Submission + - Vance suspends Microsoft, others from foreign workers applying for green cards, (foxbusiness.com)

Submitted by Kingduck
Kingduck writes: Vice President JD Vance and Labor Department officials announced Thursday that the Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe and others from a key employment-based, green-card program, accusing major tech firms and outsourcing companies of abusing the visa system at the expense of American workers.

Submission + - OpenAI Named Lead Partner of 'Hour of AI' for K-12 Schoolkids Across the Globe

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: If you thought the announced AI moratoriums by the nation's two largest K-12 school districts (New York City & Los Angeles) might prompt the tech-backed nonprofit CodeAI to ease up on the K-12 AI accelerator, think again. On Monday, CodeAI unveiled a revamped website for December's Hour of AI, with OpenAI named as the Lead Partner for the event and Microsoft named as one of two 'Supporters' (the other being the aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman). In August, as it launched ChatGPT for Teens, OpenAI announced a signature partnership with Code.org to 'prepare the first AI generation', adding that 'through the Hour of AI, OpenAI and CodeAI will introduce millions of students to the basics of using AI thoughtfully and responsibly.'

At a Microsoft AI event in August 2025, Microsoft President Brad Smith called on Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi to "switch hats" from coding to AI, setting the stage for Partovi's announcement that the nonprofit would rename the Hour of Code — formerly the premier event for K-12 schoolchildren during CS Education Week since 2013 — to the Hour of AI in 2025 (a month earlier, Microsoft and OpenAI teamed up with the American Federation of Teachers to hatch a plan to 'bring AI into the classroom'). Later in 2025, Microsoft secured a 27% stake in OpenAI's new for-profit entity, which Reuters reported is now eyeing a $1.4 trillion valuation. In mid-2026, Code.org rebranded itself as CodeAI just ahead of the growing pushback against AI in K-12 schools.

The inside story of how Big Tech is applying the same playbook it used to scale coding lessons nationwide to now mainstream their AI tools in schools is at the heart of the new book Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools.

Submission + - Cable Lobby to Sue Trump FCC Over Repeal of National TV Ownership Cap (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cable lobby groups notified the Federal Communications Commission that they will sue the agency to block its controversial repeal of the National Television Ownership Rule, which limits the number of broadcast TV stations a single company may own. The cable groups said that larger broadcast TV station groups will have leverage to demand higher retransmission fees from TV providers, resulting in “higher monthly TV bills for consumers.” They said the FCC repeal order “arbitrarily and capriciously ignores the harms that will surely follow from allowing broadcast station groups to exceed the National Cap.”

The cable lobby groups represent top providers Comcast, Charter, and various other cable operators. Top cable companies have also expanded through mergers. Charter completed a purchase of Cox in August after the FCC rejected protests by advocacy groups that said the cable deal “would create unchecked gatekeeper power over Internet distribution” and make it easier for the biggest cable companies to raise prices. [...] The TV ownership rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Congress directed the FCC to set the cap at 39 percent in 2004. On Friday, cable lobby groups submitted a petition asking the FCC to keep the TV ownership cap in place until litigation over the FCC’s authority to repeal the rule is over.

The cable groups’ filing said the FCC repeal of the TV ownership cap violates the 2004 action by US lawmakers. The decision by Congress to set the cap at a precise numerical threshold was unambiguous, the filing said. “Congress established the National Cap at 39 percent in the 2004 CAA [Consolidated Appropriations Act] in direct response to the FCC’s attempt to aggressively raise the Cap to 45 percent and made repeated references to the 39 percent Cap in the statute,” the petition said. The petition to the FCC is mainly a procedural step as the commission isn’t likely to stay its own order. The cable groups said they intend to sue the commission in a US appeals court once the FCC order is published in the Federal Register. After the lawsuit is filed, they can ask the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would keep the TV ownership cap in place pending the outcome of litigation.

