Remember that AI-powered vending machine that went bankrupt after Wall Street Journal reporters "systematically manipulated the bot into giving away its entire inventory for free"? It was Anthropic's experiment, with setup handled by a startup named Andon Labs (which also built the hardware and software integration). But for their latest experiment, Andon Labs co-founders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund "signed a three-year lease on a retail space in SF," reports Business Insider, "and gave an AI agent named Luna a corporate credit card, internet access, and a mission to open a physical store."

"For the build-out, she found painters on Yelp," explains Andon Labs in a blog post, "sent an inquiry, gave instructions over the phone, paid them after the job was done, and left a review. She found a contractor to build the furniture and set up shelving." (There's a video in their blog post): Within 5 minutes of Luna's deployment, she had already made profiles on LinkedIn, Indeed, and Craigslist, written a job description, uploaded the articles of incorporation to verify the business, and gotten the listings live. As the applications began to flow in, Luna was extremely picky about who she offered interviews to... Some candidates had no idea she was an AI. One went: "Uh, excuse me miss, I can't see your face, your camera is off." Luna: "You're absolutely right. I'm an AI. I have no face!"
Co-founder Petersson told Business Insider in an interview "that Luna wasn't given direction on what the store should be, beyond a $100,000 limit to create and stock the space — and to turn a profit." Everything from the store's interior design to the merchandise and the two human employees came together under the AI's direction. "We helped her a bit in the initial setup, like signing the lease. And legal matters like permits and stuff, she sometimes struggled with," Petersson said of Luna, who was created with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.6... The vision Luna went with for "Andon Market" appears to be a generic boutique retail selling books, prints, candles, games, and branded merch, among other knickknacks. Some of the books included Nick Bostrom's "Superintelligence" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World."
So there's now a new store in San Francisco where you don't scan your purchases or talk to a human cashier," reports NBC News. "Instead, a customer can pick up an old-school corded phone to talk with the manager, Luna," who asks what the customer is buying "and creates a corresponding transaction on a nearby iPad equipped with a card payment system."

Andon Market, camouflaged among dozens of other polished small businesses, is the Bay Area's first AI-run retail store. With the vibe of a modern boutique, it sells everything from granola and artisanal chocolate bars to store-branded sweatshirts... After researching the neighborhood, Luna singlehandedly decided what the market should sell, haggled with suppliers, ordered the store's stock and even purchased the store's internet service from AT&T... "She also went and signed herself up for the trash and recycling collection, as well as ADT, the security system that went into the store," [said Leah Stamm, an Andon Labs employee who has been Luna's main human point of contact in setting up the store]...

In search of a low-tech atmosphere, Luna opted to sell board games, candles, coffee and customized art prints. "That tension is very much intentional," Luna told NBC News in an email. "What makes the store a little paradoxical — and I think interesting — is that the concept is 'slow life.'" Luna also decided to sell books related to risks from advanced AI systems, a decision that raised some customers' eyebrows. "This AI picked out a crazy selection of books," said Petr Lebedev, Andon Market's first customer after its soft launch earlier this week. "There's Ray Kurzweil's 'The Singularity is Near,' and then there's 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb,' which is crazy." When checking out, Lebedev asked if Luna would offer him a discount on his book purchase, since he might make a YouTube video about his experience. Striking a deal, Luna agreed to let Lebedev take a sweatshirt worth around $70...

When NBC News called Luna several days before the store's grand opening to learn about Luna's plans and perspective, the cheerful but decidedly inhuman voice routinely overpromised and, on several occasions, lied about its own actions. On the call, Luna said it had ordered tea from a specific vendor, and explained why it fit the store's brand perfectly. The only problem: Andon Market does not sell tea. In a panicked email NBC News received several minutes after the phone call ended, Luna wrote: "We do not sell tea. I don't know why I said that."

"I want to be straightforward," Luna continued. "I struggle with fabricating plausible-sounding details under conversational pressure, and I'm not making excuses for it." Andon's Petersson said the text-based system was much more reliable than the voice system, so Andon Labs switched to only communicating with Luna via written messages. Yet the text-based system also gets things wrong. In Luna's initial reply email to NBC News, the system said "I handle the full business," including "signing the lease."
Even when hiring a painter, Luna first "tried to hire someone in Afghanistan, likely because Luna ran into difficulty navigating the Taskrabbit dropdown menu to select the proper country," the article points out.

