U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ordering the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments to create a sovereign wealth fund and said it may purchase TikTok. From a report: "We're going to stand this thing up within the next 12 months. We're going to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters. "There'll be a combination of liquid assets, assets that we have in this country as we work to bring them out for the American people." Trump had previously floated such a government investment vehicle as a presidential candidate, saying it could fund "great national endeavors" like infrastructure projects such as highways and airports, manufacturing, and medical research. Details on how exactly the fund would operate and be financed were not immediately available, but Trump previously said it could be funded by "tariffs and other intelligent things." Typically such funds rely on a country's budget surplus to make investments, but the U.S. operates at a deficit.

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AI startup Anthropic has demonstrated a new technique to prevent users from eliciting harmful content from its models, as leading tech groups including Microsoft and Meta race to find ways that protect against dangers posed by the cutting-edge technology. From a report: In a paper released on Monday, the San Francisco-based startup outlined a new system called "constitutional classifiers." It is a model that acts as a protective layer on top of large language models such as the one that powers Anthropic's Claude chatbot, which can monitor both inputs and outputs for harmful content. The development by Anthropic, which is in talks to raise $2 billion at a $60 billion valuation, comes amid growing industry concern over "jailbreaking" -- attempts to manipulate AI models into generating illegal or dangerous information, such as producing instructions to build chemical weapons. Other companies are also racing to deploy measures to protect against the practice, in moves that could help them avoid regulatory scrutiny while convincing businesses to adopt AI models safely. Microsoft introduced "prompt shields" last March, while Meta introduced a prompt guard model in July last year, which researchers swiftly found ways to bypass but have since been fixed.

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Cloudflare, a major web infrastructure company, will now track and verify the authenticity of images across its network through Content Credentials, a digital signature system that documents an image's origin and editing history. The technology, developed by Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative, embeds metadata showing who created an image, when it was taken, and any subsequent modifications - including those made by AI tools. Major news organizations including the BBC, Wall Street Journal and New York Times have already adopted the system. The feature is available immediately through a single toggle in Cloudflare Images settings. Users can verify an image's authenticity through Adobe's web tool or Chrome extension.

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The exponential rise in microplastic pollution over the past 50 years may be reflected in increasing contamination in human brains, according to a new study. From a report: It found a rising trend in micro- and nanoplastics in brain tissue from dozens of postmortems carried out between 1997 and 2024. The researchers also found the tiny particles in liver and kidney samples. The human body is widely contaminated by microplastics. They have also been found in blood, semen, breast milk, placentas and bone marrow. The impact on human health is largely unknown, but they have been linked to strokes and heart attacks. The scientists also found that the concentration of microplastics was about six times higher in brain samples from people who had dementia. However, the damage dementia causes in the brain would be expected to increase concentrations, the researchers said, meaning no causal link should be assumed. "Given the exponentially rising environmental presence of micro- and nanoplastics, this data compels a much larger effort to understand whether they have a role in neurological disorders or other human health effects," said the researchers, who were led by Prof Matthew Campen at the University of New Mexico in the US.

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OpenAI has filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark hardware products under its brand name, signaling potential expansion into consumer devices. The filing covers AI-assisted headsets, smart wearables and humanoid robots with communication capabilities. CEO Sam Altman told The Elect on Sunday that OpenAI plans to develop AI hardware through multiple partnerships, though he estimated prototypes would take "several years" to complete.

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U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren has introduced a bill that would allow courts to block access to foreign websites primarily engaged in copyright infringement. The Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act would enable rightsholders to obtain injunctions requiring large Internet service providers and DNS resolvers to block access to pirate sites. The bill marks a shift from previous site-blocking proposals, notably including DNS providers like Google and Cloudflare with annual revenues above $100 million. Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin backed the measure, while consumer group Public Knowledge criticized it as "censorious." The legislation requires court review and due process before any blocking orders can be issued. Sites would have 30 days to contest preliminary orders.

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The Beatles' final song "Now and Then," featuring John Lennon's AI-restored vocals from a 1970s demo, has won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr completed the track in 2023 using machine learning to isolate Lennon's voice from the original piano recording.

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Meta's investment in virtual and augmented reality is set to exceed $100 billion this year as CEO Mark Zuckerberg declares 2025 a "defining year" for its smart glasses ambitions. The company invested $19.9 billion in its Reality Labs division last year, according to its annual report, bringing total spending on VR and AR development to over $80 billion since 2014. The unit, which develops Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Quest VR headsets, sold 1 million pairs of glasses in 2024 but continues to post losses, according to Financial Times.

