An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Managers and supervisors brace yourselves: calling the boss a dickhead is not necessarily a sackable offense, a tribunal has ruled. The ruling came in the case of an office manager who was sacked on the spot when -- during a row -- she called her manager and another director dickheads. Kerrie Herbert has been awarded almost 30,000 pounds in compensation and legal costs after an employment tribunal found she had been unfairly dismissed.

The employment judge Sonia Boyes ruled that the scaffolding and brickwork company she worked for had not "acted reasonably in all the circumstances in treating [her] conduct as a sufficient reason to dismiss her." "She made a one-off comment to her line manager about him and a director of the business," Boyes said. "The comment was made during a heated meeting. "Whilst her comment was not acceptable, there is no suggestion that she had made such comments previously. Further ... this one-off comment did not amount to gross misconduct or misconduct so serious to justify summary dismissal." [...]

Boyes found that Herbert was summarily fired because of her use of the word "dickheads" and ruled that the company had failed to follow proper disciplinary procedures. She concluded that calling her bosses dickheads was not sufficient to fire Herbert and ordered the firm to pay 15,042.81 pounds in compensation. In her latest judgment she also ruled it had to pay 14,087 pounds towards her legal fees. "If it was anyone else in this position they would have walked years ago due to the goings-on in the office, but it is only because of you two dickheads that I stayed," said Herbert.

Swannell retorted: "Don't call me a fucking dickhead or my wife. That's it, you're sacked. Pack your kit and fuck off."

Rising adoption of AI technology by firms in the Federal Reserve's New York district has not been much of a job-killer so far, the regional Fed bank said in a blog on Thursday. Reuters: "Businesses reported a notable increase in AI use over the past year, yet very few firms reported AI-induced layoffs," New York Fed economists wrote in the blog. "Indeed, for those already employed, our results indicate AI is more likely to result in retraining than job loss, similar to our findings from last year," and so far the technology does not point to "significant reductions in employment."

There has been broad concern that AI could create major headwinds for hiring in the coming years, with the technology hitting highly-paid professional and managerial jobs the hardest. Investors are plowing cash into AI investments at a time when employment has already begun to show some softness, although job market changes related to AI will almost certainly play out over a long time horizon. The New York Fed blog noted that the modest impact on jobs so far may not hold in the future. "Looking ahead, firms anticipate more significant layoffs and scaled-back hiring as they continue to integrate AI into their operations," New York Fed researchers wrote.

AI will disrupt the labor market within five to ten years and force Americans to rely on investment returns rather than wages for income, according to Vlad Tenev, chief executive of stock trading firm Robinhood. Tenev told Fortune that "if you can't rely on labor to generate money to make a living, capital becomes more important."

The brokerage chief said private companies and government must make investing easier from an early age. He cited the proposed Invest America Act, included in congressional reconciliation legislation, which would provide every newborn with $1,000 in an investment account. Tenev said the policy represents preparation for an economy where "humans comprise less than 1% of the total intelligence" as AI systems advance beyond current capabilities.

Atlassian said it has agreed to acquire The Browser Co., a startup that offers a web browser with AI features, for $610 million in cash. CNBC: The companies aim to close the deal in Atlassian's fiscal second quarter, which ends in December. Established in 2019, The Browser Co. has gone up against some of the world's largest companies, including Google, with Chrome, and Apple, which includes Safari on its computers running MacOS. The startup debuted Arc, a customizable browser with a built-in whiteboard and the ability to share groups of tabs, in 2022.

The Dia browser, a simpler option that allows people to chat with an AI assistant about multiple browser tabs at once, became available in beta in June. Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said he sees shortcomings in the most popular browsers for those who do much of their work on computers. Further reading: Atlassian Buying The Browser Company Feels Like a Waste of Money.

SAP will invest over 20 billion euros ($23 billion) in European sovereign cloud infrastructure over the next decade. "Innovation and sovereignty cannot be two separate things -- it needs to come together," said Thomas Saueressig, SAP's board member tasked with leading customer services and delivery. CNBC reports: The company said it was expanding its sovereign cloud offerings to include an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform enabling companies to access various computing services via its data center network. IaaS is a market dominated by players like Microsoft and Amazon. It will also roll out a new on-site option that allows customers to use SAP-operated infrastructure within their own data centers. The aim of the initiative is to ensure that customer data is stored within the European Union to maintain compliance with regional data protection regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.

