Global sales of smartwatches have fallen for the first time, new figures indicate, in large part due to a sharp decline in the popularity of market leader, Apple. From a report: Market research firm Counterpoint says 7% fewer of the devices were shipped in 2024 compared to the year before. Shipments of Apple Watches fell by 19% in that period, Counterpoint says. It blames the slump on a lack of new features in Apple's latest devices, and the fact a rumoured high-end Ultra 3 model never materialised.

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 The Register: New York State has sued Allstate Insurance for operating websites so badly designed they would deliver personal information in plain-text to anyone that went looking for it. The data was lifted from Allstate's National General business unit, which ran a website for consumers who wanted to get a quote for a policy. That task required users to input a name and address, and once that info was entered, the site searched a LexisNexis Risk Solutions database for data on anyone who lived at the address provided. The results of that search would then appear on a screen that included the driver's license number (DLN) for the given name and address, plus "names of any other drivers identified as potentially living at that consumer's address, and the entire DLNs of those other drivers."

Naturally, miscreants used the system to mine for people's personal information for fraud. "National General intentionally built these tools to automatically populate consumers' entire DLNs in plain text -- in other words, fully exposed on the face of the quoting websites -- during the quoting process," the court documents [PDF] state. "Not surprisingly, attackers identified this vulnerability and targeted these quoting tools as an easy way to access the DLNs of many New Yorkers," according to the lawsuit. The digital thieves then used this information to "submit fraudulent claims for pandemic and unemployment benefits," we're told. ... [B]y the time the insurer resolved the mess, crooks had built bots that harvested at least 12,000 individuals' driver's license numbers from the quote-generating site.

Sphere Entertainment Co, the company behind the Las Vegas Sphere, said they are considering opening scaled-down versions of the immersive venue in other cities. AV Magazine reports: While this has been been feasible for its high-profile residencies such as U2, the Eagles, Dead & Company and Anyma, smaller venues could attract a broader range of artists who might not have the budget or demand to fill the flagship Las Vegas location. By scaling down the size while retaining the signature technology, Sphere Entertainment Co can offer a similar spectacle at a more sustainable cost for artists and spectators.

The possibility of mini-Spheres follows news that a full-scale venue will open in the UAE as a result of a partnership between Sphere Entertainment Co and the Department of Culture and Tourism -- Abu Dhabi. Beyond concerts, the Las Vegas Sphere has proven successful with immersive films such as V-U2: An Immersive Concert Film and the Sphere Expeience featuring Darren Aronofsky's Postcard from Earth, which In January passed 1,000 screenings. "As we enter a new fiscal year, we see significant opportunities to drive our Sphere business forward in Las Vegas and beyond," said Dolan. "We believe we are on a path toward realizing our vision for this next-generation medium and generating long-term shareholder value."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: An Amazon-backed self-driving taxi failed to meet vehicle safety standardsbecause it lacks basics like a brake pedal and rearview mirrors, according to a report by federal inspectors that raises questions about the industry's plans to put a new generation of autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report was produced as part of a review last year of an unusual vehicle by Amazon subsidiary Zoox that, without a steering wheel or other human controls, has no way for a person to drive. Zoox has asserted that the vehicle's technology, backed by artificial intelligence, complies with the agency's standards. But the NHTSA report documents "apparent noncompliances" with eight safety rules.

The contents of the previously undisclosed review suggest that rules written when autonomous vehicles were the stuff of futuristic musings pose a legal impediment to the industry's ambitions, even as plans for self-driving vehicles accelerate. Zoox has a small pilot fleet on the roads in California and Nevada and says it has completed thousands of trips carrying employees and guests. It is finalizing plans to launch public service in Las Vegas this year. [...] By documenting the apparent noncompliances of the Zoox, NHTSA could be setting the table for a recall, under agency procedures. It is unclear whether the Trump administration will attempt a change in course. The agency said it remains in discussion with Zoox and was "considering all options."

