The iPhone maker, VC veteran are fighting for heart-health tracking market. From a report: There's an unwritten rule for technology startups: Never challenge Apple in court if you want to survive. The world's most valuable company has a track record of success in a long string of David versus Goliath battles over cutting-edge, life-changing technologies. But billionaire Vinod Khosla is no lightweight. He's one of Silicon Valley's most celebrated venture capitalists, and he's used to playing long odds on the startups he backs. Khosla Ventures LLC put itself on a collision course with Apple when it moved into the personal health and fitness space a decade ago and invested in AliveCor, a maker of cardiac monitoring devices and software. What might have been a big partnership opportunity for AliveCor in the years following the release of the Apple Watch in 2015, to offer watch bands that monitor heart health, has turned into a messy court fight.

Now, instead of riding Apple's coattails as a prominent player in the wearable medical device market, forecast to grow to $132.5 billion by 2031, AliveCor's Food and Drug Administration-approved technology is inaccessible to the tens of millions of people who buy Apple Watches every year. The startup is in its third year of trying to prove to judges that the iPhone maker brazenly copied its heart-monitoring technology and sabotaged AliveCor's ability to offer its own product on the Apple Watch. Apple has parried with claims that its smaller rival's patent-infringement and antitrust claims are meritless -- and with counterattacks alleging that AliveCor is the imitator.

The White House said on Tuesday it would ask workers how their employers use artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor them, as it allocates federal investments in the technology, which is expected to change the nature of work. From a report: The White House will hold a listening session with workers to understand their experience with employers' use of automated technologies for surveillance, monitoring and evaluation. The call will include gig work experts, researchers, and policymakers. Millions of users have tried AI apps and tools, which supporters say can make medical diagnoses, write screenplays, create legal briefs and debug software, leading to growing concern about how the technology could lead to privacy violations, skew employment decisions, and power scams and misinformation campaigns. As part of its evaluation of the technology, the administration will also announce new steps, including an updated roadmap for federal investments in AI research, a request for public input on AI risks and with a new report from the Department of Education on how AI affects teaching, learning and research.

Netflix's controversial password sharing crackdown just hit the US. From a report: In addition to the US, Netflix confirmed it will also be rolling out the crackdown across all regions around the world such as the UK, France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, among others. "Netflix account is for use by one household," the company wrote in the post. "Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are -- at home, on the go, on holiday -- and take advantage of new features like Transfer Profile and Manage Access and Devices." Netflix broadened its crackdown in early February to include countries like Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain, in addition to the test countries of Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. It previously said "a broad rollout" of the policy would hit this quarter.

Ford is reversing course on AM radio. From a report: In a tweet today, CEO Jim Farley announced the company was backing off its decision to release new vehicles without AM radio broadcast capabilities. Instead, all 2024 Ford and Lincoln models will be able to tune in to AM radio. And for the two electric vehicles released without AM radio capabilities, a software update would be pushed to restore it. The announcement came after Farley said he spoke with policy leaders on the "importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergency alert system." A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation in Washington last week that would require automakers to keep AM radio in all their vehicles. The bill was proposed in response to an increasing number of vehicles coming out without the first-generation radio broadcast technology.

Activision has sent cease-and-desist letters to two makers of popular fan clients for legacy Call of Duty titles in recent weeks. From a report: The move cuts off access to the many gameplay and quality-of-life improvements brought by these clients and stops what fans say is the only safe way to play these older games without the threat of damaging hacking by opponents. The first victim of Activision's recent efforts was SM2, a major Modern Warfare 2 modding project whose development started over two years ago.

Since then, the modding group has been working on updating that seminal 2009 release with new weapons, in-game perks, a redesigned UI, new streak and progression systems, and even a recent move to a more modern game engine. Those efforts stopped last week, though, before the mod could even release its first version. The SM2 Twitter account reported that "a team member received a Cease & Desist letter on behalf of Activision Publishing in relation to the SM2 project. We are complying with this order and shutting down all operations permanently."

The head of the world's leading carbon credit certifier has announced he will step down as CEO next month. From a report: It comes amid concerns that Verra, a Washington-based nonprofit, approved tens of millions of worthless offsets that are used by major companies for climate and biodiversity commitments, according to a joint Guardian investigation earlier this year. In a statement on LinkedIn on Monday, Verra's CEO, David Antonioli, said he would leave his role after 15 years leading the organisation that dominates the $2bn voluntary carbon market, which has certified more than 1bn credits through its verified carbon standard (VCS).

Antonioli thanked current and former staff, and said he was immensely proud of what Verra had accomplished through the environmental standards it operates. He did not give a reason for his departure and said he would be taking a break once he left the role. Judith Simon, Verra's recently appointed president, will serve as interim CEO following Antonioli's departure on 16 June. "The trust you placed in Verra and myself in my role as CEO has meant a lot, and I leave knowing we have made tremendous strides together in addressing some of the world's most vexing environmental and social problems. Working with you on these important issues has been a great highlight of my career," he said.