[...] Saueressig said that SAP is "closely" involved in the creation of the new AI gigafactories but would not be the lead partner for the initiative. He added that the company's more than 20-billion-euro investment in Europe's sovereign cloud capabilities will not alter the company's capital expenditure for the next year and has already been baked into its financial plans.

"Typically when something is available to "buy," ownership of that good or access to that service is offered in exchange for money," writes Ars Technica.

"That's not really the case, though, when it comes to digital content." Often, streaming services like Amazon Prime Video offer customers the options to "rent" digital content for a few days or to "buy" it. Some might think that picking "buy" means that they can view the content indefinitely. But these purchases are really just long-term licenses to watch the content for as long as the streaming service has the right to distribute it — which could be for years, months, or days after the transaction. A lawsuit recently filed against Prime Video challenges this practice and accuses the streaming service of misleading customers by labeling long-term rentals as purchases. The conclusion of the case could have implications for how streaming services frame digital content...

[The plaintiff's] complaint stands a better chance due to a California law that took effect in January banning the selling of a "digital good to a purchaser with the terms 'buy,' 'purchase,' or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental." There are some instances where the law allows digital content providers to use words like "buy." One example is if, at the time of transaction, the seller receives acknowledgement from the customer that the customer is receiving a license to access the digital content; that they received a complete list of the license's conditions; and that they know that access to the digital content may be "unilaterally revoked...."

The case is likely to hinge on whether or not fine print and lengthy terms of use are appropriate and sufficient communication. [The plaintiff]'s complaint acknowledges that Prime Video shows relevant fine print below its "buy" buttons but says that the notice is "far below the 'buy movie' button, buried at the very bottom" of the page and is not visible until "the very last stage of the transaction," after a user has already clicked "buy."
Amazon is sure to argue that "If plaintiff didn't want to read her contract, including the small print, that's on her," says consumer attorney Danny Karon. But he tells Ars Technica "I like plaintiff's chances. A normal consumer, after whom the California statute at issue is fashioned, would consider 'buy' or 'purchase' to involve a permanent transaction, not a mere rental... If the facts are as plaintiff alleges, Amazon's behavior would likely constitute a breach of contract or statutory fraud."

In 2017 Rick Beato streamed "Rick's Rant Episode 2" — and just received a copyright claim this month. And days after jazz pianist Chick Corea died in 2021, Beato livestreamed a half-hour video which was mostly commentary, but with several excerpts from Corea's albums (at least one more than three minutes long). He also received a copyright claim for that one this August — just minutes after the claim on his 2017 video.

These videos "are all fair use," Beato argues in a new video, noting it's also affected other popular YouTube channels like The Professor of Rock: Rick Beato: Universal Music Group [UMG] has continued to send emails about copyright content ID claims — and now copyright strikes — on my channel. As a matter of fact, I have three shorts — these are under a minute long — that if they go through in the next four days, I'll have three strikes on my channel! Now if you don't fight these things, those three strikes would actually remove my channel from YouTube.
Five months ago Rick Beato had posted a clip from his interview with singer-songwriter Adam Duritz (founder of The Counting Crows) on YouTube. After 250,000 views, he'd earned a whopping $36.52 — and then Universal Music Group also claimed that video violated their copyright. (In the background the video played Duritz's song as he described how he wrote it.) "So they're gonna take my channel down over less than a hundred bucks — for using a small segment from an interview with him, on a song he sang on," Beato complained on YouTube. "That video is 55 seconds long!"

"You need to play people's music to talk about it," Beato argues. "That is the definition of fair use. These are interviews with the people about their careers." (And the interviews actually help promote the artists for the record labels...) Rick Beato: The next one has me in it — it's an Olivia Rodrigo song — that I played maybe 10 seconds of the song on, and the short is 42 seconds long. Who did it? UMG. The third copyright strike is from a Hans Zimmer short. It's also UMG — it's from the Crimson Tide soundtrack.

Now, what do these things say...? "Your video is scheduled to be removed in four days and your channel will get a copyright strike due to a removal request from a claimant. If you delete your video before then, your channel won't get a copyright strike." [And there's also emails like "After reviewing your dispute, UMG has decided that their copyright claim is still valid..."] I've had probably 4,000 claims, over the last 9 years — from things that are fair use. [When he interviewed producer Rick Rubin, that video got 13 separate copyright claims.]

