Mercedes-Benz will be the first automaker to launch a Level 3 automated driving system in the United States. The Drive reports: The news comes as part of a series of announcements made by Mercedes at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, noting that it has received official approval from the Nevada Department of Transportation to operate its Drive Pilot system on state roads. It expects to receive its formal certification within two weeks. In addition to Nevada, Mercedes has also applied for similar permissions in California, though it has not yet received approval. The automaker is optimistic that it will in time.

Level 3 driving assistance is defined by the SAE as a conditional hands-free automated driving system, meaning that the person behind the wheel is not actually driving while the system is engaged. However, the vehicle may request that the driver take over if certain driving conditions aren't met, unlike Level 4 and 5 which will not prompt the driver to take over once the system is engaged in its operational design domain.

Mercedes' selling point for Drive Pilot is to enable its customers to reclaim their time while in the vehicle. Specifically, the automaker says it will allow drivers to "focus on certain secondary activities such as communicating with colleagues via In-Car Office, browsing the web or relaxing while watching a movie." It's unclear just how much time drivers will get back, or where the system will be used, as Drive Pilot is currently limited to just 37 miles per hour elsewhere in the world.

Four years after introducing its MicroLED technology at CES 2018, Samsung claims the technology is ready for the masses and "will set the standard for picture quality in 2023," reports Engadget. From the report: At CES 2023, the company announced it would offer 50-, 63-, 76-, 89-, 101-, 114- and 140-inch MicroLED models, greatly expanding the amount of choice consumers have when it comes to the new display technology. Samsung didn't provide pricing and availability information for the expanded line, but the company claims the new models are its most affordable MicroLED TVs to date. [...] The set sports a 240Hz variable refresh rate and 2-nanosecond response time. It also offers 20-bit black detail for "intense" contrast.

Samsung is also promising upgrades for its Neo QLED sets, starting with the line's new flagship. The QN900C features an 8K Quantum MiniLED-lit panel capable of maxing out at 4,000 nits of brightness. As with Samsung's 2022 Neo QLED sets, the QN900C features a 14-bit backlight. However, the TV offers even better contrast thanks to a tweak the company made to its 8K Real Depth Enhancer Pro software. Samsung is also promising improved picture quality when viewing older movies and TV shows thanks to the inclusion of its new Auto HDR Remastering algorithm, which can automatically apply HDR effects to standard dynamic range content.

For those who would prefer a 4K set, there's also the QN935C. Samsung's new 4K flagship features a redesigned power board that eliminates the need for an external connection box and allows for bezels that are less than 20mm thick. The QN935C also features top-firing speakers, allowing the set to produce Dolby Atmos sound without a dedicated soundbar. You can use both the QN900C and QN935C as a smart home hub thanks to the fact Samsung's entire 2023 Neo QLED line will feature built-in Zigbee and Matter Thread all-in-one modules. As for its OLED models, Samsung announced the 2023 QD-OLED TV line, which will offer up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness and support 144Hz refresh rates -- all while being more energy efficient than before. "Additionally, the company has gone out of its way to get the panels AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certified," adds Engadget.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Scharon Harding: Like it or not, companies are set on making foldable PCs a thing. Asus' Zenbook 17 Fold OLED turned out to be one of 2022's most adventurous laptops, and Lenovo is planning its second foldable, the 16-inch ThinkPad X1 Fold for this spring. Assuming an operating system and apps that play well with the form factor, foldables excite multitaskers, workers, and creatives who can benefit from larger, yet still portable, display options, especially those who don't need a keyboard and touchpad at all times. But foldable PCs are very new and have their faults, from durability and compatibility concerns to the crease that can visibly run down the display's middle. Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i announced today at CES in Las Vegas aims to boost pixel count in a way that feels both more and less obvious: replacing the keyboard and touchpad with another laptop-size screen. It's the dual-screen PC for people who want all the pixels but none of the fold.

