ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Gavin Newsom Is Reportedly Sending Burner Phones To Tech CEOs (politico.com)

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @05:00PM (BeauHD) from the bit-unorthodox dept.)

According to Politico, Gov. Gavin Newsom has [1]distributed prepaid burner phones to around 100 California business leaders , giving them direct access to him and reinforcing his pro-business stance. "If you ever need anything, I'm a phone call away," read one of the notes. From the report:

> It was Newsom's idea, a representative said, and has already yielded some "valuable interactions." That arrangement surprised some people POLITICO spoke with, largely because Newsom is already known as an inveterate texter whose digits live in many business titans' contacts. He's also long been seen as more aligned with business interests than the Legislature, the proverbial adult in the room when private pillars like Silicon Valley need a sympathetic ear or a veto. But Newsom wanted to convey that he's intent on maintaining California's competitive edge. Phones are still going out.

>

> The California Protocol Foundation picked up the tab. That organization gets money from businesses and nonprofits for gubernatorial expenses like trips abroad -- or, evidently, burner phones -- so taxpayers aren't on the hook. It also drew leftover funds from Newsom's inauguration account, which itself drew business, so in a roundabout way California's private sector helped fund phones nurturing ties with the private sector.



[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/18/newsom-ceos-burner-phones-00235044



US Music Streaming Tops 100 Million Subscribers; Vinyl Outsells CDs For Third Year

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @12:00PM (msmash) from the can-you-hear-the-music dept.)

U.S. music streaming services [1]surpassed 100 million subscribers in 2024 [PDF] while industry revenue hit a record $14.9 billion, up 4% from the previous year, according to the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Physical media sales outpaced digital growth, with vinyl records increasing 7% to $1.4 billion, outselling CDs ($541 million) for the third consecutive year. Digital downloads plummeted 14.9%, now representing just 2% of industry revenue.



[1] https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/RIAA-2024Year-End-Revenue-Report.pdf



The Effect of Application Fees on Entry into Patenting (nber.org)

(Thursday March 20, 2025 @04:05AM (msmash) from the closer-look dept.)

The [1]abstract of a paper published on National Bureau of Economic Research:

> Ensuring broad access to the patent system is crucial for fostering innovation and promoting economic growth. To support this goal, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office offers reduced fees for small and micro entities. This paper investigates whether fee rates affect the filing of applications by small and micro entities. Exploiting recent fee reforms, the study evaluates the relationship between fee changes and the number of new entrants, controlling for potential confounding factors such as legislative changes. The findings suggest that fee reductions alone are insufficient to significantly increase participation in the patent system among small and micro entities.



[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w33492



FTC Removes Posts Critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI Companies (wired.com)

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @12:00PM (msmash) from the retraction-watch dept.)

The Federal Trade Commission has [1]removed over 300 business guidance blogs published during former President Biden's term, including consumer protection information on AI and privacy lawsuits against Amazon and Microsoft, WIRED reported Tuesday, citing current and former FTC employees.

Deleted posts included guidance about Amazon's alleged use of Ring camera data to train algorithms, Microsoft's $20 million settlement over Xbox children's data collection, and compliance standards for AI chatbots. New FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has pledged to pursue tech companies but with focus on alleged conservative censorship rather than data collection practices.



[1] https://www.wired.com/story/federal-trade-commission-removed-blogs-critical-of-ai-amazon-microsoft/



VW's Cheapest EV Is First To Use Rivian Software (techcrunch.com)

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @12:00PM (BeauHD) from the what-to-expect dept.)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:

> Volkswagen's ultra-cheap EV called the ID EVERY1 -- a small four-door hatchback revealed Wednesday -- will be the [1]first to roll out with software and architecture from Rivian , according to a source familiar with the new model. The EV is expected to go into production in 2027 with a starting price of 20,000 euros ($21,500). A second EV called the ID.2all, which will be priced in the 25,000 euro price category, will be available in 2026. Both vehicles are part of the automaker's new category of electric urban front-wheel-drive cars that are being developed under the "Brand Group Core" that makes up the volume brands in the VW Group. And both vehicles are for the European market.

