China's antitrust watchdog is laying the groundwork for a potential probe into Apple's policies and the fees it charges app developers, part of a broader push by Beijing that risks becoming another flashpoint in the country's trade war with the US. From a report: The State Administration for Market Regulation is examining Apple's policies, which include taking a cut of as much as 30% on in-app spending and barring external payment services and stores, people familiar with the matter said. Agency officials have spoken with Apple executives and app developers since last year, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive moves.

The conversations stem from long-running disputes between Apple and developers such as Tencent and ByteDance over iOS store policies -- a source of tension between the US company and regulators worldwide. While Beijing has since 2024 targeted the practices of US tech firms from Nvidia to most recently Alphabet's Google, regulators may not formally move against Apple if the current conversations go well.

Meta's metaverse ambitions face a decisive year in 2025, with Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth warning employees that the project could become either "a legendary misadventure" or prove visionary, Business Insider is reporting, citing an internal memo. Bosworth called for increased sales and user engagement for Meta's mixed reality products, noting the company plans to launch several AI-powered wearable devices.

The tech giant's Reality Labs division, which develops virtual and augmented reality products, reported record revenue of $1.08 billion in the fourth quarter but posted its largest-ever quarterly loss of $4.97 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the company's AI-powered smart glasses, which sold over 1 million units in 2024, marked a "great start" but would not significantly impact the business. The Reality Labs unit has accumulated losses of approximately $60 billion since 2020.

Apple has announced Apple Invites, a new iPhone app designed to help you manage your social life. Engadget reports: The idea behind Apple Invites is that you can create and share custom invitations for any event or occasion. You can use your own photos or backgrounds in the app as an image for the invite. Image Playground is built into Invites and you can use that to generate an images for the invitation instead. Other Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools are baked in as well, in case you need a hand to craft the right message for your invitation. The tech giant also said it was increasing AppleCare+ subscription prices for the iPhone, "raising the cost by 50 cents for all models in the United States," according to MacRumors. From the report: Standard AppleCare+ for the iPhone 16 models is now priced at $10.49 per month, for example, up from the prior $9.99 per month price. The 50 cent price increase applies to all available AppleCare+ plans for Apple's current iPhone lineup, and it includes both the standard plan and the Theft and Loss plan. The two-year AppleCare+ subscription prices have not changed, nor have the service fees and deductibles. The increased prices are only applicable when paying for AppleCare+ on a monthly basis. Apple has not raised the prices of AppleCare+ subscription plans for the iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch.

Google has updated its public AI principles page to remove a pledge to not build AI for weapons or surveillance. TechCrunch reports: Asked for comment, the company pointed TechCrunch to a new blog post on "responsible AI." It notes, in part, "we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security." Google's newly updated AI principles note the company will work to "mitigate unintended or harmful outcomes and avoid unfair bias," as well as align the company with "widely accepted principles of international law and human rights." Further reading: Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct

The DeepComputing RISC-V Mainboard that Framework announced last year for its 13-inch laptops is now available for $199. Liliputing reports: If you already have a Framework Laptop 13 with an Intel or AMD motherboard, the new board is a drop-in replacement. But if you don't have a Framework Laptop you can also use the mainboard as a standalone computer: Framework sells a $39 Cooler Master case that effectively turns its mainboards into mini desktop computers. The RISC-V Mainboard comes from a partnership between Framework and DeepComputing, the Chinese company behind the DC-ROMA laptops, which were some of the first notebook computers to ship with RISC-V processors.

The board features a StarFive JH7110 processor, which is a 1.5 GHz quad-core chip featuring SiFive U74 RISC-V CPU cores and Imagination BXE-4-32 graphics, 8GB of onboard RAM, and a a 64GB SD card for storage (there's also support for an optional eMMC module, but you'll need to bring your own). Since the board is designed to fit in existing laptop frames, it's the same size and shape as AMD or Intel models and has four USB ports in the same locations. But these ports are a little less versatile than the ones you might find on other Framework Laptop 13 Mainboards [...]. There's also a 3.5mm audio jack. You can check out the new board via the Framework Marketplace.

Further reading: Late last year, Framework CEO Nirav Patel delivered one of the best live demos we've ever seen at a tech conference -- modifying a Framework Laptop from x86 to RISC-V live on stage.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been demanding an overhaul of a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, and now his telecom policy director has been chosen to lead the federal agency in charge of the grant money. "Congratulations to my Telecom Policy Director, Arielle Roth, for being nominated to lead NTIA," Cruz wrote last night, referring to President Trump's pick to lead the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Roth's nomination is pending Senate approval. Roth works for the Senate Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Cruz. "Arielle led my legislative and oversight efforts on communications and broadband policy with integrity, creativity, and dedication," Cruz wrote.

