After raising rates last June for customers on some of its older plans, T-Mobile is pushing up costs again -- but it's not entirely clear how many people are affected. From a report: According to a memo obtained by CNET and sent to T-Mobile employees early this morning, some people will see a $5 per-line increase beginning with their April or May bills.

The memo by Jon Freier, president of T-Mobile's consumer group, states that customers affected by the price hike should be notified by the end of today, March 13. Only those who receive a notice will see the rate increase.

Freier cites the "rising costs over the past several years" as the impetus behind the price push. Other carriers are facing the same headwinds, such as Verizon last December and this January, and AT&T last January and June.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta plans to test out X's algorithm for Community Notes to crowdsource fact-checks that will appear across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. In a blog, Meta said the testing in the U.S. would begin March 18, with about 200,000 potential contributors already signed up. Anyone over 18 with a Meta account more than six months old can also join a waitlist of users who will "gradually" and "randomly" be admitted to write and rate cross-platform notes during initial beta testing.

Meta claimed that borrowing X's approach would result in "less biased" fact-checking than relying on experts alone. But the social media company will delay publicly posting any notes until it's confident that the system is working. For users of Meta platforms, notes could help flag misleading content overlooked by prior fact-checking efforts. However, Meta confirmed that users will not be allowed to add notes correcting misleading advertisements, which means notes won't help reduce scam ads that The Guardian reported last August have been spreading on Facebook for years. Meta confirmed that the company plans to tweak X's algorithm over time to develop its own version of community notes, which "may explore different or adjusted algorithms to support how Community Notes are ranked and rated."

Mozilla has warned that the U.S. Department of Justice's proposed remedies in its antitrust case against Google would harm independent browsers and reduce competition in the browser market. The DOJ and several state attorneys general last week filed revised proposed remedies in the U.S. v. Google search case that would prohibit all search payments to browser developers, a move Mozilla says would disproportionately impact smaller players.

"These proposed remedies prohibiting search payments to small and independent browsers miss the bigger picture -- and the people who will suffer most are everyday internet users," said Mark Surman, President of Mozilla. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, which generate revenue from hardware and operating systems, Mozilla relies primarily on search revenue to fund browser development. Mozilla argues that cutting these payments would not solve search dominance but would instead strengthen the position of tech giants.

Mozilla also warned that the proposal threatens its ability to maintain Gecko, one of only three major browser engines alongside Google's Chromium and Apple's WebKit. "If we lose our ability to maintain Gecko, it's game over for an open, independent web," Surman said, noting that even Microsoft abandoned its browser engine in 2019. "If Mozilla is unable to sustain our browser engine, it would severely impact browser engine competition and mean the death of the open web as we know it -- essentially, creating a web where dominant players like Google and Apple, have even more control, not less."

Firefox serves 27 million monthly active users in the U.S. and nearly 205 million globally.

According to The Verge, Sonos has abandoned its plans to release a streaming video player this year. From the report: The news was announced by the company's leadership during an all-hands call today. That product, codenamed Pinewood, was set to be Sonos' next major hardware launch. It was already deep into development and has spent months in beta testing. But now the team behind it will be reassigned to other projects as interim CEO Tom Conrad reprioritizes the company's future roadmap and continues what he hopes will be a turnaround from a bruising 2024. He told employees that a push into video from Sonos is off the table "for now." [...]

Pinewood was designed to offer many of the same streaming video apps as other devices on the market along with deep universal search and content aggregation. But as I reported last month, Sonos also intended for it to double as an HDMI switcher and support passthrough functionality for gaming consoles, 4K Blu-ray players, and more. The box was also set to allow new configurations of surround sound systems using Sonos' many speakers.

The Federal Trade Commission asked a judge in Seattle to delay the start of its trial accusing Amazon of duping consumers into signing up for its Prime program, citing resource constraints. CNBC: Attorneys for the FTC made the request during a status hearing on Wednesday before Judge John Chun in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Chun had set a Sept. 22 start date for the trial. Jonathan Cohen, an attorney for the FTC, asked Chun for a two-month continuance on the case due to staffing and budgetary shortfalls.

The FTC's request to delay due to staffing constraints comes amid a push by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency to reduce spending. DOGE, which is led by tech baron Elon Musk, has slashed the federal government's workforce by more than 62,000 workers in February alone. "We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on our case team," Cohen said.

