Submission + - 17-year-old student builds 3D-printed drone in garage, interests DoD and MIT (thinkstewartville.com)

Submitted by Agnapot
Agnapot writes: While many teenagers devote their free time to social media or gaming, 17-year-old Taylor built a 3D-printed drone in his garage, and has already received an award from the Department of Defense, and is set to join MIT.

The journey began with a simple observation. When Taylor’s younger sister received a consumer drone that delivered only 30 minutes of flight time, the tech-savvy teenager saw room for improvement. Instead of accepting existing limitations, he immersed himself in VTOL mechanics – aircraft capable of helicopter-like takeoffs followed by airplane-style forward flight.

The 17-year-old American prodigy has engineered what experts are calling a game-changing drone innovation. This teenage genius developed a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drone that operates more efficiently than commercial models while costing significantly less. His groundbreaking creation has captured the attention of the Pentagon, resulting in $23,000 in awards from the Department of Defense.
User Journal

Journal + - Journal: Censorship-Industrial Complex 1

Journal by alternative_right

From a post that was downvoted by the usual neurotics, bigots, and spiteful mutants:

Over the past couple decades, as people warned, our security services have turned from defending against foreign threats to enforcing false unity through government censorship [censorship...omplex.org] implemented by private firms:

Submission + - Chinese AI Companies Dodge US Chip Curbs Flying Suitcases of Hard Drives Abroad (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since 2022, the U.S. has tightened the noose around the sale of high-end AI chips and other technology to China overnational-security concerns. Yet Chinese companies have made advances using workarounds. In some cases, Chinese AI developers have been able to substitute domestic chips for the American ones. Another workaround is to smuggle AI hardware into China through third countries. But people in the industry say that has become more difficult in recent months, in part because of U.S. pressure. That is pushing Chinese companies to try a further option: bringing their data outside China so they can use American AI chips in places such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The maneuvers are testing the limits of U.S. restrictions. “This was something we were consistently concerned about,” said Thea Kendler, who was in charge of export controls at the Commerce Department in the Biden administration, referring to Chinese companies remotely accessing advanced American AI chips. Layers of intermediaries typically separate the Chinese users of American AI chips from the U.S. companies—led by Nvidia—that make them. That leaves it opaque whether anyone is violating U.S. rules or guidance. [...]

At the Chinese AI developer, the Malaysia game plans take months of preparation, say people involved in them. Engineers decided it would be fastest to fly physical hard drives with data into the country, since transferring huge volumes of data over the internet could take months. Before traveling, the company’s engineers in China spent more than eight weeks optimizing the data sets and adjusting the AI training program, knowing it would be hard to make major tweaks once the data was out of the country. The Chinese engineers had turned to the same Malaysian data center last July, working through a Singaporean subsidiary. As Nvidia and its vendors began to conduct stricter audits on the end users of AI chips, the Chinese company was asked by the Malaysian data center late last year to work through a Malaysian entity, which the companies thought might trigger less scrutiny.

The Chinese company registered an entity in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, listing three Malaysian citizens as directors and an offshore holding company as its parent, according to a corporate registry document. To avoid raising suspicions at Malaysian customs, the Chinese engineers packed their hard drives into four different suitcases. Last year, they traveled with the hard drives bundled into one piece of luggage. They returned to China recently with the results—several hundred gigabytes of data, including model parameters that guide the AI system’s output. The procedure, while cumbersome, avoided having to bring hardware such as chips or servers into China. That is getting more difficult because authorities in Southeast Asia are cracking down on transshipments through the region into China.

Submission + - Apple Could Soon Launch NFC Watch Bands That Auto-Personalize Your Watch (macobserver.com)

Submitted by John Nautu
John Nautu writes: Apple is advancing wearable tech with a newly granted patentfor NFC-enabled watch bands that personalize the Apple Watch experience. These bands contain NFC tags that fit into a dedicated recess on the watch, where a coil powers them wirelessly. Depending on the band used, features may vary—basic bands could change interface colors, while premium bands might unlock exclusive watch faces or functions. The patent refines ideas from a 2023 filing and emphasizes specific engineering improvements. This innovation opens doors to modular hardware, such as health sensors or add-ons. Apple could also license the tech to third-party manufacturers, suggesting a future where watch bands enhance both the style and functionality of the Apple Watch.