Microsoft is adding a Copilot AI assistant to Windows 11. Much like the Copilot sidebars we've seen in Edge, Office apps, and even GitHub, Windows Copilot will be integrated directly into Windows 11 and available to open and use from the taskbar across all apps and programs. From a report: "Once open, the Windows Copilot side bar stays consistent across your apps, programs, and windows, always available to act as your personal assistant," explains Panos Panay, Microsoft's head of Windows and devices. "It makes every user a power user, helping you take action, customize your settings, and seamlessly connect across your favorite apps."

The Windows Copilot can summarize content you're viewing in apps, rewrite it, or even explain it. It looks very similar to the dialog box that's found in Bing Chat, so you can ask it general questions and things you might usually ask a search engine. It won't directly replace the search bar on the Windows 11 taskbar and is a separate Copilot button alongside it instead, much like how Cortana had its own dedicated space on the taskbar in Windows 10. Windows Copilot is a "personal assistant," according to Microsoft, which sounds a lot like how Microsoft described Cortana as a "personal productivity assistant."

ChatGPT no longer needs to rely on its own models or plugins to provide information to users: Microsoft has announced Bing Search is integrating into ChatGPT to provide more relevant -- and potentially newer -- responses. From a report: Bing will act as the "default search experience," allowing ChatGPT to pull answers from the internet and provide citations. Microsoft and OpenAI have worked together closely over the last few months, with Bing, itself, running on GPT-4 (with some tailoring for searches). Bing works by displaying responses in detailed or summary form and sources facts and suggestions with footnotes of sorts -- features it can bring to ChatGPT to, possibly, provide more precise information. Previously, ChatGPT relied solely on individual plugins to access any recent information.

The European Union and the United States are set to step up cooperation on artificial intelligence with a view to establishing minimum standards before legislation enters force, the EU's tech chief Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday. From a report: The European Union's AI Act could be the world's first comprehensive legislation governing the technology, with new rules on facial recognition and biometric surveillance, but EU governments and lawmakers still need to agree a common text. Vestager, a vice-president of the European Commission, told a briefing on Tuesday that process might be completed by the end of the year.

"That would still leave one if not two years then to come into effect, which means that we need something to bridge that period of time," she said. Vestager said AI would be one area of focus at the fourth ministerial-level meeting of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) in Sweden on May 30-31, with discussions on generative AI algorithms that produce new text, visual or sound content, such as ChatGPT. "There is a shared sense of urgency. In order to make the most of this technology, guard rails are needed," she said. "Can we discuss what we can expect companies to do as a minimum before legislation kicks in?"

The online stock-photo marketplace Shutterstock announced Tuesday it would acquire Giphy from Meta Platforms for $53 million, a significant loss for Meta, which acquired Giphy in 2020 for $315 million. From a report: The acquisition is an all-cash deal, and in an investor presentation, Shutterstock said it would maintain its full-year revenue guidance. The acquisition would add "minimal revenue in 2023," Shutterstock noted. The deal is expected to close in June. Shutterstock's shares rose nearly 2% in morning trading Tuesday. U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority had ordered Meta to divest Giphy in 2022, citing potential anti-competitive effects. The CMA disclosed it was probing the deal in June 2020. Giphy, which is a platform for searching for and using animated images in messaging apps, was well-integrated into Meta's ecosystem, and had been an acquisition target for the social-media company years before Meta acquired it in 2020.

Apple on Tuesday announced a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar agreement with Broadcom, a leading U.S. technology and advanced manufacturing company. From a report: Through this collaboration, Broadcom will develop 5G radio frequency components -- including FBAR filters -- and cutting-edge wireless connectivity components. The FBAR filters will be designed and built in several key American manufacturing and technology hubs, including Fort Collins, Colorado, where Broadcom has a major facility.

"We're thrilled to make commitments that harness the ingenuity, creativity, and innovative spirit of American manufacturing," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "All of Apple's products depend on technology engineered and built here in the United States, and we'll continue to deepen our investments in the U.S. economy because we have an unshakable belief in America's future."

Apple already helps support more than 1,100 jobs in Broadcom's Fort Collins FBAR filter manufacturing facility, and the partnership will enable Broadcom to continue to invest in critical automation projects and upskilling with technicians and engineers. Across the country, Apple supports more than 2.7 million jobs through direct employment, developer jobs in the thriving iOS app economy, and spending with more than 9,000 U.S. suppliers and manufacturers of all sizes in all 50 states across dozens of sectors.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, writing at Financial Times: While some have tried to reduce this moment to just a competitive AI race, we see it as so much more than that. At Google, we've been bringing AI into our products and services for over a decade and making them available to our users. We care deeply about this. Yet, what matters even more is the race to build AI responsibly and make sure that as a society we get it right. We're approaching this in three ways. First, by boldly pursuing innovations to make AI more helpful to everyone. We're continuing to use AI to significantly improve our products -- from Google Search and Gmail to Android and Maps. These advances mean that drivers across Europe can now find more fuel-efficient routes; tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are helped to communicate in their new homes; flood forecasting tools are able to predict floods further in advance. Google DeepMind's work on AlphaFold, in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, resulted in a groundbreaking understanding of over 200mn catalogued proteins known to science, opening up new healthcare possibilities.

