South Korean telecom network SK Telecom is providing free SIM card replacements to all 25 million mobile subscribers following an April 19 security breach where malware compromised Universal Subscriber Identity Module data.

Despite the company's announcement, only 6 million replacement cards will be available through May 2025. The stolen data potentially includes IMSI numbers, authentication keys, and network usage information, though customer names, identification details, and financial information remain secure. The primary risk is unauthorized SIM swapping attacks, where threat actors could clone SIM cards.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Here's an easy to understand example of how Donald Trump's tariffs on imported products have completely screwed small U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs: the crowdfunding site Kickstarter is introducing a "Tariff Manager tool" that will allow creators to add extra charges to projects that were already fully funded in order to deal with the higher and unexpected costs of the president's global trade war. "Over the past few weeks, we've been hard at work developing tariff-relevant resources to support our community. From guidance to help creators navigate rapidly changing policies, to tips on shipping logistics, and even information to help backers better understand the challenges creators are facing. Our focus has been supporting you through uncertain times, but we also know that information alone isn't always enough," Kickstarter said in a blog post published last week announcing the Tariff Manager tool. "Built specifically to address the financial challenges posed by U.S. import tariffs, Kickstarter's Tariff Manager is designed to give creators more control, flexibility, and transparency at one of the most critical phases of your journey: fulfillment."

Kickstarter's Tariff Manager will allow some creators to apply per-item surcharges which will appear as a separate line item on the payment page for people who backed their project. "We understand that asking backers to pay an additional fee -- especially after a campaign has ended -- can be sensitive," Kickstarter said. "If a backer chooses not to pay the tariff cost during the pledge manager process, they'll need to reach out to you directly." Backers can pay the additional fee to get the item they had already backed in order to still get it when it's ready. If they decline, the creator can issue them a refund, or find "another resolution," the blog post says. "While this tool helps offset rising costs, we recognize that every project and backer relationship is unique," Kickstarter said. "Our goal is to provide you with the flexibility and transparency necessary to navigate those conversations with clarity and care." "Creators continue to launch, adapt, and find success on Kickstarter, even as the external landscape shifts," a Kickstarter spokesperson told 404 Media. "We know creators are navigating a lot right now, and we're focused on giving them the tools and support to adjust as needed. Our role at Kickstarter is to help creators bring their projects to life, and that includes supporting them through moments of uncertainty. That's why we're doubling down on tools that help creators stay flexible and responsive: from our Tariff Manager within our integrated pledge manager -- which we're rolling out to all of our creators soon -- to offering 24-hour support and expanding educational resources."

Microsoft Copilot "isn't doing as well as the company would like," reports XDA-Developers.com (citing a report from startup/VC industry site Newcomer). The Redmond giant has invested billions of dollars and a lot of manpower into making it happen, but as a recent report claims, people just don't care. In fact, if the report is to be believed, Microsoft's rise in the AI scene has already come to a screeching halt:

At Microsoft's annual executive huddle last month, the company's chief financial officer, Amy Hood, put up a slide that charted the number of users for its Copilot consumer AI tool over the past year. It was essentially a flat line, showing around 20 million weekly users. On the same slide was another line showing ChatGPT's growth over the same period, arching ever upward toward 400 million weekly users. OpenAI's iconic chatbot was soaring, while Microsoft's best hope for a mass-adoption AI tool was idling. It was a sobering chart for Microsoft's consumer AI team...

That's right; Microsoft Copilot's weekly user base is only 5% of the number of people who use ChatGPT, and it's not increasing. It's also worth noting that there are approximately 1.5 billion Windows users worldwide, which means just over 1% of them are using Copilot, a tool that's now a Windows default app....

It's not a huge surprise that Copilot is faltering. Despite Microsoft's CEO claiming that Copilot will become "the next Start button", the company has had to backtrack on the Copilot key and allow people to customise it to do something else, including giving back its original feature of the Menu key.
They also note earlier reports that Intel's AI PC chips aren't selling well.

"Google's DeepMind UK team reportedly seeks to unionize," reports TechCrunch: Around 300 London-based members of Google's AI-focused DeepMind team are seeking to unionize with the Communication Workers Union, according to a Financial Times report that cites three people involved with the unionization effort.

