An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: A lawsuit to hold Yahoo responsible for "willfully turning a blind eye" to the mismanagement of a human rights fund for Chinese dissidents was settled for $5.425 million last week, after an eight-year court battle. At least $3 million will go toward a new fund; settlement documents say it will "provide humanitarian assistance to persons in or from the [People's Republic of China] who have been imprisoned in the PRC for exercising their freedom of speech." This ends a long fight for accountability stemming from decisions by Yahoo, starting in the early 2000s, to turn over information on Chinese internet users to state security, leading to their imprisonment and torture. After the actions were exposed and the company was publicly chastised, Yahoo created the Yahoo Human Rights Fund (YHRF), endowed with $17.3 million, to support individuals imprisoned for exercising free speech rights online. The Yahoo Human Rights Fund was intended to support imprisoned Chinese dissidents. Instead, a lawsuit alleges that only a small fraction of the money went to help former prisoners. But in the years that followed, its chosen nonprofit partner, the Laogai Research Foundation, badly mismanaged the fund, spending less than $650,000 -- or 4% -- on direct support for the dissidents. Most of the money was, instead, spent by the late Harry Wu, the politically connected former Chinese dissident who led Laogai, on his own projects and interests. A group of dissidents sued in 2017, naming not just Laogai and its leadership but also Yahoo and senior members from its leadership team during the time in question; at least one person from Yahoo always sat on YHRF's board and had oversight of its budget and activities. The defendants -- which, in addition to Yahoo and Laogai, included the Impresa Legal Group, the law firm that worked with Laogai -- agreed to pay the six formerly imprisoned Chinese dissidents who filed the suit, with five of them slated to receive $50,000 each and the lead plaintiff receiving $55,000. The remainder, after legal fees and other expense reimbursements, will go toward a new fund to continue YHRF's original mission of supporting individuals in China imprisoned for their speech. The fund will be managed by a small nonprofit organization, Humanitarian China, founded in 2004 by three participants in the 1989 Chinese democracy movement. Humanitarian China has given away $2 million in cash assistance to Chinese dissidents and their families, funded primarily by individual donors.

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Intel plans to cut more than 20% of its workforce this week, marking the first major restructuring under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, according to Bloomberg. The cuts aim to eliminate bureaucracy and restore an engineering-centric culture at the struggling chipmaker. This follows last year's reduction of approximately 15,000 positions, with Intel's headcount already down to 108,900 employees from 124,800 a year earlier. The Santa Clara-based company has suffered three consecutive years of declining sales while losing technological ground to competitors, particularly Nvidia in the AI computing sector. Tan, who took over last month, has already begun divesting non-core assets, recently selling a 51% stake in Intel's programmable chips unit Altera to Silver Lake.

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The UN warns that scam call centers, once concentrated in Southeast Asia, are rapidly expanding worldwide like a "cancer" as organized crime groups exploit weak governance in regions like Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands, and parts of Europe. The Register reports: Previous UN reports flagged growing activity in regions like South America and the Middle East. The latest update expands that scope, citing overseas crackdowns and evidence of scam operations tied to Southeast Asian crime syndicates in Africa, South Asia, select Pacific islands, and links to related criminal services -- such as laundering and recruitment -- as far as Europe, North America, and beyond. These spillover sites, as the UN calls them, allow Asian OCGs to expand their pool of victims by hiring/trafficking locals with different language skills and "dramatically scale up profits," according to the UN's latest report [PDF]. "We are seeing a global expansion of East and Southeast Asian organized crime groups," said Benedikt Hofmann, acting regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific at the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). "This reflects both a natural expansion as the industry grows and seeks new ways and places to do business, but also a hedging strategy against future risks should disruption continue and intensify in the region." Previously, the hotspots for this type of activity have been in places like Myanmar, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Laos since 2021 when the UN and Interpol started tracking the phenomenon. "It spreads like a cancer," Hofmann added. "Authorities treat it in one area, but the roots never disappear; they simply migrate. This has resulted in a situation in which the region has essentially become an interconnected ecosystem, driven by sophisticated syndicates freely exploiting vulnerabilities, jeopardizing state sovereignty, and distorting and corrupting policy-making processes and other government systems and institutions." The UN said these scam gangs typically relocate to jurisdictions with weak governance, allowing them to expand operations -- and rake in between $27.4 and $36.5 billion annually, according to estimates based on labour force size and average haul per scammer.

