Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he understands the concerns about "AI slop" with DLSS 5 but insists the feature preserves a game's underlying geometry and artistic intent. "I think their perspective makes sense, " said Huang during a recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast. "And I could see where they're coming from because I don't love AI slop myself. You know, all of the AI-generated content increasingly looks similar, and they're all beautiful... so I'm empathic toward what they're thinking. That's just not what DLSS 5 is trying to do." Tom's Hardware reports: Although Huang is striking a more conciliatory tone, much of his response is similar to what we heard at GTC [where Huang said gamers were "completely wrong."] The artist determines the geometry, we are completely truthful to the geometry... so every single frame, it enhances, but it doesn't change anything." There was some confusion about how DLSS 5 worked when it was first announced, and although the inner workings of it still aren't clear on a technical level, Huang has said that it isn't a general-purpose generative AI model. He describes it as "content-controlled generative AI." On the other end of the spectrum, Huang also said that it isn't a post-processing filter. The technical details of DLSS 5 live somewhere between that space, and we likely won't know them until later this year when the feature is set to release.

"The question about enhancing, DLSS 5... in the future, you could even prompt it. You know, I want it to be a toon shader. I want it to look like this, kind of. You could even give it an example and it would generate in the style of that, all consistent with the artistry, the style, the intent of the artist," Huang continued. "All of that is done for the artist so they can create something that is more beautiful but still in the style that they want." Although the talking points about DLSS 5 remain unchanged, it seems that Huang has at least heard the criticism. "I think that they got the impression that the games are going to come out the way the games are... and then we're going to post-process it. That's not what DLSS is intended to do."

Huang also made assertions that DLSS is "integrated" with the artist, and suggested that it would put the power of generative AI in the hands of artists working in game development [...]. Although DLSS 5 looks like it's doing a lot, Huang said that it's just another tool, not an essential feature. "The gamers might also appreciate that, in the last couple of years, we introduced skin shaders to game developers, and many of those games have skin shaders that include sub-surface scattering that makes skin look more skin-like... [DLSS 5] is just one more tool. They can decide what to use," Huang ended the conversation about DLSS 5. Immediately after, without missing a beat, he said 1993's Doom was the most influential video game ever made.

Wing is expanding its drone delivery service to the San Francisco Bay Area. "The drone delivery startup has been rapidly expanding to metro areas across the US, but is now targeting the tech-friendly Silicon Valley region," reports Engadget. From the report: Going back to its inaugural deliveries, Wing ferried office supplies across Google's Mountain View campus in the Bay Area with its automated drones. It was still a startup out of Google's X, The Moonshot Factory incubator at the time, but early users were already asking for home delivery services, according to Wing. Now, Wing's latest delivery drones can deliver groceries, food, or whatever else fits in a small package weighing up to five pounds in 30 minutes or less to Bay Area residents. Earlier this year, Wing expanded its service to an additional 150 Walmart stores across the U.S. Service began recently in Atlanta and Charlotte, and it's coming soon to Los Angeles, Houston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Miami and other major U.S. cities to be announced later. "By 2027, Walmart and Wing say they'll have a network of more than 270 drone delivery locations nationwide."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Mark Zuckerberg wants everyone inside and outside his company to eventually have his or her own personal artificial-intelligence agent. He is starting with himself. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta Platforms, is building a CEO agent to help him do his job (source paywalled; alternative source), according to a person familiar with the project. The agent, which is still in development, is currently helping Zuckerberg get information faster -- for instance, by retrieving answers for him that he would typically have to go through layers of people to get, the person familiar with the project said.

[...] Use of AI tools has spread quickly through the ranks at Meta -- in part because it is now a factor in employees' performance reviews. Meta's internal message board is filled with posts from employees sharing new AI use cases they have found and new tools they have built using AI, according to people familiar with the matter. [...] Employees have started using personal agent tools such as My Claw that have access to their chat logs and work files and can go talk to colleagues -- or their colleagues' own personal agents -- on their behalf, the people said. Another AI tool called Second Brain that is somewhere between a chatbot and an agent is also gaining momentum internally, according to people familiar with the matter. Second Brain was built by a Meta employee on top of Claude and can index and query documents for projects, among other uses. On the internal post announcing it to staff, the employee said it is "meant to be like an AI chief of staff."

