Encrypted communications provider Proton has joined an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, filing a legal complaint that claims the company's App Store practices harm developers, consumers, and privacy. The Switzerland-based firm joined a group of Korean developers who sued Apple in May rather than filing a separate case.

Proton asked the US District Court for Northern California to require Apple to allow alternative app stores, expose those stores through its own App Store, permit developers to disable Apple's in-app payment system, and provide full access to Apple APIs. The company added a privacy-focused argument to typical antitrust complaints, contending that Apple's pricing model particularly penalizes companies that refuse to harvest user data. Developers of free apps typically sell user data to cover costs, while privacy-focused companies like Proton must charge subscriptions for revenue, making Apple's commission cuts more burdensome.

Google has signed a deal to purchase 200 megawatts of future fusion energy from Commonwealth Fusion Systems, despite the energy source not yet existing. "It's a sign of how hungry big tech companies are for a virtually unlimited source of clean power that is still years away," reports CNN. From the report: Google and Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced a deal Monday in which the tech company bought 200 megawatts of power from Commonwealth's first commercial fusion plant, the same amount of energy that could power roughly 200,000 average American homes. Commonwealth aims to build the plant in Virginia by the early 2030s. When it starts generating usable fusion energy is still TBD, though the company believes they can do it in the same timeframe.

Google is also investing a second round of money into Commonwealth to spur development of its demonstration tokamak -- a donut-shaped machine that uses massive magnets and molten plasma to force two atoms to merge, thereby creating the energy of the sun. Google and Commonwealth did not disclose how much money is being invested, but both touted the announcement as a major step toward fusion commercialization. "We're using this purchasing power that we have to send a demand signal to the market for fusion energy and hopefully move (the) technology forward," said Michael Terrell, senior director of energy and climate at Google.

Commonwealth is currently building its demonstration plant in Massachusetts, known as SPARC. It's the tokamak the company says could forever change where the world gets its power from, generating 10 million times more energy than coal or natural gas while producing no planet-warming pollution. Fuel for fusion is abundant, derived from a form of hydrogen found in seawater and tritium extracted from lithium. And unlike nuclear fission, there is no radioactive waste involved. The big challenge is that no one has yet built a machine powerful and precise enough to get more energy out of the reaction than they put into it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant's lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows' user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.

This is probably why Microsoft has been aggressively pushing users to upgrade to Windows 11 after the previous version of the OS loses support -- so that its users would install the latest version of Windows on their current system (or get a new PC if their system is incapable of running the latest version). Although macOS is a threat to Windows, especially with the launch of Apple Silicon, we cannot say that those 400 million users all went and bought a MacBook. That's because, as far back as 2023, Mac sales have also been dropping, with Statista reporting the computer line, once holding more than 85% of the company revenue, now making up just 7.7%. The shrinking Windows user base can be attributed to a combination of factors -- a major one being the global move toward a mobile-first world, where smartphones and tablets are increasingly replacing traditional PCs for everyday computing needs.

At the same time, Microsoft's strict hardware requirements for Windows 11 have alienated users with perfectly functional older machines, prompting some to stick with unsupported versions or abandon Windows entirely. Additionally, many users find Windows 11 less intuitive than its predecessor and are frustrated by Microsoft's push toward data collection and Apple-style design changes.

Automattic has put its plan to migrate Tumblr's backend to WordPress on hold, with CEO Matt Mullenweg citing a shift in focus toward features users are actively requesting. "I still want to do it," Mullenweg says. "It's just cleaner. But right now, we're not working on it." The Verge reports: The decision to halt the change also appears to mean that Tumblr posts won't be available in the fediverse in the near future. WordPress.com currently offers an ActivityPub plug-in, so Tumblr moving onto WordPress would theoretically let people bring Tumblr posts to the fediverse. "That would've been a free way to get it," Mullenweg says. "And so that was one of the arguments for migrating everything to WordPress."