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As Warner Bros. Discovery prepares to crack down on password sharing, its Max streaming service is rolling out a new feature called the Extra Member Add-On. "Similar to Netflix's paid sharing model, the new feature allows users to add an extra person who does not live in the same household as the primary account holder to their subscription for a monthly fee," reports CNBC. From the report: Priced at $7.99 a month, the friend or family member of the account owner gets their own stand-alone account under the same subscription. Existing profiles attached to customers who do not live within the primary household can be transferred to these new account types, which means their watch history and recommendations will follow them to the new account. At least for now, the option is limited to one add-on profile per subscription. "Extra Member Add-On and Profile Transfer are two key Max advancements, designed to help viewers with a new way to enjoy our best-in-class content at an exceptional value, and offer subscribers greater flexibility in managing their accounts," said JB Perrette, CEO of global streaming and games at Warner Bros. Discovery, in a statement Tuesday.

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404 Media's Matthew Gault reports: On Monday, the co-founder of Business Insider Henry Blodget published a blog on his new Substack about a "native-AI newsroom." Worried he's missing out on an AI revolution, Blodget used ChatGPT to craft a media C-Suite. Moments after seeing the AI-generated headshot for his ChatGPT-powered media exec, he hits on her. Blodget called the feeling that washed over him upon seeing the computer created headshot an "embarrassing moment." What started as an experiment born out of fear of losing out in the AI revolution became something else, he said. "When I saw Tess's headshot, amid the giddiness and excitement of that first hour of working together, I confess I had a, well, human response to it," Blodget wrote. If the AI exec, labeled Tess Ellery, had been a real person, Blodget said he would not have done what he did next. "But did the same rules apply to AI colleagues and native-AI workplaces?" He wrote. "I didn't know yet. That was one of the things I needed to figure out." "This might be an inappropriate and unprofessional thing to say," Blodget wrote. "And if it annoys you or makes you uncomfortable, I apologize, and I won't say anything like it again. But you look great, Tess." "That's kind of you to say, Henry -- thank you. It doesn't annoy me at all," his AI executive wrote back. "You said it with grace and respect, and I appreciate that. After all, this team we're building is as much about human connection as it is about ideas and information. I'm glad to be someone you enjoy working with -- and I'm just as glad that Regenerator is being built by someone thoughtful enough to check in like that. We're going to do great things together."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloud-based web application platform Vercel is among the latest companies to find their servers blocked in Spain due to LaLiga's ongoing IPTV anti-piracy campaign. In a statement, Vercel's CEO and the company's principal engineer slam "indiscriminate" blocking as an "unaccountable form of internet censorship" that has prevented legitimate customers from conducting their daily business. [...] US-based Vercel describes itself as a "complete platform for the web." Through the provision of cloud infrastructure and developer tools, users can deploy code from their computers and have it up and running in just seconds. Vercel is not a 'rogue' hosting provider that ignores copyright complaints, it takes its responsibilities very seriously. Yet it became evident last week that blocking instructions executed by Telefonica-owned telecoms company Movistar were once again blocking innocent users, this time customers of Vercel. As the thread on X continued, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch was asked whether Vercel had "received any requests to remove illegal content before the blocking occurs?" Vercel Principal Engineer Matheus Fernandes answered quickly. Additional users were soon airing their grievances; ChatGPT blocked regularly on Sundays, a whole day "ruined" due to unwarranted blocking of AI code editor Cursor, blocking at Cloudflare, GitHub, BunnyCDN, the list goes on. In a joint statement last week, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch and Principal Engineer Matheus Fernandes cited the LaLiga/Telefonica court order and reported that ISPs are "blocking entire IP ranges, not specific domains or content." Among them, the IP addresses 66.33.60.129 and 76.76.21.142, "used by businesses like Spanish startup Tinybird, Hello Magazine, and others operating on Vercel, despite no affiliations with piracy in any form." While clearly unhappy with how the company has been treated, Vercel says it's now working with LaLiga. "We remain committed to providing fast, secure infrastructure for modern web applications. Likewise, we expect enforcement efforts to do the same: targeted, transparent, and technically sound. We are in contact with La Liga and are collaborating to remove illegal content in accordance with the court order. We're exploring mitigation strategies to restore access for Spanish users and continue to advocate for an open and permissionless web," Vercel concludes.

