Wednesday OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced "12 Days of OpenAI," promising that "Each weekday, we will have a livestream with a launch or demo..." And sure enough, today he announced the launch of two things: - "o1, the smartest model in the world. Smarter, faster, and more features (e.g. multimodality) than o1-preview. Live in ChatGPT now, coming to API soon." - "ChatGPT Pro. $200/month. Unlimited usage and even-smarter mode for using o1. More benefits to come!" Altman added this update later: For extra clarity: o1 is available in our plus tier, for $20/month. With the new pro tier ($200/month), it can think even harder for the hardest problems. Most users will be very happy with o1 in the plus tier! VentureBeat points out that subscribers "also gain access to GPT-4o, known for its advanced natural language generation capabilities, and the Advanced Voice feature for speech-based interactions." And even for non-subscribers, ChatGPT can now also analyze images, points out VentureBeat, "a hugely helpful feature upgrade as it enables users to upload photos and have the AI chatbot respond to them, giving them detailed plans on how to build a birdhouse entirely from a single candid photo of one, for one fun example." In another, potentially more serious and impressive example, it is now capable of helping design data centers from sketches... o1 represents a significant evolution in reasoning model capabilities, including better handling of complex tasks, image-based reasoning, and enhanced accuracy. Enterprise and Education users will gain access to the model next week... OpenAI's updates also include safety enhancements, with the o1-preview scoring 84 on a rigorous safety test, compared to 22 for its predecessor... To encourage the use of AI in societal-benefit fields, OpenAI has announced the ChatGPT Pro Grant Program. The initiative will initially award 10 grants to leading medical researchers, providing free access to ChatGPT Pro tools. In a video Altman displays graphs showing o1 dramatically outperforms gpt4o on math questions, on competition coding at CodeForces, and on PhD-level science questions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today a group of German scientists presented data suggesting Earth is absorbing more sunlight than in the past, reports Ars Technica, "largely due to reduced cloud cover." We can measure both the amount of energy the Earth receives from the Sun and how much energy it radiates back into space.... The new paper finds that the energy imbalance set a new high in 2023, with a record amount of energy being absorbed by the ocean/atmosphere system. This wasn't accompanied by a drop in infrared emissions from the Earth, suggesting it wasn't due to greenhouse gases, which trap heat by absorbing this radiation. Instead, it seems to be due to decreased reflection of incoming sunlight by the Earth.... Using two different data sets, the teams identify the areas most effected by this, and they're not at the poles, indicating loss of snow and ice are unlikely to be the cause. Instead, the key contributor appears to be the loss of low-level clouds [particularly over the Atlantic ocean]... The drop in low-level clouds had been averaging about 1.3 percent per decade. 2023 saw a slightly larger drop occur in just one year.... So, what could be causing the clouds to go away? The researchers list three potential factors. One is simply the variability of the climate system, meaning 2023 might have just been an extremely unusual year, and things will revert to trends in the ensuing years. The second is the impact of aerosols, which both we and natural processes emit in copious quantities. These can help seed clouds, so a reduction of aerosols (driven by things like pollution control measures) could potentially account for this effect. The most concerning potential explanation, however, is that there may be a feedback relationship between rising temperatures and low-level clouds. Meaning that, as the Earth warms, the clouds become sparse, enhancing the warming further. That would be bad news for our future climate, because it suggests that the lower range of warming estimates would have to be adjusted upward to account for it. If the decline in reflectivity wasn't just caused by normal variability, the researchers warn, "the 2023 extra heat may be here to stay..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wednesday Cuba's energy grid collapsed, "leaving millions without power," CNN reported, calling it "the latest in a series of failures on an island struggling from creaking infrastructure, natural disasters and economic turmoil." Today Reuters reports: Cuba said it had reconnected its national electrical grid on Thursday, though generation remained well below demand one day after a plant failure knocked out power to millions across the island... Around half of Cuba's power generation facilities are offline for maintenance or broken down. All are decades old and producing well under capacity. As a result, a majority of Cuba's residents suffer hours-long, rolling blackouts on a daily basis even when the grid is functional. Cuba's electrical grid has been on the brink of collapse for years, as fuel shortages, a string of natural disasters and an economic crisis have left the island's government unable to maintain the system's decrepit infrastructure. Dwindling oil imports from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico tipped the system into full crisis this year, leading to several nationwide blackouts that have sparked unrest and increasing anger among the population. The blackouts, together with food, medicine and water shortages, have vastly complicated life on the island and driven a record-breaking exodus of its residents since 2020. Authorities informed Cuba's citizens that scheduled power outages will now resume, reports ABC News. "Cuban authorities said they will continue their current practice of implementing daily, five-hour power outages by block or zone as they have been doing for the past few months."