An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Twitter locked down its source code to prevent unauthorized changes, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The reports say that this change was made to prevent employees from "going rogue" and sabotaging the platform after Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of the company. Currently, a vice president must approve any changes. After the company announced it would accept Musk's offer to buy the publicly traded platform, it wasn't immediately clear to Twitter's 7,000 employees how their day-to-day would change. Even after a company all-hands, where CEO Parag Agrawal reassured the team that no layoffs were planned "at this time," employees were still left with questions about how they would fare in Musk's takeover. [...] For now, Musk's takeover bid for Twitter remains subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. But if it goes through as expected, we may witness major personnel shifts, resignations and more. A similar shake-up took place when Twitter was listed on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time. By the time the company went public, there were already 90 startups being built by former Twitter employees.

em1ly shares a report from Motherboard: Facebook is facing what it describes internally as a "tsunami" of privacy regulations all over the world, which will force the company to dramatically change how it deals with users' personal data. And the "fundamental" problem, the company admits, is that Facebook has no idea where all of its user data goes, or what it's doing with it, according to a leaked internal document obtained by Motherboard. "We've built systems with open borders. The result of these open systems and open culture is well described with an analogy: Imagine you hold a bottle of ink in your hand. This bottle of ink is a mixture of all kinds of user data (3PD, 1PD, SCD, Europe, etc.) You pour that ink into a lake of water (our open data systems; our open culture) ... and it flows ... everywhere," the document read. "How do you put that ink back in the bottle? How do you organize it again, such that it only flows to the allowed places in the lake?" (3PD means third-party data; 1PD means first-party data; SCD means sensitive categories data.)

The document was written last year by Facebook privacy engineers on the Ad and Business Product team, whose mission is "to make meaningful connections between people and businesses," and which "sits at the center of our monetization strategy and is the engine that powers Facebook's growth," according to a recent job listing that describes the team. This is the team that is tasked with building and maintaining Facebook's sprawling ads system, the core of the company's business. And in this document, the team is both sounding an alarm, and making a call to change how Facebook deals with users' data to prevent the company from running into trouble with regulators in Europe, the US, India, and other countries that are pushing for more stringent privacy constraints on social media companies. "We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can't confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as 'we will not use X data for Y purpose.' And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do, increasing our risk of mistakes and misrepresentation," the document read. In other words, even Facebook's own engineers admit that they are struggling to make sense and keep track of where user data goes once it's inside Facebook's systems, according to the document. This problem inside Facebook is known as "data lineage."

vm shares a report from Space.com: SpaceX is among companies that might replace services of NASA's aging space telecoms constellation that has kept the International Space Station connected to Earth for decades. For years, NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) constellation has served as the main link between the International Space Station and Earth, providing astronauts with constant connection to ground control as well as the ability to engage with the public and stay in touch with their loved ones. The American space agency, however, plans to retire the six aging satellites in the next decade and hand over their task to commercial companies. This month, the agency announced partnerships with six commercial satellite operators including SpaceX, U.K. company Inmarsat, American Viasat and Switzerland-based SES, to demonstrate how they could take care of NASA's space communication needs in the future. "We don't plan to launch any new TDRS satellites in the future," Eli Naffah, the manager of NASA's Commercial Services Project, who oversees the partnership with the commercial companies, told Space.com. "The plan is to allow the constellation to basically [reach the end of its life]. At some point later in this decade, we are going to have some diminished capability and the plan is for the [commercial companies] to come up with a different way of providing communication services to our missions."

"Back in the 1980s, when we developed TDRS, there really wasn't an ability on the commercial side to be able to provide this service," Naffah said. "But since then, the industry has far outpaced NASA's investment in this area. There's a lot of infrastructure, both on the ground and in orbit that is capable of providing these types of services to a spacecraft. [...] Hopefully, we can achieve some cost efficiencies in buying commercial services, get out of the business of operating networks, and really put more focus on science and exploration." According to Naffah, NASA will invest $278 million into the project over the next five years, with the agency's industry partners contributing a total of about $1.5 billion.

Europe's Digital Markets Act -- near-finalized legislation to tame the internet's gatekeepers -- contains language squarely aimed at ending Apple's iOS browser restrictions. The Register reports: The Register has received a copy of unpublished changes in the proposed act, and among the various adjustments to the draft agreement is the explicit recognition of "web browser engines" as a service that should be protected from anti-competitive gatekeeper-imposed limitations. Apple requires that competing mobile browsers distributed through the iOS App Store use its own WebKit rendering engine, which is the basis of its Safari browser. The result is that Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on iOS are all, more or less, Safari.