Our focus is also on enabling others outside of our company to innovate with AI, whether through our cloud offerings and APIs, or with new initiatives like the Google for Startups Growth program, which supports European entrepreneurs using AI to benefit people's health and wellbeing. We're launching a social innovation fund on AI to help social enterprises solve some of Europe's most pressing challenges. Second, we are making sure we develop and deploy the technology responsibly, reflecting our deep commitment to earning the trust of our users. That's why we published AI principles in 2018, rooted in a belief that AI should be developed to benefit society while avoiding harmful applications. We have many examples of putting those principles into practice, such as building in guardrails to limit misuse of our Universal Translator. This experimental AI video dubbing service helps experts translate a speaker's voice and match their lip movements. It holds enormous potential for increasing learning comprehension but we know the risks it could pose in the hands of bad actors and so have made it accessible to authorised partners only. As AI evolves, so does our approach: this month we announced we'll provide ways to identify when we've used it to generate content in our services.

According to Ars Technica, some SanDisk Extreme SSDs are wiping people's data. While SanDisk told Ars that a firmware fix is coming "soon," owners with 2TB drives are out of luck. From the report: An Ars reader tipped us (thanks!) to online discussions filled with panicked and disappointed users detailing experiences with recently purchased Extreme V2 and Extreme Pro V2 portable SSDs. Most users seemed to be using a 4TB model, but there were also complaints from owners of 2TB drives.

Until now, there has been little public response from SanDisk, which has mostly referred online users to open a support ticket with SanDisk's technical support team. Questions about refunds have been left unanswered. When Ars contacted SanDisk about the issue, a company representative said: "Western Digital is aware of reports indicating some customers have experienced an issue with 4TB SanDisk Extreme and/or Extreme Pro portable SSDs (SDSSDE61-4T00 and SDSSDE81-4T00 respectively). We have resolved the issue and will publish a firmware update to our website soon. Customers with questions or who are experiencing issues should contact our Customer Support team for assistance."

SanDisk didn't answer our questions about refunds, whether or not the firmware would address issues with the 2TB models, what caused the issue, or when exactly this firmware fix will come. Some Reddit users have suggested that SanDisk has dragged its feet on the monthlong saga, with ian__ claiming they needed to collect "data to prove to SanDisk that it actually is more than a fluke." SanDisk's brief response to Ars' questions fails to clarify what's been going on behind the scenes.

The FBI misused surveillance powers granted by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) over 278,000 times between 2020 and early 2021 to conduct warrantless searches on George Floyd protesters, January 6 Capitol rioters, and donors to a congressional campaign, according to a newly unclassified court opinion. The Register reports: On Friday, the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court made public a heavily redacted April 2022 opinion [PDF] that details hundreds of thousands of violations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping. The Feds were found to have abused the spy law in a "persistent and widespread" manner, according to the court, repeatedly failing to adequately justify the need to go through US citizens' communications using a law aimed at foreigners.

The court opinion details FBI queries run on thousands of individuals between 2020 and early 2021. This includes 133 people arrested during the George Floyd protests and more than 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign. In the latter, "the analyst who ran the query advised that the campaign was a target of foreign influence, but NSD determined that only eight identifiers used in the query had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities to comply with the querying standard," the opinion says, referring to the Justice Department's National Security Division (NSD). In other words, there wasn't a strong enough foreign link to fully justify the communications search.

For the Black Lives Matter protests, the division determined that the FBI queries "were not reasonably likely to retrieve foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime." Again, an overreach of foreign surveillance powers. Additional "significant violations of the querying standard" occurred in searched related to the January 6, 2021 breach of the US Capitol, domestic drug and gang investigations, and domestic terrorism probes, according to the court. It's said that more than 23,000 queries were run on people suspected of storming the Capitol.

Climate litigation poses a financial risk to fossil fuel companies because it lowers the share price of big polluters, research has found. From a report: A study to be published on Tuesday by LSE's Grantham Research Institute examines how the stock market reacts to news that a fresh climate lawsuit has been filed or a corporation has lost its case. The researchers hope their work will encourage lenders, financial regulators and governments to consider the effect of climate litigation when making investment decisions in a warmer future, and ultimately drive greener corporate behaviour.

The study, which is currently being peer reviewed, analysed 108 climate crisis lawsuits around the world between 2005 and 2021 against 98 companies listed in the US and Europe. It found that the filing of a new case or a court decision against a company reduced its expected value by an average of 0.41%. The stock market responded most strongly in the days after cases against carbon majors, which include the world's largest energy, utility and materials firms, cutting the relative value of those companies by an average of 0.57% after a case was filed and by 1.5% after an unfavourable judgment. Although modest, the researchers conclude that the drop in the value of big polluters is statistically significant and therefore down to the legal challenges.