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Rust Foundation is dedicated to ensuring a healthy Rust ecosystem," according to a new announcement today, " which depends on a growing pool of well-trained developers to thrive." The latest SlashData Developer Nation survey found Rust to be the fastest-growing programming language, doubling its users over the past two years. As Rust's adoption continues to accelerate, the demand for a multifaceted ecosystem of quality training will too. Their blog post highlights three examples of the Rust community "creating new pathways for learning Rust" and "addressing the critical need for Rust training in academic settings..." Rust-Edu operates as a non-profit through Portland State University, with funding from Futurewei. Their mission is to "spread Rust use and development through academic curricula and communities throughout the world, making Rust the language of choice for 'systems programming' in its broadest sense through shared efforts of faculty, students and the Rust community." They focus on three main areas: curriculum development, educational tools, and language improvements... teach-rs, pronounced "teachers," is a modular and reusable university course designed for in-person teaching in Rust. Its mission is to introduce Rust in higher education and ensure that more students enter the job market with considerable Rust experience. The teach-rs project provides ready-to-use Rust teaching materials, including slide decks and exercises that can be adapted to various teaching contexts... As an open source permissively licensed project, teach-rs enables educators to share and improve resources, making introducing Rust instruction into their programs more accessible. Many institutions now use teach-rs in their courses, including the Slovak University of Technology, RustIEC (a collaboration between Vrije Universiteit Brussel and KU Leuven), and the University Politehnica of Bucharest. At the time of this writing, teach-rs has nearly 3000 stars on GitHub... Under the guidance of The Rust Foundation's Global Rust Coordinator and Rust Nation UK's organizer Ernest Kissiedu, Mordecai Etukudo (Mart) has developed a guide to help educational institutions adopt Rust in their systems. This resource walks organizations through the entire implementation process, from initial assessment to community engagement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A tsunami warning was issued — and then cancelled about an hour later — for 400 miles of California coastline after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast near California's northern border with Oregon. "About 5 million people were under the warning while it was in effect," reports a San Francisco news site. Phones had sounded with an emergency tone in affected areas, with a warning that "You are in danger. Get away from coastal waters. Move to high ground or inland now." Warning sirens sounded in some areas, and as a precaution San Francisco paused service for its BART trains travelling under the San Francisco Bay. But while tsunami waves were originally predicted to hit San Francisco at 12:10 p.m. — they didn't. New information prompted the cancellation of the tsunami warning. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Solana JavaScript SDK "was temporarily compromised yesterday in a supply chain attack," reports BleepingComputer, "with the library backdoored with malicious code to steal cryptocurrency private keys and drain wallets." Solana offers an SDK called "@solana/web3.js" used by decentralized applications (dApps) to connect and interact with the Solana blockchain. Supply chain security firm Socket reports that Solana's Web3.js library was hijacked to push out two malicious versions to steal private and secret cryptography keys to secure wallets and sign transactions... Solana confirmed the breach, stating that one of their publish-access accounts was compromised, allowing the attackers to publish two malicious versions of the library... Solana is warning developers who suspect they were compromised to immediately upgrade to the latest v1.95.8 release and to rotate any keys, including multisigs, program authorities, and server keypairs... Once the threat actors gain access to these keys, they can load them into their own wallets and remotely drain all stored cryptocurrency and NFTs... Socket says the attack has been traced to the FnvLGtucz4E1ppJHRTev6Qv4X7g8Pw6WPStHCcbAKbfx Solana address, which currently contains 674.86 Solana and varying amounts of the Irish Pepe , Star Atlas, Jupiter, USD Coin, Santa Hat, Pepe on Fire, Bonk, catwifhat, and Genopets Ki tokens. Solscan shows that the estimated value of the stolen cryptocurrency is $184,000 at the time of this writing. For anyone whose wallets were compromised in this supply chain attack, you should immediately transfer any remaining funds to a new wallet and discontinue the use of the old one as the private keys are now compromised. Ars Technica adds that "In social media posts, one person claimed to have lost $20,000 in the hack." The compromised library "receives more than ~350,000 weekly downloads on npm," Socket posted. (Although Solana's statement says the compromised versions "were caught within hours and have since been unpublished."