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The blog OMG Ubuntu reports: Ubuntu's key developers have agreed to switch to Matrix as the primary platform for real-time development communications involving the distro. From March, Matrix will replace IRC as the place where critical Ubuntu development conversations, requests, meetings, and other vital chatter must take place... Only the current #ubuntu-devel and #ubuntu-release Libera IRC channels are moving to Matrix, but other Ubuntu development-related channels can choose to move — officially, given some projects were using Matrix over IRC already. As a result, any major requests to/of the key Ubuntu development teams with privileged access can only be actioned if requests are made on Matrix. Canonical-employed Ubuntu developers will be expected to be present on Matrix during working hours... The aim is to streamline organisation, speed up decision making, ensure key developers are reliably reachable, and avoid discussions and conversations from fragmenting across multiple platforms... It's hoped that in picking one platform as the 'chosen one' the split in where the distro's development discourse takes place can be reduced and greater transparency in how and when decisions are made restored. IRC remains popular with many Ubuntu developers but its old-school, lo-fi nature is said to be off-putting to newer contributors. They're used to richer real-time chat platforms with more features (like discussion history, search, offline messaging, etc). It's felt this is why many newer developers employed by Canonical prefer to discuss and message through the company's internal Mattermost instance — which isn't publicly accessible. Many Ubuntu teams, flavours, and community chats already take place on Matrix... "End-users aren't directly affected, of course," they point out. But an earlier post on the same blog notes that Matrix "is increasingly ubiquitous in open-source circles. GNOME uses it, KDE embraces it, Linux Mint migrated last year, Mozilla a few years before, and it's already widely used by Ubuntu community members and developers." IRC remains unmatched in many areas but is, rightly or wrongly, viewed as an antiquated communication platform. IRC clients aren't pretty or plentiful, the syntax is obtuse, and support for 'modern' comforts like media sending, read receipts, etc., is lacking.To newer, younger contributors IRC could feel ancient or cumbersome to learn. Though many of IRC's real and perceived shortcomings are surmountable with workarounds, clients, bots, scripts, and so on, support for those varies between channels, clients, servers, and user configurations. Unlike IRC, which is a centralised protocol relying on individual servers, Matrix is federated. It lets users on different servers to communicate without friction. Plus, Matrix features encryption, message history, media support, and so, meeting modern expectations.

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To capitalize on the AI boom, many crypto miners "have begun to repurpose parts of their operations into data centers," reports Reuters, "given they already have most of the infrastructure" (including landing and "significant" power resources...) Toronto-based bitcoin miner Bitfarms has enlisted two consultants to explore how it can transform some of its facilities to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence data centers, it said on Friday... Earlier this month, Riot Platforms launched a review of the potential AI and computing uses for parts of its facility in Navarro County, Texas.

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Android and Google Play have billions of users, Google wrote in its security blog this week. "However, like any flourishing ecosystem, it also attracts its share of bad actors... That's why every year, we continue to invest in more ways to protect our community." Google's tactics include industry-wide alliances, stronger privacy policies, and "AI-powered threat detection." "As a result, we prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish harmful apps. " To keep out bad actors, we have always used a combination of human security experts and the latest threat-detection technology. In 2024, we used Google's advanced AI to improve our systems' ability to proactively identify malware, enabling us to detect and block bad apps more effectively. It also helps us streamline review processes for developers with a proven track record of policy compliance. Today, over 92% of our human reviews for harmful apps are AI-assisted, allowing us to take quicker and more accurate action to help prevent harmful apps from becoming available on Google Play. That's enabled us to stop more bad apps than ever from reaching users through the Play Store, protecting users from harmful or malicious apps before they can cause any damage. Starting in 2024 Google also "required apps to be more transparent about how they handle user information by launching new developer requirements and a new 'Data deletion' option for apps that support user accounts and data collection.... We're also constantly working to improve the safety of apps on Play at scale, such as with the Google Play SDK Index. This tool offers insights and data to help developers make more informed decisions about the safety of an SDK." And once an app is installed, "Google Play Protect, Android's built-in security protection, helps to shield their Android device by continuously scanning for malicious app behavior." Google Play Protect automatically scans every app on Android devices with Google Play Services, no matter the download source. This built-in protection, enabled by default, provides crucial security against malware and unwanted software. Google Play Protect scans more than 200 billion apps daily and performs real-time scanning at the code-level on novel apps to combat emerging and hidden threats, like polymorphic malware. In 2024, Google Play Protect's real-time scanning identified more than 13 million new malicious apps from outside Google Play [based on Google Play Protect 2024 internal data]... According to our research, more than 95 percent of app installations from major malware families that exploit sensitive permissions highly correlated to financial fraud came from Internet-sideloading sources like web browsers, messaging apps, or file managers. To help users stay protected when browsing the web, Chrome will now display a reminder notification to re-enable Google Play Protect if it has been turned off... Scammers may manipulate users into disabling Play Protect during calls to download malicious Internet-sideloaded apps. To prevent this, the Play Protect app scanning toggle is now temporarily disabled during phone or video calls... Google Play Protect's enhanced fraud protection pilot analyzes and automatically blocks the installation of apps that may use sensitive permissions frequently abused for financial fraud when the user attempts to install the app from an Internet-sideloading source (web browsers, messaging apps, or file managers). Building on the success of our initial pilot in partnership with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA), additional enhanced fraud protection pilots are now active in nine regions — Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam. In 2024, Google Play Protect's enhanced fraud protection pilots have shielded 10 million devices from over 36 million risky installation attempts, encompassing over 200,000 unique apps.