Lenovo's press release calls the Yoga Book 9i the 'first full-size dual screen OLED laptop' among vendors selling at least 1 million units a year. Targeting creative consumers who also want a machine with strong productivity that's also fit for entertainment, the laptop has two 13.3-inch OLED panels connected by the soundbar hinge that Lenovo has been using in its Yoga convertible lineup for a while. Each OLED screen has 2880x1800 pixels in a 16:10 aspect ratio. That's 255.36 pixels per inch (ppi) for each panel and 10,368,000 pixels total. That's 12.5 to 25 percent more total pixels than a 4K screen, depending on whether it's 16:9 or 16:10. Each screen runs at a 60 Hz refresh rate and claims a max brightness of 400 nits. Each screen's brightness is individually adjustable. Lenovo also claims 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage, and each screen supports Dolby Vision HDR.

The Yoga Book 9i will come with a physical Bluetooth keyboard that you can use detached from the system or magnetically docked to the bottom two-thirds of the lower screen. Alternatively, you can use a virtual keyboard on the southern screen. With a physical or virtual keyboard docked, you can use the remaining top third of that display for Windows widgets, such as the Weather, News, and Sticky Notes. But if you don't use Windows widgets, the area is kind of useless because you can't use it for anything else, like a shrunken window. With the virtual keyboard on display, I was also able to quickly bring up a virtual touchpad by sliding the virtual keyboard up with my fingers. If this touchpad works well, it's a clever inclusion for times that you want more traditional navigation but don't have a mouse on hand. [...] The Yoga Book 9i is designed for "users with large budgets seeking a premium system with a unique form factor that remains portable while providing more screen than the usual laptop," writes Harding in conclusion. The 2-in-1 will start at $2,100 and go on sale in June.

An anonymous reader shares a report: ChatGPT's artificial intelligence generated dialogue has gotten pretty sophisticated -- to the point where it can write convincing sounding essays. So Edward Tian, a computer science student at Princeton, built an app called GPTZero that can "quickly and efficiently" label whether an essay was written by a person or ChatGPT. In a series of recent tweets, Tian provided examples of GPTZero in progress; the app determined John McPhee's New Yorker essay "Frame of Reference" to be written by a person, and a LinkedIn post to be created by a bot. On Twitter, he said he created the app over the holidays, and was motivated by the increasing possibility of AI plagiarism. Further reading:
1. OpenAI is developing a watermark to identify work from its GPT text AI;
2. OpenAI's attempts to watermark AI text hit limits;
3. A metadata 'watermark' could be the solution to ChatGPT plagiarism fears.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told employees last year that he had no plans for further layoffs. But according to current IBM employees, managers continue to face pressure to reduce headcount and are trying to do without Resource Actions -- what Big Blue calls formal layoffs. The Register: Instead, they're trying to encourage employees to leave on their own through redeployment and eliminating jobs without formally doing so. An IBM employee who asked not to be identified and has been with the company for more than two decades told The Register that multiple people in part of the Systems group (the individual and four colleagues) had been "redeployed to look for another job within IBM."

These individuals are expected to continue in their jobs for an indeterminate period while using some work time to find and apply for another internal position -- which may or may not be available, or may require relocation. No end date was specified for the job search but our source suggested that affected individuals have until the end of Q1 2023. After a redeployed employee fails to find another internal position, Redeployment Initiative may become a Resource Action -- a layoff.

Google is continuing on with its #GetTheMessage campaign attempting to convince Apple to adopt the RCS messaging protocol, this time taking out a large New Year's-themed ad at Harmon Corner in Las Vegas. From a report: The digital billboard urges Apple not to "drop the ball" on fixing its "pixelated photos and videos." Hey Apple, it's Android, the ball may have dropped on 2022, but you don't have to drop the ball on fixing your pixelated photos and videos. [...] After the short message, the billboard scrolls through RCS code, ending with a plea to customers to "Help Apple #GetTheMessage," the hashtag that Google has been using for the campaign.