Shortly after Trump's election win, Cruz called for an overhaul of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which was created by Congress in November 2021 and is being implemented by the NTIA. Biden-era leaders of the NTIA developed rules for the program and approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory, but a major change in approach could delay the distribution of funds. Cruz previously accused the NTIA of "technology bias" because the agency prioritized fiber over other types of technology. He said Congress would review BEAD for "imposition of statutorily-prohibited rate regulation; unionized workforce and DEI labor requirements; climate change assessments; excessive per-location costs; and other central planning mandates."

Roth criticized the BEAD implementation at a Federalist Society event in June 2024. "Instead of prioritizing connecting all Americans who are currently unserved to broadband, the NTIA has been preoccupied with attaching all kinds of extralegal requirements on BEAD and, to be honest, a woke social agenda, loading up all kinds of burdens that deter participation in the program and drive up costs," she said. Municipal broadband networks and fiber networks in general could get less funding under the new plans. Roth is "expected to change the funding conditions that currently include priority access for government-owned networks" and "could revisit decisions like the current preference for fiber," Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Congress defined priority broadband projects under BEAD as those that "ensure that the network built by the project can easily scale speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses; and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services."

The Biden NTIA determined that only end-to-end fiber-optic architecture meet these criteria. "End-to-end fiber networks can be updated by replacing equipment attached to the ends of the fiber-optic facilities, allowing for quick and relatively inexpensive network scaling as compared to other technologies. Moreover, new fiber deployments will facilitate the deployment and growth of 5G and other advanced wireless services, which rely extensively on fiber for essential backhaul," the Biden NTIA said (PDF).

Autonomous vehicle company Cruise will lay off about half of its 2,100 employees and remove several top executives, including CEO Marc Whitten, as parent company General Motors shifts away from robotaxi development to focus on personal autonomous vehicles.

The cuts come two months after GM said it would stop funding Cruise's robotaxi program to save $1 billion annually. Affected workers will receive severance packages including eight weeks of pay and benefits through April. The restructuring follows an October incident where a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian, leading to the suspension of its permits.

Chris Anderson, who transformed TED from a small conference into a global platform for sharing ideas, announced today he's stepping down after 25 years at the helm. The nonprofit's leader is seeking new ownership through an unusual open call for proposals. Anderson told WIRED he wants potential buyers -- whether universities, philanthropic organizations, media companies or tech firms -- to demonstrate both vision and financial capacity.

The organization, which charges $12,500 for its flagship conference seats, maintains $25 million in cash reserves and reports a $100 million break-even balance sheet. The future owner must commit to keeping the conference running and maintaining TED's practice of sharing talks for free.

China said Tuesday it has launched an antitrust investigation into Google, part of a swift retaliation after the U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. From a report: The probe by China's State Administration for Market Regulation will examine alleged monopolistic practices by the U.S. tech giant, which has had its search and internet services blocked in China since 2010 but maintains operations there primarily focused on advertising.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In what is becoming a sadly regular occurrence, two popular free software projects, X.org/Freedesktop.org and Alpine Linux, need to rally some of their millions of users so that they can continue operating. Both services have largely depended on free server resources provided by Equinix (formerly Packet.net) and its Metal division for the past few years. Equinix announced recently that it was sunsetting its bare-metal sales and services, or renting out physically distinct single computers rather than virtualized and shared hardware. As reported by the Phoronix blog, both free software organizations have until the end of April to find and fund new hosting, with some fairly demanding bandwidth and development needs.

An issue ticket on Freedesktop.org's GitLab repository provides the story and the nitty-gritty needs of that project. Both the X.org foundation (home of the 40-year-old window system) and Freedesktop.org (a shared base of specifications and technology for free software desktops, including Wayland and many more) used Equinix's donated space. [...] Alpine Linux, a small, security-minded distribution used in many containers and embedded devices, also needs a new home quickly. As detailed in its blog, Alpine Linux uses about 800TB of bandwidth each month and also needs continuous integration runners (or separate job agents), as well as a development box. Alpine states it is seeking co-location space and bare-metal servers near the Netherlands, though it will consider virtual machines if bare metal is not feasible.

Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill that would criminalize the import, export, and collaboration on AI technology with China. What this means is that "someone who knowingly downloads a Chinese developed AI model like the now immensely popular DeepSeek could face up to 20 years in jail, a million dollar fine, or both, should such a law pass," reports 404 Media. From the report: Hawley introduced the legislation, titled the Decoupling America's Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act, on Wednesday of last year. "Every dollar and gig of data that flows into Chinese AI are dollars and data that will ultimately be used against the United States," Senator Hawley said in a statement. "America cannot afford to empower our greatest adversary at the expense of our own strength. Ensuring American economic superiority means cutting China off from American ingenuity and halting the subsidization of CCP innovation."

Hawley's statement explicitly says that he introduced the legislation because of the release of DeepSeek, an advanced AI model that's competitive with its American counterparts, and which its developers claimed was made for a fraction of the cost and without access to as many and as advanced of chips, though these claims are unverified. Hawley's statement called DeepSeek "a data-harvesting, low-cost AI model that sparked international concern and sent American technology stocks plummeting." Hawley's statement says the goal of the bill is to "prohibit the import from or export to China of artificial intelligence technology, "prohibit American companies from conducting AI research in China or in cooperation with Chinese companies," and "Prohibit U.S. companies from investing money in Chinese AI development."

The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General has launched an audit of the TSA's use of facial recognition technology at U.S. airports following concerns from lawmakers and privacy advocates. The Register reports: Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari notified a bipartisan group of US Senators who had asked for such an investigation last year that his office has announced an audit of TSA facial recognition technology in a letter [PDF] sent to the group Friday. "We have reviewed the concerns raised in your letter as part of our work planning process," said Cuffari, a Trump appointee who survived the recent purge of several Inspectors General. "[The audit] will determine the extent to which TSA's facial recognition and identification technologies enhance security screening to identify persons of interest and authenticate flight traveler information while protecting passenger privacy," Cuffari said.

The letter from the Homeland Security OIG was addressed to Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who co-led the group of 12 Senators who asked for an inspection of TSA facial recognition in November last year. "Americans don't want a national surveillance state, but right now, more Americans than ever before are having their faces scanned at the airport without being able to exercise their right to opt-out," Merkley said in a statement accompanying Cuffari's letter. "I have long sounded the alarm about the TSA's expanding use of facial recognition ... I'll keep pushing for strong Congressional oversight."

[...] While Cuffari's office was light on details of what would be included in the audit, the November letter from the Senators was explicit in its list of requests. They asked for the systems to be evaluated via red team testing, with a specific investigation into effectiveness - whether it reduced screening delays, stopped known terrorists, led to workforce cuts, or amounted to little more than security theater with errors.

A US District Court judge denied Apple's emergency request to halt the Google Search monopoly trial, ruling that Apple failed to show sufficient grounds for a stay. The Verge reports: Apple said last week that it needs to be involved in the Google trial because it does not want to lose "the ability to defend its right to reach other arrangements with Google that could benefit millions of users and Apple's entitlement to compensation for distributing Google search to its users." The remedies phase of the trial is set for April, and lawyers for the Department of Justice have argued that Google should be forced to sell Chrome, with a possibility of spinning off Android if necessary. While Google will still appeal the decision, the company's proposed remedies focus on undoing its licensing deals that bundle apps and services together.

"Because Apple has not satisfied the 'stringent requirements' for obtaining the 'extraordinary relief' of a stay pending appeal, its motion is denied," states Judge Mehta's order. Mehta explains that Apple "has not established a likelihood of success on the merits" for the stay. That includes a lack of clear evidence on how Apple will suffer "certain and great" harm.

A new update is being rolled out to Windows 11 insiders (Build 26120.3073) that introduces a Copilot button in Microsoft Paint. PCWorld reports: Clicking the Copilot button will expand a drop-down menu with all the generative AI features: Cocreator and Image Creator (AI art based on what you've drawn or text prompts), Generative Erase (AI removal of unwanted stuff from images), and Remove Background. Note that these generative AI features have been in Microsoft Paint for some time, but this quick-access Copilot button is a nice time-saver and productivity booster if you use them a lot.

NetChoice has filed (PDF) its 10th lawsuit challenging state internet regulations, this time opposing Maryland's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. The Verge's Lauren Feiner reports: NetChoice has become one of the fiercest -- and most successful -- opponents of age verification, moderation, and design code laws, all of which would put new obligations on tech platforms and change how users experience the internet. [...] NetChoice's latest suit opposes the Maryland Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a rule that echoes a California law of a similar name. In the California litigation, NetChoice notched a partial win in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the district court's decision to block a part of the law requiring platforms to file reports about their services' impact on kids. (It sent another part of the law back to the lower court for further review.)