That's when I hired a lawyer to fight these. [Full-time, Beato says later.] And what he's done is he fought every single claim... We have successfully fought thousands of these now. But it literally costs me so much money to do this. Since we've been fighting these things — and never lost one — they still keep coming in... They're all Universal Music Group. So they obviously have hired some third party company, that are dredging up things, they're looking for things that haven't been claimed in the past — they're taking videos from seven or eight years ago!
Slashdot reader MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) writes on the "New York's Linux Scene" site that video bloggers like Beato "have been hounded by copyright pirates like UMG," arguing that new videos of support are a "rebellion gaining traction". (Beato's video drew 1,369,859 views — and attracted 24,605 Comments — along with videos of support from professional musicians like drummer Anthony Edwards, guitarist Justin Hawkins, and bassist Scot Lade, as well as two different professional music attorneys.)

"Since there's rarely humans making any of these decisions and it's automated by bots, they don't understand these claims are against Universal Music's best interests," argues the long-running blog Saving Country Music (first appearing on MySpace in 2008). On YouTube videos, creators can freely filch copyrighted photos and other people's videos virtually free of ramifications. You can take an entire 2 1/2 hour film, impose it over a background, and upload it to YouTube, and usually avoid any problems. But feature a barely audible 8 1/2-second clip of music underneath audio dialogue, and you could have your entire podcast career evaporate overnight... People continue to ask, "Why doesn't Saving Country Music has a podcast?" Because what's the point of having a music podcast when you can't feature music? In fact, after over a decade of refusing to start one, I finally did, music free. What happened? About a dozen episodes in, someone took out a claim, and not only were all the episodes deleted, so was the entire account, even though no music even appeared on any of the episodes. I was given absolutely no recourse to fight whatever false claim had been made...

The music industry continues to so colossal fail the artists and catalogs they represent, and the fans they're supposed to serve with this current system of how podcasts are handled. If everything changes today thanks to the Rick Beato rant, it would still be 15 years too late. But at least it would happen.
Instead, they write, "Music labels have been leaving major opportunities to promote their catalogs and performers on the table with their punitive copyright claims that make it impossible to feature music on music podcasts and other platforms...

"You aren't screwing podcasters. You're screwing artists who could be using podcasts to help promote their music. "

At the moment, the Spotify exodus of 2025 is a trickle rather than a flood, writes the Guardian, citing the departure of five notable bands "liked in indie circles," but not "the sorts to rack up billions of listens."

"Still, it feels significant if only because, well, this sort of thing wasn't really supposed to happen any more." Plenty of bands and artists refused to play ball with Spotify in its early years, when the streamer still had work to do before achieving total ubiquity. But at some point there seemed to a collective recognition that resistance was futile, that Spotify had won and those bands would have to bend to its less-than-appealing model... This artist acquiescence happened in tandem — surely not coincidentally — with a closer relationship between Spotify and the record labels that once viewed it as their destroyer. Some of the bigger labels have found a way to make a lot of money from streaming: Spotify paid out $10bn in royalties last year — though many artists would point out that only a small fraction of that reaches them after their label takes its share...

So why have those five bands departed in quick succession? The trigger was the announcement that Spotify founder Daniel Ek had led a €6oom fundraising push into a German defence company specialising in AI weapons technology. That was enough to prompt Deerhoof, the veteran San Francisco oddball noise pop band, to jump. "We don't want our music killing people," was how they bluntly explained their move on Instagram. That seems to have also been the animating factor for the rest of the departed, though GY!BE, who aren't on any social media platforms, removed their music from Spotify — and indeed all other platforms aside from Bandcamp — without issuing a statement, while Hotline TNT's statement seemed to frame it as one big element in a broader ideological schism. "The company that bills itself as the steward of all recorded music has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it does not align with the band's values in any way," the statement read.

That speaks to a wider artist discontent in a company that has, even by its own standards, had a controversial couple of years. There was of course the publication of Liz Pelly's marmalade-dropper of a book Mood Machine, with its blow-by-blow explanation of why Spotify's model is so deleterious to musicians, including allegations that the streamer is filling its playlists with "ghost artists" to further push down the number of streams, and thus royalty payments, to real artists (Spotify denies this). The streamer continues to amend its model in ways that have caused frustration — demonetising artists with fewer than 1,000 streams, or by introducing a new bundling strategy resulting in lower royalty fees. Meanwhile, the company — along with other streamers — has struggled to police a steady flow of AI-generated tracks and artists on to the platform...