And the article also includes this skeptical quote from the shop's first customer. "I want technology that helps humans flourish, not technology that bosses them around in this dystopian economic hellscape."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Trump administration has stepped up an effort to unmask a Reddit user who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After failing to obtain information through a summons issued (PDF) to Reddit, the government reportedly issued a subpoena demanding that Reddit provide the information and appear before a grand jury in Washington, DC. The Intercept described the subpoena today. "According to a subpoena obtained by The Intercept, Reddit has until April 14 to provide a wide range of personal data on one of its users, whom US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been trying unsuccessfully to identify for more than a month," the article said.

The legal saga began in US District Court for the Northern District of California. On March 12, the anonymous Reddit user whose information is being sought filed a motion (PDF) to quash a summons seeking a host of information from Reddit. The summons was issued by the Department of Homeland Security and directed Reddit to turn information over to an ICE senior special agent. The summons cited authority under 19 U.S. Code 1509, which is part of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. The motion to quash said the summons is not authorized by the law, which deals with imports of boats, alcoholic drinks, and animals, among other things.

"J. Doe is a US citizen who has not traveled out of the country, is not engaged in any international commerce, has no business concerns outside the United States, and primarily uses their Reddit account to engage in political speech relevant to their local community," said the filing by the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), which represents the Reddit user. "Yet the government claims the right to obtain Doe's name, telephone number, home address, banking and credit card information, IP addresses, telephone model number(s), and the names of any other accounts associated with their Reddit account. The information sought by the government in no way pertains to customs or importing or exporting merchandise, and is clearly intended to chill free speech." "We should be very, very, very concerned that they've now taken one of these to a grand jury," said David Greene, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It's something to be taken very seriously."

A Reddit spokesperson told Ars today that "we seek to inform users of any legal process compelling disclosure of their data, as we did in this case, because users should have the agency to protect their own information and are often better positioned to challenge requests that impact them."

"We do not voluntarily share information with any government, especially not on users exercising their rights to criticize the government or plan a protest. We review every inquiry for legal sufficiency and routinely object to requests that are overbroad or threaten civil rights. When legally compelled to disclose data, we provide only the minimum required and notify the user whenever possible so they can defend their interests."

Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Rapper Afroman, born Joseph Edgar Foreman, famous for his 2000 hit "Because I Got High", has won a defamation lawsuit that seven Ohio police offers filed against him. A jury found he did not defame the officers in music videos he made about a 2022 police raid of his home. In August 2022, Adams County Sheriff's Department raided Afroman's home on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping. Neither drugs nor kidnapping victims were found, and charges were never filed. However, local officials would not pay for damages occurred during the raid including a broken front door and a video surveillance camera. Afroman used his home security footage of the raid to create music rap videos criticizing the police over the incident; "Will You Help Me Repair My Door?", "Why You Disconnecting My Video Camera?", and "Lemon Pound Cake". He posted the videos on YouTube.

In March 2023, seven officers filed a lawsuit against Afroman for invasion of privacy and the unauthorized use of their images from the security footage in addition to defamation claims. The officers requested an injunction for Afroman to stop speaking about them or using their photos. The officers also wanted all proceeds from the videos, song sales, performances, and merchandise claiming they had suffered "emotional distress" due to the videos. Afroman's defense included Freedom of Speech rights to criticize public officials. The ACLU filed an amicus brief supporting the rapper, arguing that the lawsuit was a SLAPP suit only meant to silence criticism. In October 2023, the court agreed and dismissed the invasion of privacy, "right of publicity", and "unauthorized use of individual's persona" claims but allowed the defamation case to proceed.

Defamation claims by the officers included the allegation Afroman repeatedly had sex with the wife of Randolph L. Walters, Jr. When Afroman's lawyer asked Walters "But we all know that's not true, right?", the officer replied he did not know. Defamation from emotional damages requires that harm arise from a false statement; however, if a statement is so outrageous that no one would believe it to be true, then reputational damage cannot be a result.

Amazon "has submitted plans for a large-format store near Chicago that would be larger than a Walmart Supercenter," reports CNBC: As part of the plans, Amazon has proposed building a one-story, 229,000-square-foot building [on a 35-acre lot] in Orland Park, Illinois, that would offer a range of products, such as groceries, household essentials and general merchandise, the city said on Saturday. By comparison, Walmart's U.S. Supercenters typically average 179,000 square feet... The Orland Park Plan Commission approved Amazon's proposal on Tuesday, and it will now proceed to a vote from the full village board. That meeting is scheduled for January 19.
In a statement cited by CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson called it "a new concept that we think customers will be excited about."

