An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: Ikea is taking on the likes of eBay, Craigslist, and Gumtree with a peer-to-peer marketplace for customers to sell secondhand furniture to each other. Ikea Preowned will be tested in Madrid and Oslo until the end of the year with the aim of rolling out the buying and selling platform globally, according to Jesper Brodin, chief executive of Ingka, the main operator of Ikea stores. [...] Ikea has had a small offering under which it buys used furniture from customers and resells it in store. But the new platform is more ambitious, aiming to tackle the secondhand market for customers selling directly to each other -- an area where Brodin estimates Ikea has a higher market share than in new furniture sales. Customers enter their product, their own pictures, and a selling price, while Ikea's own artificial intelligence-enabled database brings in its own promotional images and measurements. The buyer collects the furniture directly from the seller, who has the option of receiving money or a voucher from Ikea with a 15 percent bonus.

"Very often there is a monopoly or oligopoly on platforms that operate," said Brodin, talking about eBay or digital classified ad services such as Gumtree in the UK and Finn in Norway. Finn has 8,700 items from Ikea listed in Oslo alone. Early offerings on Ikea Preowned include large items such as sofas for up to $670 (600 euros) and wardrobes for $500 (450 euros) as well as smaller items such as a toilet roll holder for $4.50 (4 euros). Listings are free, but Brodin said Ikea could eventually charge "a symbolic fee, a humble fee." He added: "We're going to verify the full scope including the economics. If a lot of people use the offer to get a discount with Ikea -- it's a good way to reconnect with customers. I am very curious. I think it makes business sense." Ikea has previously tested selling its new furniture on third-party platforms such as Alibaba's Tmall in China, but the Preowned platform marks its first foray into secondhand marketplaces. It also dovetails with the retailer's wish to become "circular and climate positive" by 2030.

Google may be the most successful company in the world. But a Washington Post reporter argues that Google "makes you largely responsible for dodging the criminals who are hurting legitimate businesses and swindling people." On Monday, I found what appeared to be impostors of customer service for Delta and Coinbase, the cryptocurrency company, in the "People also ask" section high up in Google. A group of people experienced in Google's intricacies also said this week that it took about 22 minutes to fool Google into highlighting a bogus business phone number in a prominent spot in search results...

If you look at the two impostor phone numbers in Google for Delta and Coinbase, there are red flags. There are odd fonts and a website below the bogus numbers that wasn't for either company. (I notified Google about the apparent scams on Monday and I still saw them 24 hours later.) The correct customer help numbers did appear at the very top, and Google says businesses have clear instructions to make their customer service information visible to people searching Google.
The larger issue is "a persistent pattern of bad guys finding ways to trick Google into showing scammers' numbers for airlines, hotels, local repair companies, banks or other businesses." The toll can be devastating when people are duped by these bogus business numbers. Fortune recently reported on a man who called what a Google listing said was Coinbase customer support, and instead it was an impostor who Fortune said tricked the man and stole $100,000...

Most of the time, you will find correct customer service numbers by Googling. But the company doesn't say how often people are tricked out of time and money by bogus listings — nor why Google can't stop the scams from recurring.
The article makes two points.

• Google says when they identify listings violating their rules, they move quickly against them.

• "Impostor numbers pop up so persistently that I am once again begging you to be wary of Google or Google Maps listings for business phone numbers... You still might see bogus phone numbers in some spots in Google. And if you're stressed trying to find help with a flight or a financial problem, you might overlook warning signs. Scams work because humans make errors in judgment, especially when we're confused or panicky. And business impostors aren't always obvious."

An anonymous reader shared this story from the blog Decrypt: Michael Lewis, author of Going Infinite, an account of the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, has argued that the disgraced FTX founder didn't have "the character of a thief" in a new The Washington Post article. "His crime was of a piece with his character. The character wasn't the character of a thief. It was the character of a person numb to risk." Lewis explained in the final paragraphs of a 4,500 word essay adapted from a new introduction to his book. "Unable to feel risk himself, he can't really imagine other people feeling much at all about the risk he has subjected them to...."

Lewis doubled down on previous claims that Bankman-Fried wasn't running a Ponzi scheme, arguing that "The crime was unnecessary to the business in a way that, say, Bernie Madoff's was not," and that "The crime made no sense." The collapse of FTX, he added, "might have been avoided and FTX might have survived."