These DeepMind employees are reportedly unhappy about Google's decision to remove a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance from its website. They're also concerned about the company's work with the Israeli military, including a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract that has prompted protests elsewhere at Google.
At least five DeepMind employees quit, according to the report (out of a 2,000 total U.K. staff members).

"A small group of around 200 employees of Google and its parent company Alphabet previously announced that they were unionizing," the article adds, "though as a union representing just a tiny slice of the total Google workforce, it lacked the ability to collectively bargain."

"4chan, down for more than a week after hackers got in through an insecure script that handled PDFs, is back online," notes BoingBoing. (They add that Thursday saw 4chan's first blog postin years — just the words "Testing testing 123 123...") But 4chan posted a much longer explanation on Friday," confirming their servers were compromised by a malicious PDF upload from "a hacker using a UK IP address," granting access to their databases and administrative dashboard.

The attacker "spent several hours exfiltrating database tables and much of 4chan's source code. When they had finished downloading what they wanted, they began to vandalize 4chan at which point moderators became aware and 4chan's servers were halted, preventing further access." While not all of our servers were breached, the most important one was, and it was due to simply not updating old operating systems and code in a timely fashion. Ultimately this problem was caused by having insufficient skilled man-hours available to update our code and infrastructure, and being starved of money for years by advertisers, payment providers, and service providers who had succumbed to external pressure campaigns. We had begun a process of speccing new servers in late 2023. As many have suspected, until that time 4chan had been running on a set of servers purchased second-hand by moot a few weeks before his final Q&A [in 2015], as prior to then we simply were not in a financial position to consider such a large purchase. Advertisers and payment providers willing to work with 4chan are rare, and are quickly pressured by activists into cancelling their services. Putting together the money for new equipment took nearly a decade...

The free time that 4chan's development team had available to dedicate to 4chan was insufficient to update our software and infrastructure fast enough, and our luck ran out. However, we have not been idle during our nearly two weeks of downtime. The server that was breached has been replaced, with the operating system and code updated to the latest versions. PDF uploads have been temporarily disabled on those boards that supported them, but they will be back in the near future. One slow but much beloved board, /f/ — Flash, will not be returning however, as there is no realistic way to prevent similar exploits using .swf files.

We are bringing on additional volunteer developers to help keep up with the workload, and our team of volunteer janitors & moderators remains united despite the grievous violations some have suffered to their personal privacy.

4chan is back. No other website can replace it, or this community. No matter how hard it is, we are not giving up.

Families earning $300,000 annually -- placing them among America's highest earners -- are increasingly finding themselves unable to afford elite college tuition without taking on substantial debt. Bloomberg's analysis of financial aid data from 50 selective colleges reveals households earning between $100,000 and $300,000 occupy a precarious middle ground: too affluent for meaningful aid but insufficiently wealthy to absorb annual costs approaching $100,000.

The squeeze begins around $150,000 income, where families typically contribute 20% ($30,000) annually toward tuition. At $270,000 income, expected contributions reach $61,000 per year. Most institutions eliminate financial aid entirely at approximately $400,000 income. Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania recently expanded free tuition thresholds to $200,000, acknowledging this middle-class pressure. The changes take effect for 2025-26.

An anonymous reader shares a report: At Microsoft's annual executive huddle last month, the company's chief financial officer, Amy Hood, put up a slide that charted the number of users for its Copilot consumer AI tool over the past year. It was essentially a flat line, showing around 20 million weekly users. On the same slide was another line showing ChatGPT's growth over the same period, arching ever upward toward 400 million weekly users.

OpenAI's iconic chatbot was soaring, while Microsoft's best hope for a mass-adoption AI tool was idling. It was a sobering chart for Microsoft's consumer AI team and the man who's been leading it for the past year, Mustafa Suleyman. Microsoft brought Suleyman aboard in March of 2024, along with much of the talent at his struggling AI startup Inflection, in return for a $650 million licensing fee that made Inflection's investors whole, and then some.

