The Open Document Format reached its 20th anniversary on May 1, marking two decades since OASIS approved the XML-based standard originally developed by Sun Microsystems from StarOffice code. Even as the format has seen adoption by several governments including the UK, India, and Brazil, plus organizations like NATO, Microsoft Office's proprietary formats remain the de facto standard.

Microsoft countered ODF by developing Office Open XML, eventually getting it standardized through Ecma International. "ODF is much more than a technical specification: it is a symbol of freedom of choice, support for interoperability and protection of users from the commercial strategies of Big Tech," said Eliane Domingos, Chair of the Document Foundation, which oversees LibreOffice -- a fork created after Oracle acquired Sun.

Waymo and Magna International plan to double production of Waymo's robotaxis at their Mesa, Arizona facility by the end of 2026, aiming to assemble over 2,000 Jaguar I-PACE vehicles and eventually tens of thousands annually, including next-gen models. CNBC reports: The "Waymo Driver Integration Plant," a 239,000 square foot facility outside of Phoenix, will assemble more than 2,000 Jaguar I-PACE robotaxis, the Alphabet company said in a statement. Waymo will add those self-driving vehicles to its existing fleet that already includes around 1,500 robotaxis. The plant will be "capable of building tens of thousands of fully autonomous Waymo vehicles per year," when it is fully built out, Waymo said. The company also said it plans to build its more advanced Geely Zeekr RT robotaxis that feature its "6th-generation Waymo Driver" technology later this year at the plant.

Waymo and Magna opened the Mesa plant in October, Forbes reported Monday. The Alphabet-owned company started its commercial robotaxi service in Phoenix in 2020 and now calls the area its domestic manufacturing home. Already, Waymo is conducting 250,000 paid, driverless rides per week across its service areas in Austin, the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles and Phoenix, and the company is planning to begin serving the Atlanta; Miami; and Washington, D.C., markets in 2026.

TeleMessage, a communications app used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz, has suspended services after a reported hack exposed some user messages. The breach follows controversy over Waltz's use of the app to coordinate military updates, including accidentally adding a journalist to a sensitive Signal group chat. From the report: In an email, Portland, Oregon-based Smarsh, which runs the TeleMessage app, said it was "investigating a potential security incident" and was suspending all its services "out of an abundance of caution." A Reuters photograph showed Waltz using TeleMessage, an unofficial version of the popular encrypted messaging app Signal, on his phone during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. A separate report from 404 Media says hackers have also targeted GlobalX Air -- one of the main airlines the Trump administration is using as part of its deportation efforts -- and claim to have stolen flight records and passenger manifests for all its flights, including those for deportation. From the report: The data, which the hackers contacted 404 Media and other journalists about unprompted, could provide granular insight into who exactly has been deported on GlobalX flights, when, and to where, with GlobalX being the charter company that facilitated the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador. "Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge's order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans," a defacement message posted to GlobalX's website reads. Anonymous, well-known for its use of the Guy Fawkes mask, is an umbrella some hackers operate under when performing what they see as hacktivism.

An industrial plan China rolled out a decade ago that was criticized by the U.S. as protectionist has been highly successful in narrowing China's technological gap with the West, a new study finds. From a report: The study, commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is set to intensify the debate in Washington and elsewhere over how to counter China's use of state subsidies and other strategies to bolster its competitiveness. To placate President Trump during his first-term trade war with China, Beijing dropped mentions of the "Made in China 2025" plan, leader Xi Jinping's signature industrial strategy, from public discourse. But the policy stayed in place.

The study, released Monday, shows that enormous state support unleashed under the strategy has enabled China to eliminate or reduce its dependence on imports such as rail and power equipment, medical devices and renewable-energy products. In addition, Chinese companies have become more competitive globally, gaining market share from foreign companies in sectors including shipbuilding and robotics. The findings in the study, conducted by economic consulting firm Rhodium Group, highlight the stakes for the U.S. and other advanced economies as Beijing continues to advance Xi's blueprint to make China a leader in high-tech industries.