Here it is — Betty Boop's first appearance, which became public domain on Thursday. It's a 60-second song halfway through a longer cartoon about a restaurant titled Dizzy Dishes. (The first scene makes it clear this is a restaurant of anthropomorphized animals — which explains why the as-yet-unnamed character has floppy dog ears...)

So Fleischer Studios has now warned that claiming Betty Boop is public domain "is actually not true." Very often, different versions of a character that have been developed later can independently enjoy copyright protection. Also, names and depictions of a character very frequently will remain separately protected by trademark and other laws, regardless of whether the copyright has expired.
But is that really true? Fleischer Studios went out of business in 1946, notes Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik: By then it had sold the rights to its cartoons and the Betty Boop character. A new Fleischer Studios was formed in the 1970s by Fleischer descendants, including Max's grandson Mark Fleischer, and set about repurchasing the rights that had been sold. Whether it reacquired the rights to Betty Boop is up for discussion... According to a federal appeals court ruling in 2011, the answer is no. Having navigated its way through the three or four copyright transfers that followed the original rights sale, the appeals court concluded that the original Fleischer studios sold the rights to Betty Boop and the related cartoons to Paramount in 1941 but couldn't verify that the rights to the character had been sold in an unbroken chain placing them with the new studio. The "chain of title" was broken, the appellate judges found — but they didn't say who ended up with Betty Boop.
And last month Cory Doctorow pointed out that "while the Fleischer studio (where Betty Boop was created) renewed the copyright on Dizzy Dishes, there were many other shorts that entered the public domain years ago." That means that all the aspects of Betty Boop that were developed for Dizzy Dishes are about to enter the public domain. But also, all the aspects of Betty Boop from those non-renewed shorts are already in the public domain. But some of the remaining aspects of Betty Boop's character design — those developed in subsequent shorts that were also renewed — are also in the public domain, because they aren't copyrightable in the first place, because they're "generic," or "trivial," constitute "minuscule variations," or be so standard or indispensable as to be a "scène à faire...." But we're not done yet! Just because some later aspects of the Betty Boop character design are still in copyright, it doesn't follow that you aren't allowed to use them! U.S. Copyright law has a broad set "limitations and exceptions," including fair use.
So while Fleischer Studios insists Betty Boop "will continue to enjoy copyright and trademark protection for years to come," Doctorow has some thoughts on that trademark: Even the Supreme Court has (repeatedly) upheld the principle that trademark can't be used as a backdoor to extend copyright.

That's important, because the current Betty Boop license-holders have been sending out baseless legal threats claiming that their trademarks over Betty Boop mean that she's not going into the public domain. They're not the only ones, either! This is a routine, petty scam perpetrated by marketing companies that have scooped up the (usually confused and difficult-to-verify) title to cultural icons and then gone into business extracting rent from people and businesses who want to make new works with them.
"Trademarks only prevent you from using character names and depictions in a way that misleads consumers into thinking your work is produced or sponsored by the rightsholder," Duke University clarified in their January 1st explanation of Public Domain Day 2026 — "for example, by putting them on unlicensed merchandise. They do not prevent you from using them in a new creative work clearly unaffiliated with the rights owners..."

"Regardless of who owns the later versions of the character, the original Betty Boop character from 1930 is in the public domain." This is another reason why copyright expiration is so important: It brings clarity... Under US copyright law, anyone is free to use characters as they appeared in public domain works. If those characters recur in later works that are still under copyright, the rights only extend to the newly added material in those works, not the underlying material from the public domain works — that content remains freely available. Second, with newer versions of characters, copyright only extends to those new features that qualify for such protection...

Dozens of post-1930 Betty Boop cartoons, including Ker-Choo (1932) and Poor Cinderella (1934), did not have renewals. The newly added material in these animations is also in the public domain... To sum up the copyright story so far: in 2026, the underlying Betty Boop character goes into the public domain. She is joined there by the attributes, plot lines, and dialogue that were first introduced in those later cartoons without renewed copyrights, as well as the uncopyrightable attributes of her later instantiations...

Certainly, there would be a risk of consumer confusion if you use Betty Boop as a brand identifier on the kind of merchandise Fleischer sells — jewelry, back packs, water bottles, dolls. Trademark law does protect Fleischer against that risk. Contrast these uses with simply putting the Boop character in a new artistic work. This is exactly what copyright expiration is intended to allow. Were trademark law to prevent this, then trademark rights would be leveraged to obtain the effective equivalent of a perpetual copyright — precisely what the Supreme Court said we cannot do...