[R]emoving yourself from such an important platform is highly risky. But if they can pull it off, the sacrifice might just be worth it. "A cooler world is possible," as Hotline TNT put it in their statement.
The Guardian's culture editor adds that "I've been using Bandcamp more, even — gasp — buying albums..."

"Maybe weaning ourselves off not just Spotify, but the way that Spotify has convinced us to consume music is the only answer. Then a cooler world might be possible."

Intel amended its deal with the U.S. Department of Commerce "to remove earlier project milestones," reports Reuters, "and received about $5.7 billion in cash sooner than planned."

"The move will give Intel more flexibility over the funds." The amended agreement, which revises a November 2024 funding deal, retains some guardrails that prevent the chipmaker from using the funds for dividends and buybacks, doing certain control-changing deals and from expanding in certain countries.
The move makes the Wall Street Journal wonder what, beyond equity, the U.S. now gets in return, calling government's position "a stake without a strategy." The U.S. has historically shied away from putting money into private business. It can't really outguess the market on where the most promising returns lie. Yet there are exceptions. Sometimes a company or industry risks failing without public support, and that failure would hurt the whole country, not just its shareholders and employees. Intel meets both conditions. It isn't failing, but it is losing money, its core business is in decline, and it lacks the capital and customers needed to make the most advanced semiconductors. If Intel were to fail, it would take a sizable chunk of the semiconductor industrial base with it. At a time of existential competition with China, that is a national emergency...

[U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick] said as a shareholder, the U.S. would help Intel "to create the most advanced chips in the world." And yet the deal doesn't provide Intel with new resources to accomplish that. Rather, to get the remaining $9 billion, Intel had to give the U.S. equity. This is more like a tax than an investment: Shareholders gave up a 10th of their ownership in return for money the company was supposed to get anyway... Some of the administration's forays into private business do reflect strategic thinking, such as the Pentagon's 15% stake in MP Materials in exchange for investment and contracts that help make the company a viable alternative to China as a supplier of rare-earth magnets for products such as automobiles, wind turbines, jet fighters and missile systems. But more often, companies recoil from government ownership...

Though the U.S. stake dilutes Intel's existing shareholders, its stock has held up. There could be several reasons. It eliminates uncertainty over whether the remaining $9 billion in federal funds will be forthcoming... [B]ecause Washington has a vested interest in Intel's share price, investors believe it may prod companies such as Nvidia and Apple to buy more of its chips.
But that only goes so far, the article seems to conclude, offering this quote from an analyst Bernstein investment research. "If Intel can prove they can make these leading-edge products in high volume that meets specifications at a good cost structure, they'll have customers lined up around the block. If they can't prove they can do it, what customer will put meaningful volume to them regardless of what pressure the U.S. government brings to bear?"

CBS News also notes the U.S. government stake "is being criticized by conservatives and some economic policy experts alike, who worry such extensive government intervention undermines free enterprise."

Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.

Alibaba, China's largest cloud-computing company, has developed a domestically manufactured, versatile inference chip to fill the gap left by U.S. restrictions on Nvidia's sales in China. The Wall Street Journal reports: Previous cloud-computing chips developed by Alibaba have mostly been designed for specific applications. The new chip, now in testing, is meant to serve a broader range of AI inference tasks, said people familiar with it. The chip is manufactured by a Chinese company, they said, in contrast to an earlier Alibaba AI processor that was fabricated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. Washington has blocked TSMC from manufacturing AI chips for China that use leading-edge technology.

[...] Private-sector cloud companies including Alibaba have refrained from bulk orders of Huawei's chips, resisting official suggestions that they should help the national champion, because they consider Huawei a direct rival in cloud services, people close to the firms said. China's biggest weakness is training AI models, for which U.S. companies rely on the most powerful Nvidia products. Alibaba's new chip is designed for inference, not training, people familiar with it said. Chinese engineers have complained that homegrown chips including Huawei's run into problems when training AI, such as overheating and breaking down in the middle of training runs. Huawei declined to comment.

Universities facing federal research budget cuts are increasingly turning to corporate partnerships for funding as Georgia Tech secures $70 million from industry this fiscal year -- 28% more than last year and representing 15% of campus research funding versus the 6% national average. The Atlanta school's corporate engagement office has fielded multiple weekly calls from other institutions seeking guidance after securing deals including Hyundai's $55 million stadium naming rights agreement alongside undisclosed research investments in electric vehicle and hydrogen fuel technologies.