In the meantime, however, "I think if there was a big push to implement fediverse, we would just do it on the Tumblr code base," according to Mullenweg.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said he regrets telling the media that "WordPress.org just belongs to me personally" during a new interview about his company's legal dispute with hosting provider WP Engine. The comment has been "taken out of context so many times" and represents "the worst thing ever," Mullenweg said in a new podcast interview with The Verge.

The dispute began when Mullenweg accused WP Engine of "free-riding" on WordPress's open-source ecosystem without contributing adequate resources back to the project. Mullenweg filed a lawsuit against WP Engine while cutting off the company's access to core WordPress technologies. WP Engine countersued, and Automattic was forced to reverse some retaliatory measures.

The controversy triggered significant internal upheaval at Automattic. The company offered "alignment" buyouts to employees who disagreed with the direction, reducing headcount from a peak of 2,100 to approximately 1,500 people. Mullenweg said this was "probably the fourth big time" WordPress has faced such community controversy, though the first in the current media landscape. WordPress powers 43% of websites globally. Mullenweg said he wants to return to "the most collaborative version of WordPress possible" but noted the legal proceedings continue with both sides spending "millions of dollars a month on lawyers."

The problem? "Companies want their products and brands to appear in chatbot results," reports 9to5Mac. And "Since Reddit forms a key part of the training material for Google's AI, then one effective way to make that happen is to spam Reddit." Huffman has confirmed to the Financial Times that this is happening, with companies using AI bots to create fake posts in the hope that the content will be regurgitated by chatbots:

"For 20 years, we've been fighting people who have wanted to be popular on Reddit," Huffman said... "If you want to show up in the search engines, you try to do well on Reddit, and now the LLMs, it's the same thing. If you want to be in the LLMs, you can do it through Reddit."

Multiple ad agency execs confirmed to the FT that they are indeed "posting content on Reddit to boost the likelihood of their ads appearing in the responses of generative AI chatbots." Huffman says that AI bots are increasingly being used to make spam posts, and Reddit is trying to block them: For Huffman, success comes down to making sure that posts are "written by humans and voted on by humans [...] It's an arms race, it's a never ending battle." The company is exploring a number of new ways to do this, including the World ID eyeball-scanning device being touted by OpenAI's Sam Altman.
It's Reddit's 20th anniversary, notes CNBC. And while "MySpace, Digg and Flickr have faded into oblivion," Reddit "has refused to die, chugging along and gaining an audience of over 108 million daily users..."

But now Reddit "faces a gargantuan challenge gaining new users, particularly if Google's search floodgates dry up." [I]n the age of AI, many users simply "go the easiest possible way," said Ann Smarty, a marketing and reputation management consultant who helps brands monitor consumer perception on Reddit. And there may be no simpler way of finding answers on the internet than simply asking ChatGPT a question, Smarty said. "People do not want to click," she said. "They just want those quick answers."
But in response, CNBC's headline argues that Reddit "is fighting AI with AI." It launched its own Reddit Answers AI service in December, using technology from OpenAI and Google. Unlike general-purpose chatbots that summarize others' web pages, the Reddit Answers chatbot generates responses based purely on the social media service, and it redirects people to the source conversations so they can see the specific user comments. A Reddit spokesperson said that over 1 million people are using Reddit Answers each week.

"A second major academic institution has accused Uber of using opaque computer code to dramatically increase its profits at the expense of the ride-hailing app's drivers and passengers," reports the Guardian: Research by academics at New York's Columbia Business School concluded that the Silicon Valley company had implemented "algorithmic price discrimination" that had raised "rider fares and cut driver pay on billions of ... trips, systematically, selectively, and opaquely". The Ivy League business school research — which is based on an analysis of "tens of thousands of trips ... as well as an analysis of over 2 million ... trip requests" — follows a similar academic paper based on 1.5m UK trips that was published last week by the University of Oxford. The British study found that many UK Uber drivers were making "substantially less" each hour since the ride-hailing app introduced a "dynamic pricing" algorithm in 2023 that coincided with the company taking a significantly higher share of fares...