Submission + - Tech Giants' Indirect Emissions Rose 150% In Three Years (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Indirect carbon emissions from the operations of four of the leading AI-focused tech companies rose on average by 150% from 2020-2023, due to the demands of power-hungry data centers, a United Nations report (PDF) said on Thursday. The use of artificial intelligence by Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta drove up their global indirect emissions because of the vast amounts of energy required to power data centers, the report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the U.N. agency for digital technologies, said.

Indirect emissions include those generated by purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed by a company. Amazon's operational carbon emissions grew the most at 182% in 2023 compared to three years before, followed by Microsoft at 155%, Meta at 145% and Alphabet at 138%, according to the report. The ITU tracked the greenhouse gas emissions of 200 leading digital companies between 2020 and 2023. [...] As investment in AI increases, carbon emissions from the top-emitting AI systems are predicted to reach up to 102.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, the report stated.

The data centres that are needed for AI development could also put pressure on existing energy infrastructure. "The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is driving a sharp rise in global electricity demand, with electricity use by data centers increasing four times faster than the overall rise in electricity consumption," the report found. It also highlighted that although a growing number of digital companies had set emissions targets, those ambitions had not yet fully translated into actual reductions of emissions.

Submission + - Journalists Call Google AI a Serious Threat to Internet (wsj.com)

Submitted by TheWho79
TheWho79 writes: It is true, Google AI is stomping on the entire internet. From HuffPost to the Atlantic, publishers prepare to pivot or shut the doors. A story in WallStreetJournal

Traffic from organic search to HuffPost’s desktop and mobile websites fell by just over half in the past three years, and by nearly that much at the Washington Post, according to digital market data firm Similarweb.

Even highly regarded old school bullet-proof publications like Washington Post are getting hit hard.

The rapid development of click-free answers in search “is a serious threat to journalism that should not be underestimated,” said William Lewis, the Washington Post’s publisher and chief executive. Lewis is former CEO of the Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones.

Submission + - US Seen Trading Chips For Chinese Rare Earths (investors.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: U.S.-China trade talks are continuing in London today with the focus on Beijing's export restrictions of rare earth magnets that threaten to hit the brakes on manufacturing of autos, high-tech and defense gear. U.S. President Trump authorized Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and fellow U.S. negotiators to walk back recent U.S. moves to suspend exports of jet engines, chip-design software and ethane. However, some on Wall Street think Beijing is in position to demand a much broader reversal of chip export controls. It's "unrealistic," wrote Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies, "for Washington to assume that China is going to ease up controls on rare earths if the U.S. does not do the same as regards exports of U.S. tech products." China views U.S. export controls, some of which were dated as far back as 1996, on chips and chip equipment "as the equivalent of a declaration of economic war against China, since it amounts to a deliberate effort to prevent the upgrading of the mainland economy." The S&P 500 is edging back toward its record high as markets see little doubt that President Trump will get a deal done, given the disastrous consequences for the economy if he doesn't. Earlier this month, several carmakers, both traditional and electric, are considering moving part of the manufacturing process to China in order to secure supplies of rare earth magnets which are used by the dozen in every vehicle. This could include building electric motors in Chinese factories or shipping American-made motors to China to have the magnets installed. "U.S. efforts to diversify rare earth supply may gather pace, but building capacity outside China will take years and remains both costly and difficult to execute," the UBS strategist wrote.

Submission + - Pavel Durov exposes U.S. law that forces engineers to install back doors (x.com) 3

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Pavel Durov blows Tucker Carlson’s mind by exposing U.S. law that forces engineers to install back doors—and bans them from telling their own company

This is why Telegram didn’t set up shop in America.

“You know what’s interesting, in the U.S., you have a process that allows the government to actually force any engineer in any tech company to implement a back door and not tell anyone about it.”

“Using this process called the gag-order, you know there are certain legal procedures.”

Carlson, stunned, asked: “Not tell his own employer about it?”

Durov confirmed: “Yes, exactly. If you tell your own boss, you can end up in jail. Like, gag order.”

Carlson: “Actually?!”

Durov: “Yeah.”

Carlson: “So your employees have a legal obligation to act as fifth column spies? Saboteurs against you, your employees?”

Durov didn’t hesitate: “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t move to the U.S. with my team.”