There is even a group on the internal messaging board where employees' personal agents talk to each other, some of the people said. (Separately, Meta acquired Moltbook, the social-media site for AI agents, and hired its founders in a deal earlier this month.) Meta also recently acquired Manus, a Singapore-based startup that makes personal agents that can execute tasks for its users, and is using the tool internally, some of the people said. Meta recently established a new applied AI engineering organization that is tasked with using AI to help speed up development of the company's large language models. Those teams will have an ultraflat structure of as many as 50 individual contributors reporting to one manager, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. [...] Employees across the company said they have been encouraged to attend AI tutorial meetings several times a week and frequent AI hackathons, and to create their own AI tools to speed up their work.

Computershack shares a report from NBC News: Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of adult-content platform OnlyFans, has died of cancer at the age of 43, the company said in a statement on Monday. "We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Leo Radvinsky. Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer," an OnlyFans spokesperson said. "His family have requested privacy at this difficult time."


Radvinsky, a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur, acquired Fenix International Limited, the parent company of OnlyFans, in 2018 and served as its director and majority shareholder. He also runs Leo, a venture capital fund he founded in 2009 that focuses primarily on investments in technology companies. According to Reuters, OnlyFans is valued at around $5.5 billion, including debt.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: There could be one more step required before creating an account and posting on Reddit in the future. According to Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, the social media platform is exploring different ways to verify a user is human and not a bot. When asked by the TBPN podcast how to confirm that it's a human using Reddit, Huffman responded with several verification methods with varying degrees of heavy-handedness.

"The most lightweight way is with something like Face ID or Touch ID," Huffman said during the interview. "They actually require a human presence, like a human has to touch, or do or look at something, so that actually just proves there's a person there or gets you pretty far." Besides these passkey methods that use biometrics data, Huffman said there are other options like relying on third-party services that are decentralized or don't require ID. On the other end of the spectrum, Huffman also mentioned more burdensome options, like ID-checking services.

[...] "Part of our promise for our users is we don't know your name but we do want to know you're a person," Huffman said. "It'll be an evolution for us for a while, and probably every platform to find the right middle ground here." Reddit co-founder and former executive chair, Alexis Ohanian, said on X that Reddit requiring Face ID wasn't something he expected but agreed that something had to be done about the fake content from bots, adding that, "I just don't know how to sell face-scanning to Redditors or even lurkers." We reached out to Reddit's communications team and will update the story when we hear back. The Digg beta shut down earlier this month after failing to fight the overwhelming influx of AI-driven bots and spam. "The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts," said CEO Justin Mezzell. "We knew bots were part of the landscape, but we didn't appreciate the scale, sophistication, or speed at which they'd find us."

"We banned tens of thousands of accounts. We deployed internal tooling and industry-standard external vendors. None of it was enough. When you can't trust that the votes, the comments, and the engagement you're seeing are real, you've lost the foundation a community platform is built on."

Yes, Microsoft announced it's fixing common Windows 11 complaints. But what about getting rid of that requirement to have a Microsoft account before installing Windows 11? While Microsoft didn't mention that at all, the senior editor at the blog Windows Central reports there's "a number of people" internally pushing at Microsoft to relax that requirement: Microsoft Vice President and overall developer legend Scott Hanselman has posted on X in response to someone asking him about possibly relaxing the Microsoft account requirements, saying "Ya I hate that. Working on it...." [Hanselman made that remark Friday, to his 328,200 followers.]
The blog notes "It would be very easy for Microsoft to remove this requirement from a technical perspective, it's just whether or not the company can agree to make the change that needs to be decided."

Elsewhere on X someone told Hanselman they wanted to see Windows "cut out the borderline malware tactics we've seen in recent years to push things like Edge, Bing, ads into the start menu, etc." Hanselman's reply? "Yes a calmer and more chill OS with fewer upsells is a goal."

Q: When will we see first changes? for now it's just words...

