IBM is [1]laying off thousands of employees across the United States, with approximately 25% of staff at its Cloud Classic operation affected, The Register reports, citing a source. "Concrete numbers are being kept private," a source told the publication. "It is in the thousands."

Staff reductions have occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Dallas, Texas; and California, the report said. Affected departments include consulting, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, and internal systems teams. The report adds:

> With regard to IBM Cloud Classic -- the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) outfit offering built on IBM's 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer -- another source told us: "It's a resource action. I don't know how many people are in IaaS classic. They don't typically make that information easy to find. What I can say is that they have been making a lot of changes to shift employment to India as much as possible."

>

> A third source, newly let go by Big Blue, said it was fair to characterize this a layoff. "Everyone I know that was affected, myself included, was simply offered a separation agreement," this individual said, estimating that 10 percent of the Cloud group (which is not the same as Cloud Classic) has been let go.



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/20/ibm_cuts_us_jobs/

Nvidia is selling its scarce RTX 5080 and 5090 graphics cards [1]from a pop-up "food truck" at its GPU Technology Conference, where attendees paying over $1,000 for tickets can purchase the coveted hardware alongside merchandise. The company has only 2,000 cards available (1,000 each of RTX 5080 and 5090), released in small batches at random times during the three-day conference which concludes tomorrow.



[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/2643886/nvidia-sells-rtx-gpus-from-a-food-truck.html

Apple is undergoing a rare shake-up of its executive ranks, aiming to get its artificial intelligence efforts back on track after months of delays and stumbles, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report:

> Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development, [1]so he's moving over another top executive to help : Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. In a new role, Rockwell will be in charge of the Siri virtual assistant, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the moves haven't been announced.

>

> Rockwell will report to software chief Craig Federighi, removing Siri completely from Giannandrea's command. Apple is poised to announce the changes to employees this week. The iPhone maker's senior leaders -- a group known as the Top 100 -- just met at a secretive, annual offsite gathering to discuss the future of the company. Its AI efforts were a key talking point at the summit, Bloomberg News has reported.

>

> The moves underscore the plight facing Apple: Its AI technology is severely lagging industry rivals, and the company has shown little sign of catching up. The Apple Intelligence platform was late to arrive and largely a flop, despite being the main selling point for the iPhone 16.

Further reading : [2]'Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino'



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-20/apple-vision-pro-chief-mike-rockwell-named-siri-head-giannandrea-keeps-ai-role

[2] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/03/13/1815207/something-is-rotten-in-the-state-of-cupertino

Cosmologists have uncovered stronger evidence that dark energy -- the mysterious force accelerating cosmic expansion -- [1]may be weakening over time . The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration presented their [2]latest findings at the Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, reinforcing their preliminary results from last year.

The DESI team analyzed data from approximately 15 million galaxies collected over three years, more than doubling their previous dataset of 6 million galaxies. Combined with supernova observations and cosmic microwave background data, their analysis shows a 4.2-sigma deviation from the standard Lambda-CDM cosmological model, which assumes dark energy remains constant.

"We are much more certain than last year that this is definitely a thing," said Seshadri Nadathur of the University of Portsmouth, a key DESI researcher. These findings align with recent independent results from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which earlier this month reported a similar 3.2-sigma tension with Lambda-CDM -- a tension that disappears if dark energy is allowed to vary. If confirmed, evolving dark energy could fundamentally alter cosmologists' understanding of the universe's ultimate fate. Instead of expanding indefinitely until all particles become impossibly separated, the universe might follow alternative trajectories.

"It challenges the fate of the universe," explained Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki from the University of Texas at Dallas. "It's game-changing." Moreover, these findings challenge the simplest explanation of dark energy as vacuum energy, which quantum physics suggests should remain constant. Instead, the results indicate unknown physics, possibly involving a new particle, a modification to Einstein's theory of gravity, or even a new fundamental theory. DESI will continue observing through 2026, eventually producing a final map expected to include 50 million galaxies, potentially providing definitive evidence for this cosmic paradigm shift.



[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-dark-energy-getting-weaker-new-evidence-strengthens-the-case-20250319/

[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.14738

Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky has warned that the company's [1]revived smartwatch line will face significant functionality limitations when paired with iPhones, blaming Apple's restrictive policies that favor its own Apple Watch. "It's impossible for a 3rd party smartwatch to send text messages, or perform actions on notifications (like dismissing, muting, replying) and many, many other things," Migicovsky [2]wrote in a blog post , adding that the situation has "actually gotten worse over the last 8 years."