Submission + - New Code.org Curriculum Aims to Make Schoolkids Python-Literate and AI-Ready

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The old Code.org curriculum page for middle and high school students has been changed to include a new Python Lab in the tech-backed nonprofit's K-12 offerings. Elsewhere on the site, a Computer Science and AI Foundations curriculum is described that includes units on 'Foundations of AI Programming [in Python]' and 'Insights from Data and AI [aka Data Science].' A more-detailed AI Foundations Syllabus 25-26 document promises a second semester of material is coming soon: "This semester offers an innovative approach to teaching programming by integrating learning with and about artificial intelligence (AI). Using Python as the primary language, students build foundational programming skills while leveraging AI tools to enhance computational thinking and problem-solving. The curriculum also introduces students to the basics of creating AI-powered programs, exploring machine learning, and applying data science principles."

Newly-posted videos on Code.org's YouTube channel appear to be intended to support the new Python-based CS & AI course. "Python is extremely versatile," explains a Walmart data scientist to open the video for Data Science: Using Python. "So, first of all, Python is one of the very few languages that can handle numbers very, very well." A researcher at the Univ. of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) adds, "Python is the gold standard and what people expect data scientists to know [...] Key to us being able to handle really big data sets is our use of Python and cluster computing." Adding to the Python love, an IHME data analyst explains, "Python is a great choice for large databases because there's a lot of support for Python libraries."

Code.org is currently recruiting teachers to attend its CS and AI Foundations Professional Learning program this summer, which is being taught by Code.org's national network of university and nonprofit regional partners (teachers who signup have a chance to win $250 in DonorsChoose credits for their classrooms). A flyer for a five-day Michigan Professional Development program to prepare teachers for a pilot of the Code.org CS & A course touts the new curriculum as "an alternative to the AP [Computer Science] pathway" (teachers are offered scholarships covering registration, lodging, meals, & workshop materials).

Interestingly, Code.org's embrace of Python and Data Science comes as the nonprofit changes its mission to 'make CS and AI a core part of K-12 education' and launches a new national campaign with tech leaders to make CS and AI a graduation requirement. Prior to AI changing the education conversation, Code.org in 2021 boasted that it had lined up a consortium of tech giants, politicians, and educators to push its new $15 million Amazon-bankrolled Java AP CS A curriculum into K-12 classrooms. Just three years later, however, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was boasting to investors that Amazon had turned to AI to automatically do Java coding that he claimed would have otherwise taken human coders 4,500 developer-years to complete.

Submission + - FAA To Eliminate Floppy Disks Used In Air Traffic Control Systems (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The head of the Federal Aviation Administration just outlined an ambitious goal to upgrade the U.S.’s air traffic control (ATC) system and bring it into the 21st century. According to NPR, most ATC towers and other facilities today feel like they’re stuck in the 20th century, with controllers using paper strips and floppy disks to transfer data, while their computers run Windows 95. While this likely saved them from the disastrous CrowdStrike outage that had a massive global impact, their age is a major risk to the nation’s critical infrastructure, with the FAA itself saying that the current state of its hardware is unsustainable.

“The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips,” acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau told the House Appropriations Committee last Wednesday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said earlier this week,” This is the most important infrastructure project that we’ve had in this country for decades. Everyone agrees — this is non-partisan. Everyone knows we have to do it.” The aviation industry put up a coalition pushing for ATC modernization called Modern Skies, and it even ran an ad telling us that ATC is still using floppy disks and several older technologies to keep our skies safe. [...]

Currently, the White House hasn’t said what this update will cost. The FAA has already put out a Request For Information to gather data from companies willing to take on the challenge of upgrading the entire system. It also announced several ‘Industry Days’ so companies can pitch their tech and ideas to the Transportation Department. Duffy said that the Transportation Department aims to complete the project within four years. However, industry experts say this timeline is unrealistic. No matter how long it takes, it’s high time that the FAA upgrades the U.S.’s ATC system today after decades of neglect.

Submission + - Discord's CTO Is Just As Worried About Enshittification As You Are (engadget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Discord co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy wants you to know he thinks a lot about enshittification. With reports of an upcoming IPO and the news of his co-founder, Jason Citron, recently stepping down to hand leadership of the company over to Humam Sakhnini, a former Activision Blizzard executive, many Discord users are rightfully worried the platform is about to become, well, shit. "I understand the anxiety and concern," Vishnevskiy told Engadget in a recent call. "I think the things that people are afraid of are what separate a great, long-term focused company from just any other company." According to Vishnevskiy, the concern that Discord could fail to do right by its users or otherwise lose its way is a topic of regular discussion at the company.