The arrangements come with restrictions: nondisclosure agreements limit publication options for graduate students, and companies typically avoid funding basic research without immediate commercial applications. Federal grants still constitute over half of university research spending nationally, supporting early-stage discovery work that laid groundwork for current quantum computing developments.

Stellantis has put its fully developed Level 3 driver-assistance system on hold due to high costs, technical hurdles, and weak consumer demand. Reuters reports: As recently as February, Stellantis said its in-house system, which is part of the AutoDrive program, was ready for deployment and a key pillar of its strategy. The company said the system, which enables drivers to have their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road under certain conditions, would allow them to temporarily watch movies, catch up on emails, or read books. That Level 3 software was never launched, the company confirmed to Reuters. But it stopped short of saying that the program was canceled.

"What was unveiled in February 2025 was L3 technology for which there is currently limited market demand, so this has not been launched, but the technology is available and ready to be deployed," a Stellantis spokesperson said. The three sources, however, said that the program was put on ice and is not expected to be deployed. When asked how much time and money was lost on the initiative, Stellantis declined to say, responding that the work done on AutoDrive will help support its future versions. [...] Stellantis said it is leaning on aiMotive, a tech startup it acquired in 2022, to deliver the next generation of the AutoDrive program. Stellantis declined to say when that program would be ready for market or if it would include Level 3 capability.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over half of the British public are worried about the impact of AI on their jobs, according to employment unions, which want the UK government to adopt a "worker first" strategy rather than simply allowing corporations to ditch employees for algorithms. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), a federation of trade unions in England and Wales, says it found that people are concerned about the way AI is being adopted by businesses and want a say in how the technology is used at their workplace and the wider economy.

It warns that without such a "worker-first plan," use of "intelligent" algorithms could lead to even greater social inequality in the country, plus the kind of civil unrest that goes along with that. The TUC says it wants conditions attached to the tens of billions in public money being spent on AI research and development to ensure that workers are supported and retrained rather than deskilled or replaced. It also wants guardrails in place so that workers are protected from "AI harms" at work, rules to ensure workers are involved in deciding how machine learning is used, and for the government to provide support for those who euphemistically "experience job transitions" as a result of AI disruption.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a liberal dark money organization, is paying Democratic influencers up to $8,000 monthly through its Chorus Creator Incubator Program, Wired reports. Contracts prohibit participants from disclosing their payments or identifying funders, the publication added. The program launched last month includes over 90 creators with a collective audience exceeding 40 million followers. Influencers must attend advocacy trainings and messaging check-ins while Chorus retains approval rights over political content made with program resources. The Sixteen Thirty Fund distributed over $400 million to left-leaning causes in 2020.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinTelegraph: Paying interest on stablecoin deposits could spark a wave of bank outflows similar to the money market fund boom of the 1980s, Citi's Future of Finance head Ronit Ghose warned in a report published Monday. According to the Financial Times, Ghose compared the potential outflows caused by paying interest on stablecoins to the rise of money market funds in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Those funds ballooned from about $4 billion in 1975 to $235 billion in 1982, outpacing banks whose deposit rates were tightly regulated, Federal Reserve data showed. Withdrawals from bank accounts exceeded new deposits by $32 billion between 1981 and 1982.

Sean Viergutz, banking and capital markets advisory leader at consultancy PwC, similarly suggested that a shift from consumers to higher-yielding stablecoins could spell trouble for the banking sector. "Banks may face higher funding costs by relying more on wholesale markets or raising deposit rates, which could make credit more expensive for households and businesses," he said. The GENIUS Act does not allow stablecoin issuers to offer interest to holders, but it does not extend the ban to crypto exchanges or affiliated businesses. The regulatory setup led to a significant reaction by the banking sector.

Several US banking groups led by the Bank Policy Institute have urged local regulators to close what they say is a loophole that may indirectly allow stablecoin issuers to pay interest or yields on stablecoins. In a recent letter, the organization argued that the so-called loophole may disrupt the flow of credit to American businesses and families, potentially triggering $6.6 trillion in deposit outflows from the traditional banking system.