[...] The cable groups’ petition said the FCC can’t change the cap because the 2004 law “references the 39 percent Cap as statutory, not regulatory.” A provision requiring divestiture of stations “specified that someone exceeding ‘the 39 percent national audience reach limitation in paragraph (1)(B)’ of ‘section 202(c)’ of ‘[t]he Telecommunications Act of 1996’ ‘shall have not more than 2 years to divest,’” the petition said. “Likewise, Congress singled out the Commission’s only mechanism for setting aside statutory requirements—the Commission’s forbearance authority under 47 U.S.C. 160—and made clear that it ‘shall not apply to any person or entity that exceeds the 39 percent national audience reach limitation,’” the cable lobby petition said. The FCC order argued that the agency’s “ability to forbear from enforcement of its rules is distinct from its power to alter or eliminate those rules,” and that the FCC forbearance authority doesn’t apply to regulation of broadcasters.

Submission + - Pneumonic plague outbreak hits Siberia as lab worker, 28, dies (hotair.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A suspected plague outbreak has erupted in Russia — killing a young lab worker, forcing nearly 200 people into isolation and triggering accusations that Vladimir Putin’s regime is trying to keep the infection’s possible spread under wraps.

The alarm was raised in Siberia after a worker at an anti-plague laboratory died of the disease, which killed tens of millions in the medieval Black Death, according to a report from The Moscow Times.

Anna Popova, who heads Russia’s public-health watchdog, then rushed 2,600 miles from Moscow to the Irkutsk region as authorities quarantined a hospital and placed scores of people who had come into contact with the victim under medical observation.

"FSB units accompanying ambulances transporting people who had been in contact with [lab tech] Shipilova for medical examination," as per local news. This is significant. FSB is Russia's domestic security / counterintelligence service, tasked w/implementing the national security of Russia." (Its predecessor was the KGB). This suggests quarantine was not voluntary.

It also means Russian authorities are treating the lab accident and plague outbreak as a national security issue, involving a lot more than routine public health.

https://x.com/AnnieJacobsen/st...

Submission + - Google tests AI processor in space (npr.org)

Submitted by Geoffrey.landis
Geoffrey.landis writes: Google just put a satellite testing AI chips into space. The refrigerator-sized satellite is part of a research project, "Suncatcher," the company hopes can pave the way for orbiting AI data centers powered by the sun. The prototype satellite has four specialty chips in it called Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, that Google designed for machine learning and has already deployed in data centers on Earth. The chips will run a version of the company's Gemma AI model for 15 minutes at a time due to heat management constraints, using the open weight model to answer simple queries. In a blog post, Google said the mission will gauge how the TPUs handle "the physical stress of spaceflight and the radiation and thermal extremes of space." The satellite launched October 1 is a prototype that Travis Beals, senior director and lead of Project Suncatcher, called "a very minimal test" to make sure the chips can run in space. A SpaceX rocket carried it into orbit, and Planet will get it up and running. Beal said Google will then fire up and test the TPUs. The goal is for the mission to be operational for a year.

Submission + - New Mexico Wants Meta to Pay $40 Billion In Penalties For Cambridge Analytica (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The state of New Mexico asked a judge on Thursday to order Meta Platforms to pay between $35 billion and $40 billion in penalties after a jury found the company had misled consumers about the privacy of their data on Facebook in a case that came out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Attorneys for New Mexico made the request at a hearing in a lawsuit brought following revelations that the British political consulting firm, which worked on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app without their consent. The jury returned its verdict on September 25. Judge Francis Mathew, who oversaw the trial in Santa Fe, will decide how much Meta must pay in financial penalties. [...] State law allows the judge to decide how much to fine Meta per violation, up to $5,000. At the hearing on Thursday, Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, said applying the full $5,000 penalty to the number of violations would create too large of a penalty under the US Constitution's protections on due process. But the judge should order a significant payment that will impact the company, McGinn said.

"This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price," McGinn said. She said $35 billion to $40 billion, which represents about 20% of the possible penalties that could be awarded under state law from the verdict, would impact the stock price while complying with Meta's right to due process under the Constitution. At the hearing on Thursday, Matt Nicholson, a lawyer for Meta, called the state's request an "astronomical penalty that would obviously violate a host of constitutional provisions." In court filings, Meta urged Mathew to cap the penalties at $3.45 billion. The jury may have said it found Meta's statements misleading, but the evidence shows that Meta does not sell user data and New Mexico did not prove that any consumer had actually been misled, the company said in court filings. The judge said he expected to issue a ruling later this month.

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