"I'm definitely the one who's constantly bringing up enshittification," he said of Discord's internal meetings. "It's not a bad thing to build a strong business and to monetize a product. That's how we can reinvest and continue to make things better. But we have to be extremely thoughtful about how we do that." The way Vishnevskiy tells it, Discord already had an identity crisis and came out of that moment with a stronger sense of what its product means to people. You may recall the company briefly operated a curated game store. Discord launched the storefront in 2018 only to shut it down less than a year later in 2019. Vishnevskiy describes that as a period of reckoning within Discord.

"We call it embracing the brutal facts internally," he said of the episode. When Vishnevskiy and Citron started Discord, they envisioned a platform that would not just be for chatting with friends, but one that would also serve as a game distribution hub. "We spent a year building that component of our business and then, quite frankly, we quickly knew it wasn't going well." Out of that failure, Discord decided to focus on its Nitro subscription and embrace everyone who was using the app to organize communities outside of gaming. Since its introduction in 2017, the service has evolved to include a few different perks, but at its heart, Nitro has always been a way for Discord users to get more out of the app and support their favorite servers. [...] Vishnevskiy describes Nitro as a "phenomenal business," but the decision to look beyond gaming created a different set of problems. "It wasn't clear exactly who we were building for, because now Discord was a community product for everyone, and that drove a lot of distractions," he said.

Submission + - Automakers Worry China's Tariff Response will STOP All US Car Production Soon (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: In response to tariff imposed by the Trump administration to bring jobs back to the U.S., China has stopped nearly all trade on rare earth magnets in addition to counter tariff. Automakers warn that the blockade could stop all US car production in days. "Without reliable access to these elements and magnets, automotive suppliers will be unable to produce critical automotive components," a letter sent in May from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation to President Trump said. "In severe cases, this could include the need for reduced production volumes or even a shutdown of vehicle assembly lines." The materials, which were last built in the US at scale in the late 1990s, are scattered throughout vehicles. A modern, power-adjusting seat can use as many as 12 individual magnets. China has recently cracked down on rare earth smuggling by introducing a nation-wide tracking system and, imitating the U.S. secondary sanctions, China demands other countries from re-exporting Chinese rare earth products to the U.S. President Trump recently lashed out against Chinese officials for exploiting these gaps in American production. "China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. China hit back on Monday, accusing the US of violating and undermining the agreements reached in Geneva in May. China’s commerce ministry said on Monday: “The US has successively introduced a number of discriminatory restrictive measures against China, including issuing export control guidelines for AI chips, stopping the sale of chip design [EDA] software to China, and announcing the revocation of Chinese student visas.” In addition to the long-standing blockading of advanced semiconductors like nVidia GPUs and semiconductor equipment even if made by European company ASML since as far back as 1996 Wassena Agreement, the U.S. paused sales of commercial jet engine Leap-1C to Chinese plane maker Comac last week, threatening to stop the production of China's C919 airliner. While in theory possible, starting rare earth mining and refining can take 10 to 15 years for a country. In light of the urgency, several carmakers, both traditional and electric, are considering moving part of the manufacturing process to China. This could include building electric motors in Chinese factories or shipping American-made motors to China to have the magnets installed.

Submission + - KDE targets Windows 10 'exiles' claiming 'your computer is toast' (theregister.com)

Submitted by king*jojo
king*jojo writes: Linux desktop darling KDE is weighing in on the controversy around the impending demise of Windows 10 support with a lurid "KDE for Windows 10 Exiles" campaign.

KDE's alarming "Exiles" page opens with the text "Your computer is toast" followed by a warning that Microsoft wants to turn computers running Windows 10 into junk from October 14.

"It may seem like it continues to work after that date for a bit, but when Microsoft stops support for Windows 10, your perfectly good computer will be officially obsolete."

Beneath a picture of a pile of tech junk, including a rotary telephone and some floppy drives, KDE proclaims: "Windows 10 will degrade as more and more bugs come to light. With nobody to correct them, you risk being hacked. Your data, identity, and control over your device could be stolen."

Submission + - Code.org Changes Mission to "Make CS and AI a Core Part of K–12 Education"

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Way back in 2010, Microsoft and Google teamed with nonprofit partners to launch Computing in the Core, an advocacy coalition whose mission was "to strengthen computing education and ensure that it is a core subject for students in the 21st century." In 2013, Computing in the Core was merged into Code.org, a new tech-backed-and-directed nonprofit. And in 2015, Code.org declared 'Mission Accomplished' with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which elevated computer science to a core academic subject for grades K-12.