A 2024 class action lawsuit cited in the post claims Apple has added further restrictions since iOS 13, including requiring users to display full content previews on their lock screens for notifications to reach third-party watches. Pebble is still developing an iOS app because 40% of potential customers use iPhones, he said. Migicovsky warned that the watch will "always appear to have less developed functionality on iOS than Android" and some features will arrive on Android first.



[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1621244/the-first-new-pebble-smartwatches-are-coming-later-this-year

[2] https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-awesome-with-iphones

The credit-card market has quietly split in two, Atlantic [1]argues in a new story : one offering generous benefits to wealthy Americans, the other offering expensive debt to the poor. Credit-card balances have reached an all-time high of $1.2 trillion, with serious delinquency rates climbing to their highest point since the Great Recession.

"Transactors" pay off balances monthly and earn valuable rewards worth up to $3,000 annually in taxable income equivalent, while "revolvers" carry balances at a brutal 21.5% average APR. The poor subsidize the rich through two mechanisms: swipe fees that drive up retail prices by $1,700 annually for the average family, and late fees and interest charges that finance rewards programs. Interest revenue for credit-card companies has ballooned from $76 billion in 2020 to $170 billion in 2024.

The economy now appears to be slowing down. High-income families are increasingly resembling working-class families in credit data, with three in five households earning over $80,000 annually carrying balances for more than a year. Card companies are now offering fewer cards to subprime borrowers, creating a troubling dilemma - while expensive credit cards are harmful, having no credit access might be worse. Bipartisan legislation now aims to cap interest rates and lower swipe fees.



[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-kinds-credit-cards-113000521.html

Microsoft is developing a new Windows 11 feature that will [1]explain how hardware limitations affect PC performance . The latest preview builds include a hidden FAQ section in system settings that addresses GPU memory, system RAM, and OS version impacts.

The feature, discovered by Windows observer "phantomofearth" in this week's Dev Channel build, requires manual activation. It provides specific recommendations for configurations like low RAM or GPUs with less than 4GB memory, and flags outdated Windows versions.



[1] https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lld3hsasiketetu767uagr6m/post/3lkmdy5p35s2g

The National Archives has released [1]thousands of pages of declassified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. From a report:

> The records were [2]posted to the National Archives' website , joining recently released records posted in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2017-2018.

>

> "This release consists of approximately 80,000 pages of previously-classified records that will be published with no redactions," said the announcement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "Additional documents withheld under court seal or for grand jury secrecy, and records subject to section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, must be unsealed before release."

>

> President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 23 directing the release of all remaining records related to the assassination, saying it was in the "public interest" to do so. Tuesday's initial release contained 1,123 records comprising 32,000 pages. A subsequent release on Tuesday night contained 1,059 records comprising 31,400 additional pages.



[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/government-releases-thousands-declassified-records-related-jfk-assassination/story?id=119926288

[2] https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release-2025

Nvidia has [1]not been approached about acquiring a stake in Intel, CEO Jensen Huang said on Wednesday, addressing speculation about potential semiconductor industry consolidation.

"Nobody's invited us to a consortium," Huang told reporters at Nvidia's annual developer conference. "Nobody invited me. Maybe other people are involved, but I don't know. There might be a party. I wasn't invited."

Reuters previously reported that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) had approached Nvidia, Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices about joining a potential joint venture to operate Intel's factories. Other media outlets reported Intel was considering separating its manufacturing operations with U.S. President Donald Trump's support, potentially transferring control to a TSMC-led consortium.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-ceo-says-orders-36-million-blackwell-gpus-exclude-meta-2025-03-19/

[1]prisoninmate writes:

> GNOME 48 desktop environment has been released after six months of development with major new features that have been expected for more than four years, such as dynamic triple buffering, HDR support, and much more. 9to5Linux reports:

>

> "Highlights of GNOME 48 include dynamic triple buffering to boost the performance on low-end GPUs, such as Intel integrated graphics or Raspberry Pi computers, Wayland color management protocol support, new Adwaita fonts, HDR (High Dynamic Range) support, and a new Wellbeing feature with screen time tracking.

>

> "GNOME 48 also introduces a new GNOME Display Control (gdctl) utility to view the active monitor configuration and set new monitor configuration using command line arguments, implements a11y keyboard monitoring support, adds output luminance settings, and it now centers new windows by default."



[1] https://slashdot.org/~prisoninmate

OpenAI has [1]launched a more powerful version of its o1 "reasoning" AI model, o1-pro, in its developer API. From a report:

> According to OpenAI, o1-pro uses more computing than o1 to provide "consistently better responses." Currently, it's only available to select developers -- those who've spent at least $5 on OpenAI API services -- and it's pricey. Very pricey. OpenAI is charging $150 per million tokens (~750,000 words) fed into the model and $600 per million tokens generated by the model. That's twice the price of OpenAI's GPT-4.5 for input and 10x the price of regular.