Apple on Monday lodged an appeal to challenge a U.S. judge's ruling that ordered the tech company to immediately open its lucrative App Store to more competition. From a report: Apple in a court notice it will ask the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the April 30 ruling, which found the company in contempt of an earlier order in a 2020 antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in her decision that Apple willfully failed to comply with a 2021 injunction designed to allow developers to more easily steer consumers to potentially cheaper non-Apple payment options. Gonzalez Rogers also referred Apple and one of its executives to federal prosecutors for a possible criminal contempt investigation.

Yahoo Finance reports that Mark Zuckerberg made bold predictions for investors on Meta's earnings call this week — about advertisers. "AI has already made us better at targeting and finding the audiences that will be interested in their products than many businesses are themselves," Zuck said, "and that keeps improving..."

"If we deliver on this vision, then over the coming years, I think that the increased productivity from AI will make advertising a meaningfully larger share of global GDP than it is today..." If investors are still searching for answers to nagging questions about how massive AI investments will pay off, Zuckerberg provided the clearest reply yet: It will strengthen our core business. In fact, it is our business... On what many believe to be the cusp of an economic downturn, Meta isn't pitching its AI developments as an add-on to its operations, but as something central to its core proposition of targeted advertising...

"While Meta's investments in GenAI have spooked certain investors who continue to question the return on these investments, we saw further signs of GenAI monetization in the firm's ad business," wrote Morningstar equity analyst Malik Ahmed Khan in a note on Thursday. In a powerful showing, coming after Alphabet's own impressive results, Meta noted that a new ads recommendation model it's testing for Reels has already boosted conversion rates by 5%. And nearly one-third of advertisers were using AI creative tools in the past quarter. For Zuckerberg, the enhancements AI offers to finding the right consumers and providing measurable results strengthen the case for boosting capacity and for a revamped model of advertising's scope.

And with the company set to invest upwards of $70 billion toward its AI opportunity this year, the bet is not all about ads, of course. Zuckerberg outlined four other areas of focus for its AI efforts: business messaging, Meta AI, AI devices, and more engaging experiences. Meta's efforts can also be viewed as an ambitious play to take on its rivals across tech's legacy and emerging platforms. As John Blackledge, senior analyst at TD Cowen, said in a note on Thursday, the AI opportunities Zuckerberg outlined are about "ultimately taking on Google search, iPhone and ChatGPT all at once."
In the pre-AI world, "Businesses used to have to generate their own ad creative and define what audiences they wanted to reach," Zuckerberg told Meta's investors this week.

And by Friday's closing, Meta's stock had jumped 12.6% over its value Wednesday morning, leading Yahoo Finance to conclude that Wall Street "appears to be buying into" Zuckerberg's vision.

Did you know there's an initiative to drive Open Source adoption both within the United Nations — and globally? Launched in March, it's the work of the Digital Technology Network (under the UN's chief executive board) which "works to advance open source technologies throughout UN agencies," promoting "collaboration and scalable solutions to support the UN's digital transformation." Fun fact: The first group to endorse the initiative's principles was the Open Source Initiative...

"The Open Source Initiative applauds the United Nations for recognizing the growing importance of Open Source in solving global challenges and building sustainable solutions, and we are honored to be the first to endorse the UN Open Source Principles," said Stefano Maffulli, executive director of OSI.
But that's just the beginining, writes It's FOSS News: As part of the UN Open Source Principles initiative, the UN has invited other organizations to support and officially endorse these principles. To collect responses, they are using CryptPad instead of Google Forms... If you don't know about CryptPad, it is a privacy-focused, open source online collaboration office suite that encrypts all of its content, doesn't log IP addresses, and supports a wide range of collaborative documents and tools for people to use.

While this happened back in late March, we thought it would be a good idea to let people know that a well-known global governing body like the UN was slowly moving towards integrating open source tech into their organization... I sincerely hope the UN continues its push away from proprietary Big Tech solutions in favor of more open, privacy-respecting alternatives, integrating more of their workflow with such tools.
16 groups have already endorsed the UN Open Source Principles (including the GNOME Foundation, the Linux Foundation, and the Eclipse Foundation).