[Len Sherman, the US report's author] added: "Since implementing upfront pricing, Uber has increased rider prices, has cut driver pay, has increased its take rates, and, of course, has greatly improved its cashflow during the period covered by this study...." The Columbia paper, which focused on 24,532 trips made by a single US Uber driver, concluded that the introduction of the new algorithm had allowed Uber to "significantly increase its take rate — the per cent of rider fares net of driver pay captured by the company — from about 32% at the start of upfront pricing to upwards of 42% by the end of 2024". Last week's University of Oxford research found that, since the launch of dynamic pricing, Uber's median take rate per UK driver had "increased from 25% to 29%, and on some trips ... is over 50%".
Thanks to Slashdot reader votsalo for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader shared this report from WebProNews: The Linux world is abuzz with news of XLibre, a fork of the venerable X11 window display system, which aims to be an alternative to X11's successor, Wayland.

Much of the Linux world is working to adopt Wayland, the successor to X11. Wayland has been touted as being a superior option, providing better security and performance. Despite Fedora and Ubuntu both going Wayland-only, the newer display protocol still lags behind X11, in terms of functionality, especially in the realm of accessibility, screen recording, session restore, and more. In addition, despite the promise of improved performance, many users report performance regressions compared to X11.

While progress is being made, it has been slow going, especially for a project that is more than 17 years old. To make matters worse, Wayland is largely being improved by committee, with the various desktop environment teams trying to work together to further the protocol. Progress is further hampered by the fact that the GNOME developers often object to the implementation of some functionality that doesn't fit with their vision of what a desktop should be — despite those features being present and needed in every other environment.

In response, developer Enrico Weigelt has forked Xll into the XLibre project. Weigelt was already one of the most prolific X11 contributors at a time when little to no improvements or new features are being added to the aging window system... Weigelt has wasted no time releasing the inaugural version of XLibre, XLibre 25.0. The release includes a slew of improvements.
MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) adds that Artix Linux, a rolling-release distro based on Arch Linux which does not use systemd, now offers XLibre ISO images and packages for testing and use. They're all non-systemd based, and "Its a decent undertaking by the Artix development team. The iso is considered to be testing but it is quickly moving to the regular repos for broad public use."

After past damage to undersea cables, Denmark will boost their surveillance of Baltic Sea/North Sea waters by deploying four uncrewed surface vessels — about 10 meters long — that are equipped with drones and also AI, reports Euronews.

The founder/CEO of the company that makes the vessels — Saildrone — says they'll work "like a truck" that "carries the sensors." And then "we use on-board sophisticated machine learning and AI to fuse that data to give us a full picture of what's above and below the surface." Powered by solar and wind energy, they can operate autonomously for months at sea. [Saildrone] said the autonomous sailboats can support operations such as illegal fishing detection, border enforcement, and strategic asset protection... The four "Voyagers" will be first in operation for a three-month trial, as Denmark and NATO allies aim at extending maritime presence, especially around critical undersea infrastructure such as fibre optic cables and power lines. NATO and its allies have increased sea patrolling following several incidents.

"Mercedes-AMG is transitioning away from the four-cylinder plug-in hybrid powertrain," reports Car and Driver, "and back towards the inline-six and V-8 powertrains more traditionally associated with the brand." That isn't to say that AMG had a change of heart concerning the merits of the four-cylinder powertrain, but rather that the automaker is responding to customer criticisms. "Technically, the four-cylinder is one of the most advanced drivetrains available in a production car. It's also right up there on performance. But despite this, it failed to resonate with our traditional customers. We've recognized that," a source at Mercedes told Autocar...

Car and Driver also spoke with AMG chief Michael Schiebe at the reveal of the AMG GT XX electric concept car... Although the four-cylinder may be on its way out, Schiebe did say AMG remains committed to plug-in hybrids. "There are a lot of advantages of combining electric motors with combustion engines," Schiebe said. "We want to offer different kinds of drivetrain opportunities on the combustion side to our customers, so they can choose for whatever purpose they want to use the car."