[...] Yet from the very start, people inside the company told me they were skeptical. Many outsiders have struggled to make an impact or even survive at Microsoft, a company that's full of lifers who cut their tech teeth in a different era. My skeptical sources noted Suleyman's previous run at a big company hadn't gone well, with Google stripping him of some management responsibilities following complaints of how he treated staff, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. There was also much eye-rolling at the fact that Suleyman was given the title of CEO of Microsoft AI. That designation is typically reserved for the top executive at companies it acquires and lets operate semi-autonomously, such as LinkedIn or Github.

Apple plans to shift the assembly of all US-sold iPhones to India [alternative source] as soon as next year, according to Financial Times, which cites people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump's trade war forces the tech giant to pivot away from China. From the report: The push builds on Apple's strategy to diversify its supply chain but goes further and faster than investors appreciate, with a goal to source from India the entirety of the more than 60 million iPhones sold annually in the US by the end of 2026.

The Sydney-based CADA station secretly used an AI-generated host named "Thy" for its weekday shows over six months without disclosure. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: After initial questioning from Stephanie Coombes in The Carpet newsletter, it was revealed that the station used ElevenLabs -- a generative AI audio platform that transforms text into speech -- to create Thy, whose likeness and voice were cloned from a real employee in the ARN finance team. The Australian Communications and Media Authority said there were currently no specific restrictions on the use of AI in broadcast content, and no obligation to disclose its use.

An ARN spokesperson said the company was exploring how new technology could enhance the listener experience. "We've been trialling AI audio tools on CADA, using the voice of Thy, an ARN team member. This is a space being explored by broadcasters globally, and the trial has offered valuable insights." However, it has also "reinforced the power of real personalities in driving compelling content," the spokesperson added.

The Australian Financial Review reported that Workdays with Thy has been broadcast on CADA since November, and was reported to have reached at least 72,000 people in last month's ratings. Vice president of the Australian Association of Voice Actors, Teresa Lim, said CADA's failure to disclose its use of AI reinforces how necessary legislation around AI labelling has become. "AI can be such a powerful and positive tool in broadcasting if there are correct safeguards in place," she said. "Authenticity and truth are so important for broadcast media. The public deserves to know what the source is of what's being broadcast ... We need to have these discussions now before AI becomes so advanced that it's too difficult to regulate."

Male college enrollment in Lake County, Ohio plummeted by more than 15% over the last decade -- the steepest decline among any large U.S. county. Nationwide, men now constitute virtually the entirety of the 1.2 million student drop in college attendance between 2011 and 2022.

Financial concerns dominate decision-making, with even public in-state education costing approximately $25,000 annually. One high school senior secured a $15/hour collision repair job, Bloomberg reports, calculating he'll earn "upwards of a grand every other week" while avoiding student debt.

Social media significantly influences these choices. "You see a lot of influencers saying you don't need to go to college, and when people see that, they listen," explained one student from Perry High School.

New Jersey sued the property management software company RealPage, accusing it and 10 of the state's largest landlords of conspiring to drive up residential rents, violating federal and state antitrust laws and New Jersey consumer fraud laws. From a report: The complaint filed on Wednesday by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin said the defendants, including AvalonBay Communities illegally used RealPage's revenue management software and algorithms to inflate rents for apartments in multifamily properties.

New Jersey said the defendants also quietly exchanged non-public data such as lease prices, amenities, concessions offered, property values and housing inventory, in order to align pricing and avoid competition to lower rents. The state said the collusion has inflated rents for hundreds of thousands of residents, with half of low-income renters paying more than 30% of their gross incomes toward rent. Many real estate and financial experts recommend a 30% limit.