A similar provision in Maryland's law is at the center of NetChoice's complaint. The group says that Maryland's reporting requirement lets regulators subjectively determine the "best interests of children," inviting "discriminatory enforcement." The reporting requirement on tech companies essentially mandates them "to disparage their services and opine on far-ranging and ill-defined harms that could purportedly arise from their services' 'design' and use of information," NetChoice alleges. NetChoice points out that both California and Maryland have passed separate online privacy laws, which NetChoice Litigation Center director Chris Marchese says shows that "lawmakers know how to write laws to protect online privacy when what they want to do is protect online privacy."

Supporters of the Maryland law say legislators learned from California's challenges and "optimized" their law to avoid questions about speech, according to Tech Policy Press. In a blog analyzing Maryland's approach, Future of Privacy Forum points out that the state made some significant changes from California's version -- such as avoiding an "express obligationâ to determine users' ages and defining the "best interests of children." The NetChoice challenge will test how well those changes can hold up to First Amendment scrutiny. NetChoice has consistently maintained that even well-intentioned attempts to protect kids online are likely to backfire. Though the Maryland law does not explicitly require the use of specific age verification tools, Marchese says it essentially leaves tech platforms with a no-win decision: collect more data on users to determine their ages and create varied user experiences or cater to the lowest common denominator and self-censor lawful content that might be considered inappropriate for its youngest users. And similar to its arguments in other cases, Marchese worries that collecting more data to identify users as minors could create a "honey pot" of kids' information, creating a different problem in attempting to solve another.

AI startup Anthropic has demonstrated a new technique to prevent users from eliciting harmful content from its models, as leading tech groups including Microsoft and Meta race to find ways that protect against dangers posed by the cutting-edge technology. From a report: In a paper released on Monday, the San Francisco-based startup outlined a new system called "constitutional classifiers." It is a model that acts as a protective layer on top of large language models such as the one that powers Anthropic's Claude chatbot, which can monitor both inputs and outputs for harmful content.

The development by Anthropic, which is in talks to raise $2 billion at a $60 billion valuation, comes amid growing industry concern over "jailbreaking" -- attempts to manipulate AI models into generating illegal or dangerous information, such as producing instructions to build chemical weapons. Other companies are also racing to deploy measures to protect against the practice, in moves that could help them avoid regulatory scrutiny while convincing businesses to adopt AI models safely. Microsoft introduced "prompt shields" last March, while Meta introduced a prompt guard model in July last year, which researchers swiftly found ways to bypass but have since been fixed.

Just three hours ago, OpenAI made a surprise announcement to their 3.9 million followers on X.com. "Live from Tokyo," they'd be livestreaming... something. Their description of the event was just two words.

"Deep Research"

UPDATE: The stream has begun, and it's about OpenAI's next "agent-ic offering". ("OpenAI cares about agents because we believe they're going to transform knowlege work...")

"We're introducing a capability called Deep Research... a model that does multi-step research. It discovers content, it synthesizes content, and it reasons about this content." It even asks "clarifying" questions to your prompt to make sure its multi-step research stays on track. Deep Research will be launching in ChatGPT Pro later today, rolling out into other OpenAI products...

And OpenAI's site now has an "Introducing Deep Research" page. Its official description? "An agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks for you. Available to Pro users today, Plus and Team next."

Before the livestream began, X.com users shared their reactions to the coming announcement:

"It's like DeepSeek, but cleaner"
"Deep do do if things don't work out"
"Live from Tokyo? Hope this research includes the secret to waking up early!"
"Stop trying, we don't trust u"

But one X.com user had presciently pointed out OpenAI has used the phrase "deep research" before. In July of 2024, Reuters reported on internal documentation (confirmed with "a person familiar with the matter") code-named "Strawberry" which suggested OpenAI was working on "human-like reasoning skills." How Strawberry works is a tightly kept secret even within OpenAI, the person said. The document describes a project that uses Strawberry models with the aim of enabling the company's AI to not just generate answers to queries but to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform what OpenAI terms "deep research," according to the source. This is something that has eluded AI models to date, according to interviews with more than a dozen AI researchers.

Asked about Strawberry and the details reported in this story, an OpenAI company spokesperson said in a statement: "We want our AI models to see and understand the world more like we do. Continuous research into new AI capabilities is a common practice in the industry, with a shared belief that these systems will improve in reasoning over time." The spokesperson did not directly address questions about Strawberry.