Much of the criticism of the C63 and GLC63's powertrain was focused on the lackluster sound when compared with the symphony of a V-8. The M139 drew our ire for sounding "reedy" and "buzzy" in our test of the current C63. The C63's hybrid system also brings the car's curb weight up to nearly 5000 pounds, meaning it didn't provide a meaningful performance boost over its V-8 predecessor despite offering significantly more horsepower....

AMG wouldn't confirm exactly when the four-cylinder will be phased out, telling Autocar that it will remain in production for the time being before "eventually" being replaced.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Tuesday, software engineer Doug Brown published his discovery of how to trigger a long-known but previously inaccessible Easter egg in the Power Mac G3's ROM: a hidden photo of the development team that nobody could figure out how to display for 27 years. While Pierre Dandumont first documented the JPEG image itself in 2014, the method to view it on the computer remained a mystery until Brown's reverse engineering work revealed that users must format a RAM disk with the text "secret ROM image."

Brown stumbled upon the image while using a hex editor tool called Hex Fiend with Eric Harmon's Mac ROM template to explore the resources stored in the beige Power Mac G3's ROM. The ROM appeared in desktop, minitower, and all-in-one G3 models from 1997 through 1999. "While I was browsing through the ROM, two things caught my eye," Brown wrote. He found both the HPOE resource containing the JPEG image of team members and a suspicious set of Pascal strings in the PowerPC-native SCSI Manager 4.3 code that included ".Edisk," "secret ROM image," and "The Team."

The strings provided the crucial clue Brown needed. After extracting and disassembling the code using Ghidra, he discovered that the SCSI Manager was checking for a RAM disk volume named "secret ROM image." When found, the code would create a file called "The Team" containing the hidden JPEG data. Brown initially shared his findings on the #mac68k IRC channel, where a user named Alex quickly figured out the activation method. The trick requires users to enable the RAM Disk in the Memory control panel, restart, select the RAM Disk icon, choose "Erase Disk" from the Special menu, and type "secret ROM image" into the format dialog. "If you double-click the file, SimpleText will open it," Brown explains on his blog just before displaying the hidden team photo that emerges after following the steps.

The Canadian government has ordered Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer Hikvision to cease operations in Canada over national security concerns, Industry Minister Melanie Joly said late on Friday. From a report: Hikvision, also known as Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co, has faced numerous sanctions and restrictions by Canada's neighbor, the United States, over the past five and a half years for the firm's dealings and the use of its equipment in China's Xinjiang region, where rights groups have documented abuses against the Uyghur population and other Muslim communities.

"The government has determined that Hikvision Canada's continued operations in Canada would be injurious to Canada's national security," Joly said on X, adding that the decision was taken after a multi-step review of information provided by Canada's security and intelligence community."

Graphic artists in China are pushing back against AI image generators, which they say "profoundly shifts clients' perception of their work, specifically in terms of how much that work costs and how much time it takes to produce," reports The Verge. "Freelance artists or designers working in industries with clients that invest in stylized, eye-catching graphics, like advertising, are particularly at risk." From the report: Long before AI image generators became popular, graphic designers at major tech companies and in-house designers for large corporate clients were often instructed by managers to crib aesthetics from competitors or from social media, according to one employee at a major online shopping platform in China, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from their employer. Where a human would need to understand and reverse engineer a distinctive style to recreate it, AI image generators simply create randomized mutations of it. Often, the results will look like obvious copies and include errors, but other graphic designers can then edit them into a final product.

"I think it'd be easier to replace me if I didn't embrace [AI]," the shopping platform employee says. Early on, as tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney became more popular, their colleagues who spoke English well were selected to study AI image generators to increase in-house expertise on how to write successful prompts and identify what types of tasks AI was useful for. Ultimately, it was useful for copying styles from popular artists that, in the past, would take more time to study. "I think it forces both designers and clients to rethink the value of designers," Jia says. "Is it just about producing a design? Or is it about consultation, creativity, strategy, direction, and aesthetic?" [...]

