ordinary Nepalis. One post liked 13,000 times accused politicians' children of "living like millionaires," asking: "Where is the tax money going?" "NepoKids was trending all the time," including in rural areas where Facebook is popular, said rights activist Sanjib Chaudhary. "This fuelled the fire" of anger that "has been growing for a long time," he said. [...] Chaudhary said the government "seriously underestimated the power of social media." Nepal's first female prime minister was sworn in Friday as interim leader after protesters held an informal vote on Discord. "Former chief justice Sushila Karki, 73, was the unlikely choice of the 'Gen Z' protesters behind the movement that started out as a social media demonstration against the lavish lifestyles of 'Nepo Kids' but spilled out onto the streets and into the deadliest social unrest Nepal has seen in years," reports CNN World.

"Karki has spent much of her career within the very establishment the youth are protesting against, yet her reputation as a fearless and incorruptible jurist has appealed to many young people in the country of 30 million."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For millions of Spotify users, the "Wrapped" feature -- which crunches the numbers on their annual listening habits -- is a highlight of every year's end, ever since it debuted in 2015. NPR once broke down exactly why our brains find the feature so "irresistible," while Cosmopolitan last year declared that sharing Wrapped screenshots of top artists and songs had by now become "the ultimate status symbol" for tens of millions of music fans. It's no surprise then that, after a decade, some Spotify users who are especially eager to see Wrapped evolve are no longer willing to wait to see if Spotify will ever deliver the more creative streaming insights they crave.

With the help of AI, these users expect that their data can be more quickly analyzed to potentially uncover overlooked or never-considered patterns that could offer even more insights into what their listening habits say about them. Imagine, for example, accessing a music recap that encapsulates a user's full listening history -- not just their top songs and artists. With that unlocked, users could track emotional patterns, analyzing how their music tastes reflected their moods over time and perhaps helping them adjust their listening habits to better cope with stress or major life events. And for users particularly intrigued by their own data, there's even the potential to use AI to cross data streams from different platforms and perhaps understand even more about how their music choices impact their lives and tastes more broadly.

Likely just as appealing as gleaning deeper personal insights, though, users could also potentially build AI tools to compare listening habits with their friends. That could lead to nearly endless fun for the most invested music fans, where AI could be tapped to assess all kinds of random data points, like whose breakup playlists are more intense or who really spends the most time listening to a shared favorite artist. In pursuit of supporting developers offering novel insights like these, more than 18,000 Spotify users have joined "Unwrapped," a collective launched in February that allows them to pool and monetize their data.

Voting as a group through the decentralized data platform Vana -- which Wired profiled earlier this year -- these users can elect to sell their dataset to developers who are building AI tools offering fresh ways for users to analyze streaming data in ways that Spotify likely couldn't or wouldn't. In June, the group made its first sale, with 99.5 percent of members voting yes. Vana co-founder Anna Kazlauskas told Ars that the collective -- at the time about 10,000 members strong -- sold a "small portion" of its data (users' artist preferences) for $55,000 to Solo AI. While each Spotify user only earned about $5 in cryptocurrency tokens -- which Kazlauskas suggested was not "ideal," wishing the users had earned about "a hundred times" more -- she said the deal was "meaningful" in showing Spotify users that their data "is actually worth something." Spotify responded to the collective by citing both trademark and policy violations. The company sent a letter to Unwrapped developers, warning that the project's name may infringe on Spotify's Wrapped branding, and that Unwrapped breaches developer terms. Specifically, Spotify objects to Unwrapped's use of platform data for AI/ML training and facilitating user data sales.

"Spotify honors our users' privacy rights, including the right of portability," Spotify's spokesperson said. "All of our users can receive a copy of their personal data to use as they see fit. That said, UnwrappedData.org is in violation of our Developer Terms which prohibit the collection, aggregation, and sale of Spotify user data to third parties."

Unwrapped says it plans to defend users' right to "access, control, and benefit from their own data," while providing reassurances that it will "respect Spotify's position as a global music leader."

California's legislature this week approved a bill to let renters opt out of bulk-billing arrangements that force them to pay for Internet service from a specific provider. ArsTechnica: The bill says that by January 1, a landlord must "allow the tenant to opt out of paying for any subscription from a third-party Internet service provider, such as through a bulk-billing arrangement, to provide service for wired Internet, cellular, or satellite service that is offered in connection with the tenancy." If a landlord fails to do so, the tenant "may deduct the cost of the subscription to the third-party Internet service provider from the rent," and the landlord would be prohibited from retaliating.

The bill passed the state Senate in a 30-7 vote on Wednesday but needs Gov. Gavin Newsom's signature to become law. It was approved by the state Assembly in a 75-0 vote in April. Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Democratic lawmaker who authored the bill, told Ars today that lobby groups for Internet providers and real estate companies have been "working really hard" to defeat it. But she expects Newsom will approve. "I strongly believe that the governor is going to look at what this bill provides as far as protections for tenants and sign it into law," Ransom said in a phone interview.