>

> The EVERY1 will be the first to ship with Rivian's vehicle architecture and software as part of a [2]$5.8 billion joint venture struck last year between the German automaker and U.S. EV maker. The ID.2all is based on the E3 1.1 architecture and software developed by VW's software unit Cariad. VW didn't name Rivian in its reveal Wednesday, although there were numerous nods to next-generation software. Kai Grunitz, member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for technical development, noted it would be the first model in the entire VW Group to use a "fundamentally new, particularly powerful software architecture." "This means the future entry-level Volkswagen can be equipped with new functions throughout its entire life cycle," he said. "Even after purchase of a new car, the small Volkswagen can still be individually adapted to customer needs."

Volkswagen says the ID EVERY1 concept is a compact electric vehicle with a 70 kW motor, a top speed of 130 km/h, a minimum range of 250 km (150 miles), seating for four, and a 305-liter luggage capacity.

Volkswagen has a [3]press release with additional information.



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/05/volkswagens-cheapest-ev-ever-is-the-first-to-use-rivian-software/

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/06/25/2111250/vw-to-invest-up-to-5-billion-in-ev-maker-rivian

[3] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/en/press-releases/mobility-for-everyone-with-the-id-every1-volkswagen-is-providing-a-preview-of-an-entry-level-electric-model-19039



Dutch Parliament Calls For End To Dependence On US Software Companies (yahoo.com)

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @12:00PM (BeauHD) from the changing-relations dept.)

The Dutch parliament approved motions [1]urging the government to reduce reliance on U.S. software companies by developing a sovereign cloud platform and reconsidering contracts with American firms. Reuters reports:

> While such initiatives have foundered in the past due to a lack of viable European alternatives, lawmakers said changing relations with the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump have given the issue fresh urgency. "The question we as Europeans must ask ourselves is: do we feel comfortable with people like Trump, (Meta CEO Mark) Zuckerberg and (X owner Elon) Musk ruling over our data?" said Marieke Koekkoek of the pro-European Volt party, who authored one of the eight motions, in an email to Reuters.

>

> In addition to launching a sovereign cloud services platform, the motions called on the government to re-examine a decision to use Amazon's web services for the Netherlands' internet domain hosting, and to develop alternatives to U.S. software and preferential treatment for European firms in public tenders. [...] Bert Hubert, a Dutch technology expert who has advocated for reducing dependency on the U.S., said: "This is only the first step in potentially doing something." But he said one important outcome would be forcing agencies to publicly report on risks related to their reliance on U.S. cloud firms. "With the advent of Trump 2.0, it has become clear that this is not something you can harmlessly sign off on," he said.



[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/dutch-parliament-calls-end-reliance-155717872.html



Nvidia Reveals Next-Gen AI Chips, Roadmap Through 2028 (cnbc.com)

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @06:00AM (msmash) from the pushing-the-limits dept.)

Nvidia unveiled its next wave of AI processors at GTC on Tuesday, [1]announcing Blackwell Ultra chips that will ship in the second half of 2025, followed by the Vera Rubin architecture in 2026. CEO Jensen Huang also revealed that its 2028 chips will be named after physicist Richard Feynman.

The Blackwell Ultra maintains the same 20 petaflops of AI performance as standard Blackwell chips but increases memory from 192GB to 288GB of HBM3e. Nvidia claims these chips can process 1,000 tokens per second -- ten times faster than its 2022 hardware -- enabling AI reasoning tasks like running DeepSeek-R1 models with 10-second response times versus 1.5 minutes on H100 chips.

Vera Rubin will deliver a substantial leap to 50 petaflops in 2026, featuring Nvidia's first custom Arm-based CPU design called Olympus. Nvidia is also changing how it counts GPUs -- Rubin itself contains two dies working as one chip. The annual release cadence represents a strategic shift for Nvidia, which previously introduced new architectures every two years before the AI boom transformed its business.



[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/18/nvidia-announces-blackwell-ultra-and-vera-rubin-ai-chips-.html



GM Taps Nvidia To Boost Its Self-Driving Projects

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @06:00AM (BeauHD) from the next-gen-partnerships dept.)