"That doesn't mean I think that Sam Bankman-Fried is innocent. It merely informs how I feel about him," Lewis explained. "I think the truth is closer to 'young person with an intellectually defensible but socially unacceptable moral code makes a huge mistake in trying to live by it' than "criminal on the loose in the financial system.'"
From from The Daily Beast: Lewis also pointed to bankruptcy court filings from FTX in the weeks after Bankman-Fried's sentencing showing that "against the $8.7 billion in missing customer deposits, FTX was now sitting on something like $14.5 to $16.3 billion." "Whatever the exact sum, it was enough to repay all depositors and various other creditors at least 118 cents on the dollar — that is, everyone who imagined they had lost money back in November 2022 would get their money back, with interest," Lewis writes.
Michael Lewis's article offers some vivid details: Inside of three years, he'd gone from socially and emotionally isolated 25-year-old with an upper-middle-class bank account to leader of a small army of math nerds and (according to Forbes magazine) not merely the world's richest person under 30 but maybe the fastest creator of wealth in recorded history... He'd gone from having no friends as a child to having too many as an adult without ever developing a capacity for friendship....

The prosecutors didn't need Sam's help. Sam helped them anyway by ignoring the counsel of his lawyers and testifying on his own behalf... As Lewis Kaplan, the federal judge who presided over the case, said later: "When he wasn't outright lying, he was often evasive, hairsplitting, dodging questions and trying to get the prosecutor to reword questions in ways that he could answer in ways he thought less harmful than a truthful answer to the question that was posed would have been. I've been doing this job for close to 30 years. I've never seen a performance quite like that...." [T]he judge ordered Sam to rise so that he might address him directly. Two hours or so earlier, Sam had shuffled into the courtroom in prison khakis with his head down and his hands oddly clasped behind his back. Just before he'd entered, his guards had told him he was meant to be wearing handcuffs and asked if he could create the impression that he was doing so...

"There is a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future, and it's not a trivial risk, not a trivial risk at all," said the judge. "So, in part, my sentence will be for the purpose of disabling him." He then sentenced Sam to 25 years in prison, with no possibility of parole.

A few minutes later, Sam dutifully clasped his hands behind his back and shuffled out of the courtroom.
Lewis adapted his 4,500-word article from the upcoming (updated) paperback edition of his book — which was originally published in 2023 on the same day jurors were selected for Bankman-Fried's trial...

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp shared this anecdote about Amazon's GenAI assistant for software development, Amazon Q: On Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took to Twitter to boast that using Amazon Q to do Java upgrades has already saved Amazon from having to pay for 4,500 developer-years of work. ("Yes, that number is crazy but, real," writes Jassy). And Jassy says it also provided Amazon with an additional $260M in annualized efficiency gains from enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs.

"Our developers shipped 79% of the auto-generated code reviews without any additional changes," Jassy explained. "This is a great example of how large-scale enterprises can gain significant efficiencies in foundational software hygiene work by leveraging Amazon Q."

Jassy — who FORTUNE reported had no formal training in computer science — also touted Amazon Q's Java upgrade prowess in his Letter to Shareholders earlier this year, as has Amazon in its recent SEC filings ("today, developers can save months using Q to move from older versions of Java to newer, more secure and capable ones; in the near future, Q will help developers transform their .net code as well"). Earlier this week, Business Insider reported on a leaked recording of a fireside chat in which AWS CEO Matt Garman predicted a paradigm shift in coding as a career in the foreseeable future with the prevalence of AI. According to Garman, "If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can't exactly predict where it is — it's possible that most developers are not coding."

Wyoming is pioneering the next phase of crypto growth by creating its own U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, the Wyoming stable token. The state aims for an early 2025 launch and have it serve as a model for a digitized dollar at the federal level, while also using the token's reserves to fund public schools. CNBC reports: Wyoming is currently vetting potential partners and vendors with more tech expertise to help build the stable token. It will require an exchange and wallet providers -- Coinbase and Kraken, for example, offer both -- to purchase and hold the token. The state plans to issue the token to an exchange so the exchange can issue it to the retail user. From there, it should be just another payment method for everyday things, said Flavia Naves, a commissioner at the Wyoming Stable Token Commission. "When you walk into Cowboy Coffee in Jackson, Wyoming, and you want to buy your latte, there's going to be their wallet there in Solana that you can use to buy your coffee with the Wyoming token," she said, describing the vision for the stablecoin.