Amazon, Alphabet's Google and Meta Platforms on Wednesday said they support efforts to at least triple nuclear energy worldwide by 2050. From a report: The tech companies signed a pledge first adopted in December 2023 by more than 20 countries, including the U.S., at the U.N. Climate Change Conference. Financial institutions including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley backed the pledge last year.

The pledge is nonbinding, but highlights the growing support for expanding nuclear power among leading industries, finance and governments. Amazon, Google and Meta are increasingly important drivers of energy demand in the U.S. as they build out AI centers. The tech sector is turning to nuclear power after concluding that renewables alone won't provide enough reliable power for their energy needs. Microsoft and Apple did not sign the statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: When Bluesky CEO Jay Graber walked on stage at SXSW 2025 for her keynote discussion, she wore a large black T-shirt with her hair pulled back into a bun. At first glance, it might appear as though she's following the same playbook that so many women in tech leadership have played before: downplaying her femininity to be taken seriously. The truth is way more interesting than that. What might look like your average black T-shirt is a subtle, yet clear swipe at Mark Zuckerberg, a CEO who represents everything that Bluesky is trying to work against as an open source social network.

The Meta founder and CEO has directly compared himself to the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. His own shirt declared Aut Zuck aut nihil, which is a play on the Latin phrase aut Caesar aut nihil: "Either Caesar or nothing." Graber's shirt -- which directly copies the style of a shirt that Zuckerberg wore onstage recently -- says Mundus sine caesaribus. Or, "a world without Caesars." With the way Bluesky is designed, Graber is certainly putting her money where her mouth (or shirt) is. As a decentralized social network built upon an open source framework, Bluesky differs from legacy platforms like Facebook in that users have a direct, transparent window into how the platform is being built. "If a billionaire came in and bought Bluesky, or took it over, or if I decided tomorrow to change things in a way that people really didn't like, then they could fork off and go on to another application," Graber explained at SXSW. "There's already applications in the network that give you another way to view the network, or you could build a new one as well. And so that openness guarantees that there's always the ability to move to a new alternative."

Today marks the release of Framework Mono 6.14, the first major Mono release in five years and the first under WineHQ's stewardship. This update includes long-awaited improvements such as native macOS ARM64 support, enhancements to System.Windows.Forms for X11, better COM interface support, and various stability fixes. Phoronix reports: In addition to the native macOS ARM64 support and System.Windows.Forms improvements for X11, some of the other Mono 6.14 improvements carried out over the past half-decade include improved support for generated COM interfaces, many warning fixes, addressing common cases where processes would hang on exit, and more.

As for the "Framework Mono" name rather than just Mono, the release announcement explains: "Framework Mono is the project previously hosted at https://github.com/mono/mono, which was then simply called Mono. I have made this change to distinguish it from 'monovm' and 'Wine Mono', which are different projects. Framework Mono is a cross-platform runtime compatible with .NET Framework." You can download and learn more about the release here.

A 55-year-old software developer faces up to 10 years in prison after being convicted for deploying malicious code that sabotaged his former employer's network, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.

Davis Lu was convicted by a jury for causing intentional damage to protected computers owned by power management company Eaton Corp., the US Department of Justice announced Friday. Lu, who worked at Eaton for 11 years, became disgruntled after a 2018 corporate "realignment" reduced his responsibilities.

He created malicious code that deleted coworker profile files, prevented logins, and caused system crashes. His most destructive creation was a "kill switch" named "IsDLEnabledinAD" that automatically activated upon his termination in 2019, disrupting Eaton's global operations. Lu admitted to creating some malicious code but plans to appeal the verdict.

Microsoft has spotted a malvertising campaign that downloaded nastyware hosted on GitHub and exposed nearly a million devices to information thieves. From a report: Discovered by Microsoft Threat Intelligence late last year, the campaign saw pirate vid-streaming websites embed malvertising redirectors to generate pay-per-view or pay-per-click revenue from malvertising platforms. "These redirectors subsequently routed traffic through one or two additional malicious redirectors, ultimately leading to another website, such as a malware or tech support scam website, which then redirected to GitHub" according to Microsoft's threat research team.

GitHub hosted a first-stage payload that installed code that dropped two other payloads. One gathered system configuration info such as data on memory size, graphics capabilities, screen resolution, the operating system present, and user paths. Third-stage payloads varied but most "conducted additional malicious activities such as command and control (C2) to download additional files and to exfiltrate data, as well as defense evasion techniques."