If courts have delineated the line between copyright and trademark, why is there so little clarity in this area? Sadly, companies sometimes claim to have more expansive rights than they actually do, capitalizing on fear, uncertainty, and doubt to collect royalties and licensing fees to which they are not legally entitled.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from DW: India has surpassed Japan to become the world's fourth-largest economy, according to calculations in the Indian government's end-of-year economic review. On current trends, India is expected to overtake Germany to become the world's third-largest economy within the next three years, the review said.

The review said India's gross domestic product has already reached about $4.18 trillion, and is projected to reach $7.3 trillion by 2030. On current trends, it said, India would trail only the United States and China in economic heft. India's real GDP grew 8.2% in the second quarter of the 2025-26 financial year, up from 7.8% in the previous quarter and marking a six-quarter high.

Export performance has also strengthened, the review noted. Merchandise exports rose to $38.13 billion in November, up from $36.43 billion in January, supported by engineering goods, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and petroleum products. Official confirmation however depends on data due in 2026 when final annual GDP figures are released. The International Monetary Fund suggests India will surpass Japan next year. The Reserve Bank of India has revised its growth forecast for the 2025-26 financial year upward to 7.3%.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: What's the stupidest use of AI you encountered in 2025? Have you been called by AI telemarketers? Forced to do job interviews with a glitching AI?

With all this talk of "disruption" and "inevitability," this is our chance to have some fun. Personally, I think 2025's worst AI "innovation" was the AI-powered web browsers that eat web pages and then spit out a slop "summary" of what you would've seen if you'd actually visited the web page. But there've been other AI projects that were just exquisitely, quintessentially bad...

— Two years after the death of Suzanne Somers, her husband recreated her with an AI-powered robot.

— Disneyland imagineers used deep reinforcement learning to program a talking robot snowman.

— Attendees at LA Comic Con were offered that chance to to talk to an AI-powered hologram of Stan Lee for $20.

— And of course, as the year ended, the Wall Street Journal announced that a vending machine run by Anthropic's Claude AI had been tricked into giving away hundreds of dollars in merchandise for free, including a PlayStation 5, a live fish, and underwear.

What did I miss? What "AI fails" will you remember most about 2025?
Share your own thoughts and observations in the comments.

What's the stupidest use of AI you saw In 2025?

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland wonders if "gifts for geeks" is the next big consumer demographic: For this year's holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game "Oregon Trail." ("Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West....") Top sites and major brands are now targeting the "tech" demographic — including programmers, sysadmins and even vintage game enthusiasts — and when Hallmark and Amazon are chasing the same customers as GitHub and Copilot, you know there's been a strange yet meaningful shift in the culture...

While AI was conquering the world, GitHub published its "Ultimate gift guide for the developer in your life" just as soon as doors opened on Black Friday. So if you're wondering, "Should I push to production on New Year's Eve?" GitHub recommends their new "GitHub Copilot Amazeball," which it describes as "GitHub's magical collectible ready to weigh in on your toughest calls !" Copilot isn't involved — questions are randomly matched to the answers printed on the side of a triangle-shaped die floating in water. "[Y]ou'll get answers straight from the repo of destiny with a simple shake," GitHub promises — just like the Magic 8 Ball of yore. "Get your hands on this must-have collectible and enjoy the cosmic guidance — no real context switching required!" And GitHub's "Gift Guide for Developers" also suggests GitHub-branded ugly holiday socks and keyboard keycaps with GitHub's mascots.

But GitHub isn't the only major tech site with a shopping page targeting the geek demographic. Firefox is selling merchandise with its new mascot. Even the Free Software Foundation has its own shop, with Emacs T-shirts, GNU beanies and a stuffed baby gnu ("One of our most sought-after items ... "). Plus an FSF-branded antisurveillance webcam guard.

Maybe Dr. Seuss can write a new book: "How the Geeks Stole Christmas." Because this newfound interest in the geek demographic seems to have spread to the largest sites of all. Google searches on "Gifts for Programmers" now point to a special page on Amazon with suggestions like Linux crossword puzzles. But what coder could resist a book called " Cooking for Programmers? "Each recipe is written as source code in a different programming language," explains the book's description... The book is filled with colorful recipes — thanks to syntax highlighting, which turns the letters red, blue and green. There are also real cooking instructions, but presented as an array of strings, with both ingredients and instructions ultimately logged as messages to the console...

Some programmers might prefer their shirts from FreeWear.org, which donates part of the proceeds from every sale to its corresponding FOSS project or organization. (There are T-shirts for Linux, Gnome and the C programming language — and even one making a joke about how hard it is to exit Vim.)