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 years ago his hard drive ended up in a U.K. landfill — with 8,000 bitcoin. It's now worth $800 million... and James Howell wants it back. The Guardian reports that his "bid to become extremely rich reached a judge on Tuesday with a team of lawyers arguing that it was still possible to launch a hunt for his missing hard drive containing the bitcoin." They claimed that rather than searching for a "needle in a haystack", the position of the bitcoin hoard had been narrowed down to a small area and there was a "finely tuned" plan to retrieve it... [Howells] has been asking Newport city council for help in getting the hard drive back, and even said he would share the money with the authority, to no avail... James Goudie KC, representing the council, said Howells had no legal claim to the hard drive. He said: "Anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council's ownership." Goudie said Howells' offer to share some of the bitcoin with Newport council amounted to a bribe. He said: "He is trying to buy something the council is not in a position to sell...." Before the hearing, a spokesperson for Newport council said: "The council has told Mr Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. "Responding to Mr Howells' baseless claims are costing the council and Newport taxpayers time and money which could be better spent on delivering services." Howells was 28 when he lost the hard drive, and has said he may as well keep trying to recover it — because he'll always know that it's out there. Howells' legal teams are "working pro bono," the article notes, "on the basis that they get a share of the bitcoin profits if successful..." And TechSpot points out that "There's also the question of whether the data on the drive would still be accessible after more than a decade of sitting under a pile of rotting garbage. "Howells has a team of data recovery engineers who are also working pro bono..." Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 years ago his hard drive ended up in a U.K. landfill — with 8,000 bitcoin. It's now worth $8 billion... and James Howell wants it back. The Guardian reports that his "bid to become extremely rich reached a judge on Tuesday with a team of lawyers arguing that it was still possible to launch a hunt for his missing hard drive containing the bitcoin." They claimed that rather than searching for a "needle in a haystack", the position of the bitcoin hoard had been narrowed down to a small area and there was a "finely tuned" plan to retrieve it... [Howells] has been asking Newport city council for help in getting the hard drive back, and even said he would share the money with the authority, to no avail... James Goudie KC, representing the council, said Howells had no legal claim to the hard drive. He said: "Anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council's ownership." Goudie said Howells' offer to share some of the bitcoin with Newport council amounted to a bribe. He said: "He is trying to buy something the council is not in a position to sell...." Before the hearing, a spokesperson for Newport council said: "The council has told Mr Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. "Responding to Mr Howells' baseless claims are costing the council and Newport taxpayers time and money which could be better spent on delivering services." Howells was 28 when he lost the hard drive, and has said he may as well keep trying to recover it — because he'll always know that it's out there. Howells' legal teams are "working pro bono," the article notes, "on the basis that they get a share of the bitcoin profits if successful..." And TechSpot points out that "There's also the question of whether the data on the drive would still be accessible after more than a decade of sitting under a pile of rotting garbage. "Howells has a team of data recovery engineers who are also working pro bono..." Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace, a nonpartisan international affairs think tank, points out that when subsea internet cables were cut in November, Europe was more prepared: Where in the past there were no contingency plans for sabotage, there are now more maritime patrols, an attempt to forge deeper intelligence connections, and the beginnings of a new relationship with the private sector... Even before the October 2023 incident, NATO, the EU, and certain European governments began to increase their efforts to boost subsea cable resilience and security. In February 2023, NATO stood up a new Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell in Brussels to convene stakeholders and enhance coordination between the public and private sectors. In July 2023, NATO allies at the Vilnius Summit established a Maritime Center for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure as part of the alliance's Maritime Command in Northwood, UK. In October 2023, after the first incident, NATO defense ministers endorsed a new Digital Ocean Vision, an initiative aimed at improving undersea surveillance. And in