AmiMoJo writes: In September 2023, KrebsOnSecurity published findings from security researchers who concluded that a series of six-figure cyberheists across dozens of victims resulted from thieves cracking master passwords stolen from the password manager service LastPass in 2022. In a court filing last week, U.S. federal agents investigating a spectacular $150 million cryptocurrency heist said they had reached the same conclusion.

On March 6, federal prosecutors in northern California said they seized approximately $24 million worth of cryptocurrencies that were clawed back following a $150 million cyberheist on Jan. 30, 2024. The complaint refers to the person robbed only as 'Victim-1,' but according to blockchain security researcher ZachXBT the theft was perpetrated against Chris Larsen, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency platform Ripple.

ZachXBT was the first to report on the heist, of which approximately $24 million was frozen by the feds before it could be withdrawn. This week's action by the government merely allows investigators to officially seize the frozen funds. But there is an important conclusion in this seizure document: It basically says the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI agree with the findings of the LastPass breach story published here in September 2023.

Nearly one in four U.S. tech jobs posted in 2025 require AI skills, according to data from the University of Maryland's AI job tracker, as companies across sectors adapt to the technology.

Companies across healthcare, retail and utilities are increasingly seeking candidates who can integrate AI into existing roles rather than creating entirely new positions, with these skills commanding premium pay and greater job security.

The information sector leads with 36% of IT jobs in January seeking AI expertise, followed by finance and professional services firms. AI-related listings account for 1.3% of all job postings nationwide. New AI job postings surged 68% since ChatGPT's launch in late 2022 through end-2024, while tech postings overall fell 27% during the same period.

August, 2023: Thousands of Crypto Scammers are Enslaved by Human-Trafficking Gangsters, Says Bloomberg Reporter. ("They'd lure young people from across Southeast Asia...with the promise of well-paying jobs in customer service or online gambling.")

February, 2025: A coordinated response begins by Thai, Chinese and Myanmar authorities, which includes cutting power, internet, and fuel supplies to the scam centers.

Today: The Associated Press reports that thousands of the people liberated from locked compounds in Myanmar now "have found themselves trapped once again, this time in overcrowded facilities with no medical care, limited food and no idea when they'll be sent home." Thousands of sick, exhausted and terrified young men and women, from countries all over the world squat in rows, packed shoulder to shoulder, surgical masks covering their mouths and eyes. Their nightmare was supposed to be over... The armed groups who are holding the survivors, as well as Thai officials across the border, say they are awaiting action from the detainees' home governments. It's one of the largest potential rescues of forced laborers in modern history, but advocates say the first major effort to crack down on the cyber scam industry has turned into a growing humanitarian crisis...

An unconfirmed list provided by authorities in Myanmar says they're holding citizens from 29 countries including Philippines, Kenya and the Czech Republic. Authorities in Thailand say they cannot allow foreigners to cross the border from Myanmar unless they can be sent home immediately, leaving many to wait for help from embassies that has been long in coming. China sent a chartered flight Thursday to the tiny Mae Sot airport to pick up a group of its citizens, but few other governments have matched that. There are roughly 130 Ethiopians waiting in a Thai military base, stuck for want of a $600 plane ticket. Dozens of Indonesians were bused out one morning last week, pushing suitcases and carrying plastic bags with their meager possessions as they headed to Bangkok for a flight home... The recent abrupt halt to U.S. foreign aid funding has made it even harder to get help to released scam center workers...

It's not clear how much of an effect these releases will have on the criminal groups that run the scam centers. February marked the third time the Thais have cut internet or electricity to towns across the river. Each time, the compounds have managed to work around the cuts. Large compounds have access to diesel-powered generators, as well as access to internet provider Starlink, experts working with law enforcement say.
The article also points out that "The people released are just a small fraction of what could be 300,000 people working in similar scam operations across the region, according to an estimate from the United States Institute of Peace. Human rights groups and analysts add that the networks that run these illegal scams will continue to operate unless much broader action is taken against them..."

"The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes estimates that between $18 billion and $37 billion was lost in Asia alone in 2023, with minimal government action against the criminal industry's spread."

