An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dell Technologies' Australia subsidiary misled online shoppers into thinking that adding a monitor to their purchase would get them a discount on the display, even though doing so sometimes resulted in customers paying a higher price for the monitor than if they had bought it on its own. That's according to a declaration by the Australian Federal Court on Monday. The deceptive practices happened on Dell's Australian website, but they serve as a reminder to shoppers everywhere that a strikethrough line or sale stamp on an online retailer doesn't always mean you're getting a bargain. On June 5, the Federal Court said Dell Australia was guilty of making "false or misleading representations with respect to the price" of monitors that its website encouraged shoppers to add to their purchase. The purchases were made from August 2019 to the middle of December 2021.

The website would display the add-on price alongside a higher price that had a strikethrough line, suggesting that the monitor was typically sold at the price with the line going through it but that customers would get a discount if they added it to their cart at purchase. (The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, or ACCC, posted a screenshot example here.) However, the strikethrough prices weren't actually representative of what Dell was charging for the monitors for most of the time before the purported discount. In fact, the allegedly discounted price occasionally turned out to be a rip-off, as ACCC commission Liza Carver said in a statement today: "In some cases, consumers paid more for the add-on monitor advertised as 'discounted' than they would have paid if they had bought it as a stand-alone product, which is shocking."

The Australian Federal Court also found that Dell's Australian website used deceptive language, like "Includes x% off," "Total Savings" plus a dollar amount, "Discounted Price" and a dollar amount, and "Get the best price for popular accessories when purchased with this product." According to the ACCC, shoppers spent over $2 million Australian dollars ($1.33 million USD) on 5,300 add-on monitors during this time period. The Australian Federal Court ordered Dell Australia to give full or partial refunds to affected customers. The company must also hire an "independent compliance professional" and contact affected customers. The Australian Federal Court will take comment on further penalties Dell Australia should incur, which could include fines, at a future date. Dell told The Register: "As we acknowledged in November 2022 when the ACCC commenced these proceedings, due to an unrectified error on our part, our web page misrepresented the level of savings consumers could achieve by purchasing a monitor in conjunction with a desktop, laptop, or notebook."

Dell is looking into refunding customers, "plus interest," Dell's statement to The Register added, and the company is "taking steps to improve our pricing processes to ensure this sort of error does not happen again."

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed an emergency motion seeking to freeze the assets of Binance's U.S. platform and repatriate the funds held by its customers, including both fiat currency and cryptocurrencies. CNBC reports: The freezing order only applies Binance's two U.S. holding companies, not to the non-U.S. regulated international exchange. The order would apply to dozens of accounts held at Axos Bank, the defunct Silvergate Bank, Prime Trust, and other institutions. Two foreign entities also controlled by Zhao, Sigma Chain and Merit Peak, served as conduits for billions of dollars of customer money that was improperly commingled with Binance's funds, the SEC has alleged.

The emergency restraining order was necessary, the regulator argued, to "prevent the dissipation of available assets for any judgment, given the Defendants' years of violative conduct, disregard of the laws of the United States." The order also compels Binance's founder, Changpeng Zhao, to "show cause why a preliminary injunction" against Zhao and his two holding companies "should not be entered." The restraining order would also prevent all three entities from destroying evidence. On Monday, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance and the company's founder, Changpeng Zhao, accusing the exchange of mishandling customer funds as well as lying to regulators and investors about its operations.

schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: When whistleblower Frances Haugen pulled back the curtain on Facebook in the fall of 2021, thousands of pages of internal documents showed troubling signs that the social media giant knew its platforms could be negatively impacting youth, and were doing little to effectively change it. With around 21 million American adolescents on social media, parents took note. Now, families are suing social media. Since we first reported this story last December, the number of families pursuing lawsuits has grown to over 2,000. More than 350 lawsuits are expected to move forward this year against TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblox and Meta -- the parent company to Instagram and Facebook.

Kathleen Spence: They're holding our children hostage and they're seeking and preying on them. Sharyn Alfonsi: Preying on them? Kathleen Spence: Yes. The Spence family is suing social media giant Meta. Kathleen and Jeff Spence say Instagram led their daughter Alexis into depression and to an eating disorder at the age of 12. [...] Attorney Matt Bergman represents the Spence family. He started the Social Media Victims Law Center after reading the Facebook papers and is now working with more than 1,800 families who are pursuing lawsuits against social media companies like Meta. Matt Bergman: Time and time again, when they have an opportunity to choose between safety of our kids and profits, they always choose profits.

This summer, Bergman and his team plan on starting the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation. This summer, Bergman and his team plan on starting the discovery process for the federal case against Meta and other social media companies, a multi-million dollar suit that he says is more about changing policy than financial compensation. Matt Bergman: They have intentionally designed a product that is addictive. They understand that if children stay online, they make more money. It doesn't matter how harmful the material is.