schwit1 shares an excerpt from a Motherboard article: Some renters may savor the convenience of "smart home" technologies like keyless entry and internet-connected doorbell cameras. But tech companies are increasingly selling these solutions to landlords for a more nefarious purpose: spying on tenants in order to evict them or raise their rent. "You CAN raise rents in NYC!" reads the headline of one promotional email sent to landlords. It was a sales pitch from Teman, a tech company that makes surveillance systems for apartment buildings. Teman's sales pitch proposes a solution to a frustration for many New York City landlords, who have tenants living in older apartments that are protected by a myriad of rent control and stabilization laws. The company's email suggests a workaround: "3 Simple Steps to Re-Regulate a Unit." First, use one of Teman's automated products to catch a tenant breaking a law or violating their lease, such as by having unapproved subletters or loud parties. Then, "vacate" them and merge their former apartment with one next door or above or below, creating a "new" unit that's not eligible for rent protections. "Combine a $950/mo studio and $1400/mo one-bedroom into a $4200/mo DEREGULATED two-bedroom," the email enticed. Teman's surveillance systems can even "help you identify which units are most-likely open to moving out (or being evicted!)." [...]

Erin McElroy, a professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin who tracks eviction trends, also says that digital surveillance of residential buildings is increasing, particularly in New York City, which she calls the "landlord tech epicenter." Any camera system can document possibly eviction-worthy behavior, but McElroy identified two companies, Teman and Reliant Safety, that use the biometrics of tenants with the explicit goal of facilitating evictions. These companies are part of an expanding industry known as "proptech," encompassing all the technology used for acquiring and managing real estate. A report by Future Market Insights predicts that proptech will quadruple its current value, becoming a $86.5 billion industry by 2023. It is also sprouting start-ups to ease all aspects of the business -- including the unsavory ones. [...]

Reliant Safety, which claims to watch over 20,000 apartment units nationwide, has a less colorful corporate pedigree. It is owned by the Omni Organization, a private developer founded in 2004 that "acquires, rehabilitates, builds and manages quality affordable housing throughout the United States," according to its website. The company claims it has acquired and managed more than 17,000 affordable housing units. Many of the properties it lists are in New York City. Omni's website features spotless apartment complexes under blue skies and boasts about sponsorship of after-school programs, food giveaways, and homeless transition programs. Reliant's website features videos that depict various violations detected by its surveillance cameras. The website has a page of "Lease Violations" it says its system has detected, which include things such as "pet urination in hallway," "hallway fistfight," "improper mattress disposal," "tenant slips in hallway," as well as several alleged assaults, videos of fistfights in hallways, drug sales at doorways and break-ins through smashed windows. Almost all of them show Black or brown people and almost all are labeled as being from The Bronx -- where, in 2016, Omni opened a 140-unit affordable housing building at 655 Morris Avenue that boasted about "state-of-the-art facial recognition building access" running on ubiquitous cameras in common areas. Reliant presents these as "case studies" and lists outcomes that include arrest and eviction. Part of its package of services is "illegal sublet detection" using biometrics submitted by tenants to suss out anyone not authorized to be there. While Reliant claims its products are rooting out illegal and dangerous activity, the use of surveillance and biometrics to further extend policing into minority communities are a major cause for concern to privacy advocates.

Saudi Arabia has infiltrated Wikipedia and jailed two administrators in a bid to control content on the website, weeks after a former Twitter worker was jailed in the US for spying for the Saudis. The Guardian reports: One administrator was jailed for 32 years, and another was sentenced to eight years, the activists said. An investigation by parent body Wikimedia found the Saudi government had penetrated Wikipedia's senior ranks in the region, with Saudi citizens acting or forced to act as agents, two rights groups said. "Wikimedia's investigation revealed that the Saudi government had infiltrated the highest ranks in Wikipedia's team in the region," Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) and Beirut-based Smex said in a joint statement.

Dawn, which is based in Washington DC and was founded by slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and Smex, which promotes digital rights in the Arab world, cited "whistleblowers and trusted sources" for the information. There was no immediate comment from the Saudi government or from Wikimedia, which puts free educational content online through initiatives like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and Wiktionary. Dawn and Smex's statement comes after Wikimedia last month announced global bans for 16 users "who were engaging in conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the Mena [Middle East and North Africa] region."