That requirement has been a sore spot for years among rivals like Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft. They could not compete on iOS through product differentiation because their mobile browsers had to rely on WebKit rather than their own competing engines. And Apple's browser engine requirement has vexed web developers, who have been limited to using only the web APIs implemented in WebKit for their web apps. Many believe this barrier serves to steer developers toward native iOS app development, which Apple controls.

The extent to which Apple profits from the status quo has prompted regulatory scrutiny in Europe, the UK, the US, and elsewhere. [...] Now those efforts have been translated into the text of the DMA, which, alongside the Digital Services Act (DSA), defines how large technology gatekeepers will be governed in Europe. [...] In short, when the DMA takes effect in 2024, it appears that Apple will be required to allow browser competition on iOS devices. "The potential for a capable web has been all but extinguished on mobile because Apple has successfully prevented it until now," said Alex Russell, partner program manager on Microsoft Edge who worked previously as Google Chrome's first web standards tech lead. "Businesses and services will be able to avoid building 'apps' entirely when enough users have capable browsers."

"There's a long road between here and there," he added. "Apple has spent enormous amounts to lobby on this, and they aren't stupid. Everyone should expect them to continue to play games along the lines of what they tried in Denmark and South Korea."

British group gained $7.8bn valuation in pandemic, but lay-offs and slump in secondary market trades have followed. From a report: In November 2020, with the pandemic in full force, British virtual events start-up Hopin declared that a new era of digital gatherings had begun. Virtual events were "here to stay," said founder Johnny Boufarhat, as he bragged that there were "more than 15,000 monthly events" available on Hopin's "Explore" platform. Today, there are fewer than 500 listed. Boufarhat's vision made Hopin a pandemic sensation and Europe's fastest growing start-up ever. Launched in 2019, his company rocketed to fame after Covid hit with a conferencing product that seemed tailor-made for lockdowns. The 27-year-old raised more than a billion dollars for Hopin in little over a year, reaching a $7.8bn private market valuation that made him Britain's youngest self-made billionaire on paper.

As top-tier venture capital firms like IVP, Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global clamoured to invest, Boufarhat sold $195mn worth of his own shares, according to a Financial Times analysis. With Covid beginning to recede and publicly traded technology stocks being dumped by investors, Boufarhat now faces a moment of truth as he tries to build a sustainable business that lives up to the lofty expectations it set during the pandemic. "The landscape will look very different going forward. People can now meet," noted one events industry executive. They dismissed the pandemic-driven online events boom as "a bit of an artificial bubble."

Chess.com, writes in a blog post: Yesterday, Chess.com was banned by the Russian government agency Roscomnadzor, the "Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media." Roscomnadzor is responsible for censorship within Russia, a busy occupation these days. Since the start of Russia's war against Ukraine on February 24th, Roscomnadzor has banned hundreds of sites including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google News, BBC News, NPR, and Amnesty International. According to Roscomnadzor, their goal is to block two webpages: "On The Invasion of Ukraine" which outlines our policy and actions regarding the war on Ukraine and addresses FAQ and "Ukrainian Chess Players In Times Of War" which is a piece interviewing Ukrainian chess players on their circumstances and views during the early days of the war. Since Chess.com uses secure https webpages, Roscomnadzor is unable to ban these single pages and has banned the entire Chess.com site. Our members report that Chess.com's apps are unaffected. We happily encourage our Russian members to continue accessing our site using our apps or any of the many outstanding VPN services that are so essential in Russia.

UnknowingFool writes: In 2020, Paragon Software announced they wanted to upstream their previously proprietary NTFS driver into Linux. After a year of review, the NTFS3 driver was added to the Linux 5.15 kernel. While Paragon pledged to maintain their driver, there have been no major updates to the driver despite a growing list of patches that have submitted. Developer Kari Argillander has raised his concerns on the mailing list that the driver is orphaned, and that the Paragon maintainer has not responded to any messages about fixes. An offer to co-maintain the driver has also been met with "radio silence".

Computers using light rather than electric currents for processing, only years ago seen as research projects, are gaining traction and startups that have solved the engineering challenge of using photons in chips are getting big funding. From a report: In the latest example, Ayar Labs, a startup developing this technology called silicon photonics, said on Tuesday it had raised $130 million from investors including chip giant Nvidia. While the transistor-based silicon chip has increased computing power exponentially over past decades as transistors have reached the width of several atoms, shrinking them further is challenging. Not only is it hard to make something so miniscule, but as they get smaller, signals can bleed between them.