Canada's tech job market has collapsed from its pandemic-era boom, with postings down 19% from 2020 levels. Analysts say the decline was sharper than the overall job market and worsened after ChatGPT's debut in 2022 fueled AI-driven shifts in workforce demand. The Canadian Press reports: "The Canadian tech world remains stuck in a hiring freeze," said Brendon Bernard, Indeed's senior economist. "While both the tech job market and the overall job market have definitely cooled off from their 2022 peaks, the cool off has been much sharper in tech." He thinks the fall was likely caused by the market adjusting after a pandemic boom in hiring along with recent artificial intelligence advances that have reduced tech firms' interest in expanding their workforces.

"We went from this really hot job market with job postings through the roof to one where job postings really crashed, falling well below their pre-pandemic levels," Bernard said. However, he sees AI's recent boom as a "watershed moment." While much of the decline in tech job postings has been in software engineer roles, Indeed found hiring for AI-related jobs was still up compared to early 2020. In fact, machine learning engineers and roles that support AI infrastructure, such as data engineers and data centre technicians, were among the job titles with postings still above early-2020 levels.

At the same time, Indeed saw postings for senior and manager-level tech jobs drop sharply from their 2022 peak, but as of early 2025, they were still up five per cent from their pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, basic and junior tech titles were down 25 per cent. When it compared Canada's overall decline in tech job postings, Indeed found the country's decrease from pre-pandemic levels was somewhat milder than the retrenchment it has observed in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany. The U.S. fall amounted to 34 per cent, while in the U.K. it was 41 per cent. France saw a 38 per cent drop and Germany experienced a 29 per cent decrease. "All this just highlights is that this tech hiring freeze is a global tech hiring freeze," Bernard said.

Dish's parent company EchoStar is selling $23 billion worth of 5G spectrum licenses to AT&T and shifting Boost Mobile onto AT&T and T-Mobile networks, effectively abandoning its bid to become the fourth major U.S. wireless carrier. The Verge reports: As part of T-Mobile's deal to acquire Sprint in 2019, the Department of Justice stipulated that another company must replace it as the fourth major wireless carrier. Dish came forward to acquire Boost Mobile from Sprint, paying $1.4 billion to purchase the budget carrier and other prepaid assets. Since then, Dish has spent billions acquiring spectrum to build out its own 5G network, which the company said was close to reaching 80 percent of the US population as of last year, in line with the Federal Communications Commission's deadline to meet certain coverage requirements.

But Dish struggled to repay mounting debt, leading it to rejoin EchoStar, the company it originally spun off from in 2008. And at the same time, it came under renewed pressure from the FCC to make use of its spectrum. In April, the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX wrote a letter to the FCC saying EchoStar "barely uses" the AWS-4 (2GHz) spectrum band for satellite connectivity. Weeks later, FCC chair Brendan Carr opened an investigation into EchoStar's 5G expansion, criticizing the company's slow buildout and claiming that it had lost Boost Mobile customers since its acquisition of the carrier. Carr also questioned EchoStar's use of the AWS-4 spectrum, which isn't included in its deal with AT&T.

In July, Carr said that he's not concerned with having a fourth mobile provider, saying during an open meeting that there isn't a "magic number" of carriers needed in the US to maintain competition. "We're always looking at a confluence of different factors to make sure that there's sufficient competition," he said, as reported by Fierce Network. Now, EchoStar will become a hybrid mobile network operator, which is a carrier that operates on its own network, in addition to using other companies' infrastructure. As noted in the press release, Boost Mobile will provide connectivity through AT&T towers and the T-Mobile network. "This ensures the survival of Boost Mobile," [said Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics]. "It gives them money, but at the end, they don't have much of a network left."

The Michigan Supreme Court has drawn a firm line around digital privacy, ruling that police cannot use overly broad warrants to comb through every corner of a person's phone. From a report: In People v. Carson, the court found [PDF] that warrants for digital devices must include specific limitations, allowing access only to information directly tied to the suspected crime. Michael Carson became the focus of a theft investigation involving money allegedly taken from a neighbor's safe. Authorities secured a warrant to search his phone, but the document placed no boundaries on what could be examined.

It permitted access to all data on the device, including messages, photos, contacts, and documents, without any restriction based on time period or relevance. Investigators collected over a thousand pages of information, much of it unrelated to the accusation. The court ruled that this kind of expansive warrant violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires particularity in describing what police may search and seize.

The U.S. government's 10% stake in Intel "is a mistake," writes the Washington Post's editorial board, calling Intel "an aging also-ran in critical markets" that "has spent recent years stumbling on execution and missing one strategic opportunity after another."