Zoox could have sought an exemption from the safety rules, but NHTSA has never granted one to an autonomous passenger vehicle. Instead, the company self-certified that its vehicle complied with the rules as it raced to be the first company to put a purpose-built robotaxi on the road and claim a share of what could become a multi trillion-dollar market. Zoox's vehicle bears little resemblance to a normal car. The plan is for customers to summon a ride using an app, much like a regular ride-hailing vehicle, getting in through bus-like doors and sitting facing one another. The vehicle navigates itself, seeing the world through a set of cameras and laser-based sensors. It largely relies on its own abilities to drive, but the company says teams of remote operators can seize control to help handle unusual situations. Passengers can call for assistance via a touch screen and open the doors using an emergency release. "We will continue to support transportation technology innovation while maintaining the safety of America's roads," NHTSA said in a statement.

"Our recent discussions with NHTSA are about mirrors, windshield wipers, a defroster, and a foot-activated brake pedal -- equipment that makes sense for vehicles with human drivers, but not for the Zoox purpose-built robotaxi," Zoox said in a statement. "Our purpose-built design means that the robotaxi can never be operated by a human driver, and our AI driver doesn't rely on this equipment to view the world."

Southwest Airlines boasts that its passengers' "bags fly free" -- but not for long. From a report: Starting May 28 -- just in time for the busy summer travel season -- only Southwest's most elite Rapid Rewards A-List Preferred members and passengers who book their top-tier Business Select fares will receive two free checked bags. Frequent flyer A-List Members, Southwest-branded credit card holders and other select customers will be allowed one checked bag.

Everyone else will be charged for their first and second checked bags on flights booked on or after May 28, the carrier says. It's a break with Southwest's 54 year history -- one that could undermine customer loyalty to the carrier, according to experts. "This is how you destroy a brand. This is how you destroy customer preference. This is how you destroy loyalty. And this, I think, is going to send Southwest into a financial tailspin," airline industry analyst Henry Harteveldt, of Atmosphere Research Group, told CBS News senior transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave. "Southwest, with these changes, becomes just another airline."

Abstract of a paper published on Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management:The adoption of digital menus accessed through quick response (QR) codes has witnessed a notable upsurge. Despite potential benefits for restaurant operators, the nuanced effects of QR code menus on customer behavior and experience remain relatively unknown. This research investigates the influence of menu presentation (QR code vs. traditional) on customer loyalty. In two studies, we find that QR code menus diminish customer loyalty (compared to traditional menus) due to perceived inconvenience. This effect is further moderated by customers' need for interaction. Our work is timely in highlighting the negative impact of perceptions of inconvenience on technology adoption.

SpaceX's Starlink has secured its first agreement in India, partnering with telecommunications leader Bharti Airtel to bring high-speed satellite internet to the world's most populous country, the companies announced Tuesday [PDF].

The landmark deal will enable Starlink to tap into Airtel's extensive retail network and ground infrastructure while expanding its global reach into previously underserved regions across India, pending regulatory authorizations.

"We are excited to work with Airtel and unlock the transformative impact Starlink can bring to the people of India," said Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX. "The team at Airtel has played a pivotal role in India's telecom story, so working with them to complement our direct offering makes great sense for our business."

The collaboration will explore selling Starlink equipment through Airtel's retail stores and offering services to business customers while connecting communities in rural areas with limited connectivity.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A former senior Facebook executive has told the BBC how the social media giant worked "hand in glove" with the Chinese government on potential ways of allowing Beijing to censor and control content in China. Sarah Wynn-Williams -- a former global public policy director -- says in return for gaining access to the Chinese market of hundreds of millions of users, Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, considered agreeing to hiding posts that were going viral, until they could be checked by the Chinese authorities.