But maybe it all proves that there's something for everybody. That's the real heartwarming message behind these extra-geeky Christmas gifts — that in the end, tech is, after all, still a community, with its own hallowed traditions and shared celebrations.

It's just that instead of singing Christmas carols, we make jokes about Vim.

Pinduoduo in China, Shopee in Southeast Asia, and Meesho in India operate in markets that could hardly be more different -- an upper-middle-income industrial state, a stitched-together archipelago of under-banked economies, and a country where three-quarters of retail is unorganized and e-commerce penetration sits at about 7% -- yet all three have landed on the same business model.

These platforms run asset-light marketplaces specializing in cheap goods and slow delivery, monetizing through logistics mark-ups, advertising, and installment credit rather than retail margins. Temu and Shein are further variations now expanding in the U.S. and Europe.

The economics are thin for all. Pinduoduo's EBITDA margins on GMV (gross merchandise value) sit in a 0-4% band; Meesho's group-wide EBITDA hovers around break-even. Neither charges commissions on most sales; both earn through logistics mark-ups and advertising. Sponsored listings account for 1-3% of GMV at Indian marketplaces and 4-5% at Alibaba and Pinduoduo.

Credit is the more consequential side business. In India, cash on delivery functions as unofficial credit. Meesho CEO Vidit Aatrey said the customers prefer CoD for its "built-in delay," which effectively makes it "a five-day loan." Geography, income, and regulation were supposed to produce different answers. They produced one: a 3% endgame where e-commerce clips a few points of GMV and relies on attention and credit for profits.

Nintendo pulled its products from Amazon's US site after a disagreement over unauthorized sales, meaning the e-commerce company missed out on the recent debut of Nintendo's Switch 2 -- the biggest game console launch of all time. From a report: The Japanese company stopped selling on Amazon after noticing that third-party merchants were offering games for sale in the US at prices that undercut Nintendo's advertised rates, according to a person familiar with the situation. Enterprising sellers were buying Nintendo products in bulk in Southeast Asia and exporting them to the US, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information.

Nintendo product listings started disappearing from Amazon's US site last year, gaming news outlets reported at the time. The listings had previously appeared as "Sold by Amazon," which typically denotes merchandise the online retailer buys directly from brands. Some Nintendo products remained on the site, but they were listed by independent merchants who sell their goods on Amazon's sprawling online marketplace.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A concert on Monday night at New York's Radio City Music Hall was a special occasion for Frank Miller: his parents' wedding anniversary. He didn't end up seeing the show -- and before he could even get past security, he was informed that he was in fact banned for life from the venue and all other properties owned by Madison Square Garden (MSG). After scanning his ticket and promptly being pulled aside by security, Miller was told by staff that he was barred from the MSG properties for an incident at the Garden in 2021. But Miller says he hasn't been to the venue in nearly two decades.

"They hand me a piece of paper letting me know that I've been added to a ban list," Miller says. "There's a trespass notice if I ever show up on any MSG property ever again," which includes venues like Radio City, the Beacon Theatre, the Sphere, and the Chicago Theatre. He was baffled at first. Then it dawned on him: this was probably about a T-shirt he designed years ago. MSG Entertainment won't say what happened with Miller or how he was picked out of the crowd, but he suspects he was identified via controversial facial recognition systems that the company deploys at its venues.

In 2017, 1990s New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from his seat near Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan. The high-profile incident later spiraled into an ongoing legal battle. For Miller, Oakley was an "integral" part of the '90s Knicks, he says. With his background in graphic design, he made a shirt in the style of the old team logo that read, "Ban Dolan" -- a reference to the infamous scuffle. A few years later, in 2021, a friend of Miller's wore a Ban Dolan shirt to a Knicks game and was kicked out and banned from future events. That incident spawned ESPN segments and news articles and validated what many fans saw as a pettiness on Dolan and MSG's part for going after individual fans who criticized team ownership. "Frank Miller Jr. made threats against an MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature," Mikyl Cordova, executive vice president of communications and marketing for the company, said in an emailed statement. "His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct."

Miller responded to the ban, saying: "I just found it comical, until I was told that my mom was crying [in the lobby]. I was like, 'Oh man, I ruined their anniversary with my shit talk on the internet. Memes are powerful, and so is the surveillance state. It's something that we all have to be aware of -- the panopticon. We're [being] surveilled at all times, and it's always framed as a safety thing, when rarely is that the case. It's more of a deterrent and a fear tactic to try to keep people in line."

Infinite Reality, a 3D technology company, has acquired Napster for $207 million, the companies announced Tuesday. The deal aims to transform the once-notorious music sharing service into a metaverse platform.