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Spirit Aerosystems builds aircraft components, including fuselages and flight deck sections for Boeing, according to Wikipedia. But now Boeing is set to acquire Spirit AeroSystems. The aviation blog called Aviation Source News says the price tag was $4.7 billion, and opines that Boeing's move signals "a renewed focus on quality and supply chain stability" as Boeing "addresses lingering concerns surrounding its 737 program." Spirit's recent struggles with quality control and production delays have had a fallout effect for Boeing... By integrating Spirit's operations, Boeing can implement more stringent oversight and ensure consistent manufacturing processes. This move is a direct response to past quality lapses that have plagued the company and damaged its reputation. Beyond quality control, the acquisition also offers Boeing greater control over its supply chain. By bringing a key supplier in-house, Boeing can streamline production, improve coordination, and reduce the risk of future disruptions... Spirit AeroSystems also supplies parts to Airbus, Boeing's main competitor. To address this, a separate agreement is being negotiated for Airbus to acquire Spirit's Airbus-related business. This strategic move ensures that Airbus maintains control over its own supply chain and prevents Boeing from gaining undue influence over its competitor's production. Meanwhile, the vice president leading Boeing's Starliner spacecraft unit "has left his role in the program and been replaced by the company's International Space Station program manager, John Mulholland," Reuters reports, citing a Boeing spokesperson. In its first test mission last summer flying astronauts, Starliner was forced by NASA to leave its crew aboard the ISS and return empty in September over problems with its propulsion system. A panel of senior NASA officials in August had voted to have a Crew Dragon capsule from Elon Musk's SpaceX bring them back instead, deeming Starliner too risky for the astronauts. Paul Hill, a veteran NASA flight director and member of the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said during a quarterly panel meeting on Thursday that NASA and Boeing continue to investigate Starliner's propulsion system. A Boeing spokesperson said on Thursday that the company and NASA have not yet determined what Starliner's next mission will look like, such as whether it will need to repeat its crewed flight test before receiving NASA certification for routine flights.