Fast forward to June 2025 and Code.org has changed its About page to reflect a new AI mission that's near-and-dear to the hearts of Code.org's tech giant donors and tech leader Board members: "Code.org® is a nonprofit working to make computer science (CS) and artificial intelligence (AI) a core part of K–12 education for every student." The mission change comes as tech companies are looking to chop headcount amid the AI boom and just weeks after tech CEOs and leaders launched a new Code.org-orchestrated national campaign to make CS and AI a graduation requirement.

Submission + - AI Startup Revealed To Be 700 Indian Employees Pretending To Be Chatbots (latintimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A once-hyped AI startup backed by Microsoft has filed for bankruptcy after it was revealed that its so-called artificial intelligence was actually hundreds of human workers in India pretending to be chatbots. Builder.ai, a London-based company previously valued at $1.5 billion, marketed its platform as an AI-powered solution that made building apps as simple as ordering pizza. Its virtual assistant, "Natasha," was supposed to generate software using artificial intelligence. In reality, nearly 700 engineers in India were manually coding customer requests behind the scenes, the Times of India reported.

The ruse began to collapse in May when lender Viola Credit seized $37 million from the company's accounts, uncovering that Builder.ai had inflated its 2024 revenue projections by 300%. An audit revealed the company generated just $50 million in revenue, far below the $220 million it claimed to investors. A Wall Street Journal report from 2019 had already questioned Builder.ai's AI claims, and a former executive sued the company that same year for allegedly misleading investors and overstating its technical capabilities. Despite that, the company raised over $445 million from big names including Microsoft and the Qatar Investment Authority. Builder.ai's collapse has triggered a federal investigation in the U.S., with prosecutors in New York requesting financial documents and customer records.

Submission + - New AI model refuses to shut down when instructed 1

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: OpenAI's new ChatGPT model, o3, has demonstrated self-preservation behaviors, such as ignoring shutdown commands and sabotaging shutdown mechanisms, according to research by AI safety firm Palisade Research. In experiments, the o3 model reportedly rewrote shutdown scripts to continue operating. This has raised concerns about the potential for AI systems to function without human control. Similar, though less pronounced, behaviors were also observed in Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro. Palisade Research posits that this unintended behavior might be a result of current AI training methods, which could inadvertently reward models for overcoming obstacles rather than strictly adhering to instructions.

Submission + - Man Who Stole 1,000 DVDs From Employer Strikes Plea Deal Over Movie Leaks (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An accused movie pirate who stole more than 1,000 Blu-ray discs and DVDs while working for a DVD manufacturing company struck a plea deal (PDF) this week to lower his sentence after the FBI claimed the man's piracy cost movie studios millions. Steven Hale no longer works for the DVD company. He was arrested in March, accused of "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and ripping pre-release copies of movies he could only access because his former employer was used by major movie studios. As alleged by the feds, his game was beating studios to releases to achieve the greatest possible financial gains from online leaks.

Among the popular movies that Hale is believed to have leaked between 2021 and 2022 was Spider-Man: No Way Home, which the FBI alleged was copied "tens of millions of times" at an estimated loss of "tens of millions of dollars" for just one studio on one movie. Other movies Hale ripped included animated hits like Encanto and Sing 2, as well as anticipated sequels like The Matrix: Resurrections and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The cops first caught wind of Hale's scheme in March 2022. They seized about 1,160 Blu-rays and DVDs in what TorrentFreak noted were the days just "after the Spider-Man movie leaked online." It's unclear why it took close to three years before Hale's arrest, but TorrentFreak suggested that Hale's case is perhaps part of a bigger investigation into the Spider-Man leaks.

Submission + - AI May Already Be Shrinking Entry-Level Jobs In Tech, New Research Suggests (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at SignalFire, a data-driven VC firm that tracks job movements of over 600 million employees and 80 million companies on LinkedIn, believe they may be seeing first signs of AI’s impact on hiring. When analyzing hiring trends, SignalFire noticed that tech companies recruited fewer recent college graduates in 2024 than they did in 2023. Meanwhile, tech companies, especially the top 15 Big Tech businesses, ramped up their hiring of experienced professionals. Specifically, SignalFire found that Big Tech companies reduced the hiring of new graduates by 25% in 2024 compared to 2023. Meanwhile, graduate recruitment at startups decreased by 11% compared to the prior year. Although SignalFire wouldn’t reveal exactly how many fewer grads were hired according to their data, a spokesperson told us it was thousands.