It also has a public good tilt to it: the commission plans to invest reserves that back each token in circulation into Treasurys and reverse repos, and use the interest made on those investments to fund its public schools. At the conference, [Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon] emphasized the importance of resisting the urge to focus too much on how much money the state can make here and to instead prioritize reserve management. [...] Naves emphasized that there will be a "buffer" in the reserves to account for any potential deviations and full transparency to establish and maintain public trust.

"There will be audits available to the public on how many tokens [are] in circulation [and] how much money is in the bank account backing, so you can always see there is a 1-to-1 [stablecoin-to-dollar ratio]," she said. "This is a public token as well so as with any public service, all the information is available." The commission invites the public virtually to its meetings on the stable token and posts the minutes to its website afterward. "This is fully reserved and part of what we've been working out ... is to make sure that we can fully back whatever it is we're going to do," Gordon said. "Plus the fact that our legislation says that when a person buys a Treasury or a repo, we're going to have that in evidence, you're going to be able to see that. So hopefully we can avoid the de begging issues." Success would be "adoption of a stablecoin ... that's transparent, that is fully backed by our short-term Treasurys [and] that's dollar dependent," Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon told CNBC at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole. "One of the big things for me is to be able to bring back onshore a lot of our debt, because if it's bought by treasuries and supported by Treasurys, it will help to stabilize that market to a degree."

"It is clear to me is that digital assets are going to have a future," Gordon said. "The United States has to address this issue. Washington's being a little bit stodgy, which is why Wyoming, being a nimble and entrepreneurial state, can make a difference."

New submitter ElimGarak000 shares a report from CyberScoop: The Texas-based voice service provider that sent AI-generated robocalls of President Joe Biden to New Hampshire voters ahead of its Democratic presidential primary has agreed to pay a $1 million fine and implement enhanced verification protocols designed to prevent robocalls and phone number spoofing in a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission. The fine represents half the amount the FCC was originally seeking in an enforcement action proposed against Lingo Telecom in May. Despite that, agency leaders characterized the settlement (PDF) as a successful effort to defend U.S. telecommunications networks and election infrastructure from nascent AI and deepfake technologies. [...]

In addition to the fine, the settlement requires Lingo Telecom to follow regulatory protocols that were put in place in 2020 to ensure telecommunications carriers authenticate caller identities using their networks. The protocols, known as STIR/SHAKEN, require carriers like Lingo to digitally verify and formally attest to the FCC that callers are legitimate and own the phone number they display on Caller ID. In the New Hampshire robocall case, Kramer and Life Corporation spoofed the phone number of Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic party official who was running a write-in campaign for Biden.

The FCC cited Lingo's inability to properly implement and enforce STIR/SHAKEN as a key failure in a February cease-and-desist letter, and again in May when the agency proposed a $2 million enforcement action. The company was also named in a civil lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters and New Hampshire residents, seeking damages over the incident. Per terms of the settlement, Lingo Telecom must hire a senior manager knowledgeable in STIR/SHAKEN protocols and develop a compliance plan, new operating procedures and training programs. They must also report any incidents of non-compliance with STIR/SHAKEN within 15 days of discovery. "Every one of us deserves to know that the voice on the line is exactly who they claim to be," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. "If AI is being used, that should be made clear to any consumer, citizen, and voter who encounters it. The FCC will act when trust in our communications networks is on the line."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The former CEO of a small Kansas bank was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for looting the bank of $47 million -- which he sent to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by scammers who had duped him in a "pig butchering" scheme that appealed to his greed, federal prosecutors said. The massive embezzlement by ex-CEO Shan Hanes in a series of wire transfers over just eight weeks last year led to the collapse and FDIC takeover of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, one of only five U.S. banks that failed in 2023. Hanes, 53, also swindled funds from a local church and investment club -- and a daughter's college savings account -- to transfer money, purportedly to buy cryptocurrency as the scammers insisted they needed more funds to unlock the supposed returns on his investments, according to records from U.S. District Court in Wichita, Kansas. But Hanes never realized any profit and lost all of the money he stole as a result of the scam. Judge John Broomes on Monday sentenced Hanes to 293 months in prison -- 29 months more than what prosecutors requested after he pleaded guilty in May to a single count of embezzlement by a bank officer. [...]