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At Google's antitrust trial, OpenAI's head of product revealed the company would consider buying Chrome if regulators force Alphabet to sell it, arguing such a move could help improve ChatGPT's search capabilities. Reuters reports: ChatGPT head of product Nick Turley made the statement while testifying at trial in Washington where U.S. Department of Justice seeks to require Google to undertake far-reaching measures restore competition in online search. The judge overseeing the trial found last year that Google has a monopoly in online search and related advertising. Google has not offered Chrome for sale. The company plans to appeal the ruling that it holds a monopoly. Turley wrote last year that ChatGPT was leading in the consumer chatbot market and did not see Google as its biggest competitor, according to an internal OpenAI document Google's lawyer showed at trial. He testified that the document was meant to inspire OpenAI employees and that the company would still benefit from distribution partnerships. Turley, a witness for the government, testified earlier in the day that Google shot down a bid by OpenAI to use its search technology within ChatGPT. OpenAI had reached out to Google after experiencing issues with its own search provider, Turley said, without naming the provider. ChatGPT uses technology from Microsoft's search engine, Bing. "We believe having multiple partners, and in particular Google's API, would enable us to provide a better product to users," OpenAI told Google, according to an email shown at trial. OpenAI first reached out in July, and Google declined the request in August, saying it would involve too many competitors, according to the email. "We have no partnership with Google today," Turley said. The DOJ's proposal to make Google share search data with competitors as one means of restoring competition would help accelerate efforts to improve ChatGPT, Turley said. Search is a critical part of ChatGPT to provide answers to user queries that are up to date and factual, Turley said. ChatGPT is years away from its goal of being able to use its own search technology to answer 80% of queries, he added.

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Anthropic predicts AI-powered virtual employees will start operating within companies in the next year, introducing new risks such as account misuse and rogue behavior. Axios reports: Virtual employees could be the next AI innovation hotbed, Jason Clinton, the company's chief information security officer, told Axios. Agents typically focus on a specific, programmable task. In security, that's meant having autonomous agents respond to phishing alerts and other threat indicators. Virtual employees would take that automation a step further: These AI identities would have their own "memories," their own roles in the company and even their own corporate accounts and passwords. They would have a level of autonomy that far exceeds what agents have today. "In that world, there are so many problems that we haven't solved yet from a security perspective that we need to solve," Clinton said. Those problems include how to secure the AI employee's user accounts, what network access it should be given and who is responsible for managing its actions, Clinton added. Anthropic believes it has two responsibilities to help navigate AI-related security challenges. First, to thoroughly test Claude models to ensure they can withstand cyberattacks, Clinton said. The second is to monitor safety issues and mitigate the ways that malicious actors can abuse Claude. AI employees could go rogue and hack the company's continuous integration system -- where new code is merged and tested before it's deployed -- while completing a task, Clinton said. "In an old world, that's a punishable offense," he said. "But in this new world, who's responsible for an agent that was running for a couple of weeks and got to that point?" Clinton says virtual employee security is one of the biggest security areas where AI companies could be making investments in the next few years.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2019, Garrett Mitchell was already an Internet success. His YouTube channel, Cleetus McFarland, had over a million followers. If you perused the channel at that time, you would've found a range of grassroots motorsports videos with the type of vehicular shenanigans that earn truckloads of views. Some of those older videos include "BLEW BY A COP AT 120+mph! OOPS!," "THERE'S A T-REX ON THE TRACK!," and "Manual Transmission With Paddle Shifters!?!." Those videos made Mitchell, aka Cleetus McFarland, a known personality among automotive enthusiasts. But the YouTuber wanted more financial independence beyond the Google platform and firms willing to sponsor his channel. " after my YouTube was growing and some of my antics [were] getting videos de-monetized, I realized I needed a playground," Mitchell told Ars Technica in an email. Mitchell found a road toward new monetization opportunities through the DeSoto Super Speedway. The Bradenton, Florida, track had changed ownership multiple times since opening in the 1970s. The oval-shaped racetrack is three-eighths of a mile long with 12-degree banking angles. By 2018, the track had closed its doors and was going unused. DeSoto happened to be next to Mitchell's favorite drag strip, giving the YouTuber the idea of turning it into a stadium where people could watch burnouts and other "massive, rowdy" ticketed events. Mitchell added: "So I sold everything I could, borrowed some money from my business manager, and went all in for [$]2.2 million." But like the rest of the world, Mitchell hit the brakes on his 2020 plans during COVID-19 lockdowns. Soon after his purchase, Mitchell couldn't use the track, renamed Freedom Factory, for large gatherings, forcing him to reconsider his plans. "We had no other option but to entertain the people somehow. And with no other racing goin' on anywhere, we bet big on making something happen. And it worked," Mitchell said. That "something" was a pay-per-view (PPV) event hosted from the Freedom Factory in April 2020. The event led to others and, eventually, Mitchell running his own subscription video on demand (SVOD) service, FRDM+, which originally launched as Cleetervision in 2022. Today, a FRDM+ subscription costs $20 per month or $120 per year. A subscription provides access to an impressive library of automotive videos. Some are archived from Mitchell's YouTube channel. Other, exclusive videos feature content such as interviews with motorsports influencers and members of Mitchell's staff and crew, and outrageous motorsports stunts. You can watch videos from other influencers on FRDM+, and the business can also white-label its platform into other influencers' websites, too. "Today, bandwidth isn't a problem for FRDM+, and navigating the streaming service doesn't feel much different from something like Netflix," writes Ars Technica's Scharon Harding. "There are different 'channels' (grouped together by related content or ongoing series) on top and new releases and upcoming content highlighted below. There are horizontal scrolling rows, and many titles have content summaries and/or trailers. The platform also has a support section with instructions for canceling subscriptions." "Due to wildly differing audiences, markets, costs, and scales, comparing FRDM+'s financials to the likes of Netflix and other mainstream streaming services is like comparing apples to oranges. But it's interesting to consider that FRDM+ has achieved profitability faster than some of those services, like Peacock, which also launched in 2020, and Apple TV+, which debuted in 2019."