February 2024, the European Commission released its first "Recommendation on Secure and Resilient Submarine Cable Infrastructures," encouraging member states to conduct regular stress tests, improve information sharing amongst themselves, and improve cable maintenance and repair capabilities. The article points out that the Chinese ship suspected in the 2023 cable cutting "ignored requests from Finnish and Estonian authorities to halt" and returned to China. But the Chinese ship suspected in November's cable-cutting "remains in international waters in the Kattegat, with naval and coast guard vessels from Denmark, Germany, and Sweden circling close by." Yet "Under international maritime law, these countries' authorities are not allowed to board..." Current provisions of international law are neither formulated to adequately protect subsea data cables from sabotage nor hold perpetrators accountable. This reality should lead the EU, as a body inherently focused on the resilience of international legal regimes, to push for updates that are better suited for the current geopolitical reality... Lawmakers should also explore ways to increase penalties for subsea cable damage, in part to deter acts of sabotage in the first place.... A forthcoming Carnegie Endowment report will detail more in-depth recommendations on how Europe can both protect itself against future subsea cable damage and help expand trusted networks around the world. The article also notes that "Of the hundreds of disruptions to cables that occur each year, the vast majority are caused by accidental human activity, like fishing, or natural events, like earthquakes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters: Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI plans to expand its Memphis, Tennessee, supercomputer to house at least one million graphics processing units (GPUs), the Greater Memphis Chamber said on Wednesday, as xAI races to compete against rivals like OpenAI. The move represents a massive expansion for the supercomputer called Colossus, which currently has 100,000 GPUs to train xAI's chatbot called Grok. As part of the expansion, Nvidia, which supplies the GPUs, and Dell and Super Micro, which have assembled the server racks for the computer, will establish operations in Memphis, the chamber said in a statement. The Greater Memphis chamber (an economic development organization) called it "the largest capital investment in the region's history," even saying that xAI "is setting the stage for Memphis to become the global epicenter of artificial intelligence." ("To facilitate this massive undertaking, the Greater Memphis Chamber established an xAI Special Operations Team... This team provides round-the-clock concierge service to the company.") Reuters calls the supercomputer "a critical component of advancing Musk's AI efforts, as the billionaire has deepened his rivalry against OpenAI..." And the Greater Memphis chamber describes the expansion by Nvidia/Dell/Super Micro as "further solidifying the city's position as the 'Digital Delta'... Memphis has provided the power and velocity necessary for not just xAI to grow and thrive, but making way for other companies as well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Are Primordial Black Holes real...?" asks Universe Today. "If they do exist, a "new paper suggests they may be hiding in places so unlikely that nobody ever thought to look there..." — in planets, in asteroids, and here on earth. Physicists hypothesize that Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) formed in the early Universe from extremely dense pockets of sub-atomic matter that collapsed directly into black holes. They could form part or all of what we call dark matter. However, they remain hypothetical because none have been observed... The authors claim that evidence for PBHs could be found in objects as large as hollowed out planetoids or asteroids and objects as small as rocks here on Earth. "Small primordial black holes could be captured by rocky planets or asteroids, consume their liquid cores from inside and leave hollow structures," the authors write. "Alternatively, a fast black hole can leave a narrow tunnel in a solid object while passing through it." "We could look for such micro-tunnels here on Earth in very old rocks," the authors claim, explaining that the search wouldn't involve specialized, expensive equipment... "The chances of finding these signatures are small, but searching for them would not require much resources and the potential payoff, the first evidence of a primordial black hole, would be immense," said Dejan Stojkovic [the paper's co-author from the State University of New York]. "We have to think outside of the box because what has been done to find primordial black holes previously hasn't worked...." Cosmology is kind of at a standstill while we wrestle with the idea of dark matter. Could PBHs be dark matter? Could they behave like the authors suggest, and be detected in this manner? "The smartest people on the planet have been working on these problems for 80 years and have not solved them yet," Stojkovic said. "We don't need a straightforward extension of the existing models. We probably need a completely new framework altogether."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eli sends us something that's not quite a code sample, despite coming from code. It's not a representative line, because it's many lines. But it certainly is representative.