[P]rosecutors and bank regulators said that Hanes, who has three daughters with his school teacher wife, began stealing after being targeted in a pig-butchering scheme in late 2022. That scheme was described in a court filing as "a scammer convincing a victim (a pig) to invest in supposedly legitimate virtual currency investment opportunities and then steals the victim's money -- butchering the pig." Hanes, who had served on the board of the American Bankers Association, and been chairman of the Kansas Bankers Association, in December 2022 began making transactions to buy cryptocurrency, which "appeared to be precipitated by communication with an unidentified co-conspirator on the electronic messaging app 'WhatsApp,'" prosecutors wrote in a court filing. "To date, the true identity of the co-conspirator, or conspirators, remain unknown," the filing notes. Hanes initially used personal funds to buy crypto, but in early 2023 he stole $40,000 from Elkhart Church of Christ and $10,000 from the Santa Fe Investment Club, according to prosecutors and a defense filing. He also used $60,000 taken from a daughter's college fund, and nearly $1 million in stock from the Elkhart Financial Corporation, his lawyer said in a filing.

In May 2023, he began to make wire transfers from Heartland Tri-State Bank to accounts controlled by scammers, at first with a $5,000 transfer. Two weeks later, on May 30, Hanes wired $1.5 million and a day after that, he sent another transfer of the same amount the following day, filings show. Three days later he directed two wire transfers totaling $6.7 million to be sent by the bank to the crypto wallet, and a whopping $10 million less than two weeks later, and another $3.3 million days afterward. Hanes told bank employees to execute the wire transfers, and "made many misrepresentations to various people" to get access to the funds so they could be transferred, prosecutors wrote. Heartland Tri-State employees circumvented the bank's own wire policy and daily limits to approve Hanes' wire transfers, according to a report by the Office of the Inspector General of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Google has reached a groundbreaking deal with California lawmakers to contribute millions to local newsrooms, aiming to support journalism amid its decline as readers migrate online and advertising dollars evaporate. The agreement also includes a controversial provision for artificial intelligence funding. Politico reports: California emulated a strategy that other countries like Canada have used to try and reverse the journalism industry's decline as readership migrated online and advertising dollars evaporated. [...] Under the deal, the details of which were first reported by POLITICO on Monday, Google and the state of California would jointly contribute a minimum of $125 million over five years to support local newsrooms through a nonprofit public charity housed at UC Berkeley's journalism school. Google would contribute at least $55 million, and state officials would kick in at least $70 million. The search giant would also commit $50 million over five years to unspecified "existing journalism programs."

The deal would also steer millions in tax-exempt private dollars toward an artificial intelligence initiative that people familiar with the negotiations described as an effort to cultivate tech industry buy-in. Funding for artificial intelligence was not included in the bill at the core of negotiations, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. The agreement has drawn criticism from a journalists' union that had so far championed Wicks' effort. Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce in an email to union members Sunday evening said such a deal would entrench "Google's monopoly power over our newsrooms." "This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy," said Kent Walker, chief legal officer for Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce wasn't so chipper. He criticized the plan in emails with union members, calling it a "total rout of the state's attempts to check Google's stranglehold over our newsrooms."

TV manufacturers are shifting their focus from hardware sales to viewer data and advertising revenue. This trend is driven by declining profit margins on TV sets and the growing potential of smart TV operating systems to generate recurring income. Companies like LG, Samsung, and Roku are increasingly prioritizing ad sales and user tracking capabilities in their TVs, ArsTechnica reports. Automatic content recognition (ACR) technology, which analyzes viewing habits, is becoming a key feature for advertisers. TV makers are partnering with data firms to enhance targeting capabilities, with LG recently sharing data with Nielsen and Samsung updating its ACR tech to track streaming ad exposure. This shift raises concerns about privacy and user experience, as TVs become more commercialized and data-driven. Industry experts predict a rise in "shoppable ads" and increased integration between TV viewing and e-commerce platforms. The report adds: With TV sales declining and many shoppers prioritizing pricing, smart TV players will continue developing ads that are harder to avoid and better at targeting. Interestingly, Patrick Horner, practice leader of consumer electronics at analyst Omdia, told Ars that smart TV advertising revenue exceeding smart TV hardware revenue (as well as ad sale margins surpassing those of hardware) is a US-only trend, albeit one that shows no signs of abating. OLED has become a mainstay in the TV marketplace, and until the next big display technology becomes readily available, OEMs are scrambling to make money in a saturated TV market filled with budget options. Selling ads is an obvious way to bridge the gap between today and The Next Big Thing in TVs.