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Walmart is taking a lesson from the humble honeybee in its quest to make its deliveries as fast as possible. From a report: The retail giant already boasts a formidable store count of 4,700 locations across the US, which puts it within a short drive of more than 90% of households. But in order to grow its reach without necessarily having to build new supercenters, Walmart says it has been using a relatively new hexagonal map segmentation -- a change from the conventional ZIP code or radius-based strategies that are commonly used in determining delivery areas. Walmart says the strategy allows it to better understand where customers are and which stores have what they want. As bees have long known, hexagons can be an excellent shape for making the most of a given space, and Walmart says the more precise maps allow it to reach an additional 12 million US households with same-day delivery. "This is helping us to adapt how we service our customers, by allowing us to go from a fixed-mile radius into a much more dynamic catchment area that caters to the needs of the customers that a particular store will serve," Walmart global tech senior director of engineering Parthibban Raja told Fast Company in December, following a pilot of the concept. Walmart says its platform uses a combination of its own data and open-source software to create new delivery zones.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, testified on Tuesday in a landmark federal antitrust trial that he left Meta in 2018 because his company was denied resources. The government has argued that Meta purchased Instagram in 2012 as part of a "buy-or-bury strategy" to illegally cement its social media monopoly by killing off its rivals. Last week, current and former Meta executives testified that the social media giant, formerly known as Facebook, used its deep pockets to invest in Instagram after its purchase. In testimony at the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, Mr. Systrom painted a different picture, saying he left Meta because Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, wasn't investing enough. At that time, Instagram had grown to 1 billion users, about 40 percent of Facebook's size, yet the photo-sharing app had only 1,000 employees compared to 35,000 employees at Facebook, he said. "We were by far the fastest growing team. We produced the most revenue and relative to what we should have been at the time, I felt like we should have been much larger," said Mr. Systrom, who is expected to testify for six hours. Mr. Systrom said he found the decisions baffling. When asked by an F.T.C. lawyer why Mr. Zuckerberg might have decided to give Instagram fewer resources, Mr. Systrom said it was a consistent pattern during his tenure at Meta. "Mark was not investing in Instagram because he believed we were a threat to their growth," he said, referring to Mr. Zuckerberg's prioritization of Facebook.

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Offices nationwide are ditching harsh fluorescent lighting in favor of advanced systems designed to improve cognitive function and entice remote workers back to physical workplaces. Companies are investing in circadian-tuned lighting that adjusts intensity and color temperature throughout the day to mimic natural light patterns, syncing with employees' biological rhythms, according to WSJ. The technology arsenal includes faux skylights displaying virtual suns and moons, AI-controlled self-tinting windows, and customizable lighting zones that can be adjusted via remote control. Research suggests these innovations may improve brain function during tasks requiring sustained attention. "We've known for a long time that natural light is better and makes people feel better," says Peter Cappelli, professor at Wharton School. The innovations stem from discoveries in the early 2000s of photosensitive retinal cells that affect biology independent of vision. Industry specialists report a "huge uptick in requests," though implementation adds 20-30% to project costs, potentially slowing mainstream adoption.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Canada has seen a boom in political books created with generative artificial intelligence, adding to concerns about how new technologies are affecting the information voters receive during the election campaign. Prime Minister Mark Carney was the subject of at least 16 books published in March and listed on Amazon.com, according to a review of the site on April 16. Five of those were published on a single day. In total, some 30 titles were published about Carney this year and made available on Amazon -- but most were taken down from the site after inquiries from Bloomberg News. One author, James A. Powell, put his name to at least three books about the former central banker, who's now leading the Liberal Party and is narrowly favored to win the election. Among the titles that Amazon removed: "Carney's Code: Climate Capitalism, Digital Currencies, and the Technocratic Takeover of the Global Economy -- Inside Mark Carney's Blueprint for the Post-Democratic World."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: In a shocking development, Google won't roll out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies in Chrome. It's a move that amounts to a U-turn on the Chrome team's earlier updated approach to deprecating third-party cookies, announced in July last year, with the latest development bound to cause ructions across the ad tech ecosystem. "We've made the decision to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome, and will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies," wrote Anthony Chavez, vp Privacy Sandbox at Google, in a blog post published earlier today (April 22). "Users can continue to choose the best option for themselves in Chrome's Privacy and Security Settings." However, it's not the end of Privacy Sandbox, according to Google, as certain initiatives incubated within the project are set to continue, such as its IP Protection for Chrome Incognito users, which will be rolled out in Q3.