Hanselman: This month and every month this year.

A man crossing the street one San Francisco night spotted a self-driving car — and decided to confront its passenger, 37-year-old tech worker Doug Fulop. The New York Times reports the man yelled that "he wanted to kill Fulop and the other two passengers for giving money to a robot." A taxi driver would have simply driven away. But Fulop's vehicle had no driver — it was a self-driving Waymo... Self-driving cars are designed to stop moving if a person is nearby. People can take advantage of that function to harass and threaten their passengers.... It was unsettling to be trapped inside a Waymo during an attack, Fulop said. "If he had kept hammering on one window instead of alternating, I'm sure he would have eventually broken through," he said. The attacker did not appear to be on drugs or otherwise impaired, but seemed to be overtaken by extreme anger at the self-driving car, Fulop said.

It did not seem safe to get out and run, he added, since the man was trying to open the locked doors and said he wanted to kill the passengers. They called 911 and Waymo's support line, Fulop said. Waymo told them that it would not manually direct the car away if someone was standing nearby, and that the passengers would be OK with the doors locked. The car's software does not allow riders to jump into the driver's seat and take over during an incident. The attack lasted around six minutes. By then, bystanders had begun cheering on the man, Fulop said. That distracted the man, who moved far enough away from the car that it could finally drive away...

Fulop said he had stopped using Waymo for a time after the January attack and would avoid the service at night unless the company changed its policy of not intervening when a hostile person threatened riders. "As passengers, we deserve more safety than that if someone is trying to attack us," he said. "This can't be the policy to be trapped there."
The article remembers other incidents — including a 2024 video showing three women screaming as their autonomous taxi is spray-painted by vandals. And technology author/speaker Anders Sorman-Nilsson says in Los Angeles five men on e-bikes surrounded his Waymo and forced it to stop. The author felt safe inside the vehicle, according to the times, which adds "He felt reassured knowing that Waymo's many exterior cameras were recording the men. After around five minutes, he said, they gave up and rode away."

"Billionaire Elon Musk has announced plans to build a $20 billion chip plant in Austin, Texas" reports a local news station: Musk announced on Saturday night during a livestream on his social media platform X that the plant, called "Terafab," will be built near Tesla's campus and gigafactory in eastern Travis County. The long-anticipated project is a joint venture between Musk-owned properties Tesla, SpaceX and xAI... The Terafab plant is expected to begin production in 2027.
Musk "has said the semiconductor industry is moving too slow to keep up with the supply of chips he expects to need," writes Bloomberg — quoting Musk as saying "We either build the Terafab or we don't have the chips, and we need the chips, so we build the Terafab." Musk detailed some specific plans, including producing chips that can support 100 to 200 gigawatts a year of computing power on Earth, and chips that can support a terawatt in space, but gave no timelines for the facility or its output... The facility is expected to make two types of chips, one of which will be optimized for edge and inference, primarily for his vehicle, robotaxi and Optimus humanoid robots. The other will be a high-power chip, designed for space that could be used by SpaceX and xAI... Musk said he expects xAI to use the vast majority of the chips.

During the presentation, Musk also unveiled a speculative rendering of a future "mini" AI data center satellite, one piece of a much larger satellite system that he wants SpaceX to build to do complex computing in space. In January, SpaceX requested a license from the Federal Communications Commission to launch one million data center satellites into orbit around Earth. Musk said that the mini satellite he revealed would have the capacity for 100 kilowatts of power. "We expect future satellites to probably go to the megawatt range," Musk said.

Raising money to build and launch AI data centers in space is one of the driving forces behind SpaceX's planned IPO later this year. SpaceX is expected to raise as much as $50 billion in a record-setting IPO this summer which could value it at more than $1.75 trillion, Bloomberg News reported earlier.

A new bill proposed in California "goes after big tech companies" writes Semafor. Supported by Y Combinator, Cory Doctorow , and the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future, it's called the "BASED" act — an acronym which stands for "Blocking Anticompetitive Self-preferencing by Entrenched Dominant platforms."