General Motors is [1]partnering with Nvidia to enhance its self-driving and manufacturing capabilities by leveraging Nvidia's AI chips, software, and simulation tools. "GM says it will apply several of Nvidia's products to its business, such as the Omniverse 3D graphics platform which will run simulations on virtual assembly lines with an eye on reducing downtime and improving efficiency," reports The Verge. "The automaker also plans to equip its next-generation vehicles with Nvidia's 'AI brain' for advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving. And it will employ the chipmaker's AI training software to make its vehicle assembly line robots better at certain tasks, like precision welding and material handling." From the report:

> GM already uses Nvidia's GPUs to train its AI software for simulation and validation. Today's announcement was about expanding those use cases into improving its manufacturing operations and autonomous vehicles, GM CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. (Dave Richardson, GM's senior VP of Software and Services Engineering will be joining NVIDIA's Norm Marks for a fireside chat at the conference.) "AI not only optimizes manufacturing processes and accelerates virtual testing but also helps us build smarter vehicles while empowering our workforce to focus on craftsmanship," Barra said. "By merging technology with human ingenuity, we unlock new levels of innovation in vehicle manufacturing and beyond."

>

> GM will adopt Nvidia's in-car software products to build next-gen vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities. That includes the company's Drive AGX system-on-a-chip (SoC), similar to Tesla's Full Self-Driving chip or Intel's Mobileye EyeQ. The SoC runs the "safety-certified" DriveOS operating system, built on the Blackwell GPU architecture, which is capable of delivering 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of high-performance compute, the company says. [...] In a briefing with reporters, Ali Kani, Nvidia's vice president and general manager of automotive, described the chipmaking company's automotive business as still in its "infancy," with the expectation that it will only bring in $5 billion this year. (Nvidia reported over $130 billion in revenue in 2024 for all its divisions.)

>

> Nvidia's chips are in less than 1 percent of the billions of cars on the road today, he added. But the future looks promising. The company is also announcing deals with Tier 1 auto supplier Magna, which helped build Sony's Afeela concept, to use Drive AGX in the company's next-generation advanced driver assist software. "We believe automotive is a trillion dollar opportunity for Nvidia," Kani said.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/631951/gm-nvidia-gtc-deal-cars-robots-factories



US Appeals Court Rejects Copyrights For AI-Generated Art (yahoo.com)

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @06:00AM (BeauHD) from the humans-win-this-round dept.)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters:

> A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input [1]cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law . The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted.

>

> Tuesday's decision marks the latest attempt by U.S. officials to grapple with the copyright implications of the fast-growing generative AI industry. The Copyright Office has separately rejected artists' bids for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. The artists argued they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance -- unlike Thaler, who said that his "sentient" system created the image in his case independently. [...]

>

> U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel on Tuesday that U.S. copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." "Because many of the Copyright Act's provisions make sense only if an author is a human being, the best reading of the Copyright Act is that human authorship is required for registration," the appeals court said.



[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-appeals-court-rejects-copyrights-171203999.html



Vance Slams Globalization For Hampering American Innovation (thehill.com)

(Wednesday March 19, 2025 @06:00AM (msmash) from the how-about-that dept.)

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance [1]denounced decades of globalization for hampering American innovation in a speech to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on Tuesday, arguing that offshoring has eroded U.S. technological leadership. "Our workers have been failed by the government of the last 40 years," Vance told the American Dynamism Summit, criticizing two "conceits" of globalization: that nations manufacturing products wouldn't eventually design them too, and that cheap foreign labor benefits innovation.

"As they got better at the low end of the value chain, they also started catching up on the higher end. We were squeezed from both ends," Vance said, adding that "cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch" that inhibits technological advancement. The Trump administration recently rolled back Biden-era AI regulations, with Vance emphasizing their goal to "incentivize investment in our own borders, in our own businesses, our own workers and our own innovation." Vance, a former venture capitalist, dismissed fears about AI eliminating jobs, comparing it to ATMs which ultimately created more financial sector roles.



[1] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5200621-vance-trump-administration-tech/



Why Are the Most Expensive Netflix Movies Also the Worst? (theguardian.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @11:30PM (msmash) from the all-the-money-in-the-world dept.)

Despite spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films, Netflix continues to [1]churn out critically panned big-budget fare with its latest $300 million flop, "The Electric State," starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. While the streaming giant has produced acclaimed films by giving talented directors creative freedom -- resulting in successes like "The Irishman," "Marriage Story" and "The Power of the Dog" -- it has repeatedly failed to create genuinely compelling blockbusters despite attracting major talent and pouring massive resources into productions like "Red Notice," "The Gray Man" and now "The Electric State."

