Tether Buys $200 Million Majority Stake In Brain-Computer Interface Company

Crypto company Tether announced Monday that it has invested $200 million to acquire a majority stake in brain-computer interface company Blackrock Neurotech via its venture capital division Tether Evo. [The firm is not related to the asset management giant BlackRock.] CoinDesk reports: Blackrock Neurotech develops medical devices that are powered by brain signals and aims to help people impacted by paralysis and neurological disorders. The investment will fund the roll-out and commercialization of the medical devices and also for research and development purposes, the press release said. Tether is the company behind USDT, the largest stablecoin with a market cap of $110 billion. Recently, Tether established four divisions to expand beyond stablecoin issuance. “Tether has long believed in nurturing emerging technologies that have transformative capabilities, and the Brain-Computer-Interfaces of Blackrock Neurotech have the potential to open new realms of communication, rehabilitation, and cognitive enhancement,” Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, said in a statement.

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The EU Will Force Apple To Open Up iPadOS

As reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple’s iPadOS will need to abide by EU’s DMA rules, as it is now designated as a gatekeeper alongside the Safari web browser, iOS operating system and the App Store. “Apple now has six months to ensure full compliance of iPadOS with the DMA obligations,” reads the EU’s blog post about the change. Engadget reports: What does Apple have to do to ensure iPadOS compliance? According to the DMA, gatekeepers are prohibited from favoring their own services over rivals and from locking users into the ecosystem. The software must also allow third parties to interoperate with internal services, which is why third-party app stores are becoming a thing on iPhones in Europe. The iPad, presumably, will soon follow suit. In other words, the DMA is lobbing some serious stink bombs into Apple’s walled garden. In a statement published by Forbes, Apple said it “will continue to constructively engage with the European Commission” to ensure its designated services comply with the DMA, including iPadOS. “iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers,” wrote Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy at the European Commission. “Today’s decision will ensure that fairness and contestability are preserved also on this platform.”

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A Coal Billionaire is Building the World’s Biggest Clean Energy Plant – Five Times the Size of Paris

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:

Five times the size of Paris. Visible from space. The world’s biggest energy plant. Enough electricity to power Switzerland. The scale of the project transforming swathes of barren salt desert on the edge of western India into one of the most important sources of clean energy anywhere on the planet is so overwhelming that the man in charge can’t keep up. “I don’t even do the math any more,” Sagar Adani told CNN in an interview last week.

Adani is executive director of Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL). He’s also the nephew of Gautam Adani, Asia’s second richest man, whose $100 billion fortune stems from the Adani Group, India’s biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the dirty fuel. Founded in 1988, the conglomerate has businesses in fields ranging from ports and thermal power plants to media and cements. Its clean energy unit AGEL is building the sprawling solar and wind power plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat at a cost of about $20 billion.

It will be the world’s biggest renewable park when it is finished in about five years, and should generate enough clean electricity to power 16 million Indian homes… [T]he park will cover more than 200 square miles and be the planet’s largest power plant regardless of the energy source, AGEL said.

CNN adds that the company “plans to invest $100 billion into energy transition over the next decade, with 70% of the investments ear-marked for clean energy.”

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Bezos, Other Amazon Execs Used Signal – a Problem for FTC Investigators

Pursuing an unfair business practices case against Amazon, America’s Federal Trade Commission has now “accused” Amazon of using Signal, reports the Seattle Times:

The newspaper notes that the app “can be set to automatically delete messages, to hide information related to the FTC’s ongoing antitrust investigation into the company.”

In a court filing this week, the FTC moved to “compel” Amazon to share more information about its policies and instructions related to using the Signal app… The FTC accused Amazon executives of manually turning on the feature to delete messages in Signal even after the company learned that the FTC was investigating and had told Amazon to keep documents, emails and other messages.