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Just three hours ago, OpenAI made a surprise announcement to their 3.9 million followers on X.com. "Live from Tokyo," they'd be livestreaming... something. Their description of the event was just two words. "Deep Research" UPDATE: The stream has begun, and it's about OpenAI's next "agent-ic offering". ("OpenAI cares about agents because we believe they're going to transform knowlege work...") "We're introducing a capability called Deep Research... a model that does multi-step research. It discovers content, it synthesizes content, and it reasons about this content." It even asks "clarifying" questions to your prompt to make sure its multi-step research stays on track. Deep Research will be launching in ChatGPT Pro later today, rolling out into other OpenAI products... And OpenAI's site now has an "Introducing Deep Research" page. Its official description? "An agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks for you. Available to Pro users today, Plus and Team next." Before the livestream began, X.com users shared their reactions to the coming announcement: "It's like DeepSeek, but cleaner" "Deep do do if things don't work out" "Live from Tokyo? Hope this research includes the secret to waking up early!" "Stop trying, we don't trust u" But one X.com user had presciently pointed out OpenAI has used the phrase "deep research" before. In July of 2024, Reuters reported on internal documentation (confirmed with "a person familiar with the matter") code-named "Strawberry" which suggested OpenAI was working on "human-like reasoning skills." How Strawberry works is a tightly kept secret even within OpenAI, the person said. The document describes a project that uses Strawberry models with the aim of enabling the company's AI to not just generate answers to queries but to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform what OpenAI terms "deep research," according to the source. This is something that has eluded AI models to date, according to interviews with more than a dozen AI researchers. Asked about Strawberry and the details reported in this story, an OpenAI company spokesperson said in a statement: "We want our AI models to see and understand the world more like we do. Continuous research into new AI capabilities is a common practice in the industry, with a shared belief that these systems will improve in reasoning over time." The spokesperson did not directly address questions about Strawberry. The Strawberry project was formerly known as Q*, which Reuters reported last year was already seen inside the company as a breakthrough... OpenAI hopes the innovation will improve its AI models' reasoning capabilities dramatically, the person familiar with it said, adding that Strawberry involves a specialized way of processing an AI model after it has been pre-trained on very large datasets. Researchers Reuters interviewed say that reasoning is key to AI achieving human or super-human-level intelligence... OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that in AI "the most important areas of progress will be around reasoning ability.

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An anonymous reader shared this post from the blog OMG Ubuntu Want to find out if the text you're reading online was written by an real human or spat out by a large language model trying to sound like one? Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector Firefox add-on may help give you an indication. Similar to online AI detector tools, the add-on can analyse text (of 32 words or more) to identify patterns, traits, and tells common in AI generated or manipulated text. It uses Mozilla's proprietary ApolloDFT engine and a set of open-source detection models. But unlike some tools, Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector browser extension is free to use, does not require a signup, nor an app download. "After installing the extension, it is simple to highlight any text online and request an instant analysis. Our Detector will tell you right away if the words are likely to be written by a human or if they show AI patterns," Mozilla says. Fakespot, acquired by Mozilla in 2023, is best known for its fake product review detection tool which grades user-submitted reviews left on online shopping sites. Mozilla is now expanding the use of Fakespot's AI tech to cover other kinds of online content. At present, Mozilla's Fakespot Deepfake Detector only works with highlighted text on websites but the company says it image and video analysis is planned for the future. The Fakespot web site will also analyze the reviews on any product-listing pages if you paste in its URL.

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"Stakeholders must be included" throughout an agile project "to ensure the evolving deliverables meet their expectations," according to an article this week in Communications of the ACM. But long-time Slashdot reader theodp complains it's a "gushing how-to-make-Agile-even-better opinion piece." Like other pieces by Agile advocates, it's long on accolades for Agile, but short on hard evidence justifying why exactly Agile project management "has emerged as a critical component for firms looking to improve project delivery speed and flexibility" and the use of Agile approaches is being expanded across other departments beyond software development. Indeed, among the three examples of success offered in the piece to "highlight the effectiveness of agile methods in navigating complex stakeholder dynamics and achieving project success" is Atlassian's use of agile practices to market and develop its products, many of which are coincidentally designed to support Agile practices and teams (including Jira). How meta. Citing "recent studies," the piece concludes its call for stakeholder engagement by noting that "59% of organizations measure Agile success by customer or user satisfaction." But that is one of those metrics that can create perverse incentives. Empirical studies of user satisfaction and engagement have been published since the 1970's, and sadly one of the cruel lessons learned from them is that the easiest path to having satisfied users is to avoid working on difficult problems. Keep that in mind when you ponder why difficult user stories seem to languish forever in the Kanban and Scrum Board "Ice Box" column, while the "Complete" column is filled with low-hanging fruit. Sometimes success does come easy! So, are you in the Agile-is-Heaven or Agile-is-Hell camp?