Here's the eight UN Open Source Principles:

1. Open by default: Making Open Source the standard approach for projects
2. Contribute back: Encouraging active participation in the Open Source ecosystem
3. Secure by design: Making security a priority in all software projects
4. Foster inclusive participation and community building: Enabling and facilitating diverse and inclusive contributions
5. Design for reusability: Designing projects to be interoperable across various platforms and ecosystems
6. Provide documentation: Providing thorough documentation for end-users, integrators and developers
7. RISE (recognize, incentivize, support and empower): Empowering individuals and communities to actively participate
8. Sustain and scale: Supporting the development of solutions that meet the evolving needs of the UN system and beyond.

"Our future won't be handed to us," says the young narrator in a new ad from the nonprofit Code.org. "We will build it."

"But how can we when the education we need is still just an elective?" says another young voice...

The ad goes on to tout the power "to create with computer science and AI — the skills transforming every industry..." and ends by saying "This isn't radical. It's what education is supposed to do. Make computer science and AI a graduation requirement."

There's also a hard-hitting new web site, which urges people to sign a letter of support (already signed by executives from top tech companies including Microsoft, Dropbox, AMD, Meta, Blue Origin, and Palantir — and by Steve Ballmer, who is listed as the chairman of the L.A. Clippers basketball team).

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says the letter ran in the New York Times, while this campaign will officially kick off Monday... Code.org teased the new Unlock8 campaign last month on social media as it celebrated a new Executive Order that makes K–12 AI literacy a U.S. priority, which it called a big win for CS & AI education, adding, "We've been building to this moment."

The move to make CS and AI a graduation requirement is a marked reversal of Code.org's early days, when it offered Congressional testimony on behalf of itself and tech-led Computing in the Core reassuring lawmakers that: "Making computer science courses 'count' would not require schools to offer computer science or students to study it; it would simply allow existing computer science courses to satisfy a requirement that already exists."

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Verge: Firefox could be put out of business should a court implement all the [U.S.] Justice Department's proposals to restrict Google's search monopoly, an executive for the browser owner Mozilla testified Friday. "It's very frightening," Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said.

The Department of Justice wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google's own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals. The court has already ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in search, partly thanks to exclusionary deals that make it the default engine on browsers and phones, depriving rivals of places to distribute their search engines and scale up. But while Firefox — whose CFO is testifying as Google presents its defense — competes directly with Chrome, it warns that losing the lucrative default payments from Google could threaten its existence.

Firefox makes up about 90 percent of Mozilla's revenue, according to Muhlheim, the finance chief for the organization's for-profit arm — which in turn helps fund the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. About 85 percent of that revenue comes from its deal with Google, he added. Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make "significant cuts across the company," Muhlheim testified, and warned of a "downward spiral" that could happen if the company had to scale back product engineering investments in Firefox, making it less attractive to users. That kind of spiral, he said, could "put Firefox out of business." That could also mean less money for nonprofit efforts like open source web tools and an assessment of how AI can help fight climate change.

Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy. Firefox's underlying Gecko browser engine is "the only browser engine that is held not by Big Tech but by a nonprofit," he said.

"It is the fastest, most efficient transistor ever," proclaims an announcment from Peking University. "And most important of all, there's no trace of silicon involved," adds ZME Science. From the South China Morning Post: A team of researchers at Peking University claims to have shattered chip performance limits and proven that China can use new materials to "change lanes" in the semiconductor race by circumventing silicon-based roadblocks entirely.