Here's the end of one of their code files:

}); } } ); }); } ) ); } }); } } ); });

I feel like someone heard that JavaScript could do functional programming and decided to write LISP. That's a lot of nested blocks. I don't know what the code looks like, but also I don't want to know what the code looks like.

Also, as someone who programs with a large font size, this is a special kind of hell for me.

[Advertisement] Picking up NuGet is easy. Getting good at it takes time. Download our guide to learn the best practice of NuGet for the Enterprise.

The Guardian reports: People working in the music sector will lose almost a quarter of their income to artificial intelligence within the next four years, according to the first global economic study examining the impact of the emerging technology on human creativity. Those working in the audiovisual sector will also see their income shrink by more than 20% as the market for generative AI grows from €3bn (A$4.9bn) annually to a predicted €64bn by 2028. The findings were released in Paris on Wednesday by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), representing more than 5 million creators worldwide. The report concluded that while the AI boom will substantially enrich giant tech companies, creators' rights and income streams will be drastically reduced unless policymakers step in... The study concluded that under current regulatory frameworks in most countries, creators stand to lose on two fronts. Unauthorised use of their works by generative AI models will eat into remuneration earned through copyright, while at the same time work opportunities will shrink as AI-generated outputs become more competitive against human-made works. The report predicted that by 2028, exponential growth in generative AI music would account for about 20% of traditional music streaming platforms' revenues, and about 60% of music libraries' revenues. The report warned of revenue "derived directly from the unlicensed reproduction of creators' works, representing a transfer of economic value from creators to AI companies," according to the article. On a hopeful note, it adds that the CISAC's president also applauded Australia and New Zealand for their thoughtful response to the issue. "By setting a gold standard in AI policy, one that protects creators' rights while fostering responsible and innovative technological development, Australia and New Zealand can ensure that AI serves as a tool to enhance human creativity rather than replace it." Thanks to Slashdodt reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bitcoin just broke $100,000 USD for the first time and reached as high as $104k, and is now sitting at $102,857 at the time of this writing. Slashdot was pretty early on Bitcoin.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In March, 2023 the Internet Archive lost in court, with a judge ruling they couldn't scan entire books and then lend them as ebooks. The Internet Archive appealed to a higher court, which also ruled against them in September of 2024. Today, the Internet Archive made an announcement: that "While we are deeply disappointed with the Second Circuit's opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Internet Archive has decided not to pursue Supreme Court review." We will continue to honor the Association of American Publishers agreement to remove books from lending at their member publishers' requests. We thank the many readers, authors and publishers who have stood with us throughout this fight. Together, we will continue to advocate for a future where libraries can purchase, own, lend and preserve digital books.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce Perens wrote the original Open Source definition back in 1997, and then co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond in 1998. But after resigning from the group in 2020, Perens is now diligently developing an alternative he calls "Post Open" to "meet goals that Open Source fails at today" — even providing a way to pay developers for their work. To make it all happen, he envisions software developers owning (and controlling) a not-for-profit corporation developing a body of software called "the Post Open Collection" and collecting its licensing fees to distribute among developers. The hope? To "make it possible for an individual developer to stay at home and code all day, and make their living that way without having to build a company." The not-for-profit entity — besides actually enforcing its licensing — could also: Provide tech support, servicing all Post-Open software through one entity.Improve security by providing developers with cryptographic-hardware-backed authentication guaranteeing secure software chain-of-custody.Handle onerous legal requirements like compliance with the EU Cyber Resilience Act "on behalf of all developers in the Post Open Collection".Compensate documentation writers.Fund lobbying on behalf of developers, along with advocacy for their software's privacy-preserving features. "We've started to build the team," Perens said in a recent interview, announcing weeks ago that attorneys are already discussing the structure of the future organization and its proposed license. But what do you think? Perens has agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers... He's also Slashdot reader #3,872. (And Perens is also an amateur radio operator, currently on the board of M17 — a community of open source developers and radio enthusiasts — and in general support of Open Source and Amateur Radio projects through his non-profit HamOpen.org.) But more importantly, Perens "was the person to announce 'Open Source' to the world," according to his official site. Now's your chance to ask him about his next new big idea... Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment. We'll pick the very best questions — and forward them on to Bruce Perens himself to answer!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's next president "announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator," reports Ars Technica: In a post on X, Isaacman said he was "honored" to receive Trump's nomination. "Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history," Isaacman wrote. "On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun...." "Jared Isaacman will be an outstanding NASA Administrator and leader of the NASA family," said Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator during Trump's first term in the White House. "Jared's vision for pushing boundaries, paired with his proven track record of success in private industry, positions him as an ideal candidate to lead NASA into a bold new era of exploration and discovery. I urge the Senate to swiftly confirm him." Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator during the Obama administration, wrote on X that Isaacman's nomination was "terrific news," adding that "he has the opportunity to build on NASA's amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future." Isaacman, 41, is the founder and CEO of Shift4, a mobile payment processing platform, and co-founded Draken International, which owns a fleet of retired fighter jets to pose as adversaries for military air combat training... Isaacman, an evangelist for the commercial space industry, has criticized some of NASA's decisions on the Artemis program. In several posts on X, he questioned the agency's decision to fund two redundant lunar landers, while not planning for any backup to the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which costs $2.2 billion per copy, not including expenses for ground infrastructure or the Orion spacecraft itself. One of those casualties might be the SLS rocket. The program is managed by NASA, with suppliers spread across the United States and prime contractors working under cost-plus arrangements with the space agency, meaning the government is on the hook to pay for any delays or cost overruns. If confirmed he'll be the 4th NASA administrator who's actually flown in space, according to the article. And according to Wikipedia, Isaacman was the commander of Inspiration4, a private spaceflight using SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience that launched in 2021. The crew returned to Earth on September 18, 2021, after orbiting at 585 km (364 mi) in altitude. The mission was part of a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to which Isaacman pledged to donate $100 million. Thanks to Slashdot reader FallOutBoyTonto for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"$15.8 million every 60 seconds. That's how much US consumers spent in two hours on Monday night," reports CNN, "capping off a five-day spending spree that smashed previous records." U.S. consumers spent a total of $13.3 billion on Cyber Monday, up 7.3% from the previous year, according to Adobe Analytics... Consumers spent a record $41.1 billion across the five days beginning Thanksgiving Day, according to Adobe. "While Cyber Monday remained the season's and year's biggest online shopping day, year-over-year growth was stronger on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday," Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement... The company's data projects that holiday spending from November 1 to December 31 will surpass $240 billion, up 8.4% from the previous year. The record sales on Cyber Monday were boosted by US consumers shopping on their mobile devices, which accounted for $7.6 billion in spending. This year, 57% of online sales came through a mobile device, compared to 33% in 2019, as shopping on mobile phones has surged in popularity... Buy now, pay later" programs also contributed nearly $1 billion in spending on Cyber Monday, a record high. About 75% of these types of transactions occurred through a mobile device. Cyber Monday shopping wasn't just confined to the US, either. Global sales reached $49.7 billion, up 3% from the previous year, according to data from Salesforce. The top-selling items included consumer electronics like the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch OLED, the article points out (adding that "About 78% of all consumer smartphones and 87% of consoles were imported from China in 2023, according to a report from the Consumer Technology Association.") More interesting statistics from CNN: "Discounts on apparel peaked at just over 23% off, while TVs and computers peaked at almost 22% off, according to Adobe. And the discounts might last: Adobe projects discounts of up to 18% off computers through the end of the year... " "For US retail sites, the share of revenue from affiliates and partners like social media influencers was 20.3% on Cyber Monday, up almost 7% from the previous year. " "Additionally, companies employed AI chatbots to assist consumers, like Amazon's Rufus. Traffic to retail sites from chatbots increased by nearly 2,000% on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Have you