The Atomic Wallet app has suffered a large-scale attack resulting in the potential theft of up to $35 million worth of cryptocurrency, with losses possibly exceeding $50 million. The Register reports: The Atomic Wallet app's makers first reported June 3 that some folks were complaining some crypto had been taken from their wallets and deposited in strangers' accounts, with others saying their wallets had been emptied completely. The biz tweeted Monday that less than one percent of their monthly active users had reported they were affected, though that number could grow with more reports coming in.

"Security investigation is ongoing. We report victim addresses to major exchanges and [use] blockchain analytics to trace and block the stolen funds," the company wrote, adding that the "last drained transaction was confirmed over 40h ago." A Twitter user with the handle ZachXBT, who describes themselves as an "on-chain sleuth," suggested over the weekend that the losses traced have added up to more than $35 million, with the largest victim having $7.95 million swiped. The five largest losses seen by ZachXBT added up to $17 million, almost half of the known total. "Think it could surpass $50 million. Keep finding more and more victims sadly," was the message.

Crypto security researcher Tay tweeted that the first report of stolen funds came in late on June 2. Since then reports of the stolen assets began rolling in, with some users reporting that their entire crypto portfolios were hijacked. [...] Atomic Wallet is collecting information from victims to try to get a better gauge on how the cyber-theft happened. In a Google Docs form, the company is asking users for such information as the operating system on their devices, the online app store they used to buy the Atomic Wallet app, the amount of lost funds coins and when the coins were withdrawn, where they stored the backup phrase, and when the last time was that they used their wallet before they saw that the coins were stolen.

It's unclear how the miscreants were able to steal the funds from users' wallets and Atomic Wallet said it is working with third-party security vendors to investigate. If there really is a low number of users affected, it may be some kind of credential stuffing, phishing, or brute-force attack, or a malware infection on the victims' devices. As if the stolen funds weren't enough of a problem, users also have to deal with the scams that typically crop up in the wake of such heists. ZachXBT tweeted that phishing scammers are already spamming fake Atomic Wallet refund efforts on Twitter in hopes of roping in some victims whose money was stolen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Thirty people in the U.K. could soon receive $1,983 each month if the trial (PDF) by independent think tank Autonomy secures funding. The basic income payments are estimated to cost 1.15 million pounds through the duration of the two-year project. During this time, researchers would assess the impact of the UBI cash on the lives of participants. A separate group who won't be receiving the money each month will be monitored through one on one interviews, focus groups and questionnaires to understand the difference in their experiences.

The trial is two years in the making. Dialogue with local communities during that time found strong support for UBI and informed how the trial was planned. It focuses on two areas in the U.K., one in East Finchley in the capital of London, which is often associated with a higher cost of living, and one in central Jarrow in the northeast of the country. Local citizens would be able to put themselves forward to take part in the trial and participant selection would be random. Autonomy has said they would work to ensure the trial group is representative, however.

"All the evidence shows that it would directly alleviate poverty and boost millions of people's wellbeing," said Will Stronge, director of research at Autonomy. Stronge believes changes to the world we live in could also be a key driver in the adoption of UBI. "With the decades ahead set to be full of economic shocks due to climate change and new forms of automation, basic income is going to be a crucial part of securing livelihoods in the future," he said. A UBI could even impact the way people feel about work, some research suggests. In 2022, 19% of Americans said it would ease their frustrations with their jobs.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: A year ago, the mood in Silicon Valley was dour. Big Tech stocks were falling, the cryptocurrency bubble had popped, and a wave of layoffs was beginning to sweep through the industry.

Then the artificial intelligence boom hit.

Since then, venture capitalists have been throwing money at AI start-ups, investing over $11 billion in May alone, according to data firm PitchBook, an increase of 86 percent over the same month last year. Companies from Moderna to Heinz have mentioned AI initiatives on recent earnings calls... AI is one of the only fields here still hiring, and firms are paying huge salaries for the expertise. Workers here are retraining to specialize in the field...

Tech stocks have rallied across the board, a whiplash return to growth after analysts declared the 10-year bull market was finally over. In 2022, the Nasdaq 100, a stock market index dominated by the biggest tech companies, lost an entire third of its value, falling 33 percent in a massive erasure of wealth that had been built up over the past decade. So far in 2023, the Nasdaq 100 is already up 31 percent... The start-up ecosystem is rebounding back to optimism as well, at least for those focused on AI...

"VC firms compete for access to hot AI deals while eschewing unprofitable conventional software companies," said Brendan Burke, an analyst with PitchBook. "AI start-ups experience founder-friendly conditions not extended to the rest of the tech ecosystem." Around $12.5 billion in investments have gone into generative AI start-ups this year so far, compared with only $4.5 billion invested in the field in all of 2022, Burke said.
Calling NVIDIA an "AI chipmaker," the article points out that Friday NVIDIA's valuation on the stock market was $971.4 billion, "within spitting range of Amazon, which is worth $1.26 trillion."

NVIDIA is now "one of only a handful of companies in the world to hit $1 trillion in value."