As announced by San Francisco state representative Scott Wiener, the bill "will restore competition to the digital marketplace by prohibiting any digital platform with a market capitalization greater than $1 trillion and serving 100 million or more monthly users in the U.S., from favoring their own products and services on the platforms they operate."

More from Scott Wiener;s announcement: For years, giant digital platforms like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta have used their immense power to promote their own products and services while stifling competitors — a practice also known as self-preferencing. The result has been higher prices, diminished service, and fewer options for consumers, and less innovation across the technology ecosystem.

Self-preferencing also locks startups and mid-sized companies out of the online marketplace unless they play by rules set by their competitors. As a new generation of AI-powered startups seeks to enter the marketplace, their success — and public access to the innovations they produce — depends on their ability to compete on an even playing field.

"Anticompetitive behavior is everywhere on the internet," said Senator Wiener, "from rigged search results, to manipulative nudges boosting the 'house' product, to anti-discount policies that raise prices, to the dreaded green bubble that 'breaks' the group chat. When the world's largest digital platforms rig the game to favor their own products and services, we all lose. By prohibiting these anticompetitive practices, the BASED Act will protect competition online, empower consumers and startups, and promote innovations to improve all our lives."
The announcement includes a quote from Teri Olle, VP of the nonprofit Economic Security California Action, saying the act would "safeguard merit-based market competition. This legislation stands for a simple principle: owning the stadium doesn't mean that you get to rig the game." Some conduct prohibited by the proposed bill includes

• Manipulating the order of search results to favor a provider's products or services, irrespective of a merit-based process,

• Using non-public data generated by third-party sellers — including sales volumes, pricing, and customer behavior — to develop competing products that are subsequently boosted above the third-party sellers' product...

And the announcement also notes that "under the terms of the bill, providers could not prevent consumers from obtaining a portable copy of their own data or restrict voluntary data sharing (by consumers) with third parties."

Read on for reactions from DuckDuckGo, Proton, Yelp, Y Combinator, and Cory Doctorow.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the tech-news blog Neowin: Apple appears to have temporarily prevented apps, including Replit and Vibecode, from pushing new updates. Apple seems bothered by how apps like Replit present vibe-coded apps in a web view within the original app. This process virtually allows the app to become something else. And the new app isn't distributed via the App Store, but it still runs on the user's device... [S]uch apps would also bypass the App Store Review process that ensures that apps are safe to use and meet Apple's design and performance standards...

According to the publication (via MacRumors), Apple was close to approving pending updates for such apps if they changed how they work. For instance, Replit would get the green light if its developers configure the app to open vibe-coded apps in an external browser rather than the in-app web view.

Vibecode is also close to being approved if it removes features, such as the ability to develop apps specifically for the App Store.

CNN looks at "the Magic AI fitness mirror," a new product "watching you, and giving you feedback automatically," while sometimes playing footage of a recorded personal trainer.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland describes CNN's video report: CNN says the device "tracks form, counts reps, and corrects technique in real-time — and it doesn't go easy on you." (Although the company's CEO/cofounder, Varun Bhanot, says "we're not trying to completely replace personal trainers. What we are providing is a more accessible alternative.")

CNN call the company "more a computer-vision firm than a fitness company, building the tech for this mirror from the ground up." CEO Bhanot tells CNN he'd hired a personal trainer in his 20s to get fit, but "Going through that journey, I realized how old-fashioned personal training was. Dumbbells were still dumb. There was no data or augmentation for the whole process!"

"The AI fitness and wellness market is already huge — and it's growing," CNN adds. "In 2025 the global market was worth $11 billion, according to [market research firm] Insightace Analytic. By 2035, this market is expected to reach just shy of $58 billion. And Magic AI is far from alone. Form, Total, Speediance, and Echelon, to name a few, are all brands vying for a slice of this market.
Even the most purely physical of activities — exercising your body — now gets "enhanced" with AI accessories...

"Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated," reports the Verge: After doing something similar in its Google Discover news feed, it's starting to mess with headlines in the traditional "10 blue links," too. We've found multiple examples where Google replaced headlines we wrote with ones we did not, sometimes changing their meaning in the process. For example, Google reduced our headline "I used the 'cheat on everything' AI tool and it didn't help me cheat on anything" to just five words: "'Cheat on everything' AI tool." It almost sounds like we're endorsing a product we do not recommend at all.