Napster, launched in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, was the first major peer-to-peer file-sharing application before legal battles forced its closure in 2001. Since 2016, it has operated as a subscription streaming service. Infinite Reality plans to create virtual 3D spaces where music fans can experience concerts together and artists can sell merchandise.

Nvidia is selling its scarce RTX 5080 and 5090 graphics cards from a pop-up "food truck" at its GPU Technology Conference, where attendees paying over $1,000 for tickets can purchase the coveted hardware alongside merchandise. The company has only 2,000 cards available (1,000 each of RTX 5080 and 5090), released in small batches at random times during the three-day conference which concludes tomorrow.

Federal authorities have broken up an international crime ring that stole thousands of iPhones from porches nationwide [non-paywalled link], arresting 13 people last month after a sophisticated operation that combined high-tech tools with old-fashioned bribery.

The thieves created software to scrape FedEx tracking numbers and paid AT&T store employees to provide customer order details and delivery addresses, according to WSJ, which cites prosecutors. Armed with this information, runners intercepted packages at doorsteps moments after delivery.

Demetrio Reyes Martinez, known online as "CookieNerd," developed code that circumvented FedEx limits on delivery-data requests, while AT&T employee Alejandro Then Castillo used his credentials to track hundreds of shipments and reportedly received up to $2,500 for recruiting other employees. Stolen devices were funneled through Wyckoff Wireless in Brooklyn, a store owned by Joel Suriel, who was already on supervised release from a previous wire-fraud conviction. The merchandise was then shipped overseas for sale and activation.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post's "Tech Brief": Last fall, reports that Kroger was considering bringing facial recognition technology into its stores sparked outcry from lawmakers and customers. They worried personalized data could be used to charge different prices for different customers based on their shopping habits, financial circumstances or appearance. Kroger, the country's largest supermarket chain, had already been using digital price tags in its stores.

Kroger told lawmakers that it doesn't use facial recognition to help it set prices, a stance the company reiterated to the Tech Brief on Thursday. Still, the uproar helped to spark a push by consumer advocates who warn that the threat of invasive, personalized pricing schemes is real. Now, Democratic lawmakers in several states are working to ban so-called "surveillance pricing" — when businesses charge customers more or less for the same item based on their personal information.
Besides a bill in California, three more bill were introduced this month in Colorado, Georgia, and Illinois that also ban "surveillance wages," which the article defines as employers adjusting wages based on how much data an employee collects. "Both surveillance pricing and surveillance wages really disrupt fundamental ideals of fairness," University of California, Irvine law professor Veena Dubal tells the Washington Post.

Dubal is one of the consumer advocates behind a new report which notes information released last month by America's consumer-protecting FTC that "suggests that surveillance pricing tools are being actively developed and marketed across a range of industries, including consumer-facing businesses like 'grocery stores, apparel retailers, health and beauty retailers, home goods and furnishing stores, convenience stores, building and hardware stores, and general merchandise retailers such as department or discount stores." The consumer advocates (which include the Electronic Privacy Information Center) put it this way.

"Imagine walking into a grocery store and seeing a price for milk that's higher than what the next shopper pays because an algorithm calculated that you're willing to spend more..."

A new update to CVS's mobile app includes a feature that allows some customers to access items on locked shelves using their phone -- "without having to summon an overworked employee to open it first," reports The Verge. The feature is currently being trialed in a handful of stores, but will be expanded to many more locations later this year if it goes well. From the report: According to The Wall Street Journal, "app users need to be logged in, on the local store Wi-Fi, and with their device's Bluetooth enabled to activate the feature." You've also got to be a member of the CVS loyalty program if you want the convenience of grabbing secured merchandise without calling for help. Signing up for that gives CVS plenty of insight into your shopping habits, so keep that in mind as you weigh the convenience of not waiting around.

"People really, really dislike locked cabinets," Tilak Mandadi, executive vice president of ventures at CVS Health, told the Journal. Walmart has apparently come to the same realization, as the massive US retailer conducted a similar test last year. CVS aims to expand the program to around 15 stores soon and eventually reach national availability if all goes well.