Across the board, though, artists and designers say that AI hype has negatively impacted clients' view of their work's value. Now, clients expect a graphic designer to produce work on a shorter timeframe and for less money, which also has its own averaging impact, lowering the ceiling for what designers can deliver. As clients lower budgets and squish timelines, the quality of the designers' output decreases. "There is now a significant misperception about the workload of designers," [says Erbing, a graphic designer in Beijing who has worked with several ad agencies and asked to be called by his nickname]. "Some clients think that since AI must have improved efficiency, they can halve their budget." But this perception runs contrary to what designers spend the majority of their time doing, which is not necessarily just making any image, Erbing says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice. The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people's identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe. Having secured broad cross-party agreement, the department of culture plans to submit a proposal to amend the current law for consultation before the summer recess and then submit the amendment in the autumn. It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice.

The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an "unequivocal message" that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded. He told the Guardian: "In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI." He added: "Human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes and I'm not willing to accept that."

The changes to Danish copyright law will, once approved, theoretically give people in Denmark the right to demand that online platforms remove such content if it is shared without consent. It will also cover "realistic, digitally generated imitations" of an artist's performance without consent. Violation of the proposed rules could result in compensation for those affected. The government said the new rules would not affect parodies and satire, which would still be permitted. "Of course this is new ground we are breaking, and if the platforms are not complying with that, we are willing to take additional steps," said Engel-Schmidt.

He expressed hope that other European countries will follow suit and warned that "severe fines" will be imposed if tech platforms fail to comply.

Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares a report from Car and Driver with the comment: "Lack of visibility is a significant consequence of improving safety on the front overlap crash testing." Here's an excerpt from the report: The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has a new method to look at what drivers can't look at, and the results of a DOT study using the method suggest that things have gotten worse over the past quarter-century. [...] For the study, researchers with the U.S. Department of Transportation's Volpe Center used the IIHS method to examine every generation of some popular vehicles sold between 1997 and 2023. The models chosen were the Chevrolet Suburban, the Ford F-150, the Honda Accord, the Honda CR-V, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, and the Toyota Camry. The analysis measured how much of a 10-meter radius is visible to a driver; this distance was chosen because that's approximately how much space a driver needs to react and stop when traveling at 10 mph. The study also measured visibility between 10 and 20 meters from the vehicle.

The biggest model-specific difference was observed with the Honda CR-V. In a 1997 model, the researchers measured 68 percent visibility, while the 2022 came in at just 28 percent. In a 2000 Suburban, the study measured 56 percent visible area within the 10-meter radius, but in a 2023 model it was down to 28 percent. The study concluded that higher hoods on newer versions of both models had the biggest impact on outward visibility. The F-150 started out with low visibility (43% for a 1997 model) and also declined (36% for the 2015 version). The two sedans in the study saw the least regression: A 2003 Accord was measured at 65 percent visibility, with the 2023 close behind at 60 percent, and the Camry went from 61 percent for the 2007 model to 57 percent for a 2023. Results for visibility between 10 and 20 meters were mixed, with some improving and others decreasing over subsequent generations.

While this is not conclusive evidence across the industry, the results from these representative vehicles suggest an overall decline in outward frontal visibility. The study also notes that, during the same time period, pedestrian and bicyclist deaths on U.S. roads increased dramatically -- 37 and 42 percent, respectively. There's likely at least some causation with that correlation, even when you consider the addition of features such as automated emergency braking that are meant to intervene and prevent such collisions.

Facebook is prompting users to opt into a feature that uploads photos from their camera roll -- even those not shared on the platform -- to Meta's servers for AI-driven suggestions like collages and stylized edits. While Meta claims the content is private and not used for ads, opting in allows the company to analyze facial features and retain personal data under its broad AI terms, raising privacy concerns. TechCrunch reports: The feature is being suggested to Facebook users when they're creating a new Story on the social networking app. Here, a screen pops up and asks if the user will opt into "cloud processing" to allow creative suggestions. As the pop-up message explains, by clicking "Allow," you'll let Facebook generate new ideas from your camera roll, like collages, recaps, AI restylings, or photo themes. To work, Facebook says it will upload media from your camera roll to its cloud (meaning its servers) on an "ongoing basis," based on information like time, location, or themes.