The researchers, led by physical chemistry professor Peng Hailin, said their self-engineered 2D transistor could operate 40 per cent faster than Intel and TSMC's cutting-edge 3-nanometre silicon chips, while consuming 10 per cent less energy.... "While this path is born out of necessity due to current sanctions, it also forces researchers to find solutions from fresh perspectives," [Hailin] added.
"Peking's major innovation comes from the two-dimensional nature of their transistors, facilitated by using an element other than silicon," writes Tom's Hardware: BiâOâSe, or bismuth oxyselenide, is a semiconductor material studied for its use in sub-1nm process nodes for years, largely thanks to its ability to be a 2D semiconductor. Two-dimensional semiconductors, like 2D BiâOâSe, are more flexible and sturdy at a small scale than silicon, which runs into reduced carrier mobility at even the 10nm node. Such breakthroughs into stacked 2D transistors and the move from silicon to bismuth are exciting for the future of semiconductors and are necessary for the Chinese industry to compete on the leading edge of semiconductors.
ZME Science adds this note of skepticism. "Turning laboratory breakthroughs into commercial chips typically takes years — sometimes decades..."

Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares an article from Renewables Now: Chinese tech company Leapting has successfully completed its first commercial deployment of photovoltaic (PV) modules with an AI-driven solar module mounting robot in Australia. The Chinese company was tasked with supporting the installation of French Neoen's (EPA:NEOEN) 350-MW/440-MWp Culcairn Solar Farm in New South Wales' Riverina region. Shanghai-based Leapting said this week that its intelligent robot has installed almost 10,000 modules at an "efficient, safe, and stable" pace that has "significantly" reduced the original construction timeline.

Litian Intelligent was deployed at the Australian project site in early February. The machine has a 2.5-metre-high robotic arm sitting on a self-guided, self-propelled crawler. Equipped with a navigation system, and visual recognition technology, it can lift and mount PV panels weighing up to 30 kilograms. By replacing labour-intensive manual operations, the robot shortens the module installation cycle by 25%, while the installation efficiency increases three to five times as compared to manual labour and is easily adapted to complex environments, Leapting says.
Or, as Clean Technica puts it, "Meet the robot replacing four workers at a time on solar projects." This is part of a broader industrial trend. In the United States, Rosendin Electric demonstrated its own semi-autonomous system in Texas that allowed a two-person team to install 350 to 400 modules per day, a clear step-change from traditional methods. AES Corporation has been developing a robot called Maximo that combines placement and fastening with computer vision. Trina Solar's Trinabot in China operates in a similar space, with prototype systems demonstrating 50-plus modules per hour... In an industry where time-to-energy is critical, shaving weeks off the construction schedule directly reduces costs and increases net revenue...

[T]he direction is clear. The future of solar construction will be faster, safer, and more precise — not because of human brawn, but because of robotic repetition. There will still be humans on-site, but their role shifts from lifting panels to managing throughput. Just as cranes and excavators changed civil construction, so too will robots like Leapting's define the next era of solar deployment.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Google plans to roll out its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot next week for children under 13 (source paywalled; alternative source) who have parent-managed Google accounts, as tech companies vie to attract young users with A.I. products. "Gemini Apps will soon be available for your child," the company said in an email this week to the parent of an 8-year-old. "That means your child will be able to use Gemini" to ask questions, get homework help and make up stories. The chatbot will be available to children whose parents useFamily Link, a Google service that enables families to set up Gmail and opt into services like YouTube for their child. To sign up for a child account, parents provide the tech company with personal data like their child's name and birth date. Gemini has specific guardrails for younger users to hinder the chatbot from producing certain unsafe content, said Karl Ryan, a Google spokesman. When a child with a Family Link account uses Gemini, he added, the company will not use that data to train its A.I.

Introducing Gemini for children could accelerate the use of chatbots among a vulnerable population as schools, colleges, companies and others grapple with the effects of popular generative A.I. technologies. Trained on huge amounts of data, these systems can produce humanlike text and realistic-looking images and videos. [...] Google acknowledged some risks in its email to families this week, alerting parents that "Gemini can make mistakes" and suggesting they "help your child think critically" about the chatbot. The email also recommended parents teach their child how to fact-check Gemini's answers. And the company suggested parents remind their child that "Gemini isn't human" and "not to enter sensitive or personal info in Gemini." Despite the company's efforts to filter inappropriate material, the email added, children "may encounter content you don't want them to see."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Driverless trucks are officially running their first regular long-haul routes, making roundtrips between Dallas and Houston. On Thursday, autonomous trucking firm Aurora announced it launched commercial service in Texas under its first customers, Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines, which delivers time- and temperature-sensitive freight. Both companies conducted test runs with Aurora, including safety drivers to monitor the self-driving technology dubbed "Aurora Driver." Aurora's new commercial service will no longer have safety drivers.