Ms Williams -- who makes the claims in a new book -- has also filed a whistleblower complaint with the US markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), alleging Meta misled investors. The BBC has reviewed the complaint. Facebook's parent company Meta, says Ms Wynn-Williams had her employment terminated in 2017 "for poor performance." It is "no secret we were once interested" in operating services in China, it adds. "We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored." Meta referred us to Mark Zuckerberg's comments from 2019, when he said: "We could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they [China] never let us in."

Facebook also used algorithms to spot when young teenagers were feeling vulnerable as part of research aimed at advertisers, Ms Wynn-Williams alleges. A former New Zealand diplomat, she joined Facebook in 2011, and says she watched the company grow from "a front row seat." Now she wants to show some of the "decision-making and moral compromises" that she says went on when she was there. It is a critical moment, she adds, as "many of the people I worked with... are going to be central" to the introduction of AI. In her memoir, Careless People, Ms Wynn-Williams paints a picture of what she alleges working on Facebook's senior team was like.

The Register's Simon Sharwood reports: The body that runs New Zealand's public health system uses a single Excel spreadsheet as the primary source of data to consolidate and manage its finances, which aren't in great shape perhaps due to the sheet's shortcomings. The spreadsheet-using agency is Health New Zealand (HNZ) which was established in 2022 to replace 20 district health boards in the expectation it would be more cost-effective and deliver more consistent services. The org has a budget of $NZ28 billion ($16 billion) and advised lawmakers it would stay within it for FY 23.24.

That prediction was incorrect and HNZ blew its budget, leading to a review of its finances that last week delivered a damming report [PDF] that found the org lost "control of the critical levers that drive financial outcomes" and had an "inability to identify and respond to the disconnect between expenditure and revenue." The Deloitte-penned report also found an Excel spreadsheet was the "primary data file used by HNZ to manage its financial performance" and was used for "consolidation, journals, business-critical reporting, and analysis."

The report also noted five big problems with the sheet used at HNZ:
- Financial information was often 'hard-coded,' making it difficult to trace to the source or have updated data flow through.
- Errors such as incorrectly releasing accruals or double-up releases were not picked up until following periods.
- Changes to prior periods and FTE errors in district financial reporting Excel submissions, would not flow through to consolidated file.
- The spreadsheet can be easy to manipulate information as there is limited tracking to source information where information is not flowing directly from accounting systems.
- It is highly prone to human error, such as accidental typing of a number or omission of a zero.
Relying on the spreadsheet also meant Health NZ moved slowly: The report found "monthly financial reporting usually took 12-15 days to consolidate and five days to analyze."

Dustin Moskovitz, CEO and co-founder of Asana, is stepping down and will transition to the role of Chair once a new CEO is appointed. "As I reflect on my journey since co-founding Asana nearly 17 years ago, I'm filled with immense gratitude," Moskovitz said in a statement. "Creating and leading Asana has been more than just building a company -- it's been a profound privilege to work alongside some of the most talented minds in the industry." Asana's stock price was down more than 25% following the news. CNBC reports: Asana said fourth-quarter sales rose 10% year over year to $188.3 million, which was in line with analysts' estimates. The company said its adjusted earnings per share was breakeven, ahead of analysts' estimates of a loss of one cent per share. Asana said it expects fiscal first-quarter revenue of $184.5 million to $186.5 million, trailing analysts' expectations of $191 million.

Moskovitz owns about 53% of the company's outstanding shares, between his Class A and Class B holdings. He has substantially increased his ownership since the company's public market debut in 2020. [...] Moskovitz said in his Monday retirement statement that he plans to focus more on his philanthropic endeavors, such as Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy, which cites "potential risks from advanced AI" among its various focus areas. In 2010, Moskovitz signed the Giving Pledge, a promise by some of the wealthiest people in the world to donate most of their fortunes to charity.