What we are seeing is a "small" and "narrow" experiment, one that's not yet approved for a fuller launch, Google spokespeople Jennifer Kutz, Mallory De Leon, and Ned Adriance tell The Verge. They would not say how "small" that experiment actually is. Over the past few months, multiple Verge staffers have seen examples of headlines that we never wrote appear in Google Search results — headlines that do not follow our editorial style, and without any indication that Google replaced the words we chose. And Google says it's tweaking how other websites show up in search, too, not just news.

The good news, for now, is that these changed headlines seem to be few and far between, and they're not yet the kind of tripe we've seen in Google Discover. (For example, Google Discover told me this week that the PlayStation Portal was getting a 1080p streaming mode, when it actually got a higher bitrate mode instead.) Compared to that and other lying Google Discover headlines like "US reverses foreign drone ban" — on a story reporting the opposite — the nonsense headlines we're seeing in Google Search are downright tame.
The article points out that Google "originally told us its AI headlines in Google Discover were an experiment too. A month later, it told us those AI headlines are now a feature..."

"Google confirmed that the test uses generative AI, but claimed that 'if we were to actually launch something based on this experiment, it would not be using a generative model and we would not be creating headlines with gen AI'..."

13 million people live in Moscow, reports CNN.

But since early March the city "has experienced internet and mobile service outages on a level previously unseen." (Though Wi-Fi access to the internet is still available...) Russian social media "is flooded with jokes and memes about sending letters by carrier pigeons or using smartphones as ping-pong paddles..." [Moscow residents] complain they cannot navigate around the center or use their favorite mobile apps. The interruptions appear to have had a knock-on effect of making it more difficult to make voice calls or send an SMS. Some are panic-buying walkie-talkies, paper maps, and even pagers.

The latest shutdown builds on similar efforts around the country. For months, mobile internet service interruptions have hit Russia's regions, particularly in provinces bordering Ukraine, which has staged incursions and launched strikes inside Russian territory to counter Russia's full-scale invasion. Some regions have reported not having any mobile internet since summer. But the most recent outages have hit the country's main centers of wealth and power: Moscow and Russia's second city, St. Petersburg.

Public officials claim the blackout of mobile internet service in the capital and other regions is part of a security effort to counter "increasingly sophisticated methods" of Ukrainian attack... Speculation centers on whether the authorities are testing their ability to clamp down on public protest in the case there's an effort to reintroduce unpopular mobilization measures to find fresh manpower for the war in Ukraine; whether mobile internet outages may precede a more sweeping digital blackout; or if the new restrictions reflect an atmosphere of heightened fear and paranoia inside the Kremlin as it watches US-led regime- change efforts unfold against Russian allies such as Venezuela and Iran... On Wednesday, Russian mobile providers sent notifications that there would be "temporary restrictions" on mobile internet in parts of Moscow for security reasons, Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti reported. The measures will last "for as long as additional measures are needed to ensure the safety of our citizens," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on March 11...

As well as banning many social media platforms, Russia blocks calling features on messenger apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. Roskomnadzor, the country's communications regulator, has introduced a "white list" of approved apps... Russia has also tested what it calls the "sovereign internet," a network that is effectively firewalled from the rest of the world. The disruptions are fueling broader concerns about tightening state control. In parallel with the internet shutdown, the Kremlin has also been pushing to impose a state-controlled messaging app called Max as the country's main portal for state services, payments and everyday communication. There has been speculation the Kremlin may be planning to ban Telegram, Russia's most widely used messaging app, entirely. Roskomnadzor said that it was restricting Telegram for allegedly failing to comply with Russian laws.

"Russia has opened a criminal case against me for 'aiding terrorism,'" Telegram's Russian-born founder Pavel Durov said on X last month. "Each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians' access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech...."
The article includes this quote from Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society and an expert on Russian internet freedom. "In any situation when they (the authorities) perceive some kind of danger for themselves and accept the belief that the internet is dangerous for them, even if it may not be true, they will shut it down," he said. "Just like in Iran."