"We founded Aurora to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly, said Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Aurora, in a release on Thursday. "Now, we are the first company to successfully and safely operate a commercial driverless trucking service on public roads." The trucks are equipped with computers and sensors that can see the length of over four football fields. In four years of practice hauls the trucks' technology has delivered over 10,000 customer loads. As of Thursday, the company's self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles without a human in the truck. Aurora is starting with a single self-driving truck and plans to add more by the end of 2025.

The U.S. government is seeking to break up Google's advertising technology business after a judge ruled the company holds an illegal monopoly over ad tools for publishers, marking the second such antitrust case following a similar request to divest Chrome. The Guardian reports: "We have a defendant who has found ways to defy" the law, US government lawyer Julia Tarver Wood told a federal court in Virginia, as she urged the judge to dismiss Google's assurance that it would change its behavior. "Leaving a recidivist monopolist" intact was not appropriate to solve the issue, she added. [...] The US government specifically alleged that Google controls the market for publishing banner ads on websites, including those of many creators and small news providers.

The hearing in a Virginia courtroom was scheduled to plan out the second phase of the trial, set for September, in which the parties will argue over how to fix the ad market to satisfy the judge's ruling. The plaintiffs argued in the first phase of the trial last year that the vast majority of websites use Google ad software products which, combined, leave no way for publishers to escape Google's advertising technology and pricing.

The district court judge Leonie Brinkema agreed with most of that reasoning, ruling last month that Google built an illegal monopoly over ad software and tools used by publishers, but partially dismissed the argument related to tools used by advertisers. The US government said it would use the trial to recommend that Google should spin off its ad publisher and exchange operations, as Google could not be trusted to change its ways. "Behavioral remedies are not sufficient because you can't prevent Google from finding a new way to dominate," Tarver Wood said.

Google countered that it would recommend that it agree to a binding commitment that it would share information with advertisers and publishers on its ad tech platforms. Google lawyer Karen Dunn did, however, acknowledge the "trust issues" raised in the case and said the company would accept monitoring to guarantee any commitments made to satisfy the judge. Google is also arguing that calls for divestment are not appropriate in this case, which Brinkema swiftly refused as an argument. The judge urged both sides to mediate, stressing that coming to a compromise solution would be cost-effective and more efficient than running a weeks-long trial.

A Michigan federal magistrate judge has banned a lawyer from using a cartoon dragon watermark on legal filings, calling the practice "juvenile and impertinent." Judge Ray Kent of the Western District of Michigan issued the order on April 28 after receiving a complaint featuring a purple, suit-wearing dragon on every page.

"Each page of plaintiff's complaint appears on an e-filing which is dominated by a large multi-colored cartoon dragon dressed in a suit," Kent wrote. "The Court is not a cartoon." The watermark belongs to Jacob A. Perrone of Dragon Lawyers, who told The New York Times he purchased the image online for $20 because "people like dragons."

Perrone said it plans to continue using the logo in his practice but will tone it down in future court submissions.

Apple said a majority of its devices shipped into the U.S. in the June quarter will originate in India and Vietnam, a move to allay investor concerns about the impact of tariffs on its operations. From a report: The company was among the hardest-hit of the tech giants last month because of its exposure to China, a primary target of the Trump administration's global tariff pressure. Most of Apple's devices are assembled in the country, and investors are closely watching its efforts to shift final assembly of devices bound for the U.S. to India and other countries.