Many of Amazon’s senior leaders used Signal, according to the FTC, including former CEO and current chair Jeff Bezos, CEO Andy Jassy, and general counsel David Zapolsky, as well as Jeff Wilke, former head of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business, and Dave Clark, former worldwide operations chief. “Amazon is a company that tightly controls what its employees put into writing,” FTC attorneys said in a court filing Thursday. “But Amazon’s senior leadership also used another channel for internal communications and avoided the need to talk carefully by destroying the records of their messages….”

In the court filing Thursday, the FTC asked Amazon to provide two troves of documents related to its use of Signal: Amazon’s document preservation notices and its instructions about the use of “ephemeral messaging applications, including Signal.” The FTC said Amazon waited for more than a year after it learned of the investigation to instruct its employees to preserve Signal messages. “It is highly likely that relevant information has been destroyed as a result of Amazon’s actions and inactions,” the FTC wrote in court records.

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America’s Commerce Department is Reviewing China’s Use of RISC-V Chips

An anonymous reader shared a report this week from Reuters:

The U.S. Department of Commerce is reviewing the national security implications of China’s work in open-source RISC-V chip technology, according to a letter sent to U.S. lawmakers…

The technology is being used by major Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba Group Holding and has become a new front in the strategic competition over advanced chip technology between the U.S. and China. In November, 18 U.S. lawmakers from both houses of Congress pressed the Biden administration for its plans to prevent China “from achieving dominance in … RISC-V technology and leveraging that dominance at the expense of U.S. national and economic security.”

In a letter last week to the lawmakers that was seen by Reuters on Tuesday, the Commerce Department said it is “working to review potential risks and assess whether there are appropriate actions under Commerce authorities that could effectively address any potential concerns.”

But the Commerce Department also noted that it would need to tread carefully to avoid harming U.S. companies that are part of international groups working on RISC-V technology.

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Cisco Joins Microsoft, IBM in Vatican Pledge For Ethical AI Use and Development

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:

Tech giant Cisco Systems on Wednesday joined Microsoft and IBM in signing onto a Vatican-sponsored pledge to ensure artificial intelligence is developed and used ethically and to benefit the common good… The pledge outlines key pillars of ethical and responsible use of AI. It emphasizes that AI systems must be designed, used and regulated to serve and protect the dignity of all human beings, without discrimination, and their environments. It highlights principles of transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality and security as necessary to guide all AI developments.

The document was unveiled and signed at a Vatican conference on Feb. 28, 2020… Pope Francis has called for an international treaty to ensure AI is developed and used ethically, devoting his annual peace message this year to the topic.

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Russia Vetoes U.N. Resolution On Nuclear Weapons In Space

This week Russia vetoed a UN resolution that proposed banning nuclear weapons in space, CNN reports.

But it all happened “amid U.S. intelligence-backed concerns that Moscow is trying to develop a nuclear device capable of destroying satellites.”

In February, President Joe Biden confirmed the US has intelligence that Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satellite capability. Three sources familiar with the intelligence subsequently told CNN the weapon could destroy satellites by creating a massive energy wave when detonated…

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Wednesday’s vote “marks a real missed opportunity to rebuild much-needed trust in existing arms control obligations.” A US and Japan-drafted resolution had received cross-regional support from more than 60 member states. It intended to strengthen and uphold the global non-proliferation regime, including in outer space, and reaffirm the shared goal of maintaining outer space for peaceful purposes. It also called on UN member states not to develop nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction designed to be placed in Earth’s orbit….

Experts say this kind of weapon could have the potential to wipe out mega constellations of small satellites, like SpaceX’s Starlink, which has been successfully used by Ukraine to counter Russian troops. This would almost certainly be “a last-ditch weapon” for Russia, the US official and other sources said — because it would do the same damage to whatever Russian satellites were also in the area.

The article notes that in March Russian President Vladimir Putin “told officials that space projects, including the setup of a nuclear power unit in space, should be a priority and receive proper financing.”