So, Moore's law, which said every two years the density of the transistors on a chip would double and bring down costs, is slowing, pushing the industry to seek new solutions to handle increasingly heavy artificial intelligence computing needs. According to data firm PitchBook, last year silicon photonics startups raised over $750 million, doubling from 2020. In 2016 that was about $18 million. The challenge is that many large machine-learning algorithms can use hundreds or thousands of chips for computing, and there is a bottleneck on the speed of data transmission between chips or servers using current electrical methods.

Bolt, the payments startup known for its founder's inflammatory Twitter threads claiming Silicon Valley is run by "mob bosses," is being sued by its most prominent customer. From a report: The complaint by Authentic Brands Group alleges that Bolt not only failed to deliver promised technology but that during Bolt's integration with Forever 21, the clothier lost out on more than $150 million in online sales. The complaint also states that Bolt raised funding at increasingly high valuations by "consistently overstating" the nature of its integration with ABG's brands to suggest it had more customers than it did and to convince investors to bankroll additional growth for the startup. Because Bolt's business relies on having a large network of consumers, the allegations create major new uncertainty for the controversial payments startup, which investors most recently valued at $11 billion. In a filing, Bolt responded to the complaint saying that ABG's claims are without merit, and are "a transparent attempt" to renegotiate the terms of the companies' agreements.

India has once again called upon Elon Musk to manufacture Tesla cars locally instead of selling China-made electric vehicles in the world's fourth-largest autos market as demand for clean transport surges. From a report: "If Elon Musk is ready to manufacture Tesla in India, then there is no problem," Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said at an event Tuesday. But manufacturing cars in China and selling them in India is not a "good proposition."

Discussions between Tesla and the Indian government have come to a standstill over import taxes and a local factory. The U.S. automaker is seeking lower levies in India so it can test the market by selling cheaper imported EVs before committing to a manufacturing base of its own. India will consider Tesla's demand for a reduction in taxes only if it promises to buy $500 million of auto parts from local suppliers and ramp up domestic sourcing by around 10% to 15% each year, people familiar with the matter said in February.

A new breed of startups wants to formalise cattle trading. The Economist: Livestock fairs, where most animals are still bought and sold, can be expensive and chaotic. Farmers shell out entry fees to register their beasts. They must pay for labourers to load and unload the animals, as well as for transport to and from the fair. They worry about cattle thieves. Making a sales pitch to every prospective customer takes a toll in the heat. And if your cows find no buyers, you must go through the whole rigmarole again, complains Anil Renusay, another cattle farmer in Vajeghar. Then there is fraud, says Satish Birnale, who rears buffaloes in Sangli, a small western city. Some traders inject their animals with steroids. Horns are often polished "as if the cows have just been to a beauty parlour," he says. "It's like searching for a bride in an arranged marriage. We have to be careful and not go just by the looks."

Firms like Pashushala and Animall claim to have solved such problems with a system of checks, including a nod from a local veterinarian. Animall requires sellers to upload videos and pictures of their cattle, and provide details not just of breed or age, but also past pregnancies, how much milk they provide and so on. A team calls every user to verify the information. Ads with blurry photos or listings with pictures taken from the internet are swiftly removed. A close-up of the cow's udders is important. So are comments by the farmer about the animal's temperament. In one video a seller croons, "Beautiful! Oh, look at those singhs (horns)". It is not a new pitch. But it is now easier and cheaper to make.

World military spending continued to grow in 2021, reaching an all-time high of $2.1 trillion. This was the seventh consecutive year that spending increased. From a report: "Even amid the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, world military spending hit record levels," said Dr Diego Lopes da Silva, Senior Researcher with SIPRI's Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. "There was a slowdown in the rate of real-terms growth due to inflation. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1 per cent." As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden -- world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP) -- fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021. US military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020. The US military burden decreased slightly from 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2020 to 3.5 per cent in 2021. US funding for military research and development rose by 24 per cent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 per cent over the same period. In 2021 spending on both decreased. However, the drop in R&D spending (-1.2 per cent) was smaller than that in arms procurement spending (-5.4 per cent).

Tesla confirmed that nearly half of all its vehicles produced last quarter are already using cobalt-free iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries. Electrek reports: Over the last few years, CEO Elon Musk has said multiple times that Tesla plans to shift more electric cars to LFP batteries in order to overcome nickel and cobalt supply concerns. Iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which don't use nickel or cobalt, are traditionally cheaper and safer, but they offer less energy density, which means less efficient and shorter range for electric vehicles. However, they have improved enough recently that it now makes sense to use cobalt-free batteries in lower-end and shorter-range vehicles. It also frees up the production of battery cells with other, more energy-dense chemistries to produce more longer-range vehicles.