Discord CEO and co-founder Jason Citron is stepping down from his leadership role at the company and being replaced by Humam Sakhnini, a former executive from Activision Blizzard. "Citron will remain on Discord's board of directors, and fellow co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy will continue acting as the company's chief technology officer," notes Engadget. From the report: There's an important financial context to Citron's move. The New York Times reported in March that Discord was meeting with investors to take the company public. Sakhnini has experience acting as a leader of a public company. He was also the President of King Digital -- the creator of Candy Crush and other popular mobile games -- after the company was acquired by Activision Blizzard. A veteran executive could be a natural fit to usher Discord to an IPO. Citron didn't deny the plan when VentureBeat asked if the company would go public: "As you can imagine, hiring someone like Humam is a step in that direction." "From the very beginning, our mission has been about bringing people together around games," Citron said in a statement. "It's a mission I've dedicated my career to, and I'm confident that passing the torch to Humam is the right evolution for Discord's future." While initially pitched as a way to talk to friend's before, during and after playing games, Discord has morphed into a much larger and more general social platform, serving "more than 200 million monthly active users worldwide," the company says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2019, Garrett Mitchell was already an Internet success. His YouTube channel, Cleetus McFarland, had over a million followers. If you perused the channel at that time, you would've found a range of grassroots motorsports videos with the type of vehicular shenanigans that earn truckloads of views. Some of those older videos include "BLEW BY A COP AT 120+mph! OOPS!," "THERE'S A T-REX ON THE TRACK!," and "Manual Transmission With Paddle Shifters!?!." Those videos made Mitchell, aka Cleetus McFarland, a known personality among automotive enthusiasts. But the YouTuber wanted more financial independence beyond the Google platform and firms willing to sponsor his channel. " after my YouTube was growing and some of my antics [were] getting videos de-monetized, I realized I needed a playground," Mitchell told Ars Technica in an email.

Mitchell found a road toward new monetization opportunities through the DeSoto Super Speedway. The Bradenton, Florida, track had changed ownership multiple times since opening in the 1970s. The oval-shaped racetrack is three-eighths of a mile long with 12-degree banking angles. By 2018, the track had closed its doors and was going unused. DeSoto happened to be next to Mitchell's favorite drag strip, giving the YouTuber the idea of turning it into a stadium where people could watch burnouts and other "massive, rowdy" ticketed events. Mitchell added: "So I sold everything I could, borrowed some money from my business manager, and went all in for [$]2.2 million." But like the rest of the world, Mitchell hit the brakes on his 2020 plans during COVID-19 lockdowns. Soon after his purchase, Mitchell couldn't use the track, renamed Freedom Factory, for large gatherings, forcing him to reconsider his plans. "We had no other option but to entertain the people somehow. And with no other racing goin' on anywhere, we bet big on making something happen. And it worked," Mitchell said. That "something" was a pay-per-view (PPV) event hosted from the Freedom Factory in April 2020.

The event led to others and, eventually, Mitchell running his own subscription video on demand (SVOD) service, FRDM+, which originally launched as Cleetervision in 2022. Today, a FRDM+ subscription costs $20 per month or $120 per year. A subscription provides access to an impressive library of automotive videos. Some are archived from Mitchell's YouTube channel. Other, exclusive videos feature content such as interviews with motorsports influencers and members of Mitchell's staff and crew, and outrageous motorsports stunts. You can watch videos from other influencers on FRDM+, and the business can also white-label its platform into other influencers' websites, too. "Today, bandwidth isn't a problem for FRDM+, and navigating the streaming service doesn't feel much different from something like Netflix," writes Ars Technica's Scharon Harding. "There are different 'channels' (grouped together by related content or ongoing series) on top and new releases and upcoming content highlighted below. There are horizontal scrolling rows, and many titles have content summaries and/or trailers. The platform also has a support section with instructions for canceling subscriptions."

"Due to wildly differing audiences, markets, costs, and scales, comparing FRDM+'s financials to the likes of Netflix and other mainstream streaming services is like comparing apples to oranges. But it's interesting to consider that FRDM+ has achieved profitability faster than some of those services, like Peacock, which also launched in 2020, and Apple TV+, which debuted in 2019."

CATL has unveiled a second-generation Shenxing battery capable of delivering a 520km range in just five minutes of charging, surpassing BYD's recent breakthrough and positioning both Chinese firms ahead of Western rivals in EV battery tech. The battery manufacturer also introduced a sodium-ion battery called Naxtra, offering up to 500km range for EVs and potential to diversify global energy resources. The Financial Times reports: The claims by the Chinese battery groups would put them ahead of major western rivals. At present, Tesla vehicles can be charged up to 200 miles (321km) in added range in 15 minutes, while Germany's Mercedes-Benz recently launched its all-electric CLA compact sedan, which can be charged for up to 325km within 10 minutes using a fast-charging station. [...] The second generation of the Shenxing battery, which boasts a range of 800km on one charge, can achieve a peak charging speed of 2.5km per second, the company said at a media event ahead of this week's Shanghai auto show.