Indeed, with companies like Samsung and LG making big deals with analytics firms and other brands building their businesses around ads, the industry's obsession with ads will only intensify. As we've seen before with TV commercials, which have gotten more frequent over time, once the ad genie is out of the bottle, it tends to grow, not go back inside. One side effect we're already seeing, Horner notes, is "a proliferation of more TV operating systems." While choice is often a good thing for consumers, it's important to consider if new options from companies like Amazon, Comcast, and TiVo actually do anything to notably improve the smart TV experience for owners.

And OS operators' financial success is tied to the number of hours users spend viewing something on the OS. Roku's senior director of ad innovation, Peter Hamilton, told Digiday in May that his team works closely with Roku's consumer team, "whose goal is to drive total viewing hours." Many smart TV OS operators are therefore focused on making it easier for users to navigate content via AI.

Bloomberg's Mark Gruman remembers how Apple's hardware group "allowed Apple to dump Intel chips from its entire Mac lineup."

And they're now building an in-house cellular modem: For more than a decade, Apple has used modem chips designed by Qualcomm... But in 2018 — while facing a legal battle over royalties and patents — Apple started work on its own modem design.... It's devoting billions of dollars, thousands of engineers and millions of working hours to a project that won't really improve its devices — at least at the outset...

Over the past few years, Apple's modem project has suffered numerous setbacks. There have been problems with performance and overheating, and Apple has been forced to push back the modem's debut until next year at the earliest. The rollout will take place on a gradual basis — starting with niche models — and take a few years to complete. In a sign of this slow transition, Apple extended its supplier agreement with Qualcomm through March 2027... But Qualcomm has said that Apple will still have to pay it some royalties regardless (the chipmaker believes that Apple won't be able to avoid infringing its patents).

So it's hard to tell how big the benefits will be in the near term. Down the road, there are plans for Apple to fold its modem design into a new wireless chip that handles Wi-Fi and Bluetooth access. That would create a single connectivity component, potentially improving reliability and battery life. There's also the possibility that Apple could one day combine all of this into the device's main system on a chip, or SoC. That could further cut costs and save space inside the iPhone, allowing for more design choices. Furthermore, if Apple does ultimately save money by switching away from Qualcomm, it could redirect that spending toward new features and components.

Data center construction "could delay California's transition away from fossil fuels and raise electric bills for everyone else," warns the Los Angeles Times — and also increase the risk of blackouts: Even now, California is at the verge of not having enough power. An analysis of public data by the nonprofit GridClue ranks California 49th of the 50 states in resilience — or the ability to avoid blackouts by having more electricity available than homes and businesses need at peak hours... The state has already extended the lives of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant as well as some natural gas-fueled plants in an attempt to avoid blackouts on sweltering days when power use surges... "I'm just surprised that the state isn't tracking this, with so much attention on power and water use here in California," said Shaolei Ren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside. Ren and his colleagues calculated that the global use of AI could require as much fresh water in 2027 as that now used by four to six countries the size of Denmark.

Driving the data center construction is money. Today's stock market rewards companies that say they are investing in AI. Electric utilities profit as power use rises. And local governments benefit from the property taxes paid by data centers.
The article notes a Goldman Sachs estimate that by 2030, data centers could consume up to 11% of all U.S. power demand — up from 3% now. And it shows how the sprawling build-out of data centers across America is impacting surrounding communities:

• The article notes that California's biggest concentration of data centers — more than 50 near the Silicon Valley city of Santa Clara — are powered by a utility emitting "more greenhouse gas than the average California electric utility because 23% of its power for commercial customers comes from gas-fired plants. Another 35% is purchased on the open market where the electricity's origin can't be traced." Consumer electric rates are rising "as the municipal utility spends heavily on transmission lines and other infrastructure," while the data centers now consume 60% of the city's electricity.