Tesla already moved its Standard Range Model 3 and Model Y produced in China to LFP cells. Last year, Tesla also announced it is "shifting to Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry globally" for "standard range vehicles." It confirmed that the automaker planned to switch the Model 3 Standard Range, also known as Model 3 Rear-Wheel-Drive, being produced in the Fremont factory to LFP cells, too.

Now with the release of Tesla's Q1 2022 financial results, Tesla confirmed that nearly half of all vehicles produced are now using LFP batteries: "Diversification of battery chemistries is critical for long-term capacity growth, to better optimize our products for their various use cases and expand our supplier base. This is why nearly half of Tesla vehicles produced in Q1 were equipped with a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery, containing no nickel or cobalt. Currently, LFP batteries are used in most of our standard range vehicle products, as well as commercial energy storage applications. As a result of our energy efficient motors, a Model 3 with an LFP battery pack can still achieve a 267-mile EPA range." This would mean that roughly half of Tesla's volume comes from Model 3 Rear-Wheel-Drive, the cheapest Tesla vehicle, and the Model Y Standard Range, which is only offered in China.

Two artists are illustrating bias in machine learning with data from one of the most opinionated sites on the internet: the r/AmITheAsshole subreddit. Motherboard reports: Now boasting 3.9 million users, the r/AmITheAsshole subreddit has become known as one of the leading forums where users can seek and share advice with virtual strangers. Internet artists Morry Kolman and Alex Petros trained three AI models using comments from over 60,000 posts from the popular subreddit. They filtered the comments according to the original subreddit's formal voting guidelines where users vote on whether the poster is the asshole or if ESH (Everyone Sucks Here). What results is a positive bot, a negative bot, and a neutral bot that respond to every scenario submitted. The project, funded by Digital Void, aims to illustrate how training data can bias the decision-making abilities of artificial intelligence models. Now, their bots can help you answer the age-old question: Are you the asshole?

Users can submit their own moral dilemmas -- real or not -- and get a positive, negative, and swing response that can go either way. The three AI models are trained on data derived from Reddit users passing judgment so what results is a funny microcosm of what it's like to debate on the internet now. Any topic can inspire strong, contradictory reactions from total strangers. "When reading the results of a judgment, note the way in which the AI constructs ideas from snippets of human reasoning," their website reads. "Sometimes the AI can produce stunning results, but it is fundamentally attempting to mimic the ways that humans put together arguments."

Android Central was sent images of Google's upcoming Pixel Watch after it was reportedly left at a restaurant in the U.S. It's reminiscent of when an Apple iPhone 4 was lost and found at a bar in 2010. From the report: Android Central has reviewed the images of the watch that could be announced during Google I/O next month. It's possible that the watch itself could be released alongside the Pixel 7. The source, who we have left anonymous to protect their identity, said the watch, which could be "a testing model for the Internal Pixel team," was found at a restaurant. The source requested Android Central to not publish their name or the restaurant name, including location, in order to protect their job. After the reporting of this story, the source wrote a Reddit post about the alleged watch. The source indicated that the watch was left at the restaurant "for a few weeks expecting the people that left it to return, but that never happened."

The watch in our images looks almost identical to leaks of rumored rendered images. It has a minimalist design and follows what leaks have suggested a screen with hardly any bezels. The image also confirms one of the rumored colors that the watch will come in: black. Previous rumors have suggested the watch will have a rotating crown and potentially two hidden buttons. It is a bit hard to tell from the image above, but if this is the rumored watch then there is definitely at least one button next to the crown.

[I]t seems that the watch's band is a proprietary Google band and looks very similar to the jelly-like Apple Watch sport bands. This could mean that we might see many more colors to come. It also looks like it attaches directly to the watch case. This might make swapping out watch bands difficult, especially when most of the other top Android smartwatches give you more leeway with standard watch band types. No charger was left behind with the watch, but it is possible that the watch could be charged from the back of the watch case. This is also how Fitbit's Versa 3 and Sense smartwatches (Fitbit is owned by Google) and the Apple Watch are charged. The source indicated that the bottom "looks metallic but feels like it's coated with glass." [...] The source indicated that nothing happened past the boot logo when they tried to power it up [...]. This likely means that there is no OS yet installed on the watch.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The EU has agreed on another ambitious piece of legislation to police the online world. Early Saturday morning, after hours of negotiations, the bloc agreed on the broad terms of the Digital Services Act, or DSA, which will force tech companies to take greater responsibility for content that appears on their platforms. New obligations include removing illegal content and goods more quickly, explaining to users and researchers how their algorithms work, and taking stricter action on the spread of misinformation. Companies face fines of up to 6 percent of their annual turnover for noncompliance.