"We look forward to collaborating with more industry leaders to push the limits of supercharging through true innovation," said CATL's chief technology officer Gao Huan, adding that he wanted the new batteries to become "the standard for electric vehicles." Analysts at Bernstein said the latest progress meant that charging speeds had more than doubled in the past year and "increased tenfold over the past 3-4 years." Huan said the new Shenxing battery would be installed in more than 67 EV models this year. He later told reporters that energy density would not be sacrificed as a trade-off for fast charging.

During its tech day, CATL also unveiled its new sodium-ion battery, which it said would go into mass production in December. The battery brand called Naxtra is able to give a range of about 200km for a hybrid vehicle and 500km for an electric vehicle, according to Huan. [...] At the event, Huan claimed the new sodium-ion battery would enable the industry's shift from "single resource dependence" to "energy freedom" and reshape the global energy landscape. He added that he was in discussions with several companies about using sodium-ion batteries in their vehicles.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: An October 2024 study by Software AG suggests that half of all employees are Shadow AI users, and most of them wouldn't stop even if it was banned. The problem is the ease of access to AI tools, and a work environment that increasingly advocates the use of AI to improve corporate efficiency. It is little wonder that employees seek their own AI tools to improve their personal efficiency and maximize the potential for promotion. It is frictionless, says Michael Marriott, VP of marketing at Harmonic Security. 'Using AI at work feels like second nature for many knowledge workers now. Whether it's summarizing meeting notes, drafting customer emails, exploring code, or creating content, employees are moving fast.' If the official tools aren't easy to access or if they feel too locked down, they'll use whatever's available which is often via an open tab on their browser.

There is almost also never any malicious intent (absent, perhaps, the mistaken employment of rogue North Korean IT workers); merely a desire to do and be better. If this involves using unsanctioned AI tools, employees will likely not disclose their actions. The reasons may be complex but combine elements of a reluctance to admit that their efficiency is AI assisted rather than natural, and knowledge that use of personal shadow AI might be discouraged. The result is that enterprises often have little knowledge of the extent of Shadow IT, nor the risks it may present. According to an analysis from Harmonic, ChatGPT is the dominant gen-AI model used by employees, with 45% of data prompts originating from personal accounts (such as Gmail). Image files accounted for 68.3%. The report also notes that 7% of empmloyees were using Chinese AI models like DeepSeek, Baidu Chat and Qwen.

"Overall, there has been a slight reduction in sensitive prompt frequency from Q4 2024 (down from 8.5% to 6.7% in Q1 2025)," reports SecurityWeek. "However, there has been a shift in the risk categories that are potentially exposed. Customer data (down from 45.8% to 27.8%), employee data (from 26.8% to 14.3%) and security (6.9% to 2.1%) have all reduced. Conversely, legal and financial data (up from 14.9% to 30.8%) and sensitive code (5.6% to 10.1%) have both increased. PII is a new category introduced in Q1 2025 and was tracked at 14.9%."

Some actors who sold their likenesses to AI video companies like Synthesia now regret the decision, after finding their digital avatars used in misleading, embarrassing, or politically charged content. Ars Technica reports: Among them is a 29-year-old New York-based actor, Adam Coy, who licensed rights to his face and voice to a company called MCM for one year for $1,000 without thinking, "am I crossing a line by doing this?" His partner's mother later found videos where he appeared as a doomsayer predicting disasters, he told the AFP. South Korean actor Simon Lee's AI likeness was similarly used to spook naive Internet users but in a potentially more harmful way. He told the AFP that he was "stunned" to find his AI avatar promoting "questionable health cures on TikTok and Instagram," feeling ashamed to have his face linked to obvious scams. [...]