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/19/openais-o1-pro-is-its-most-expensive-model-yet/

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> LG has [1]ceased its XR product commercialization efforts, it confirmed, though will still continue long-term R&D.

>

> The news of LG ending its XR product plans was first reported by South Korean news outlet The Bell, citing an industry source. In a statement given to the outlet, LG confirmed the claim but clarified that it will still continue long-term XR research and development.

>

> According to The Bell, LG took the decision because it believes the XR market isn't growing as quickly as it expected, and it wants to focus more on heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) and robotics.



[1] https://www.uploadvr.com/lg-ceases-xr-product-efforts-will-still-continue-r-d/

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> PCI Express 7 is nearing completion, the PCI Special Interest Group said, and the final specification should be released later this year. PCI Express 7, the backbone of the modern motherboard, [1]is at the stage 0.9 , which the PCI-SIG characterizes as the "final draft" of the specification. The technology was at version 0.5 a year ago, almost to the day, and originally authored in 2022.

>

> The situation remains the same, however. While modern PC motherboards are stuck on PCI Express 5.0, the specification itself moves ahead. PCI Express has doubled the data rate about every three years, from 64 gigtransfers per second in PCI Express 6.0 to the upcoming 128 gigatransfers per second in PCIe 7. (Again, it's worth noting that PCIe 6.0 exists solely on paper.) Put another way, PCIe 7 will deliver 512GB/s in both directions, across a x16 connection.

>

> It's worth noting that the PCI-SIG doesn't see PCI Express 7 living inside the PC market, at least not initially. Instead, PCIe 7 is expected to be targeted at cloud computing, 800-gigabit Ethernet and, of course, artificial intelligence. It will be backwards-compatible with the previous iterations of PCI Express, the SIG said.



[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/2643020/pci-express-7-0-is-nearly-here-on-paper-but-pcie-6-is-still-vapor.html

Streaming service provider Plex announced Wednesday its [1]first price increase in a decade for its premium Plex Pass subscription, raising monthly rates to $6.99 from $4.99, yearly subscriptions to $69.99 from $39.99, and lifetime access to $249.99 from $119.99, effective April 29. The company is also making remote playback of personal media a paid feature, introducing a Remote Watch Pass subscription at $1.99 monthly or $19.99 annually for users who don't need full Plex Pass features, and removing its one-time mobile activation fee.

The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders, the company said.



[1] https://www.plex.tv/blog/important-2025-plex-updates/

EU antitrust regulators ordered Apple on Wednesday to [1]open its closed ecosystem to competitors , detailing how the company must comply with the bloc's Digital Markets Act or face potential fines. The European Commission's decision comes six months after initiating proceedings against the tech giant.

The first order requires Apple to grant rival smartphone, headphone and VR headset manufacturers access to its technology for seamless connectivity with Apple devices. A second order establishes specific processes for responding to app developers' interoperability requests. Apple criticized the decision, saying: "Today's decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple's ability to innovate for users in Europe." EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera countered: "We are simply implementing the law." Non-compliance could trigger investigations resulting in fines up to 10% of Apple's global annual sales.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-ordered-by-eu-antitrust-regulators-open-up-rivals-2025-03-19/

SourceHut, an open-source-friendly git-hosting service, says web crawlers for AI companies are [1]slowing down services through their excessive demands for data. From a report:

> "SourceHut continues to face disruptions due to aggressive LLM crawlers," the biz reported Monday on its status page. "We are continuously working to deploy mitigations. We have deployed a number of mitigations which are keeping the problem contained for now. However, some of our mitigations may impact end-users."

>

> SourceHut said it had deployed Nepenthes, a tar pit to catch web crawlers that scrape data primarily for training large language models, and noted that doing so might degrade access to some web pages for users. "We have unilaterally blocked several cloud providers, including GCP [Google Cloud] and [Microsoft] Azure, for the high volumes of bot traffic originating from their networks," the biz said, advising administrators of services that integrate with SourceHut to get in touch to arrange an exception to the blocking.



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/18/ai_crawlers_sourcehut/

The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with [1]scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organization. From a report:

> The WMO's report on 2024, the [2]hottest year on record , sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.

>

> The report lists 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024, meaning they were worse than any ever recorded in the region. Heatwaves in Japan left hundreds of thousands of people struck down by heatstroke. Soaring temperatures during heatwaves peaked at 49.9C at Carnarvon in Western Australia, 49.7C in the city of Tabas in Iran, and 48.5C in a nationwide heatwave in Mali.