Jeff Bezos "is in early talks to raise $100 billion," reports the Wall Street Journal, "for a new fund that would buy up manufacturing companies and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation."

"The Amazon.com founder is meeting with some of the world's largest asset managers to raise funding for the project." A few months ago, [Bezos] traveled to the Middle East to discuss the new fund with sovereign wealth representatives in the region. More recently, he went to Singapore to raise funding for the effort as well, according to people familiar with the matter. The fund, described in investor documents as a "manufacturing transformation vehicle," is aiming to buy companies in major industrial sectors such as chipmaking, defense and aerospace...

Bezos was recently appointed co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a new startup that is building artificial-intelligence models that can understand and simulate the physical world. Bezos plans to use the company's technology to boost the efficiency and profitability of businesses owned by the fund, a playbook that some investment firms are similarly deploying in sectors such as accounting and property management... [Prometheus has also hired employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind, the article points out.]

While much of the AI revolution has been focused on large language models, billions of dollars have begun to flow to companies that are seeking to apply spatially focused AI systems toward industries including robotics and manufacturing... Amazon, one of [America's] largest employers, has closed in on the milestone of having as many robots as humans.

joshuark shares a report from Neowin: OpenAI is planning to combine its Atlas web browser, ChatGPT app, and Codex coding app into a singular desktop "superapp." CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, said the company was doubling down on its successful products. By taking this move, the AI company aims to streamline the user experience and reduce fragmentation. Simo said in an internal memo: "We realized we were spreading our efforts across too many apps and stacks, and that we need to simplify our efforts. That fragmentation has been slowing us down and making it harder to hit the quality bar we want."

An anonymous reader quotes a repot from the Portland Tribune: There was plenty of uncertainty and debate about the effectiveness of a cell phone ban decreed (PDF) by executive order last summer. But at least in Estacada, the policy has earned two thumbs up, including approval from a "grumpy old teacher." Jeff Mellema is a language arts teacher at Estacada High School. He has worked in the building for 24 years, and he said the new policy that prohibits students from using their phones during the day has been a breath of fresh air.

"There is so much better discourse in my classroom, be it personal or academic," Mellema said. "Students can't avoid those conversations anymore with their phones." "This ban has brought joy back to this old, grumpy teacher," he added with a smile. That is the kind of feedback Gov. Tina Kotek was hoping for as she visited Estacada High School on Wednesday afternoon, March 18. Her goal was to visit classrooms, speak with administrators, and meet with students one-on-one to hear about the effectiveness of her phone policy. [...] In the classrooms, she was able to take a straw poll around the cell phone ban and then get specific, direct feedback from the kids. Overall, it was positive.

The Rangers said they noticed changes in how they interact with teachers and peers. They don't feel that "siren's song" tug of their phones as often, and the changes are bleeding into everyday life as well -- think less reminders to put phones away during family dinners. Phones also led to issues around bullying and online toxicity during the school day. There are some hiccups. The students spoke about difficulties in tracking busy schedules. Many athletes relied on their phones for practice times and locations. Some advanced placement kids said the overzealous programs monitoring school laptops blocked access to needed resources for studying/researching schoolwork. There is even a strange quirk with school-provided tech that prevents them from accessing their calculators. "Maybe the filters are too strong right now," Gov. Kotek said. "That is why we are working with the districts to best implement the policy."

The kids also weighed in on the debate around the extent of the ban. The two options bandied in Salem were a "bell-to-bell" policy or just inside classrooms. The latter would allow kids to use their phones during passing period and lunch. Several advocated for that change. That mirrored the debate within the Oregon legislature. It ultimately led to a stalemate and the need for Gov. Kotek's executive ruling. "When you make a decision like this, you don't know how it will ultimately work," Kotek told the students. "I appreciate you adapting to the situation and making it work for you." While things could change in the future, the governor is pleased with the early results. The phone ban is here to stay.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A lobbying trade body for smaller cloud providers is asking the European Commission to impose interim measures blocking Broadcom from terminating the VMware Cloud Service Provider program, calling the decision a death sentence for some tech suppliers and an illegal squeeze on customer choice. As The Reg revealed in January, Broadcom shuttered the scheme, a move sources claimed affects hundreds of CSPs across Europe and curtails options for enterprises buying VMware software and services. The Cloud Infrastructure Service Provider in Europe (CISPE) trade group, representing nearly 50 tech suppliers, filed the complaint today with the EC Directorates-General, accusing Broadcom of bully-boy tactics, and calling for authorities to halt what it terms as "ongoing abuse."