These expensive Netflix "mockbusters" lack the overwhelming sensations that theatrical blockbusters deliver, instead feeling like glorified content designed primarily for home viewing. The Russo brothers' "Electric State," with its drab visuals and lifeless performances, exemplifies how Netflix's biggest productions feel infused with the knowledge they're merely "content first."



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/17/netflix-expensive-blockbuster-worst



The First New Pebble Smartwatches Are Coming Later This Year (theverge.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @11:30PM (msmash) from the up-next dept.)

Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, will [1]release two new smartwatches running the newly open-sourced Pebble operating system through his company Core Devices. The Core 2 Duo, priced at $149 and shipping in July, utilizes unused Pebble 2 frames with the same black-and-white E Ink display.

The device features a 30-day battery life -- quadruple its predecessor's -- and incorporates a speaker for AI assistant interaction. Approximately 10,000 units will be available. The Core Time 2, arriving in December at $225, adds touchscreen functionality to the classic Pebble design while maintaining physical buttons and month-long battery life.

Both devices face iPhone integration challenges. Migicovsky cautioned potential tariff increases would be passed to consumers, stating, "We're going to charge more if it costs more." "I'm not building a company to sell millions of these," Migicovsky said. "The goal is to make something I really want."



[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/631657/pebble-watch-core-devices-duo-2-time-2



Meta's Llama AI Models Hit 1 Billion Downloads, Zuckerberg Says (techcrunch.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:40PM (msmash) from the fast-adoption dept.)

Meta's open AI model family Llama has [1]reached 1 billion downloads , CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday, marking a 53% increase from the 650 million reported in early December. Llama, which powers Meta's AI assistant across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, operates under a proprietary license that some developers consider commercially restrictive despite its free availability. Major corporations including Spotify, AT&T and DoorDash currently deploy Llama models in production environments.



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/18/mark-zuckerberg-says-that-metas-llama-models-have-hit-1b-downloads/



Apple Loses German Antitrust Appeal, Opening Door for Greater Controls (reuters.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:40PM (msmash) from the elsewhere-in-the-world dept.)

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> Apple [1]lost an appeal on Tuesday against a regulatory assessment that opens the iPhone maker up to stricter controls in Germany, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday, following years of debate over the company's market position. Federal judges backed the German cartel office's 2023 designation of Apple as a "company of paramount cross-market significance for competition".



[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-loses-german-antitrust-appeal-opening-door-greater-controls-2025-03-18/



'Vibe Coding' is Letting 10 Engineers Do the Work of a Team of 50 To 100, Says YC CEO (businessinsider.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:40PM (msmash) from the how-about-that dept.)

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said startups are reaching $1-10 million annual revenue with fewer than 10 employees [1]due to "vibe coding," a term coined by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy in February.

"You can just talk to the large language models and they will code entire apps," Tan [2]told CNBC (video). "You don't have to hire someone to do it, you just talk directly to the large language model that wrote it and it'll fix it for you." What would've once taken "50 or 100" engineers to build, he believes can now be accomplished by a team of 10, "when they are fully vibe coders." He adds: "When they are actually really, really good at using the cutting edge tools for code gen today, like Cursor or Windsurf, they will literally do the work of 10 or 100 engineers in the course of a single day."

According to Tan, 81% of Y Combinator's current startup batch consists of AI companies, with 25% having 95% of their code written by large language models. Despite limitations in debugging capabilities, Tan said the technology enables small teams to perform work previously requiring dozens of engineers and makes previously overlooked niche markets viable for software businesses.



[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/vibe-coding-startups-impact-leaner-garry-tan-y-combinator-2025-3

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coojA-odaTk



Google Parent Alphabet Acquires Wiz For $32 Billion (ft.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:40PM (msmash) from the breaking-news dept.)

The [1]rumors were right : Google parent Alphabet has [2]agreed to buy cyber security start-up Wiz for $32 billion , the biggest acquisition in the search group's history. From the report:

> Alphabet held talks over a $23 billion acquisition of Wiz last year, although the negotiations collapsed after some of the cyber security company's directors and investors became worried about antitrust hurdles.

>

> The deal, which will rank as the biggest deal of the year so far, was [3]announced on Tuesday morning . It will probably still face scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission under President Donald Trump, whose new chair Andrew Ferguson has maintained guidelines giving the agency the ability to block large deals used by his predecessor Lina Khan.