>

> Record rains in Italy led to floods, landslides and electricity blackouts; torrents destroyed thousands of homes in Senegal; and flash floods in Pakistan and Brazil caused major crop losses.

>

> Storms were also supercharged by global heating in 2024, with an unprecedented six typhoons in under a month hitting the Philippines. Hurricane Helene was the strongest ever recorded to strike the Big Bend region of Florida in the US, while Vietnam was hit by Super Typhoon Yagi, affecting 3.6 million people. Many more unprecedented events will have passed unrecorded.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/19/unprecedented-climate-disasters-extreme-weather-un-report

[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/1450240/2024-on-track-to-be-hottest-year-on-record-as-warming-temporarily-hits-15c

Federal authorities have broken up an international crime ring that [1]stole thousands of iPhones from porches nationwide [ [2]non-paywalled link ] , arresting 13 people last month after a sophisticated operation that combined high-tech tools with old-fashioned bribery.

The thieves created software to scrape FedEx tracking numbers and paid AT&T store employees to provide customer order details and delivery addresses, according to WSJ, which cites prosecutors. Armed with this information, runners intercepted packages at doorsteps moments after delivery.

Demetrio Reyes Martinez, known online as "CookieNerd," developed code that circumvented FedEx limits on delivery-data requests, while AT&T employee Alejandro Then Castillo used his credentials to track hundreds of shipments and reportedly received up to $2,500 for recruiting other employees. Stolen devices were funneled through Wyckoff Wireless in Brooklyn, a store owned by Joel Suriel, who was already on supervised release from a previous wire-fraud conviction. The merchandise was then shipped overseas for sale and activation.



[1] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-bribes-helped-a-crime-ring-steal-thousands-of-iphones-from-porches-8d9f02f1

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/general/general/how-bribes-helped-a-crime-ring-steal-thousands-of-iphones-from-porches/ar-AA1B9QK7

Nature:

> A Microsoft researcher [this week] [1]presented results behind the company's controversial claim last month to have [2]created the first 'topological' qubits -- a long-sought goal of quantum computing. In front of a packed room at a meeting of the American Physical Society (APS), Chetan Nayak, a theoretical physicist leading Microsoft's quantum computing effort in Redmond, Washington, explained how the company is developing topological qubits, which would be the building blocks for a noise-resistant quantum computer.

>

> Physicists in the audience told Nature's news team they are still unsure whether Microsoft really has made the first topological qubits, however. "It's a hard problem," says Ali Yazdani, an experimental physicist at Princeton University in New Jersey. To anyone trying to make topological qubits, he says, "good luck."

When Nayak displayed measurement data during his presentation, he acknowledged that a characteristic signal was difficult to see due to electrical noise, prompting Cornell University theorist Eun-Ah Kim to question its robustness. Microsoft says additional details will be available in a forthcoming paper on the arXiv preprint server.

Further reading :

[3]Scientists Question Microsoft's Quantum Computing Claims ;

[4]Microsoft Quantum Computing 'Breakthrough' Faces Fresh Challenge



[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00829-2

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/19/1651235/microsoft-reveals-its-first-quantum-computing-chip-the-majorana-1

[3] https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0232239/scientists-question-microsofts-quantum-computing-claims

[4] https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/07/1350230/microsoft-quantum-computing-breakthrough-faces-fresh-challenge

Sony has developed a new TV display technology combining individual red, green, and blue LEDs for backlighting, potentially [1]offering a middle ground between existing Mini LED and OLED panels . Dubbed "General RGB LED Backlight Technology," the system enables precise color control without sacrificing brightness, reaching 4000 cd/m2 -- matching Sony's professional reference monitors.

Unlike conventional Mini LED TVs that use arrays of blue LEDs, Sony's RGB implementation delivers significantly improved color accuracy and viewing angles. In side-by-side comparisons with Sony's premium Bravia 9 Mini LED TV, the RGB prototype displayed deeper color gradations and eliminated the characteristic bluish blooming effect around bright objects on dark backgrounds.

The technology isn't entirely novel, the Verge reports -- Sony released a Qualia TV with RGB backlighting in 2004 and demonstrated "Crystal LED" prototypes in 2012. Competitors including Hisense, TCL, and Samsung are developing similar systems. While the RGB LED prototype outshone Sony's QD-OLED A95L in brightness, differences in color reproduction were less pronounced. The technology appears particularly promising for larger displays in bright environments where OLED's limitations become apparent.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/628977/sony-rgb-led-backlight-announced-color-mini-led-tvs