The Washington Post reports: Meta was willing to go to extreme lengths to censor content and shut down political dissent in a failed attempt to win the approval of the Chinese Communist Party and bring Facebook to millions of internet users in China, according to a new whistleblower complaint from a former global policy director at the company.

The complaint by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked on a team handling China policy, alleges that the social media giant so desperately wanted to enter the lucrative China market that it was willing to allow the ruling party to oversee all social media content appearing in the country and quash dissenting opinions. Meta, then called Facebook, developed a censorship system for China in 2015 and planned to install a "chief editor" who would decide what content to remove and could shut down the entire site during times of "social unrest," according to a copy of the 78-page complaint exclusively seen by The Washington Post.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg also agreed to crack down on the account of a high-profile Chinese dissident living in the United States following pressure from a high-ranking Chinese official the company hoped would help them enter China, according to the complaint, which was filed in April to the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. When asked about its efforts to enter China, Meta executives repeatedly "stonewalled and provided nonresponsive or misleading information" to investors and American regulators, according to the complaint.

Wynn-Williams bolstered her SEC complaint with internal Meta documents about the company's plans, which were reviewed by The Post. Wynn-Williams, who was fired from her job in 2017, is also scheduled to release a memoir this week documenting her time at the company, titled "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism." According to a memo in the complaint, Meta leaders faced aggressive pressure by Chinese government officials to host Chinese users' data to local data centers, which Wynn-Williams alleges would have made it easier for the Chinese Communist Party to covertly obtain the personal information of its citizens.
Wynn-Williams told the Washington Post that "for many years Meta has been working hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party, briefing them on the latest technological developments and lying about it."

Reached for a comment, Meta spokesman Andy Stone told the Washington Post it was "no secret" they'd been interested in operating in China. "This was widely reported beginning a decade ago. We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019." Although the Post shares new details about what a Facebook privacy policy staffer offer China in negotations in 2014. ("In exchange for the ability to establish operations in China, FB will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese users' data — including Hongkongese users' data.")

The Post also describes one iteration of a proposed agreement in 2015. "To aid the effort, Meta built a censorship system specially designed for China to review, including the ability to automatically detect restricted terms and popular content on Facebook, according to the complaint...

"In 2017, Meta covertly launched a handful of social apps under the name of a China-based company created by one of its employees, according to the complaint."

"McDonald's is giving its 43,000 restaurants a technology makeover," reports the Wall Street Journal, including AI-enabled drive-throughs and AI-powered tools for managers — as well as internet-connected kitchen equipment.

"Technology solutions will alleviate the stress...." says McDonald's CIO Brian Rice. McDonald's tapped Google Cloud in late 2023 to bring more computing power to each of its restaurants — giving them the ability to process and analyze data on-site... a faster, cheaper option than sending data to the cloud, especially in more far-flung locations with less reliable cloud connections, said Rice... Edge computing will enable applications like predicting when kitchen equipment — such as fryers and its notorious McFlurry ice cream machines — is likely to break down, Rice said. The burger chain said its suppliers have begun installing sensors on kitchen equipment that will feed data to the edge computing system and give franchisees a "real-time" view into how their restaurants are operating. AI can then analyze that data for early signs of a maintenance problem.

McDonald's is also exploring the use of computer vision, the form of AI behind facial recognition, in store-mounted cameras to determine whether orders are accurate before they're handed to customers, he said. "If we can proactively address those issues before they occur, that's going to mean smoother operations in the future," Rice added...

Additionally, the ability to tap edge computing will power voice AI at the drive-through, a capability McDonald's is also working with Google's cloud-computing arm to explore, Rice said. The company has been experimenting with voice-activated drive-throughs and robotic deep fryers since 2019, and ended its partnership with International Business Machines to test automated order-taking at the drive-through in 2024.

Edge computing will also help McDonald's restaurant managers oversee their in-store operations. The burger giant is looking to create a "generative AI virtual manager," Rice said, which handles administrative tasks such as shift scheduling on managers' behalf. Fast-food giant Yum Brands' Pizza Hut and Taco Bell have explored similar capabilities.

Last week Google urged the U.S. government not to break up the company — but apparently, it didn't work.
In a new filing Friday, America's Justice Department "reiterated its November proposal that Google be forced to sell its Chrome web browser," reports the Washington Post, "to address a federal judge finding the company guilty of being an illegal monopoly in August." The government also kept a proposal that Google be banned from paying other companies to give its search engine preferential placement on their apps and phones. At the same time, the government dropped its demand that Google sell its stakes in AI start-ups after one of the start-ups, Anthropic AI, argued that it needed Google's money to compete in the fast-growing industry.