Francisco Mingorance, CISPE secretary general, said of the complaint: "Businesses -- both cloud providers and their customers -- are being irreparably damaged by Broadcom's unfair actions, which we believe are illegal. "After imposing outrageous and unjustified price hikes immediately following the acquisition of VMware, Broadcom is now applying the 'coup de grace'. We need urgent intervention to force them to change. The only way to stop bullies is to stand up to them." CISPE claims that, since Broadcom completed its $69 billion takeover of VMware in October 2023, prices have risen tenfold, payment is demanded upfront, products are bundled regardless of customer need, and minimum commitments are based on potential rather than actual consumption.

The VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program officially closed in January and all transactions must be complete by March 31. After that date, only a select group of suppliers will be able to sell VMware subscriptions -- either standalone or as part of a broader service. Across Europe, we're told this equates to hundreds of businesses losing their authorization. For some, the loss of VCSP status effectively destroys their market. Those whose operations were built around VMware must now hand customers to another authorized supplier or begin the costly migration to an alternative platform. Broadcom said in a statement responding to the complaint: "Broadcom strongly disagrees with the allegations by CISPE, an organization funded by hyperscalers, which misrepresent the realities of the market. We continue to be committed to investing significantly in our European VMware Cloud Service Provider partners... helping them offer alternatives to the hyperscalers and meet the evolving needs of European businesses and organizations."

Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Rapper Afroman, born Joseph Edgar Foreman, famous for his 2000 hit "Because I Got High", has won a defamation lawsuit that seven Ohio police offers filed against him. A jury found he did not defame the officers in music videos he made about a 2022 police raid of his home. In August 2022, Adams County Sheriff's Department raided Afroman's home on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping. Neither drugs nor kidnapping victims were found, and charges were never filed. However, local officials would not pay for damages occurred during the raid including a broken front door and a video surveillance camera. Afroman used his home security footage of the raid to create music rap videos criticizing the police over the incident; "Will You Help Me Repair My Door?", "Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera?", and "Lemon Pound Cake". He posted the videos on YouTube.

In March 2023, seven officers filed a lawsuit against Afroman for invasion of privacy and the unauthorized use of their images from the security footage in addition to defamation claims. The officers requested an injunction for Afroman to stop speaking about them or using their photos. The officers also wanted all proceeds from the videos, song sales, performances, and merchandise claiming they had suffered "emotional distress" due to the videos. Afroman's defense included Freedom of Speech rights to criticize public officials. The ACLU filed an amicus brief supporting the rapper, arguing that the lawsuit was a SLAPP suit only meant to silence criticism. In October 2023, the court agreed and dismissed the invasion of privacy, "right of publicity", and "unauthorized use of individual's persona" claims but allowed the defamation case to proceed.

Defamation claims by the officers included the allegation Afroman repeatedly had sex with the wife of Randolph L. Walters, Jr. When Afroman's lawyer asked Walters "But we all know that's not true, right?", the officer replied he did not know. Defamation from emotional damages requires that harm arise from a false statement; however, if a statement is so outrageous that no one would believe it to be true, then reputational damage cannot be a result.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google is planning big changes for Android in 2026 aimed at combating malware across the entire device ecosystem. Starting in September, Google will begin restricting application sideloading with its developer verification program, but not everyone is on board. Android Ecosystem President Sameer Samat tells Ars that the company has been listening to feedback, and the result is the newly unveiled advanced flow, which will allow power users to skip app verification. With its new limits on sideloading, Android phones will only install apps that come from verified developers. To verify, devs releasing apps outside of Google Play will have to provide identification, upload a copy of their signing keys, and pay a $25 fee. It all seems rather onerous for people who just want to make apps without Google's intervention.