• Energy officials in northern Virginia "have proposed a transmission line to shore up the grid that would depend on coal plants that had been expected to be shuttered."

• In 2022 an Oregon newspaper discovered Google data centers were consuming 29% of one city's water supply.

• "Earlier this year, Pacific Gas & Electric told investors that its customers have proposed more than two dozen data centers, requiring 3.5 gigawatts of power — the output of three new nuclear reactors."

The Washington Post reviews a new book about Microsoft's 68-year-old co-founder Bill Gates: "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy." That immortal line from Monty Python's Life of Brian kept running through my head as I was reading "Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World," by Anupreeta Das, a reporter at the New York Times... which often feels like an extended list of all the major and minor complaints that Das could find not only about Gates but also about billionaires, nerds and the broader practice of philanthropy...

[T]he philanthropist who played a central role in the spectacularly successful fight against diseases like HIV/AIDS; the environmentalist whose net-zero vision has led him to create a multibillion-dollar nuclear-power company — that man barely makes an appearance in this book... Rather than weigh Gates's accomplishments against his failures, Das focuses on his personal weaknesses — his unpleasant management style, his extramarital affairs and, especially, his association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who is featured extensively throughout, including in the beginning of the book's introduction and in a 12-page section that leads off the chapter titled "Cancel Bill." Frustratingly, Das sheds little new light on the Gates-Epstein relationship, beyond suggesting that Epstein first attracted the billionaire by indicating that he might be able to get Gates his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. While I and others have reported that a $2 million donation from Gates to the MIT Media Lab was thought of within MIT as being Epstein money, for instance, Das will go only so far as to say that "the donation may or may not have been at Epstein's recommendation."
The Guardian also notes that the Gates Foundation and the Gateses "have prevented millions of deaths, pumping billions of dollars into fighting Aids, tuberculosis and malaria around the world." They co-founded Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which vaccinated half the world's children... [During the pandemic] the Gates-backed Covax partnership was spearheading the global vaccination effort, procuring more than 1bn doses for people in poorer countries. But this doesn't seem to wash with Das, who reports that the foundation is "bigfooting", "neocolonial", "antidemocratic", and "top down", and sees it as an egotistical way for Bill to charity-wash his reputation... The penultimate chapter is titled Cancel Bill, and that's what the whole book feels like: an appeal to public opinion to write Gates off. As yet, and in the context of what other American billionaires do and get away with, it seems a little unfair.

"Electronic shelf labels are already common in Europe," reports the Los Angeles Times, "and will become wider spread in the U.S., with Walmart planning to implement the labels in 2,300 stores by 2026." And grocery giant Kroger also plans to introduce digital labels.

But will they also bring "dynamic pricing", where stores raise the price of ice cream on hot days — or jack the cost of water and canned goods before upcoming storms? Kroger and Walmart said they have no plans to implement dynamic pricing, and added that electronic shelf labels will only be used to help lower costs. "Kroger's business model is to lower prices over time so that more customers shop with us," a Kroger spokesperson said. "Any test of electronic shelf tags is to lower prices more for customers where it matters most. To suggest otherwise is not true." A Walmart spokesperson said updates to the electronic tags will be used to reflect lower prices for items on sale or final clearance. Prices will not change throughout the day, she said...

Grocery industry analyst Phil Lempert said the digital tags will help save time and money amid a labor shortage, but they could lead grocery chains down a slippery slope. "If you can make it electronic you can take a lot of costs out of the system, and that's great," Lempert said. "But once that's installed, and regardless of what any retailer is going to say, it's now easy to change prices."

Santiago Gallino, a professor specializing in retail management at the University of Pennsylvania, said he hasn't seen signs that retailers plan to use electronic shelf labels for surge pricing. "In my conversation with retailers, it's clear that those who are pushing towards this technology are mainly trying to drive efficiency up in the stores and try to reduce costs," Gallino said. "Grocery retailers operate on very thin margins, so every time they find technology that can help them save in labor, they will do that."

What grocery stores save in labor they may lose in customer trust and loyalty, however, said Dominick Miserandino [CEO of the retail disussion forum RetailWire.] "Consumers are exceptionally skeptical," he said. "When most of the consumer reaction to any product seems to be overwhelmingly negative, it's probably a product that one might want to reevaluate quickly."
The article notes one U.S. presidential candidate has already pledged they'd "work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food."