But TechCrunch points out that the U.S. government "does not appear to be committing new funds. Instead, it's simply making good on what Intel described as 'grants previously awarded, but not yet paid, to Intel.'" Specifically, the $8.9 billion is supposed to come from $5.7 billion awarded-but-not-paid to Intel under the Biden administration's CHIPS Act, as well as $3.2 billion also awarded by the Biden administration through the Secure Enclave program. In a post on his social network Truth Social, Trump wrote, "The United States paid nothing for these shares..." Trump has been critical of the CHIPS Act, calling it a "horrible, horrible thing" and calling on House Speaker Mike Johnson to "get rid" of it...

According to The New York Times, some bankers and lawyers believe the CHIPS Act may not allow the government to convert its grants to equity, opening this deal to potential legal challenges.
Reuters writes that the money "will not be enough for its contract-chipmaking business to flourish, analysts said. Intel still needs external customers for its cutting-edge 14A manufacturing process to go to production, says Summit Insights analyst Kinngai Chan, "to make its foundry arm economically viable." "We don't think any government investment will change the fate of its foundry arm if they cannot secure enough customers..."

Reuters has reported that Intel's current 18A process — less advanced than 14A — is facing problems with yield, the measure of how many chips printed are good enough to make available to customers. Large chip factories including TSMC swallow the cost of poor yields during the first iterations of the process when working with customers like Apple. For Intel, which reported net losses for six straight quarters, that's hard to do and still turn a profit. "If the yield is bad then new customers won't use Intel Foundry, so it really won't fix the technical aspect of the company," said Ryuta Makino, analyst at Gabelli Funds, which holds Intel stock.

Makino, who believes that Intel can ultimately produce chips at optimal yields, views the deal as a net negative for Intel compared with just receiving the funding under the CHIPS Act as originally promised under the Biden Administration. "This isn't free money," he said. The federal government will not take a seat on Intel's board and has agreed to vote with the company's board on matters that need shareholder approval, Intel said. But this voting agreement comes with "limited exceptions" and the government is getting Intel's shares at a 17.5% discount to their closing price on Friday. The stake will make the U.S. government Intel's biggest shareholder, though neither Trump nor Intel disclosed when the transaction would happen...

Some analysts say Intel could benefit from the government's support, including in building out factories. Intel has said it is investing more than $100 billion to expand its U.S. factories and expects to begin high-volume chip production later this year at its Arizona plant. "To have access to capital and a new partial owner that wants to see you succeed are both important," said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel.

The Washington Post looks at the rise of low-effort, high-volume "AI slop" videos: The major social media platforms, scared of driving viewers away, have tried to crack down on slop accounts, using AI tools of their own to detect and flag videos they believe were synthetically made. YouTube last month said it would demonetize creators for "inauthentic" and "mass-produced" content. But the systems are imperfect, and the creators can easily spin up new accounts — or just push their AI tools to pump out videos similar to the banned ones, dodging attempts to snuff them out.
One place where they're coming from... Jiaru Tang, a researcher at the Queensland University of Technology who recently interviewed creators in China, said AI video has become one of the hottest new income opportunities there for workers in the internet's underbelly, who previously made money writing fake news articles or running spam accounts. Many university students, stay-at-home moms and the recently unemployed now see AI video as a kind of gig work, like driving an Uber. The average small creator she interviewed did their day jobs and then, at night, "spent two to three hours making AI-slop money," she said. A few she spoke with made $2,000 to $3,000 a month at it.
But the article provides other examples of the "wild cottage industry of AI-video makers, enticed by the possibility of infinite creation for minimal work"

• A 31-year-old loan officer in eastern Idaho first went viral in June "with an AI-generated video on TikTok in which a fake but lifelike old man talked about soiling himself. Within two weeks, he had used AI to pump out 91 more, mostly showing fake street interviews and jokes about fat people to an audience that has surged past 180,000 followers..." (He told the Post the videos earn him about $5,000 a month through TikTok's creator program.)

• "To stand out, some creators have built AI-generated influencers with lives a viewer can follow along. 'Why does everybody think I'm AI? ... I'm a human being, just like you guys,' says the AI woman in one since-removed TikTok video, which was watched more than 1 million times."

• One AI-generated video a dog biting a woman's face off (revealing a salad) received a quarter of a billion views.