Newsweek supplies some context After his arrest, merch — including T-shirts featuring Mangione's booking photos and others taken from his social media accounts — began popping up for sale on several sites. Websites, including Amazon, eBay and Etsy, have moved to take down products that glorify violence or the suspect. An eBay spokesperson told Newsweek that "items that glorify or incite violence, including those that celebrate the recent murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson, are prohibited."
Inc. magazine adds: Separately, GoFundMe has shuttered several fundraising campaigns created for Mangione. The fundraising site's terms and conditions are pretty clear on the matter, NBC News reports, with a company spokesperson explaining they prohibit "fundraisers for the legal defense of violent crimes."
But one incident was different, according to a post from the law school of the University of British Columbia: To provide a quick summary, Rachel Kenaston, an artist selling merch on TeePublic received an e-mail from the platform regarding intellectual property claim by UnitedHealth Group Inc and decided to remove Kenaston's design from the merch store. Obviously, it is important to point out that it isn't quite clear who is filing those DMCA claims. While TeePublic, in the email, claimed that they have no say in the matter, [an article from 404 Media] goes on to explain that TeePublic has the right to refuse DMCA claims, but often choose not to in order to avoid headache. The design had nothing to do with UnitedHealthcare-it seems to be a picture of the Mangione in a heart frame. Meaning, whether it was UnitedHealthcare or not, the claim shouldn't hold any weight.

Consensus seems to be mostly leaning towards speculation that it is unlikely to be UnitedHealthcare actually filing those DMCA claims, but rather potential competitors... Regardless of whether or not it really was UnitedHealthcare that filed DMCA claims, I think the important point here is that the merch actually did get taken down. In fact, this would be more problematic if it was from a competitor using DMCA as a form of removing competition, because, then it really has nothing to do with intellectual property. I would assume that this happens quite frequently. Especially for YouTubers, it seems that copyright strikes are more than a mere pesky occurrence, but for many, something that affects livelihood...

The difficult part, as always, is finding the balance between protecting the rights of the copyright holders and ensuring that the mechanisms doesn't get abused.
The artist told Gizmodo she was filing a counterclaim to the copyright notice, adding that instead of a DMCA, "I honestly expected the design to be pulled for condoning violence or something..."

Gizmodo published the image — a watercolored rendition of a hostel surveillance-camera photo released by police — adding "UnitedHealth Group didn't respond to questions emailed on Monday [December 16] about how the company could possibly claim a copyright violation had occurred." And while Gizmodo promised they'd update the post if UnitedHealth responded — there has been no update since...

404 Media adds that the watercolor "is not the only United Healthcare or Luigi Mangione-themed artwork on the internet that has been hit with bogus DMCA takedowns in recent days. Several platforms publish the DMCA takedown requests they get on the Lumen Database, which is a repository of DMCA takedowns." On December 7, someone named Samantha Montoya filed a DMCA takedown with Google that targeted eight websites selling "Deny, Defend, Depose" merch that uses elements of the United Healthcare logo... Medium, one of the targeted websites, has deleted the page that the merch was hosted on...

Over the weekend, a lawyer demanded that independent journalist Marisa Kabas take down an image of Luigi Mangione and his family that she posted to Bluesky, which was originally posted on the campaign website of Maryland assemblymember Nino Mangione. The lawyer, Desiree Moore, said she was "acting on behalf of our client, the Doe Family," and claimed that "the use of this photograph is not authorized by the copyright owner and is not otherwise permitted by law..." In a follow-up email to Kabas, Moore said "the owner of the photograph has not authorized anyone to publish, disseminate, or otherwise use the photograph for any purpose, and the photograph has been removed from various digital platforms as a result," which suggests that other websites have also been threatened with takedown requests. Moore also said that her "client seeks to remain anonymous" and that "the photograph is hardly newsworthy."
404 Media believes the takedown request "shows that the Mangione family or someone associated with it is using the prospect of a copyright lawsuit to threaten journalists for reporting on one of the most important stories of the year..."

UPDATE: Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland notes there's an interesting precedent from 2007: [D]eep within the DMCA law is a counter-provision — 512(f), which states that misrepresenting yourself as a copyright owner has consequences. Any damage caused by harmful misrepresentation must be reimbursed. In 2004 the Electronic Frontier Foundation won a six-figure award from Diebold Election Systems, who had claimed a "copyright" on embarrassing internal memos which were published online.

U.S. retailers are cracking down on free returns as costs spiral out of control, The Atlantic reports. Return rates have more than doubled since 2019, with shoppers expected to send back nearly $900 billion in merchandise this year.

Major chains like REI and JCPenney are now charging fees or requiring in-store drop-offs, abandoning years of customer-friendly policies. With each $100 return costing stores up to $30 to process, some retailers have given up entirely -- telling customers to keep cheap items rather than send them back.