The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) fined T-Mobile $60 million, its largest penalty ever, for failing to prevent and report unauthorized access to sensitive data tied to violations of a mitigation agreement from its 2020 merger with Sprint. "The size of the fine, and CFIUS's unprecedented decision to make it public, show the committee is taking a more muscular approach to enforcement as it seeks to deter future violations," reports Reuters. From the report: T-Mobile said in a statement that it experienced technical issues during its post-merger integration with Sprint that affected "information shared from a small number of law enforcement information requests." It stressed that the data never left the law enforcement community, was reported "in a timely manner" and was "quickly addressed." The failure of T-Mobile to report the incidents promptly delayed CFIUS' efforts to investigate and mitigate any potential harm to U.S. national security, they added, without providing further details. "The $60 million penalty announcement highlights the committee's commitment to ramping up CFIUS enforcement by holding companies accountable when they fail to comply with their obligations," one of the U.S. officials said, adding that transparency around enforcement actions incentivizes other companies to comply with their obligations.

The Dubai Court of First Instance has declared that cryptocurrency can be used as a legal form of salary under employment contracts. CoinTelegraph reports: Irina Heaver, a partner at UAE law firm NeosLegal, explained that the ruling in case number 1739 of 2024 shows a shift from the court's earlier stance in 2023, where a similar claim was denied because the crypto involved lacked precise valuation. Heaver believes this shows a "progressive approach" to integrating digital currencies into the country's legal and economic framework. Heaver said that the case involved an employee who filed a lawsuit claiming that the employer had not paid their wages, wrongful termination compensation and other benefits. The worker's employment contract stipulated a monthly salary in fiat and 5,250 in EcoWatt tokens. The dispute stems from the employer's inability to pay the tokens portion of the employee's salary in six months.

In 2023, the court acknowledged the inclusion of the EcoWatts tokens in the contract. Still, it did not enforce the payment in crypto, as the employee failed to provide a clear method for valuing the currency in fiat terms. "This decision reflected a traditional viewpoint, emphasizing the need for concrete evidence when dealing with unconventional payment forms," Heaver said. However, the lawyer said that in 2024, the court "took a step forward," ruling in favor of the employee and ordering the payment of the crypto salary as per the employment contract without converting it into fiat. Heaver added that the court's reliance on the UAE Civil Transactions Law and Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 in both judgments shows the consistent application of legal principles in wage determination.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anova, a company that sells smart sous vide cookers, is getting backlash from customers after announcing that it will soon charge a subscription fee for the device's companion app. Anova was founded in 2013 and sells sous vide immersion circulators. Its current third-generation Precision Cooker 3.0 has an MSRP of $200. Anova also sells a $149 model and a $400 version that targets professionals. It debuted the free Anova Culinary App in 2014. In a blog post on Thursday, Anova CEO and cofounder Stephen Svajian announced that starting on August 21, people who sign up to use the Anova Culinary App with the cooking devices will have to pay $2 per month, or $10 per year. The app does various things depending on the paired cooker, but it typically offers sous vide cooking guides, cooking notifications, and the ability to view, save, bookmark, and share recipes. The subscription fee will only apply to people who make an account after August 21. Those who downloaded the app and made an account before August 21 won't have to pay. But everyone will have to make an account; some people have been using the app without one until now.

"You helped us build Anova, and our intent is that you will be grandfathered in forever," Svajian wrote. According to Svajian, the subscription fees are necessary so Anova can "continue delivering the exceptional service and innovative recipes" and "maintain and enhance the app, ensuring it remains a valuable resource." As Digital Trends pointed out, the announcement follows an Anova statement saying it will no longer let users remotely control their kitchen gadgets via Bluetooth starting on September 28, 2025. This means that remote control via the app will only be possible for models offering and using Wi-Fi connectivity. Owners of affected devices will no longer be able to access their device via the Anova app, get notifications, or use status monitoring. Users will still be able to manually set the time, temperature, and timer via the device itself.