The government's final proposal "reaffirms that Google must divest the Chrome browser — an important search access point — to provide an opportunity for a new rival to operate a significant gateway to search the internet, free of Google's monopoly control," Justice Department lawyers wrote in the filing... Judge Amit Mehta, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who had ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly, will decide on the final remedies in April.
The article quotes a Google spokesperson's response: that the Justice Department's "sweeping" proposals "continue to go miles beyond the court's decision, and would harm America's consumers, economy and national security."

As Christie's auction house planned the first-ever auction dedicated to AI-generated art works, over 5,600 people signed an online letter urging them to cancel it. "Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license," the letter complained.

"These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them. Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies' mass theft of human artists' work." CNET reports that the signers "range from illustrators to authors to art therapists to cinematographers, from countries all across the globe."

Christie's ignored them all and held the auction anyways. So what happened when it was over on Wednesday morning? More than 30 lots attracted hundreds of bids and brought in $728,784, Christie's reports. And there's a generational twist: The auction house says 37% of registrants were completely new to Christie's, and 48% of bidders were millennials or members of Gen Z... The highest price in the sale was $277,200 for a work by Refik Anadol titled Machine Hallucinations — ISS Dreams — A. It used a data set of more than 1.2 million images taken from the International Space Station and satellites.
ARTnews reports that the auction actually brought in more than Christie's had expected: The sale, which made up of 34 lots, had an 82 percent sell through rate... While some digital artists, including Beeple, championed the sale, others decried it as emblematic of the ongoing struggle between human artistry and machine-driven innovation. The results, however, suggest that AI art — controversial as it may be — is carving a firm place in the market.

"The early web was fun," Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian posted Wednesday on X.com. "It was weird. It was community-driven. It's time to rebuild that.

"Which is why Kevin Rose and I just bought back Digg."

The amount of that purchase is "undisclosed," reports CNBC: The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian's Seven Seven Six.... The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by "focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative...." Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian "dreamed up features that weren't even possible with yesterday's tech."
"We're bringing more transparency and community partnership," according to Rose's post, "unlike anything you've seen, plus AI that unlocks creativity without sanitizing the human element. The timing is finally right to reimagine what's possible."

"I really disliked you for a long time," Ohanian tells Rose in their joint announcement video. (To which a cheery Rose responds, "Rightfully so.")

But in the video Ohanian also says that today "Our perspective on the world has shifted a lot. You don't want to live in the past, but now we actually have the technology to make better, healthier community experiences." ("Old Rivals, New Vision," says a post on Digg's X.com account, urging readers to "Sign up to get early access when invites go live.")

And Digg.com now just displays this teasing catchphrase. "The front page of the internet, now with superpowers." (At the top of the page there's also a link to watch Diggnation Live at SXSW.)

While valued at $160 million dollars in 2008, Digg's plummeting traffic led to its brand and web site being acquired in 2012 by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000, according to CNBC...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies' scheduled release dates. According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole "numerous 'pre-release' DVDs and Blu-rays" between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly "ripped" the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with "two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods," the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter. Among blockbuster movies that Hale is accused of stealing are Dune, F9: The Fast Saga, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Godzilla v. Kong, and, perhaps most notably, Spider-Man: No Way Home. The DOJ claimed that "copies of Spider-Man: No Way Home were downloaded tens of millions of times, with an estimated loss to the copyright owner of tens of millions of dollars."

Europe's new tech rule aims to keep digital markets open and is not targeted at U.S. tech giants, EU antitrust and tech chiefs told U.S. congressmen, reminding them that U.S. enforcers have in recent years also cracked down on these companies. From a report: The comments by EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera and EU tech chief Henna Virkkunnen came after U.S. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Scott Fitzgerald, chairman of the subcommittee on the administrative state, regulatory reform and antitrust demanded clarifications on the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

"The DMA does not target U.S. companies," Ribera and Virkkunnen wrote in a joint letter dated March 6 to Jordan and Fitzgerald seen by Reuters. "It applies to all companies which fulfil the clearly defined criteria for being designated as a gatekeeper in the European Union irrespective of where they are headquartered," they said.