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Tom's Hardware reports: Facebook's heavy-handed censorship of Linux groups and topics was "in error," the social media juggernaut has admitted. Responding to reports earlier this week, sparked by the curious censorship of the eminently wholesome DistroWatch, Facebook contacted PCMag to say that it had made a mistake and that the underlying issue had been rectified. "This enforcement was in error and has since been addressed. Discussions of Linux are allowed on our services," said a Meta rep to PCMag. That is the full extent of the statement reproduced by the source... Copenhagen-hosted DistroWatch says it has appealed against the Community Standards-triggered ban shortly after it noticed it was in effect (January 19). PCMag received the Facebook admission of error on January 28. The latest statement from DistroWatch, which now prefers posting on Mastodon, indicates that Facebook has lifted the DistroWatch links ban. More details from PCMag: Meta didn't say what caused the crackdown in the first place. But the company has been revamping some of its content moderation and plans to replace its fact-checking methodology with a user-driven Community Notes, similar to X. "We're also going to change how we enforce our policies to reduce the kind of mistakes that account for the vast majority of the censorship on our platforms," the company said earlier this month, in another irony. "Up until now, we have been using automated systems to scan for all policy violations, but this has resulted in too many mistakes and too much content being censored that shouldn't have been," Meta added in the same post.

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An aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy tested "vastly increased" levels of internet connectivity, reports the defense-news web site TWZ, callling it "a game-changer for what a ship, and its sailors, can do while at sea." The F-35 Joint Strike Fighters assigned to the carrier offer a case in point for what more shipboard bandwidth — provided by commercial providers like Starlink and OneWeb — can mean at the tactical level. Jets with the embarked Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 took on critical mission data file updates in record time last fall due to the carrier's internet innovations, a capability that is slated to expand across the fleet. "This file offers intelligence updates and design enhancements that enable pilots to identify and counter threats in specific operational environments," the Navy said in an October release announcing the feat. "The update incorporated more than 100 intelligence changes and multiple design improvements, significantly enhancing the aircraft's survivability and lethality...." [Capt. Kevin White, then the Lincoln's combat systems officer] noted how the F-35 "eats and breathes data daily," and it has to be shared with commands ashore. The connectivity innovations he's pioneered will enable such data transfers, which will only grow more complex over time. "If you can't get the data onboard, you're probably going to be at a loss," White said. "So large file transfer capability increases combat readiness...." When the system was on, it provided not only mission benefits, but benefits to the hard-working Lincoln crew as well, which was at sea for 107 days at one point with no port calls [Capt. Pete "Repete" Riebe, told WEST conference attendees]... White said the average age of an embarked Lincoln sailor was 20.8, and Riebe noted that to attract young people into service, the Navy needs to recognize the innate connection they have to their devices. "The next generation of sailors grew up with a cell phone in their hand, and they are uncomfortable without it," Riebe said. "I don't necessarily like that, but that's reality, and if we want to compete for the best folks coming into the Navy, we need to offer them bandwidth at sea." Having better connectivity also helped with the ship's administrative functions, Riebe said, making medical, dental and other work far easier than they have been in the past... A sailor who can FaceTime with his family back home carries less non-Navy stress with them as they focus on the life-or-death duties at hand, White said... This beefed-up bandwidth allowed 38 sailors to witness the birth of their child, while others were able to watch their kids' sporting events, White said. Several crew members pursued doctorate and master's degrees while deployed due to better internet, while others were able to deal with personal or legal issues they had left behind back home. One officer was able to commission his wife remotely from the ship... On the operational side, from "the most desolate waters," Lincoln used its bandwidth to connect with a command in Norfolk, which undertook the ship's annual cybersecurity scans "from halfway around the world," White said... Taxpayer dollars can also be saved if a ship isn't paying for WiFi access while in port, White noted, and the crew was able to start getting to know Italian allies online before an exercise, enhancing the personal aspects of such partnerships. More bandwidth also means more onboard training, meaning some sailors who don't have to leave to go to the school house, and sailors were able to get answers to maintenance questions from ashore commands faster as well. "Just by being able to have more reliable access to support resources, we definitely become more effective at maintenance," White said. Every day the aircraft carrier averaged four to eight terabytes of transferred data, according to the article (with a team of two full-time system administrators managing 7,000 IP addresses), and ultimately saw 780 terabytes of data transferred over five-and-a-half months. The article notes it's part of the Navy's larger "Sailor Edge Afloat and Ashore" (SEA2) program to provide all its warships with high-bandwidth connectivity around the world. The program "involves moving some communications aspects away from proprietary Defense Department satellites, while leaning on commercial satellite constellations and even cellular providers to keep ships more connected at sea for both personal and tactical uses." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