"The DSA will upgrade the ground-rules for all online services in the EU," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement. "It gives practical effect to the principle that what is illegal offline, should be illegal online. The greater the size, the greater the responsibilities of online platforms." [...] Although the legislation only applies to EU citizens, the effect of these laws will certainly be felt in other parts of the world, too. Global tech companies may decide it is more cost-effective to implement a single strategy to police content and take the EU's comparatively stringent regulations as their benchmark. Lawmakers in the US keen to rein in Big Tech with their own regulations have already begun looking to the EU's rules for inspiration.

The final text of the DSA has yet to be released, but the European Parliament and European Commission have detailed a number of obligations it will contain [...]. Although the broad terms of the DSA have now been agreed upon by the member states of the EU, the legal language still needs to be finalized and the act officially voted into law. This last step is seen as a formality at this point, though. The rules will apply to all companies 15 months after the act is voted into law, or from January 1st, 2024, whichever is later. "Large online platforms like Facebook will have to make the working of their recommender algorithms (used for sorting content on the News Feed or suggesting TV shows on Netflix) transparent to users," notes The Verge. "Users should also be offered a recommender system 'not based on profiling.' In the case of Instagram, for example, this would mean a chronological feed (as it introduced recently)."

The tech giants will also be prohibited from using "dark patterns" -- confusing or deceptive UIs designed to steer users into making certain choices. A detailed list of obligations contained in the DSA can be found in the article.

Meta's campus in Burlingame, California will be home to its first physical retail space where you can check out Quest 2 and its accessories as well as the Ray-Ban Stories sunglasses and the Portal video-calling device. UploadVR reports: The store opens May 9 with interactive demos for "Beat Saber, GOLF+, Real VR Fishing or Supernatural on a large, wall-to-wall curved LED screen that displays what you're seeing in-headset," according to a blog post from the company. "If we did our job right, people should leave and tell their friends, 'You've got to go check out the Meta Store,' Martin Gilliard, Head of Meta Store, is quoted as saying. "We're not selling the metaverse in our store, but hopefully people will come in and walk out knowing a little bit more about how our products will help connect them to it."

The store is said to be 1,550 square feet and also offers the ability to do a test call with the Portal video calling device and try out different styles of the Ray-Ban Stories camera glasses. It sounds like the main attraction here, however, will be the Quest 2-powered mixed reality installation, which promises to give VR players "a 30-second mixed reality clip of your demo experience that's yours to share," with the video wall offering a live view into VR as it is being experienced.

Earlier today, Twitter announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Elon Musk for approximately $44 billion. The announcement led to speculation that former President Donald Trump may return to the social media platform after being permanently banned in January 2021 for his role in the January 6th insurrection. However, according to TechCrunch, "it looks like he's not interested and is instead planning to formally join his own Truth Social platform over the next seven days." From the report: "I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth," Trump told Fox News. "I hope Elon buys Twitter because he'll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth. The bottom line is, no, I am not going back to Twitter." [...] Trump's comments from today come as shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp, which announced a deal in October to acquire Trump Media & Technology Group, fell 9.5% as Twitter officially announced its deal with Musk. It's possible that Truth's shaky start could cause Trump to change his mind about rejoining Twitter down the road.

Trump's media group released its Truth Social iOS app in February, but the app remained unavailable to users for quite some time. Truth is being marketed as an alternative to social media giants like Twitter and Facebook. If Trump does end up posting on Truth regularly this week, it will mark the former president's return to social media following his ban from numerous platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. So far, he's only posted on Truth once.

As for Twitter, Musk says that "free speech" is key to Twitter's future. Twitter says the transaction, which was unanimously approved by the board, will likely close this year following shareholder and regulatory approval and "the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions."

The cryptocurrency industry is ramping up efforts to recruit more legal talent as it faces increased regulatory pressure while looking to be accepted by and become part of mainstream finance. From a report: Crypto exchanges and companies are poaching attorneys left and right, from both law firms and other crypto companies, bringing them in-house to help navigate an evolving regulatory landscape while helping to curb outside legal expenses, industry participants said. Law firms, which are sometimes losing their partners to in-house positions, are also building up their crypto practices to maintain that valuable expertise. The increased demand for lawyers also marks a turning point for crypto, whose early supporters often expressed skepticism of regulation. The industry has been expanding rapidly with hopes of attracting more mainstream investment opportunities and many are embracing the stance that they want regulatory clarity.

Twitter today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk, for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion. Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately held company. Press release: Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing of the proposed transaction. The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter.

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential -- I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it." Earlier on Monday, Musk tweeted: "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means."