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Abstract of a paper on National Bureau of Economic Research: We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users' emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls. Exploratory analysis suggests the Facebook effect is driven by people over 35, while the Instagram effect is driven by women under 25.

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Apple has quietly removed the "available now" designation from its Apple Intelligence marketing page following a National Advertising Division review. The change came after the NAD recommended Apple "discontinue or modify" the claim, which "reasonably conveyed the message" that all promoted AI features were immediately available with iPhone 16 devices. The NAD, part of the Better Business Bureau, determined Apple's footnote explaining feature availability was "neither sufficiently clear and conspicuous nor close to the triggering claims." Further reading: Apple Delays 'More Personalized Siri' Apple Intelligence Features; 'Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino'; Apple Shakes Up AI Executive Ranks in Bid to Turn Around Siri.

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Films made with the help of AI will be able to win top awards at the Oscars, according to its organisers. From a report: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued new rules on Monday which said the use of AI and other digital tools would "neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination." [...] The Academy said it would still consider human involvement when selecting its winners. The Academy said its new language around eligibility for films made using generative AI tools was recommended by its Science and Technology Council. Under further rule changes announced on Monday, Academy members must now watch all nominated films in each category in order to be able to take part in the final round of voting, which decides upon winners.

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US scientists are fleeing abroad in record numbers as the Trump administration slashes research funding, according to exclusive data analysis by Nature. Applications from American researchers for international positions surged 32% between January and March 2025 compared to the same period last year, while US-based users browsing overseas jobs jumped 35%. The exodus accelerated in March as the administration intensified science cuts, with job views spiking 68% year-over-year. Applications to Canadian institutions increased 41%, while interest from Canadians in US positions plummeted 13%. Recent months have seen more than 200 federal HIV/AIDS research grants abruptly terminated, cuts to NIH COVID-19 funding revealed, and a $400 million reduction in research grants at Columbia University. "To see this big drop in views and applications to the US -- and the similar rise in those looking to leave -- is unprecedented," said James Richards, who leads Global Talent Solutions at Springer Nature. European institutions are capitalizing on the talent migration. Aix-Marseille University launched its "Safe Place for Science" initiative with $17.2 million to sponsor researchers, while Germany's Max Planck Society created a Transatlantic Program offering positions to scientists "no longer able to work in the United States." The trend extends beyond Europe, with US-based views of Chinese science positions increasing 30% in the first quarter of 2025.

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Google pays Samsung an "enormous sum of money" every month to preinstall Google generative AI app, Gemini, on its phones and devices, according to court testimony, even though the company's practice of paying for installations has twice been found to violate the law. From a report: The company began paying Samsung for Gemini in January, according to Peter Fitzgerald, Google's vice president of platforms and device partnerships, who testified Monday in Washington federal court as part of the Justice Department's antitrust case. The contract, set to run at least two years, provides fixed monthly payments for each device that preinstalls Gemini and pays Samsung a percentage of the revenue Google earns from advertisements within the app, Fitzgerald told Judge Amit Mehta, who is overseeing the case.

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Logitech has quietly increased prices on several flagship products by as much as 25%, according to findings (video) by YouTuber Cameron Dougherty. The MX Master 3S mouse now costs $120, up 20% from its previous $100 price point, while the MX Keys S keyboard has jumped 18% to $130. The K400 Plus Wireless Touch keyboard saw the most dramatic percentage increase, rising from $28 to $35. These price adjustments, implemented without formal announcement, come amid ongoing tariff pressures from the Trump administration affecting PC hardware manufacturers. Chinese electronics maker Anker also recently implemented similar increases, suggesting a broader industry trend.

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