Even a company publicly committed to ethically developing AI avatars and preventing their use in harmful content like Synthesia can't guarantee that its content moderation will catch everything. A British actor, Connor Yeates, told the AFP that his video was "used to promote Ibrahim Traore, the president of Burkina Faso who took power in a coup in 2022" in violation of Synthesia's terms. [...] Yeates was paid about $5,000 for a three-year contract with Synthesia that he signed simply because he doesn't "have rich parents and needed the money." But he likely couldn't have foreseen his face being used for propaganda, as even Synthesia didn't anticipate that outcome.

Others may not like their AI avatar videos but consider the financial reward high enough to make up for the sting. Coy confirmed that money motivated his decision, and while he found it "surreal" to be depicted as a con artist selling a dystopian future, that didn't stop him from concluding that "it's decent money for little work." Potentially improving the climate for actors, Synthesia is forming a talent program that it claims will give actors a voice in decision-making about AI avatars. "By involving actors in decision-making processes, we aim to create a culture of mutual respect and continuous improvement," Synthesia's blog said.

Fraud rings using fake "bot" students have infiltrated America's community colleges, stealing over $11 million from California's system alone in 2024. The nationwide scheme, which began in 2021, targets open-admission institutions where scammers enroll fictitious students in online courses to collect financial aid disbursements.

"We didn't used to have to decide if our students were human," said Eric Maag, who has taught at Southwestern College for 21 years. Faculty now spend hours vetting suspicious enrollees and analyzing AI-generated assignments. At Southwestern in Chula Vista, professor Elizabeth Smith discovered 89 of her 104 enrolled students were fraudulent. The California Community College system estimates 25% of all applicants statewide are bots. Community college administrators describe fighting an evolving technological battle against increasingly sophisticated fraud tactics. The fraud crisis has particularly impacted asynchronous online courses, crowding real students out of classes and fundamentally altering faculty roles.

Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick thinks AI is about to shake up consulting -- and for "traditional" professionals, not in a good way. From a report: The former Uber CEO said consultants who mostly follow instructions or do repetitive tasks are at risk of being replaced by AI. "If you're a traditional consultant and you're just doing the thing, you're executing the thing, you're probably in some big trouble," he said. He joked about what that future of consultancy might look like: "Push a button. Get a consultant."

However, Kalanick said the professionals who would come out ahead would be the ones who build tools rather than just use them. "If you are the consultant that puts the things together that replaces the consultant, maybe you got some stuff," he said. "You're going to profitable companies with competitive moats, making that moat bigger," he explained. "Making their profit bigger is probably pretty interesting from a financial point of view."

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has issued a stark ultimatum to European allies, telling them to choose between US and Chinese communications technology. In an interview with Financial Times, Carr urged "allied western democracies" to "focus on the real long-term bogey: the rise of the Chinese Communist party." The warning comes as European governments question Starlink's reliability after Washington threatened to switch off its services in Ukraine.

UK telecoms BT and Virgin Media O2 are currently trialing Starlink's satellite internet technology but haven't signed full agreements. "If you're concerned about Starlink, just wait for the CCP's version, then you'll be really worried," said Carr. Carr claimed Europe is "caught" between Washington and Beijing, with a "great divide" emerging between "CCP-aligned countries and others" in AI and satellite technology. He also accused the European Commission of "protectionism" and an "anti-American" attitude while suggesting Nokia and Ericsson should relocate manufacturing to the US to avoid Trump's import tariffs.

Intel will sell a 51% stake in its Altera programmable chip unit to private equity firm Silver Lake for $4.46 billion, aiming to cut costs, raise cash, and streamline the company's focus as it shifts toward becoming a contract chip manufacturer. CNBC reports: The deal, announced on Monday, values Altera at $8.75 billion, a sharp decline from the $17 billion Intel paid in 2015. [...] Since last year, Intel has taken steps to spin Altera out as a separate unit and said it planned to sell a portion of its stake. "Today's announcement reflects our commitment to sharpening our focus, lowering our expense structure and strengthening our balance sheet," [CEO Lip-Bu Tan], who took the helm after former top boss Pat Gelsinger's ouster, said.

Altera makes programmable chips that can be used for various purposes from telecom equipment to military. Reuters had first reported in November that Silver Lake was among potential suitors competing for a minority stake in Altera. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025, after which Intel expects to deconsolidate Altera's financial results from Intel's financial statements, the company said.