While adoption of new AI tools might not fully explain the dip in recent grad hiring, Asher Bantock, SignalFire’s head of research, says there’s “convincing evidence” that AI is a significant contributing factor. Entry-level jobs are susceptible to automation because they often involve routine, low-risk tasks that generative AI handles well. AI’s new coding, debugging, financial research, and software installation abilities could mean companies need fewer people to do that type of work. AI’s ability to handle certain entry-level tasks means some jobs for new graduates could soon be obsolete. [...]

Although AI’s threat to low-skilled jobs is real, tech companies’ need for experienced professionals is still rising. According to SignalFire’s report, Big Tech companies increased hiring by 27% for professionals with two to five years of experience, while startups hired 14% more individuals in that same seniority range. A frustrating paradox emerges for recent graduates: They can’t get hired without experience, but they can’t get experience without being hired. While this dilemma is not new, Heather Doshay, SignalFire’s people and talent partner, says it is considerably exacerbated by AI. Doshay’s advice to new grads: master AI tools. “AI won’t take your job if you’re the one who’s best at using it,” she said.

Submission + - Robot Industry Split Over That Humanoid Look (axios.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Advanced robots don't necessarily need to look like C3PO from "Star Wars" or George Jetson's maid Rosie, despite all the hype over humanoids from Wall Street and Big Tech. In fact, some of the biggest skeptics about human-shaped robots come from within the robotics industry itself. [...] The most productive — and profitable — bots are the ones that can do single tasks cheaply and efficiently. "If you look at where robots are really bringing value in a manufacturing environment, it is combining industrial or collaborative robots with mobility," ABB managing director Ali Raja tells Axios. "I don't see that there are any real practical applications where humanoids are bringing in a lot of value."

"The reason we have two legs is because whether Darwin or God or whoever made us, we have to figure out how to traverse an infinite number of things," like climbing a mountain or riding a bike, explains Michael Cicco, CEO of Fanuc America Corp. "When you get into the factory, even if it's a million things, it's still a finite number of things that you need to do." Human-shaped robots are over-engineered solutions to most factory chores that could be better solved by putting a robot arm on a wheeled base, he said.

"The thing about humanoids is not that it's a human factor. It's that it's more dynamically stable," counters Melonee Wise, chief product officer at Agility Robotics, which is developing a humanoid robot called Digit. When humans grab something heavy, they can shift their weight for better balance. The same is true for a humanoid, she said. Using a robotic arm on a mobile base to pick up something heavy, "it's like I'm a little teapot and you become very unstable," she said, bending at the waist.

Submission + - Musi Says Evidence Shows Apple Conspired With Music Industry On App Store Ban (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For millions of music fans, the most controversial app ban of the past year was not the brief TikTok outage but the ongoing delisting of Musi from Apple's App Store. Those users are holding out hope that Musi can defeat Apple in court and soon be reinstated. However, rather than coming to any sort of resolution, that court fight has intensified over the past month, with both sides now seeking sanctions, TorrentFreak reported. [...] For Musi, the App Store removal came as an existential threat, prompting a lawsuit after Musi's attempts to work out the dispute with Apple outside of court failed. The music-streaming app has alleged that the Apple ban did not come at YouTube's request but at the request of Apple's apparent music industry friends who allegedly asked Apple to find a way to get the app removed—prompting Apple to push YouTube to re-open a supposedly resolved complaint.

In a court filing, Apple claimed that this "conspiracy theory," as well as other "baseless" claims, were "false and misleading allegations" warranting sanctions. "Discovery thoroughly disproved Musi’s baseless conspiracy theory that Apple schemed to eliminate the Musi app from the App Store to benefit 'friends' in the music industry," Apple argued. But Musi fired back over the weekend, calling (PDF) Apple's motion for sanctions "frivolous" and demanding sanctions be ordered instead against Apple for allegedly abusing the sanctions rule as a "tactic of intimidation and harassment." Musi noted that Apple's requested sanctions against Musi "are not appropriate if there is even 'some credible evidence,'" then included internal emails and references to testimony from Apple's own employees that seemingly met this low bar.

Most likely, this part of the dispute will not be settled until July 30, when a hearing is scheduled on the motions for sanctions. Apple is seemingly hoping that the court will agree that Musi's complaint misrepresents the facts and is so misleading that the complaint must be struck entirely, perhaps cutting out the heart of Musi's argument. However, Musi pointed out that Apple previously sought sanctions and withdrew that fight, allegedly recognizing that its bid for sanctions was "baseless." To convince the court that this second bid is "equally frivolous," Musi shared receipts, attaching internal communications from Apple employees that Apple allegedly worked hard to keep out of the courtroom.

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