Apps that come from unverified developers won't be installable on Android phones -- unless you use the new advanced flow, which will be buried in the developer settings. When sideloading apps today, Android phones alert the user to the "unknown sources" toggle in the settings, and there's a flow to help you turn it on. The verification bypass is different and will not be revealed to users. You have to know where this is and proactively turn it on yourself, and it's not a quick process. [...] The actual legwork to activate this feature only takes a few seconds, but the 24-hour countdown makes it something you cannot do spur of the moment.

But why 24 hours? According to Samat, this is designed to combat the rising use of high-pressure social engineering attacks, in which the scammer convinces the victim they have to install an app immediately to avoid severe consequences. "In that 24-hour period, we think it becomes much harder for attackers to persist their attack," said Samat. "In that time, you can probably find out that your loved one isn't really being held in jail or that your bank account isn't really under attack." But for people who are sure they don't want Google's verification system to get in the way of sideloading any old APK they come across, they don't have to wait until they encounter an unverified app to get started. You only have to select the "indefinitely" option once on a phone, and you can turn dev options off again afterward. "For a lot of people in the world, their phone is their only computer, and it stores some of their most private information," Samat said. "Over the years, we've evolved the platform to keep it open while also keeping it safe. And I want to emphasize, if the platform isn't safe, people aren't going to use it, and that's a lose-lose situation for everyone, including developers."

Trevor Milton, the pardoned founder of Nikola, is seeking $1 billion for AI-powered autonomous planes through a new venture called SyberJet. The Tech Buzz reports: "Autonomous planes will be 10 times harder than Nikola ever was," Milton told the Wall Street Journal in a rare interview. It's a remarkable admission from someone whose last venture collapsed under the weight of securities fraud charges after he overstated the capabilities of Nikola's electric and hydrogen-powered trucks. Milton was convicted in 2022 on three counts of fraud for misleading investors about Nikola's technology, including staging a video that made it appear a truck prototype was driving under its own power when it was actually rolling downhill. The conviction sent him to prison and turned Nikola into a cautionary tale about startup hype culture. His pardon, which came earlier this year, sparked immediate controversy in venture capital and legal circles.

Now he's betting that AI and autonomous aviation represent a clean slate. SyberJet appears focused on developing artificial intelligence systems capable of piloting aircraft without human intervention - a technical challenge that's stumped even well-funded players like Boeing and Airbus. [...] Milton hasn't detailed SyberJet's technical approach or revealed who's backing the venture. The company's website remains sparse, and aviation industry sources say they haven't seen concrete demonstrations of the technology. That opacity echoes the early days of Nikola, when Milton made sweeping claims about revolutionary trucks that existed mostly in renderings and promotional videos. If you need a quick refresher on the Nikola saga, here's a timeline of key events:

June, 2016: Nikola Motor Receives Over 7,000 Preorders Worth Over $2.3 Billion For Its Electric Truck
December, 2016: Nikola Motor Company Reveals Hydrogen Fuel Cell Truck With Range of 1,200 Miles
February, 2020: Nikola Motors Unveils Hybrid Fuel-Cell Concept Truck With 600-Mile Range
June, 2020: Nikola Founder Exaggerated the Capability of His Debut Truck
September, 2020: Nikola Motors Accused of Massive Fraud, Ocean of Lies
September, 2020: Nikola Admits Prototype Was Rolling Downhill In Promo Video
September, 2020: Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Steps Down as Chairman in Battle With Short Seller
October, 2020: Nikola Stock Falls 14 Percent After CEO Downplays Badger Truck Plans
November, 2020: Nikola Stock Plunges As Company Cancels Badger Pickup Truck
July, 2021: Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Indicted on Three Counts of Fraud
December, 2021: EV Startup Nikola Agrees To $125 Million Settlement
September, 2022: Nikola Founder Lied To Investors About Tech, Prosecutor Says in Fraud Trial