[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/215231/alphabet-back-in-talks-to-buy-wiz-for-30-billion

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/26ae0691-b133-42cc-b239-0da88e1b603d

[3] https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/google-agreement-acquire-wiz/



New Form of Parkinson's Treatment Uses Real-Time Deep-Brain Stimulation

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:40PM (BeauHD) from the life-changing-tech dept.)

A newly FDA-approved form of adaptive deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease [1]adjusts electrical stimulation in real time based on an individual's brain signals , improving symptom control and reducing medication dependence. Scientific American:

> For decades, Keith Krehbiel took high doses of medications with a debilitating side effect -- severe nausea -- following his diagnosis with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 42 in 1997. When each dose wore off, he experienced dyskinesia -- involuntary, repetitive muscle movements. In his case, this consisted of head bobbing and weaving. Krehbiel is among one million Americans who live with this progressive neurological disorder, which causes slowed movements, tremors and balance problems. But soon after surgery to implant electrodes into specific areas of his brain in 2020, his life dramatically improved. "My tremor went away almost entirely," says Krehbiel, now age 70 and a professor emeritus of political science at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose Parkinson's symptoms began at age 40 and were initially misdiagnosed as repetitive stress injury from computer use. "I reduced my Parkinson's meds by more than two thirds," he adds. "And I no longer have a sensation of a foggy brain, nor nausea or dyskinesia."

>

> Krehbiel was the first participant to enroll in a clinical trial testing a new form of deep-brain stimulation (DBS), a technology that gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Parkinson's tremor and essential tremor in 1997 (it was later approved for other symptoms and conditions). The new adaptive system adjusts stimulation levels automatically based on the person's individual brain signals. In late February it received [2]FDA approval for Parkinson's disease "based on results of the international multicenter trial, which involved participants at 10 sites across a total of four countries -- the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada and France. This technology is suitable for anyone with Parkinson's, not just individuals in clinical trials, says Helen Bronte-Stewart, the recent trial's global lead investigator and a neurologist specializing in movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. "Like a cardiac pacemaker that responds to the rhythms of the heart, adaptive deep-brain stimulation uses a person's individual brain signals to control the electric pulses it delivers," Bronte-Stewart says. "This makes it more personalized, precise and efficient than older DBS methods."

>

> "Traditional DBS delivers constant stimulation, which doesn't always match the fluctuating symptoms of Parkinson's disease," adds neurologist Todd Herrington, another of the trial's investigators and director of the deep-brain stimulation program at Massachusetts General Hospital. With adaptive DBS, "the goal is to adjust stimulation in real time to provide more effective symptom control, fewer side effects and improved patient quality of life." Current FDA approval of this adaptive system is for the treatment of Parkinson's only, not essential tremor, dystonia (a neurological disorder that causes excessive, repetitive and involuntary muscle contractions) or epilepsy, which still rely on traditional, continuous DBS, Herrington says.



[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-form-of-parkinsons-treatment-uses-real-time-deep-brain-stimulation/

[2] https://news.medtronic.com/2025-02-24-Medtronic-earns-U-S-FDA-approval-for-the-worlds-first-Adaptive-deep-brain-stimulation-system-for-people-with-Parkinsons



Software Startup Rippling Sues Competitor Deel, Claiming a Spy Carried Out 'Corporate Espionage' (cnbc.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:40PM (BeauHD) from the SF-tea dept.)

HR software startup Rippling has sued competitor Deel, alleging that Deel [1]orchestrated corporate espionage by recruiting an employee within Rippling to steal trade secrets , including customer data, sales strategies, and internal records. The [2]lawsuit (PDF) claims the spy shared confidential information with Deel executives and a reporter, leading to legal action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Deel denies wrongdoing and plans to counter the claims. CNBC reports:

> The two startups are among the most world's most valuable. Investors valued Rippling at $13.5 billion in a funding round announced last year, while Deel told media outlets in 2023 that it was worth $12 billion. Deel ranked No. 28 on CNBC's 2024 Disruptor 50 list. "Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and seeding falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims," a Deel spokesperson told CNBC in an email. "We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims."

>

> Rippling confirmed its findings earlier this month. The company's general counsel sent a letter to three Deel executives that referred to a new Slack channel, and the Deel spy quickly looked for it. Rippling subsequently served a court order to the spy at its office in Dublin, Ireland requiring him to preserve information on his mobile phone. "Deel's spy lied to the court-appointed solicitor about the location of his phone, and then locked himself in a bathroom -- seemingly in order to delete evidence from his phone -- all while the independent solicitor repeatedly warned him not to delete materials from his device and that his non-compliance was breaching a court order with penal endorsement," Rippling said in Monday's filing. "The spy responded: 'I'm willing to take that risk.' He then fled the premises."