been to Enron.com lately? "It's the comeback story no one asked for," reports CNN, "the resurrection of a brand so toxic it remains synonymous with corporate fraud more than two decades after it collapsed in bankruptcy. "That's right, folks: Enron is back. But only kind of." TL;DR: A company that makes T-shirts bought the Enron trademark and appears to be trying to sell some merch on behalf of the guy behind the satirical conspiracy theory "Birds Aren't Real...." On Monday, the 23rd anniversary of Enron's filing for bankruptcy, rumors began to spread that the former Texas energy giant had come back from the dead. A sleek new website, enron.com, appeared to show that the company had done some serious soul-searching and, inexplicably, reincorporated under its original brand. As a modern energy company, it would be dedicated to "solving the global energy crisis," its press statement reads. The site is packed with the kind of stock art and benign corporate platitudes that lend it credibility. There's a link to job openings, employee testimonials and even a minute-long video titled "I am Enron," a movie-trailer-style mashup of cityscape time lapses, rockets launching into space, a ballerina twirling on a beach — a mess of imagery and baritone voiceover so trite it's almost believable. But the site and its associated social media accounts are, like Enron's balance sheets, mostly fiction. Unlike the Enron scandal, however, this one appears to be little more than performance art designed to sell branded hoodies. Publicly available documents show that an Akansas-based LLC called The College Company bought the Enron trademark for $275 in 2020... You can tab over to the site's "Company Store" page to browse a selection of Enron-branded hoodies ($118 before tax and shipping), puffer vests ($89), tees ($40) baseball hats ($40), beanies ($30) and water bottles emblazoned with the slogan "you've got great energy." Somewhere on the site CNN spotted a list of "key pillars" which included a commitment to "permissionless innovation," which CNN took to be "a nod that prompted some speculation online that the new 'Enron' would launch some kind of digital token." That phrase has apparently been changed now to "continuous innovation." An Enron-branded X account posted and later deleted a message teasing at a crypto offering, saying "we do not have any token or coin (yet). Stay tuned, we are excited to show you more soon." But sharp-eyed X.com users also found the key context to add: that the Terms of Use at Enron.com declare the site's information "is First Amendment-protected parody, represents performance art, and is for entertainment purposes only." Still, the site includes this testimonial from someone it says is a current employee. "Like many of my peers in the Enron family, I was skeptical at first. "Now, not only do I have complete confidence in the integrity of the company, I also genuinely believe that we are leading the way for a new chapter of American business."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

59-year-old Alex Mashinsky, the founder/former CEO of cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, "pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two counts of fraud," reports Reuters. He'd been indicted in July on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and market manipulation charges, according to the article, and federal prosecutors in Manhattan "said he misled customers of Celsius to persuade them to invest, and artificially inflated the value of his company's proprietary crypto token." On Tuesday, during a hearing before U.S. District Judge John Koeltl, Mashinsky said he pleaded guilty to two out of the seven counts he was initially charged with: commodities fraud, and a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of CEL, Celsius' in-house token. In court, Mashinsky admitted to giving Celsius customers "false comfort" by giving an interview in 2021 in which he said Celsius had received approval from regulators for its "Earn" program, which it had not. That program offered to deploy customers' cryptocurrency assets to yield investment returns. He said he also failed to disclose that he had been selling his holdings of CEL, the platform's in-house token. "I know what I did was wrong, and I want to try to do whatever I can to make it right," Mashinsky said. As part of his plea deal with prosecutors, Mashinsky agreed not to appeal any sentence of 30 years or less — the maximum he faces for the two counts. Koeltl is set to sentence him on April 8, 2025. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said Mashinsky also personally reaped approximately $42 million in proceeds from selling his holdings of the Cel token. "Mashinsky made tens of millions of dollars selling his own CEL at artificially high prices, while his customers were left holding the bag when the company went bankrupt," Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement on Tuesday... Founded in 2017, Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022 after customers rushed to withdraw deposits as crypto prices fell. Many were initially unable to access their funds... Celsius' former chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon, pleaded guilty in September 2023 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors' investigation. "The company exited bankruptcy on Jan. 31, and has pivoted to Bitcoin mining..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.