Two high-ranking "admins" -- volunteer administrators with privileged access to Wikipedia, including the ability to edit fully protected pages -- have been imprisoned since they were arrested on the same day in September 2020, the two bodies added. The arrests appeared to be part of a "crackdown on Wikipedia admins in the country," Dawn and Smex said, naming the two people imprisoned as Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani. Abdullah Alaoudh, Dawn's director of research for the Gulf, said Khalid was jailed for 32 years and Sofiani received an eight-year sentence. "The arrests of Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani on one hand, and the infiltration of Wikipedia on the other hand, show a horrifying aspect of how the Saudi government wants to control the narrative and Wikipedia," Alaoudh told AFP.

Salesforce division Tableau was hit harder than other units in the company's largest-ever round of jobs cuts this week, adding to a major reorganization that signals the $15.7 billion acquisition hasn't lived up to expectations. Bloomberg reports: Chief Executive Officer Mark Nelson was ousted from the data analytics division in late December and more senior staff were axed Wednesday as part of Salesforce's announcement that it would eliminate 10% of its workforce. Job reductions at Tableau were greater, proportionally, than the company at large thus far. After a half-decade of fast hiring and large acquisitions, Salesforce is trying to cut costs and better integrate the companies it has purchased. The software maker, which lost almost half of its value in 2022, has been pressured by investors to improve profit. The job cuts made public Wednesday -- about 8,000 workers -- are less than half of the number of employees hired in the pandemic and followed the announced exit in December of co-CEO Bret Taylor and the elimination of hundreds of sales positions in November.

Acquisitions fueled the company's headcount growth. Tableau, then Salesforce's most expensive deal when it was bought in 2019, came with 4,200 employees while Slack, purchased in 2021, and Mulesoft, acquired in 2018, together brought another 3,700, according to company filings. The three deals combined cost almost $50 billion with the estimated $27.7 billion for Slack leading the way. Workers across these acquired divisions were pummeled by the job reductions, particularly in recruiting and customer success roles, according to company employees. Tableau is increasingly being treated as a visualization tool for data contained in Salesforce's other services rather than a standalone program -- co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff highlighted the new integrations in a December keynote speech. The division has trailed the rest of the company in sales growth since the acquisition.

Salesforce also plans to pare back its office footprint. The company currently has four offices in the Seattle area, more than any other city, according to the company website. Three were inherited in the Tableau deal. Salesforce declined to comment on whether it would be reducing space in the Seattle area. Asked about the effect of Wednesday's job cuts on Tableau, a Salesforce spokesperson said the unit "is a vital part of our product strategy." Tableau contributes to a product that "processes over 100 billion customer records, and helps our customers understand and act on their data," the spokesperson said.

Qualcomm has announced that its new processors and modems will allow phones to communicate with the Iridium satellite network, letting users send and receive messages even in areas without cell coverage. The Verge reports: The feature, called Snapdragon Satellite, will be available in phones that have both Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and its X70 Modem system, along with some additional radios. Phones that support it should be "launched in select regions starting in the second half of 2023," according to the company's press release, and there are several manufacturers working on designs, according to Francesco Grilli, a Qualcomm spokesperson who helped conduct a briefing for journalists. For now, the feature will likely only be available in flagship Android phones, as Qualcomm's only including the tech in its premium chips. Companies that want to add it to their phones will work directly with Qualcomm to figure out the software and hardware, but they shouldn't have to build new relationships with Iridium, according to Grilli. To the satellites, phones with the tech will look like any other Iridium-enabled devices. As for who will pay for the messages, "the cost of the satellite-based messaging service and dependent services will depend on OEMs and service providers and how they choose to offer the service," according to Grilli.

At first, Snapdragon Satellite will be limited to use in emergency situations, letting you contact someone for help even if you're in a remote area without cell service. According to Grilli, "Snapdragon Satellite leverages Garmin Response." When you send an SOS, "response coordinators immediately see the customer's Latitude/Longitude in their proprietary mapping and response coordination software to determine the appropriate agency to coordinate the rescue." Qualcomm says that, eventually, it'll support "premium messaging," which will likely cost extra and will have to be implemented by OEMs, cell carriers, or other over-the-top service providers. So far, this isn't something Apple offers; you can only send texts via satellite using its SOS feature.