The message also notes that only you can see the suggestions, and the media isn't used for ad targeting. However, by tapping "Allow," you are agreeing to Meta's AI Terms. This allows your media and facial features to be analyzed by AI, it says. The company will additionally use the date and presence of people or objects in your photos to craft its creative ideas. [...] According to Meta's AI Terms around image processing, "once shared, you agree that Meta will analyze those images, including facial features, using AI. This processing allows us to offer innovative new features, including the ability to summarize image contents, modify images, and generate new content based on the image," the text states.

The same AI terms also give Meta's AIs the right to "retain and use" any personal information you've shared in order to personalize its AI outputs. The company notes that it can review your interactions with its AIs, including conversations, and those reviews may be conducted by humans. The terms don't define what Meta considers personal information, beyond saying it includes "information you submit as Prompts, Feedback, or other Content." We have to wonder whether the photos you've shared for "cloud processing" also count here.

Germany's data protection commissioner has urged Apple and Google to remove Chinese AI startup DeepSeek from their app stores due to concerns about data protection. Reuters reports: Commissioner Meike Kamp said in a statement on Friday that she had made the request because DeepSeek illegally transfers users' personal data to China. The two U.S. tech giants must now review the request promptly and decide whether to block the app in Germany, she added, though her office has not set a precise timeframe. According to its own privacy policy, DeepSeek stores numerous pieces of personal data, such as requests to its AI program or uploaded files, on computers in China.

"DeepSeek has not been able to provide my agency with convincing evidence that German users' data is protected in China to a level equivalent to that in the European Union," [Commissioner Meike Kamp] said. "Chinese authorities have far-reaching access rights to personal data within the sphere of influence of Chinese companies," she added. The commissioner said she took the decision after asking DeepSeek in May to meet the requirements for non-EU data transfers or else voluntarily withdraw its app. DeepSeek did not comply with this request, she added.

Android 16 will include a new security feature that warns users when their phones connect to fake cell towers designed for surveillance. The "network notification" setting alerts users when devices connect to unencrypted networks or when networks request phone identifiers, helping protect against "stingray" devices that mimic legitimate cell towers to collect data and force phones onto insecure communication protocols.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the FCC's Universal Service Fund can continue operating, rejecting claims that the program's funding mechanism violates the Constitution. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Elena Kagan, the court found that Congress did not exceed its authority when it enacted the 1996 law establishing the fund and that the FCC could delegate administration to a private corporation. The Universal Service Fund subsidizes telecommunications services for low-income consumers, rural health care providers, schools and libraries through fees generally passed on to customers that raise billions of dollars annually.

The program is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company, a nonprofit the FCC designated to run the fund. Conservative advocacy group Consumers' Research challenged the structure, arguing that "a private company is taxing Americans in amounts that total billions of dollars every year, under penalty of law, without true governmental accountability."

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Consumers' Research, prompting the FCC to petition the Supreme Court for review. Kagan wrote that Congress "sufficiently guided and constrained the discretion that it lodged with the FCC to implement the universal-service contribution scheme," adding that the FCC "retained all decision-making authority within that sphere." She concluded that "nothing in those arrangements, either separately or together, violates the Constitution." The challengers argued the program violates the "nondelegation doctrine," a conservative legal theory that says Congress has limited powers to delegate its lawmaking authority to the executive branch.

Brazil's supreme court has ruled that social media platforms can be held legally responsible for their users' posts. From a report: Companies such as Facebook, TikTok and X will have to act immediately to remove material such as hate speech, incitement to violence or "anti-democratic acts," even without a prior judicial takedown order, as a result of the decision in Latin America's largest nation late on Thursday.