Internet shutdowns in Africa hit a record high in 2024, with 21 shutdowns across 15 countries. The previous record was 19 shutdowns in 2020 and 21. The Guardian reports: Authorities in Comoros, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritius joined repeat offenders such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea and Kenya. Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania were also on the list. But perpetrators also included militias and other non-state actors. Telecommunication and internet service providers who shut services based on government orders are also complicit in violating people's rights, said Felicia Anthonio, the #KeepItOn campaign manager at Access Now, citing the UN guiding principles on business and human rights.

The details showed that most of the shutdowns were imposed as a response to conflicts, protests and political instability. There were also restrictions during elections. [...] At least five shutdowns in Africa had been imposed for more than a year by the end of 2024, according to Access Now. As of early 2025, the social network Meta was still restricted in Uganda, despite authorities engaging with its representatives. On the Equatorial Guinean island of Annobon, internet and cell services have been cut off since an August 2024 protest over environmental concerns and isolation from the rest of the country. The increase in shutdowns led the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to pass a landmark resolution in March 2024 to help reverse the trend.

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.

smooth wombat writes: In what can only be described as a no-brainer, Volkswagen has announced it will have once again have physical buttons in all its vehicles. As Andreas Mindt, design chief at the company said, removing buttons was "a mistake".

"From the ID 2all onwards, we will have physical buttons for the five most important functions -- the volume, the heating on each side of the car, the fans and the hazard light -- below the screen," he explained, adding: "It's not a phone: it's a car."

This doesn't mean touch screens are set to disappear on new Volkswagens, just that drivers will now have the option of physical controls for their most used day-to-day tasks. The new controls are set to make their debut in the ID.2all, a small, budget EV set to debut in Europe.

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."

Red Hat product manager Pau Garcia Quiles (also long-time Slashdot reader paugq) spotted an interesting project on GitHub: Free95, a new lean, Windows-compatible operating system is available from GitHub. In its current form, it can run very basic Win32 GUI and console applications, but its developer promises to keep working on it to reach DirectX and even game compatibility.
"Free95 is your friendly Windows Environment with an added trust of the open source community," according to its README file. (It's licensed under the GPL-3.0 license.) And in answer to the question "Why?" it responds "To remove Windows's bloat, and security problems. Being controlled by a large corporation is unsettling."

"It's still in-development of course," the developer post recently on Reddit, "and I'll appreciate anyone who'd like to contribute." In one comment they claim Free95 is "much more lightweight, simpler and faster than ReactOS." And looking to the future, they add "I might do DirectX stuff and make some games run. Or, what about DOOM?"

gdm (Slashdot reader #97,336) writes: A study published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives investigates how ants avoid traffic jams.... Quoting the abstract: "The results show that ants adopt specific traffic strategies (platoon formation, quasi-constant speed and no overtaking maneuvers) that help avoid jam phenomena, even at high density." "Researchers are now studying these insects' cooperative tactics to learn how to program self-driving cars that don't jam up," writes Scientific American: "We're maximizing the interests of individuals, [which] is why, at a given point, you start to have a traffic jam," says study co-author Nicola Pugno, who studies sustainable engineering at the University of Trento in Italy. But self-driving cars, if they one day become ubiquitous, could have more cooperative programming. In one vision of this future, autonomous vehicles would share information with nearby cars to optimize traffic flow — perhaps, the researchers suggest, by prioritizing constant speeds and headways or by not passing others on the road...

Today's drivers can learn at least one thing from ants to avoid causing a traffic jam, says Katsuhiro Nishinari [a mathematical physicist at the University of Tokyo, who studies traffic]: don't tailgate. By leaving room between their car and the one ahead of them, drivers can absorb a wave of braking in dense traffic conditions that would otherwise be amplified into a full-blown "phantom" traffic jam with no obvious cause. "Just keeping away," he says, can help traffic flow smoothly.
In the article the researchers admit there are differences between humans stuck in traffic and ants. "Unlike cars, ants don't crash; they can literally walk over one another." And if they're backed up in a tunnel, "they'll find a way to walk on the ceiling!"

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."

"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...