While Qualcomm says the emergency service will be free or very cheap, it hasn't provided details yet on how much it'll cost you if you just want to be able to text your friends from remote areas, like a hiking trail, ski lift, or even a boat in the middle of the ocean. Once that service becomes available, however, Qualcomm says you'll be able to use it with your regular phone number. (That likely won't be the case for emergency use, but it matters less there.) [...] While details are sparse on what it'll be like to actually send and receive satellite messages, it sounds like the experience will be similar to Apple's in that you'll have to follow instructions on your phone to point it toward a satellite. According to Grilli, your phone will be able to predict where Iridium's satellites are months in advance thanks to the way its constellation orbits the Earth. When you go to connect to one, it'll use GPS and other measurements to determine where you need to be facing...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, Mercedes-Benz announced that it is entering the DC fast-charging arena for electric vehicles. The German automaker is in the midst of an electrification push and a plan to be carbon-neutral by 2039, and it evidently doesn't believe that the current charging infrastructure is as good as its new EVs, so it's doing something about the situation. Mercedes says it plans to deploy more than 10,000 fast chargers around the world, starting in North America. The new network is separate from and independent of Ionity, the European fast-charging network backed by Mercedes, BMW, Ford, and Volkswagen. Here in the US, Mercedes is partnering with the charging company ChargePoint and MN8 Energy, a solar and battery-storage company. Together, they will deploy more than 2,500 DC fast chargers at more than 400 sites around the US by 2027.

The chargers will feature plug-and-charge compatibility and won't be restricted to Mercedes' EVs. Mercedes also says the locations and surroundings will be carefully chosen -- all too often, banks of DC chargers are located in desolate and lonely corners of mall parking lots that can make charging at night a stressful experience for some drivers. So the OEM plans to build the chargers "with food outlets and restrooms situated nearby." It also says there will be surveillance cameras and other security in place to provide "a safe and secure charging environment." Expect a minimum of four DC chargers at each hub, similar to an Electrify America charging location. But some hubs will have as many as 12 chargers, and there are plans for as many as 30 in some locations. The hubs will use ChargePoint's modular Express Plus system, which is capable of up to 500 kW per charging port, although Mercedes says that chargers will be "up to 350 kW" in power. And load management will ensure that if multiple EVs are charging at the same time, one charger doesn't end up throttling the rest.

In keeping with the company's 2039 sustainability goals, the electricity it uses will come from green energy suppliers or come with renewable energy certificates. Some hubs will use solar to power the lighting and security cameras. None of this will be particularly cheap. In fact, the initiative will cost more than $1.1 billion (1 billion euro) over the next six or seven years, with the costs split evenly between Mercedes and MN8 Energy. And this is just the start -- plans for more charger deployment in Europe and China will be announced in the future.

Artificial-intelligence research company OpenAI is in discussions over potentially selling at least $300 million in shares in a tender offer that would give it a roughly $29 billion valuation, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. From a report: The offering of shares of OpenAI -- known for AI programs like the chatbot ChatGPT and the image-generator Dall-E 2 would make it among the most highly-valued startups in the U.S., the Journal said. The valuation would be more than twice its valuation of $14 billion in 2021, according to the Journal. Thrive Capital and Founders Fund are in discussions to invest in the offering, under which existing shareholders would sell their shares to other investors, according to the Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. The deal terms could change and have not been finalized. Further reading: Microsoft and OpenAI Working On ChatGPT-Powered Bing In Challenge To Google

Parts made by more than a dozen US and Western companies were found inside a single Iranian drone downed in Ukraine last fall, according to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment obtained exclusively by CNN. From the report: The assessment, which was shared with US government officials late last year, illustrates the extent of the problem facing the Biden administration, which has vowed to shut down Iran's production of drones that Russia is launching by the hundreds into Ukraine. CNN reported last month that the White House has created an administration-wide task force to investigate how US and Western-made technology -- ranging from smaller equipment like semiconductors and GPS modules to larger parts like engines -- has ended up in Iranian drones.

Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to the assessment. The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China, according to the assessment. The options for combating the issue are limited. The US has for years imposed tough export control restrictions and sanctions to prevent Iran from obtaining high-end materials. Now US officials are looking at enhanced enforcement of those sanctions, encouraging companies to better monitor their own supply chains and, perhaps most importantly, trying to identify the third-party distributors taking these products and re-selling them to bad actors.

One of the world's most prestigious machine learning conferences has banned authors from using AI tools like ChatGPT to write scientific papers, triggering a debate about the role of AI-generated text in academia. From a report: The International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) announced the policy earlier this week, stating, "Papers that include text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT are prohibited unless the produced text is presented as a part of the paper's experimental analysis." The news sparked widespread discussion on social media, with AI academics and researchers both defending and criticizing the policy. The conference's organizers responded by publishing a longer statement explaining their thinking.

According to the ICML, the rise of publicly accessible AI language models like ChatGPT -- a general purpose AI chatbot that launched on the web last November -- represents an "exciting" development that nevertheless comes with "unanticipated consequences [and] unanswered questions." The ICML says these include questions about who owns the output of such systems (they are trained on public data, which is usually collected without consent and sometimes regurgitate this information verbatim) and whether text and images generated by AI should be "considered novel or mere derivatives of existing work."

During the CES 2023 in Las Vegas today, Asus announced an upcoming feature that allows users to view and work with content in 3D without wearing 3D glasses. Ars Technica reports: Similar technology has been used in a small number of laptops and displays before, but Asus is incorporating the feature for the first time in OLED laptop screens. Combined with high refresh rates, unique input methods like an integrated dial, and the latest CPUs and laptop GPUs, the company is touting the laptops with the Asus Spatial Vision feature as powerful, niche options for creative professionals looking for new ways to work.

Asus' Spatial Vision 3D tech is debuting on two laptops in Q2 this year: the ProArt Studiobook 16 3D OLED (H7604) and Vivobook Pro 16 3D OLED (K6604). The laptops each feature a 16-inch, 3200x2000 OLED panel with a 120 Hz refresh rate. The OLED panel is topped with a layer of optical resin, a glass panel, and a lenticular lens layer. The lenticular lens works with a pair of eye-tracking cameras to render real-time images for each eye that adjust with your physical movements. In a press briefing, an Asus spokesperson said that because the OLED screens claim a low gray-to-gray response time of 0.2 ms, as well as the extremely high contrast that comes with OLED, there's no crosstalk between the left and right eye's image, ensuring more realistic looking content. However, Asus' product pages for the laptops acknowledge that experiences may vary, and some may still suffer from "dizziness or crosstalk due to other reasons, and this varies according to the individual." Asus said it's looking to offer demos to users, which would be worth trying out before committing to this unique feature.

On top of the lenticular lens is a 2D/3D liquid crystal switching layer, which is topped with a glass front panel with an anti-reflective coating. According to Asus, it'll be easy to switch from 2D mode to 3D and back again. When the laptops aren't in 3D mode, their display will appear as a highly specced OLED screen, Asus claimed. The laptops can apply a 3D effect to any game, movie, or content that supports 3D. However, content not designed for 3D display may appear more "stuttery," per a demo The Verge saw. The laptops are primarily for workers working with and creating 3D models and content, such as designers and architects. The two laptops will ship with Spatial Vision Hub software. It includes a Model Viewer, Player for movies and videos, Photo Viewer for transforming side-by-side photos shot with a 180-degree camera into one stereoscopic 3D image, and Connector, a plug-in that Asus' product page says is compatible with "various apps and tools, so you can easily view any project in 3D."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: New York City's education department has banned access to ChatGPT, a chatbot that uses machine learning to craft realistic text, out of concern for "safety and accuracy." As first reported by Chalkbeat New York, the ban will apply to devices and internet networks belonging to the education department. Individual schools can request access to ChatGPT for the purpose of studying AI and technology-related education, according to a department spokesperson.