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

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Apple ID Lock-Out Affects Macs, iPhones, iPads, and iCloud Services

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Times of India:

Several Apple customers were inexplicably locked out of their Apple ID accounts Friday evening in a major service disruption, forcing them to reset their passwords across all devices and services. According to user reports on social media, the widespread outage began around 8 p.m. ET. People complained that they were abruptly signed out of their Apple IDs on Macs, iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices.

When attempting to sign back in with their existing passwords, they received an error message preventing access… To regain access, users had to go through Apple’s account recovery process to reset their Apple ID passwords. However, many reported difficulties even completing the reset process initially due to high demand…

The outage affected iCloud services like iCloud Drive, iMessage, FaceTime, and the App Store. Third-party apps and services that integrate with Apple ID sign-in were also disrupted for those impacted.

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Court Upholds New York Law That Says ISPs Must Offer $15 Broadband

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned a prior district court decision, lifting the injunction that blocked New York’s law mandating that ISPs offer $15 broadband plans to low-income families. Ars Technica reports: The ruling (PDF) is a loss for six trade groups that represent ISPs, although it isn’t clear right now whether the law will be enforced. For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits, the state law requires ISPs to offer “broadband at no more than $15 per month for service of 25Mbps, or $20 per month for high-speed service of 200Mbps,” the ruling noted. The law allows for price increases every few years and makes exemptions available to ISPs with fewer than 20,000 customers.

“First, the ABA is not field-preempted by the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996), because the Act does not establish a framework of rate regulation that is sufficiently comprehensive to imply that Congress intended to exclude the states from entering the field,” a panel of appeals court judges stated in a 2-1 opinion. Trade groups claimed the state law is preempted by former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s repeal of net neutrality rules. Pai’s repeal placed ISPs under the more forgiving Title I regulatory framework instead of the common-carrier framework in Title II of the Communications Act.

2nd Circuit judges did not find this argument convincing: “Second, the ABA is not conflict-preempted by the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 order classifying broadband as an information service. That order stripped the agency of its authority to regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet, and a federal agency cannot exclude states from regulating in an area where the agency itself lacks regulatory authority. Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and VACATE the permanent injunction.”

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Xbox Console Sales Are Tanking As Microsoft Brings Games To PS5

In its third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, Microsoft reported a 30% drop in Xbox console sales, after reporting a 30% drop last April. “It blamed the nosedive on a ‘lower volume of consoles sold’ during the start of 2024,” reports Kotaku. From the report: In February, Grand Theft Auto VI parent company Take-Two claimed in a presentation to investors that there were roughly 77 million “gen 9” consoles in people’s homes. It didn’t take fans long to do the math and speculate that Microsoft had only sold around 25 million Xbox Series X/S consoles to-date. That puts it ahead of the GameCube but behind the Nintendo 64, at least for now. Given the results this quarter as well, it doesn’t seem like Game Pass and Starfield have moved the needle much. Maybe that will change once Call of Duty, which Microsoft acquired last fall along with the rest of Activision Blizzard, finally makes its way to Game Pass. Diablo IV only just arrived on the Netflix-like subscription platform this month. But given the fact that the fate of Xbox Series X/S appears to be locked in at this point, it’s easy to see why Microsoft is looking at other places it can put its games.

Sea of Thieves, the last of four games in this initial volley to come to PS5, dominated the PlayStation Store’s top sellers list last week on pre-orders alone. CEO Satya Nadella specifically called this out during a call with investors, noting that Microsoft had more games in the top 25 best sellers on PS5 than any other publisher. “We are committed to meeting players where they are by bringing great games to more people on more devices,” he said. If players there continue to flock to the live-service pirate sim, it’s not hard to imagine Microsoft bringing another batch of its first-party exclusives to the rival platform. Whether that means more recent blockbusters like Starfield or the upcoming Indiana Jones game will someday make the journey remains to be seen.

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