The Strawberry project was formerly known as Q*, which Reuters reported last year was already seen inside the company as a breakthrough... OpenAI hopes the innovation will improve its AI models' reasoning capabilities dramatically, the person familiar with it said, adding that Strawberry involves a specialized way of processing an AI model after it has been pre-trained on very large datasets.

Researchers Reuters interviewed say that reasoning is key to AI achieving human or super-human-level intelligence... OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that in AI "the most important areas of progress will be around reasoning ability.

An anonymous reader shared this post from the blog OMG Ubuntu Want to find out if the text you're reading online was written by an real human or spat out by a large language model trying to sound like one? Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector Firefox add-on may help give you an indication. Similar to online AI detector tools, the add-on can analyse text (of 32 words or more) to identify patterns, traits, and tells common in AI generated or manipulated text.

It uses Mozilla's proprietary ApolloDFT engine and a set of open-source detection models. But unlike some tools, Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector browser extension is free to use, does not require a signup, nor an app download. "After installing the extension, it is simple to highlight any text online and request an instant analysis. Our Detector will tell you right away if the words are likely to be written by a human or if they show AI patterns," Mozilla says.

Fakespot, acquired by Mozilla in 2023, is best known for its fake product review detection tool which grades user-submitted reviews left on online shopping sites. Mozilla is now expanding the use of Fakespot's AI tech to cover other kinds of online content. At present, Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector only works with highlighted text on websites but the company says it image and video analysis is planned for the future.
The Fakespot web site will also analyze the reviews on any product-listing pages if you paste in its URL.

"Stakeholders must be included" throughout an agile project "to ensure the evolving deliverables meet their expectations," according to an article this week in Communications of the ACM.

But long-time Slashdot reader theodp complains it's a "gushing how-to-make-Agile-even-better opinion piece." Like other pieces by Agile advocates, it's long on accolades for Agile, but short on hard evidence justifying why exactly Agile project management "has emerged as a critical component for firms looking to improve project delivery speed and flexibility" and the use of Agile approaches is being expanded across other departments beyond software development. Indeed, among the three examples of success offered in the piece to "highlight the effectiveness of agile methods in navigating complex stakeholder dynamics and achieving project success" is Atlassian's use of agile practices to market and develop its products, many of which are coincidentally designed to support Agile practices and teams (including Jira). How meta.

Citing "recent studies," the piece concludes its call for stakeholder engagement by noting that "59% of organizations measure Agile success by customer or user satisfaction." But that is one of those metrics that can create perverse incentives. Empirical studies of user satisfaction and engagement have been published since the 1970's, and sadly one of the cruel lessons learned from them is that the easiest path to having satisfied users is to avoid working on difficult problems. Keep that in mind when you ponder why difficult user stories seem to languish forever in the Kanban and Scrum Board "Ice Box" column, while the "Complete" column is filled with low-hanging fruit. Sometimes success does come easy!

So, are you in the Agile-is-Heaven or Agile-is-Hell camp?

"iPhone devices are now eligible to test SpaceX-owned Starlink's direct-to-cell capability," Reuters reported this week, citing an announcement from T-Mobile: T-Mobile and Elon Musk's SpaceX are currently testing the Starlink cell network on a trial basis after receiving approval from the Federal Communications Commission in November last year. The trial offers 'text via satellite', while voice and data features will be added in the future, according to the T-Mobile website. T-Mobile initially only listed a few Android smartphones as eligible devices to test the network, but has now added iPhone devices with the latest iOS 18.3 software update.
The next day stock prices fell for several direct-to-smartphone satellite companies, reports SpaceNews: Shares in Globalstar, which enables connectivity beyond the reach of cellular towers on the latest iPhones via a far-reaching partnership with Apple, closed down nearly 18% the following day. Constellation developer AST SpaceMobile slipped 12%. Canada's MDA, which is building at least 17 satellites for Globalstar after Apple agreed to cover most of the costs to replenish the constellation, also saw its shares fall more than 9%...

"Combined, today's price action in Globalstar and satellite manufacturer MDA suggest a real investor fear that SpaceX could disintermediate the Apple-Globalstar partnership," said Adam Rhodes, a senior telecoms analyst at Octus. "However, it appears to us that there is room for both services. Based on the information we have seen, we do not anticipate that Apple views the T-Mobile-Starlink service as a replacement for the Globalstar MSS network, but rather it is choosing to enable the added feature on its T-Mobile phones...." B. Riley analyst Mike Crawford noted that Apple's two binding contracts with Globalstar extend well into the next decade, ensuring both capital expenditure (capex) and recurring service revenues.
Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.