"We always prefer to win by building the best products and we don't turn to the legal system lightly," Parker Conrad, Rippling's co-founder and CEO, said in a Monday [3]X post . "But we are taking this extraordinary step to send a clear message that this type of misconduct has no place in our industry."



[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/17/startup-rippling-sues-competitor-deel-claiming-a-spy-stole-sales-data.html

[2] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.446484/gov.uscourts.cand.446484.1.0.pdf

[3] https://x.com/parkerconrad/status/1901617143747399770



Hollywood Urges Trump To Not Let AI Companies 'Exploit' Copyrighted Works (variety.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @12:40PM (BeauHD) from the cease-and-desist dept.)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety:

> More than 400 Hollywood creative leaders signed an [1]open letter to the Trump White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, [2]urging the administration to not roll back copyright protections at the behest of AI companies . The filmmakers, writers, actors, musicians and others -- which included Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Erivo, Cate Blanchett, Cord Jefferson, Paul McCartney, Ron Howard and Taika Waititi -- were submitting comments for the Trump administration's U.S. AI Action Plan. The letter specifically was penned in response to recent submissions to the Office of Science and Technology Policy from OpenAI and Google, which asserted that U.S. copyright law allows (or should allow) allow AI companies to train their system on copyrighted works without obtaining permission from (or compensating) rights holders.

>

> "We firmly believe that America's global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries," the letter says in part. The letter claims that "AI companies are asking to undermine this economic and cultural strength by weakening copyright protections for the films, television series, artworks, writing, music and voices used to train AI models at the core of multibillion-dollar corporate valuations." [...] The letter says Google and OpenAI "are arguing for a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America's creative and knowledge industries, despite their substantial revenues and available funds. There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America flourish."

You can read the full statement and list of signatories [3]here .

The letter was issued in response to recent submissions from [4]OpenAI (PDF) and [5]Google (PDF) claiming that U.S. law allows, or should allow, AI companies to train their programs on copyrighted works under the fair use legal doctrine.



[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O3VxI_R4MmzoL9GeUUK7SJ35XQpFQiNK/view

[2] https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/hollywood-urges-trump-block-ai-exploit-copyrights-1236339750/

[3] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O3VxI_R4MmzoL9GeUUK7SJ35XQpFQiNK/view

[4] https://cdn.openai.com/global-affairs/ostp-rfi/ec680b75-d539-4653-b297-8bcf6e5f7686/openai-response-ostp-nsf-rfi-notice-request-for-information-on-the-development-of-an-artificial-intelligence-ai-action-plan.pdf

[5] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/publicpolicy.google/en//resources/response_us_ai_action_plan.pdf



BYD Unveils New Super-Charging EV Tech With Peak Speeds of 1,000 kW (yahoo.com)

(Tuesday March 18, 2025 @12:40PM (BeauHD) from the game-changer dept.)

[1]fahrbot-bot shares a report from Reuters:

> BYD on Monday unveiled a new platform for electric vehicles (EVs) that it said could charge EVs as quickly as it takes to pump gas and announced for the first time that it would build a charging network across China. The so-called "super e-platform" will be [2]capable of peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts (kW), enabling cars that use it to travel 400 km (249 miles) on a 5-minute charge, founder Wang Chuanfu said at an event livestreamed from the company's Shenzhen headquarters.

>

> Charging speeds of 1,000 kW would be twice as fast as Tesla's superchargers whose latest version offers up to 500 kw charging speeds. The new charging architecture will be initially available in two new EVs -- Han L sedan and Tang L SUV priced from 270,000 yuan ($37,328.91) and BYD said it would build over 4,000 ultra-fast charging piles, or units, across China to match the new platform.

"In order to completely solve our user's charging anxiety, we have been pursuing a goal to make the charging time of electric vehicles as short as the refuelling time of petrol vehicles," Wang said.

"This is the first time in the industry that the unit of megawatt (charge) has been achieved on charging power," he said.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~fahrbot-bot

[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-byd-unveils-faster-charging-114700761.html



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