Chief Executive Tim Cook said the impact in the June quarter from tariffs, assuming existing policies remain in place, would add $900 million to Apple's costs, a figure he suggested could be worse in future quarters. He also said that there was limited impact from tariffs in March. [...] He added that Apple would continue to diversify its supply chain away from China. "What we learned some time ago was that having everything in one location had too much risk with it," he said. Further reading: JPMorgan Says India-Assembled iPhone Within Spitting Distance of China Price.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new paper from AI lab Cohere, Stanford, MIT, and Ai2 accuses LM Arena, the organization behind the popular crowdsourced AI benchmark Chatbot Arena, of helping a select group of AI companies achieve better leaderboard scores at the expense of rivals.

According to the authors, LM Arena allowed some industry-leading AI companies like Meta, OpenAI, Google, and Amazon to privately test several variants of AI models, then not publish the scores of the lowest performers. This made it easier for these companies to achieve a top spot on the platform's leaderboard, though the opportunity was not afforded to every firm, the authors say.

"Only a handful of [companies] were told that this private testing was available, and the amount of private testing that some [companies] received is just so much more than others," said Cohere's VP of AI research and co-author of the study, Sara Hooker, in an interview with TechCrunch. "This is gamification." Further reading: Meta Got Caught Gaming AI Benchmarks.

Investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs reports: A 23-year-old Scottish man thought to be a member of the prolific Scattered Spider cybercrime group was extradited last week from Spain to the United States, where he is facing charges of wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. U.S. prosecutors allege Tyler Robert Buchanan and co-conspirators hacked into dozens of companies in the United States and abroad, and that he personally controlled more than $26 million stolen from victims. Scattered Spider is a loosely affiliated criminal hacking group whose members have broken into and stolen data from some of the world's largest technology companies. Buchanan was arrested in Spain last year on a warrant from the FBI, which wanted him in connection with a series of SMS-based phishing attacks in the summer of 2022 that led to intrusions at Twilio, LastPass, DoorDash, Mailchimp, and many other tech firms. The complain against Buchanan is available here (PDF).

After 10 consecutive quarters of rising AI-related investment, Microsoft has put on the brakes, spending over $1 billion less than the previous quarter (source paywalled; alternative source). Despite the slight slowdown, Microsoft posted stronger-than-expected results with $70 billion in revenue and $25.8 billion in profit. The New York Times reports: In the first three months of 2025, Microsoft spent $21.4 billion on capital expenses, down more than $1 billion from the previous quarter. The company is still on track to spend more than $80 billion on capital expenses in the current fiscal year, which ends in June. But the pullback, though slight, is an indication that the tech industry's appetite for spending on A.I. is not limitless.

Overall, Microsoft's results showed unexpected strength in its business. Sales surpassed $70 billion, up 13 percent from the same period a year earlier. Profit rose to $25.8 billion, up 18 percent. The results far surpassed Wall Street's expectations. "Cloud and A.I. are the essential inputs for every business to expand output, reduce costs, and accelerate growth," Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, said in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Apple sent notifications this week to several people who the company believes were targeted with government spyware, according to two of the alleged targets. In the past, Apple has sent similar notifications to targets and victims of spyware, and directed them to contact a nonprofit that specializes in investigating such cyberattacks. Other tech companies, like Google and WhatsApp, have in recent years also periodically sent such notifications to their users. As of Wednesday, only two people appear to have come forward to reveal they were among those who received the notifications from Apple this week.

One is Ciro Pellegrino, an Italian journalist who works for online news outlet Fanpage. Pellegrino wrote in an article that he received an email and a text message from Apple on Tuesday notifying him that he was targeted with spyware. The message, according to Pellegrino, also said he wasn't the only person targeted. "Today's notification is being sent to affected users in 100 countries," the message read, according to Pellegrino's article. "Did this really happen? Yes, it is not a joke," Pellegrino wrote.

The second person to receive an Apple notification is Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch right-wing activist, who posted on X on Wednesday. "Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone," the Apple alert said, according to a screenshot shown in a video that Vlaardingerbroek posted on X. "This attack is likely targeting you specifically because of who you are or what you do. Although it's never possible to achieve absolute certainty when detecting such attacks, Apple has high confidence in this warning -- please take it seriously." Reacting to the notification, Vlaardingerbroek said that this was an "attempt to intimidate me, an attempt to silence me, obviously."