A federal judge blocked the launch of Venu, a sports streaming joint venture by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, due to concerns it would substantially lessen competition and harm FuboTV. Variety reports: Fubo launched in 2015 as a start-up focused on streaming sports programming. [...] Venu, expected to launch in late August ahead of the start of the NFL's coming fall season and priced at an initial price tag of $42.99 per month, was to carry all of the sports offerings of ESPN, Fox Sports 1 and 2, and TNT for a price that is seen as more than a regional sports network but less than a full programming package available via YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. The three parent companies are targeting a new generation of consumers who disdain the high costs of traditional cable packages are more at home with signing up for streaming venues that are relatively easy to get in and out of based on the availability of favorite entertainment programs or sporting events.

Judge Garnett found that once Venu launches, FuboTV would face "a swift exodus" of large numbers of subscribers, and indicated she felt "that Fubo's bankruptcy and delisting of the company's stock will likely soon follow. These are quintessential harms that money cannot adequately repair." Fubo alleged that Venu's launch "will cause it to lose approximately 300,000 to 400,000 (or nearly 30%) of its subscribers, suffer a significant decline in its ability to attract new subscribers, lose between $75 and $95 million in revenue, and be transformed into a penny stock awaiting delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, all before year-end 2024," the judge said in her decision. "We respectfully disagree with the court's ruling and are appealing it," Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement. "We believe that Fubo's arguments are wrong on the facts and the law, and that Fubo has failed to prove it is legally entitled to a preliminary injunction. Venu Sports is a pro-competitive option that aims to enhance consumer choice by reaching a segment of viewers who currently are not served by existing subscription options."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Traffic along some of Seattle's stop-and-go streets is running a little smoother after Google tested out a new machine-learning system to optimize stoplight timing at five intersections. The company launched this test as part of its Green Light pilot program in 2023 in Seattle and a dozen other cities, including some notoriously congested places such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Kolkata, India. Across these test sites, local traffic engineers use Green Light's suggestions -- based on artificial intelligence and Google Maps data -- to adjust stoplight timing. Google intends for these changes to curb waiting at lights while increasing vehicle flow across busy throughways and intersections -- and, ultimately, to reduce greenhouse gases.

"We have seen positive results," says Mariam Ali, a Seattle Department of Transportation spokesperson. Green Light has provided "specific, actionable recommendations," she adds, and it has identified bottlenecks (and confirmed known ones) within the traffic system.

Managing the movement of vehicles through urban streets requires lots of time, money and consideration of factors such as pedestrian safety and truck routes. Google's foray into the field is one of many ongoing attempts to modernize traffic engineering by incorporating GPS app data, connected cars and artificial intelligence. Preliminary data suggest the system could reduce stops by up to 30 percent and emissions at intersections by up to 10 percent as a result of reduced idling, according to Google's 2024 Environmental Report. The company plans to expand to more cities soon. The newfangled stoplight system doesn't come close to replacing human decision-making in traffic engineering, however, and it may not be the sustainability solution Google claims it is.

AltStore PAL, a third-party iOS app store available in the EU, has eliminated its annual 1.50-euro subscription fee after receiving a "MegaGrant" from Epic Games. This grant was awarded for "innovation in app distribution," allowing AltStore to cover Apple's Core Technology Fee without charging users. The Verge reports: Epic uses MegaGrants as a way to "sponsor the development of exciting projects that may not otherwise have enough funding to fully realize," the company says. The grants are typically meant for smaller teams using Epic's technologies to "bring bold, challenging, and insanely creative dreams to life," but in this case, Epic awarded the grant for "innovation in app distribution," according to AltStore. AltStore didn't share the dollar value of the grant.

Current subscribers won't be charged when their renewal date rolls around, AltStore says. The AltStore team also plans to "show our appreciation for our existing subscribers in a future update" but didn't specify what that might look like.

Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO and executive chairman at Google, walked back remarks in which he said his former company was losing the AI race because of its remote-work policies. From a report: "I misspoke about Google and their work hours," Schmidt said Wednesday in an email to The Wall Street Journal. "I regret my error." Schmidt, who left Google parent Alphabet's board more than five years ago, spoke earlier at a wide-ranging discussion at Stanford University. He criticized Google's remote-work policies in response to a question about Google competing with OpenAI. "Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning," Schmidt said at Stanford. "The reason startups work is because the people work like hell."

Video of Schmidt's talk was posted on YouTube this week by Stanford Online, a division of the university that offers online courses. The video, which had more than 40,000 views as of Wednesday afternoon, has since been set to private. Schmidt said he asked for the video to be taken down.