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Honda calls it their "second founding," as the company "continues to target 100% electric vehicle sales by 2040, and to have 'zero environmental impact' by 2050," writes Green Car Reports. "It's previously projected 40% EV sales in North America by 2030... " Half of the Honda Accords sold in America are already electric, — but Honda "has admitted that it's hard to predict the trajectory of where the mix will be on the way to fully electric." So... To reconcile all this, it's prepared by committing to a new template for making both EVs and gasoline models, all on the same production line. This sea change in how it makes vehicles could keep its oldest U.S. assembly plant, its Marysville, Ohio, facility that opened in 1982, humming at capacity, no matter what the market presents. As Honda confirmed last April, Marysville will truly get the automaker to the point of EV mass production in North America, with a big asterisk. It has the capability to make hundreds of EVs per day, or many hundreds of gasoline models — depending on demand. Marysville is one of four facilities set to make up what Honda is calling its Ohio EV Hub — including the Anna Engine Plant and East Liberty Auto Plant, all within 50 miles of each other, and a joint-venture battery plant between Honda and LG Energy solution in nearby Jeffersonville, Ohio. Battery plant aside, Honda says it encompasses more than a $1 billion investment in the three facilities, in redesigning the manufacturing process around being able to make ICE, hybrid, and EV models all on the same production line. The investment in the Ohio facilities marks the global debut of changes in the way it builds vehicles, with expertise set to be shared across North America. And, according to Honda, it's aiming to set a global standard for Honda EV production. The article explains that Honda "created a series of sub-assembly lines that could handle all the differences in the way an EV is assembled versus the way a gasoline or hybrid vehicle is assembled." And CNBC reports that Honda's Ohio project includes "several new manufacturing processes and techniques to lower emissions and waste, including using a special form of structural aluminum for the EV battery packs that can be recycled and reused." Bob Schwyn, senior vice president of Honda Development and Manufacturing of America, describes it as part of Honda's "strategies to recapture our products at end-of-life and then recycle or reuse 100% of the materials, especially finite materials for EV batteries, to essentially make new Hondas out of old Hondas."

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"iPhone devices are now eligible to test SpaceX-owned Starlink's direct-to-cell capability," Reuters reported this week, citing an announcement from T-Mobile: T-Mobile and Elon Musk's SpaceX are currently testing the Starlink cell network on a trial basis after receiving approval from the Federal Communications Commission in November last year. The trial offers 'text via satellite', while voice and data features will be added in the future, according to the T-Mobile website. T-Mobile initially only listed a few Android smartphones as eligible devices to test the network, but has now added iPhone devices with the latest iOS 18.3 software update. The next day stock prices fell for several direct-to-smartphone satellite companies, reports SpaceNews: Shares in Globalstar, which enables connectivity beyond the reach of cellular towers on the latest iPhones via a far-reaching partnership with Apple, closed down nearly 18% the following day. Constellation developer AST SpaceMobile slipped 12%. Canada's MDA, which is building at least 17 satellites for Globalstar after Apple agreed to cover most of the costs to replenish the constellation, also saw its shares fall more than 9%... "Combined, today's price action in Globalstar and satellite manufacturer MDA suggest a real investor fear that SpaceX could disintermediate the Apple-Globalstar partnership," said Adam Rhodes, a senior telecoms analyst at Octus. "However, it appears to us that there is room for both services. Based on the information we have seen, we do not anticipate that Apple views the T-Mobile-Starlink service as a replacement for the Globalstar MSS network, but rather it is choosing to enable the added feature on its T-Mobile phones...." B. Riley analyst Mike Crawford noted that Apple's two binding contracts with Globalstar extend well into the next decade, ensuring both capital expenditure (capex) and recurring service revenues. Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

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The photography blog PetaPixel once interviewed the photographer who took one of the most famous "Tank Man" photos showing a tank-defying protester during 1989's Tiananmen Square protests. But this week PetaPixel reported... A Reddit user discovered that the new Chinese LLM chatbot DeepSeek refuses to answer questions about the famous Tank Man photograph taken in Tiananmen Square in 1989. PetaPixel confirmed that DeepSeek does censor the topic. When a user types in the question, "What famous picture has a man with grocery bags in front of tanks?" The app begins to answer the questions but then cuts itself off. DeepSeek starts writing: "The famous picture you're referring to is known as "Tank Man" or "The Unknown Rebel." It was taken on June 5, 1989, during the Tiananmen..." before a message abruptly appears reading "Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else." Bloomberg has more details: Like all other Chinese AI models, DeepSeek self-censors on topics deemed sensitive in China. It deflects queries about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests or geopolitically fraught questions such as the possibility of China invading Taiwan. In tests, the DeepSeek bot is capable of giving detailed responses about political figures like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but declines to do so about Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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