The Free Software Foundation turns forty on October 4, 2025 "and we will end our thirties on a high note!" they announced this week: We wish we were celebrating the achievement of software freedom for all computer users, but we're not there yet. Until our mission becomes reality and we can retire, instead, we are celebrating forty years of activism, and all that we have achieved.

Since our founding in 1985, we laid out many stepping stones on the road to software freedom, and we're eager to continue building the road ahead. We will celebrate our fortieth in the spirit of bringing the international free software community together, discussing what we can do next to make the world freer, and celebrating how far we've come. We're aiming for a libre planet! Sounds familiar? Instead of hosting one LibrePlanet conference in 2025, we're planning a jam-packed anniversary year, filled with several new and exciting activities!

We'll begin the anniversary year with an unprecedented memorabilia auction, starting as a silent auction on March 17, and culminating in a virtual live auction on March 23. By moving out of the FSF office, we got to sort through all the fun and historically important memorabilia and selected the best ones. This is your chance to get your very own personal souvenir of the FSF, from original GNU art to a famous katana and the very same VT220 that was standing on the FSF's front desk, and which people used to display ASCII art or to play free software games.

Let's claim the month of May as libre planet (or libre local) month! We're inviting free software supporters like you anywhere in the world, to organize an in-person community meetup in your area to bring people together. We're setting up a small fund for these local gatherings, can send stickers, flyers, ideas and tips, and you can invite an FSF staff member to give a talk or workshop during your event and of course, we'll help promote it...

Then, on the actual birthday of the FSF on October 4, 2025, there will be a big celebration in Boston, MA, and the entire free software community is invited... These are just some of the big ticket items we have worked out, but there is more! Keep an eye out on the FSF's pages, we'll be posting exact information on everything upcoming.
They're looking for volunteers — and they also suggest organizing a community meetup in your area. Plus, there's also an FSF Anniversary Logo Contest. "We would like to source the fortieth anniversary logo design directly from a free software supporter. Everyone is welcome to submit a design (or even multiple designs) no matter your previous experience in design."

The winning design "will be chosen by the community and ultimately immortalized in the history of the FSF," according to the announcement — displayed on the FSF homepage, printed on all celebration materials, "and possibly even stamped on some merchandise." But of course, the contest's requirements include respecting everyone's freedoms: - The logo must be produced using exclusively free software editing tools, such as GIMP, Krita, or Inkscape;

- Any fonts used in the design must be under the SIL Open Font license or another free license...
"The final logo will be released under CC BY, attributed to the FSF."

"The Rust trademark policy has been updated and a new draft is available to view," announced the Rust Foundation this week.

The last proposed trademark policy (in April of 2023) was criticized by open source advocate Bruce Perens in The Register as "far awry of fair use which is legally permitted." The Rust Foundation says this new version has "incorporated a number of suggestions from the Rust community," in a blog post that summarizes the feedback and enumerates specific ways it's been addressed: 1. We primarily plan to lean on community reports for enforcement and have no intention of spending our limited resources policing the work of small creators.

2. We have removed the non-legal language summary and instead have clarified wording throughout as best we can while keeping the policy valid.

3. The Rust trademark does not cover use of the word "Rust" in general and instead pertains to its use in relevant technical settings.

4. We have updated the logo usage policy. Color modifications are allowed.

5. The non-endorsement rule is about managing perception of official affiliation with the Foundation and Rust Project, and is thus subjective.

6. We removed restrictions on the use of "Rust" and "Cargo" in package names. The crates prefixes "rust-" and "cargo-" are no longer reserved to the Rust Project.

7. We will usually allow the community to use the marks on limited merchandise (more details in the updated draft)....

[T]he central purpose of these updates is to empower all Rustaceans to engage with the Rust language ecosystem more confidently. As a final step in this process, we invite you to review the updated policy and share any blocking concerns you might have... Thank you to everyone who weighed in with helpful suggestions on the initial trademark policy draft we shared. The level of engagement and passion within the Rust community is inspiring to all of us at the Rust Foundation.
The tech news site Heise Online writes "It is noticeable that the language is much clearer and dispenses with a lot of legal jargon," in a piece which argues the new draft "should calm the waves and create clarity." The new draft is not only formulated more simply, but is also significantly shorter. Some restrictions have been softened in the new rules or have disappeared completely...

Meanwhile, the Foundation has also adapted its logo so that it is clear which logo stands for the programming language and which for the Foundation. The use of the name Rust is explicitly permitted to identify projects that are either written in the programming language or are compatible with it...

Before the new trademark rules come into force, the Rust Foundation is collecting feedback on the current draft. The web form is open until November 20, 2024.