"Due to concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content, access to ChatGPT is restricted on New York City Public Schools' networks and devices," education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle told Motherboard in a statement. "While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success." According to the Washington Post, some teachers are "in a near-panic" about the technology enabling students to cheat on assignments. "The New York Times recently showed writers and educators samples of ChatGPT's writing side-by-side with writing by human students, and none of them could reliably discern the bot from the real thing," adds Motherboard.

When asked about the ban, ChatGPT told Motherboard: "It is important to consider the potential risks and benefits of using ChatGPT in education, and to carefully weigh the evidence before making a decision. It is also essential to listen to the perspectives and concerns of all stakeholders, including educators, students, and parents, in order to make informed and fair decisions."

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you bought an Apple MacBook with an ill-fated butterfly keyboard and ended up having to replace either individual keycaps or the whole keyboard, you may be eligible to claim part of a $50 million settlement reached after a class-action lawsuit. The law firm handling the settlement has been emailing class members since mid-December but we wanted to highlight that the deadline for making a claim is fast approaching on March 6th, 2023. Claims can be submitted via the keyboardsettlement.com website, which says that the settlement class includes "all persons and entities in the United States" who purchased a butterfly-equipped MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro between 2015 and 2019.

Meta is kicking off the New Year with more privacy fines and corrective orders hitting its business in Europe. The latest swathe of enforcement relates to EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaints over the legal basis it claims to run behavioral ads. From a report: The Facebook owner's lead data protection watchdog in the region, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), announced today that it's adopted final decisions on two of these long-running enquiries -- against Meta owned social networking site, Facebook, and social photo sharing service, Instagram. The DPC's press release today announces financial penalties of ~$223 million for Facebook and ~$191 million for Instagram -- and confirms the European Data Protection Board (EDPB)'s binding decision last month on these complaints that contractual necessity is not an appropriate basis for processing personal data for behavioral ads.

These new sanctions add to a pile of privacy fines for Meta in Europe last year -- including a $281 million penalty for a Facebook data-scraping breach; $429 million for an Instagram violation of children's privacy; $18 million for several historical Facebook data breaches; and a $63.6 million penalty over Facebook cookie consent violations -- making for a total of $792 million in (publicly disclosed) EU data protection and privacy fines handed down to the adtech giant in 2022. But now, in the first few days of 2023, Meta has landed financial penalties worth more than half last year's regional total -- and more sanctions could be coming shortly.

Salesforce said on Wednesday it would lay off about 10% of its employees and close some offices, becoming the latest tech firm to undertake cost cuts amid an economic slowdown. From a report: The company expects the move to lead to about $1.4 billion to $2.1 billion in charges, of which about $800 million to $1 billion will be recorded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. "The environment remains challenging and our customers are taking a more measured approach to their purchasing decisions," co-Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said in a letter to employees. Companies from Meta Platforms to Amazon.com have in the past year taken steps to prepare for a deep downturn as global central banks have aggressively raised interest rates to tame decades-high inflation. Businesses that relied on cloud services during the pandemic are now trying to reduce expenses through job cuts or delaying new projects, which has hurt companies such as Salesforce, which owns office messaging app Slack, and Teams parent Microsoft. "As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we're now facing, and I take responsibility for that," Benioff said.

Coinbase, a publicly traded cryptocurrency trading exchange based in the United States, agreed to pay a $50 million fine after financial regulators found that it let customers open accounts without conducting sufficient background checks, in violation of anti-money-laundering laws. From a report: The settlement with the New York State Department of Financial Services, announced Wednesday, will also require Coinbase to invest $50 million to bolster its compliance program, which is supposed to prevent drug traffickers, sellers of child pornography and other potential lawbreakers from opening accounts with the exchange.

It's the latest hit to the once-highflying global cryptocurrency trading business. Several cryptocurrency firms have filed for bankruptcy over the past year -- most notably FTX, which was the world's second-largest crypto exchange before it collapsed in November. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder, and other top FTX executives now face federal criminal charges. The compliance problems at Coinbase were first detected during a routine examination in 2020 after the exchange secured a license to operate in New York in 2017, regulators said. They found problems with the exchange's anti-money-laundering controls going as far back as 2018.