The Associated Press reports: Customers of Venmo, PayPal and CashApp should not store their money with those apps for the long term because the funds might not be safe during a crisis, the [U.S.] Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned Thursday...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures bank accounts up to $250,000. But money stored in Venmo or CashApp or Apple Cash is not being held in a traditional bank account. So, if there is an event similar to a bank run with those payment apps, those funds may not be protected. Some of the funds may be eligible for pass-through insurance coverage if customers do certain activities with the apps, the CFPB said, but generally by default the apps are not covered by deposit insurance.

For example, if a customer opened a PayPal Savings account, it would have deposit insurance through PayPal's partner bank, Synchrony Bank. But the general PayPal account is not covered by insurance. For Apple Cash, which can be insured through Green Dot Bank, it requires a user to verify their identity to get deposit insurance. "We find that stored funds can be at risk of loss in the event of financial distress or failure of the entity operating the nonbank payment platform, and often are not placed in an account at a bank or credit union and lack individual deposit insurance coverage," the CFPB said in its report.

"Consumers may not fully appreciate when, or under what conditions, they would be protected by deposit insurance," the agency added in its report.

Bill Gates wrote a blog post this week recommending a novel about videogame development. Gates calls Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. "one of the biggest books of last year," telling the story of "two friends who bond over Super Mario Bros. as kids and grow up to make video games together." Although there are plenty of video games mentioned in the book — Oregon Trail is a recurring theme — I'd describe it more as a story about partnership and collaboration. When Sam and Sadie are in college, they create a game called Ichigo that turns out to be a huge hit. Their company, Unfair Games, becomes successful, but the two start to butt heads. Sadie is upset that Sam got most of the credit for Ichigo. Sam is frustrated that Sadie cares more about creating art than about making their company viable...

Most of the book is about how a creative partnership can be equal parts remarkable and complicated. I couldn't help but be reminded of my relationship with Paul Allen while I was reading it. Sadie believes that "true collaborators in this life are rare." I agree, and I was lucky to have one in Paul. An early chapter describing how Sam and Sadie worked until sunrise in a dingy apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, could have just as easily been about Paul and me coming up with the idea for Microsoft. Like Sam and Sadie, we worked together every day for years.

Paul's vision and contributions to the company were absolutely critical to its success, and then he chose to move on. We had a great relationship, but not without some of the complexities that success brings. Zevin really captures what it feels like to start a company that takes off. It's thrilling to know your vision is now real, but success brings a lot of new questions. Once you make money, do you still have something to prove? How does your relationship with your partner change once a lot more people get involved? How do you make the next idea as good as the last?

You can't help but wonder whether you would've been as successful if you started up at a different time... Paul and I were very lucky in terms of our timing with Microsoft. We got in when chips were just starting to become powerful but before other people had created established companies... Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow resonated with me for personal reasons, but I think Zevin's exploration of partnership and collaboration is worth reading no matter who you are. Even if you're skeptical about reading a book about video games, the subject is a terrific metaphor for human connection.
The book is now being adapted into a movie.

In 2020 Nigeria had the third-most cryptocurrency transactions in the world (behind the U.S. and Russia). But "Nigeria's history with crypto has been a bittersweet one where the citizens have embraced digital assets with open arms but the government remains vehemently against it," writes the site Bitcoinist.

In early 2021 the BBC reported that "In an effort to regulate the market, Nigeria's central bank banned banks from facilitating cryptocurrency-related transactions in 2017, but the ban remained largely unenforced. However, this year the institution doubled down on its stance." In a statement released on 7 February [2021] it cited the need to protect the general public and safeguard the country from potential threats posed by "unknown and unregulated entities" that are "well-suited for conducting many illegal activities". Since then, many Nigerians have reported that their bank accounts have been frozen due to cryptocurrency-related activity...

However many investors with the possibility say they will continue to trade using their overseas bank accounts. They say they can easily revert to peer-to-peer transactions. This means that rather than transferring funds between a financial institution and a cryptocurrency online trading platform, investors transfer funds directly to each other or through a middle person as they buy and sell. This is the method the cryptocurrency community used before the development of the virtual currency marketplace ecosystem in Nigeria...

At the heart of the rise of Bitcoin is a distrust of centralised financial systems and top-down economic control, investors say. Many express their frustrations with government policy and the decline of the Nigerian economy.
This week the Lagos-based Nigerian newspaper The Nation published this explanation of that crackdown from the Central Bank's deputy governor, Kinsley Obiora. "When the central bank started reacting to COVID with what we call printing money and responding to the crisis, a lot of people in the private sector felt that printing of money could lead to hyper-inflation and these private sector people decided to respond by creating cryptocurrencies." Over time, the creators of cryptocurrency, he added, felt that central banks should not be left with the authority to do whatever they like with money. Fearing that such a mindset might cause inflation and reduce the purchasing power of households, the CBN he said responded to what he called "the good aspect of that change because a lot of people actually took to crypto currencies". Fed up with the antics of the cryptocurrency operators, Obiora said the "we kicked them out of our banking system because the opacity of the system is still a threat to financial system stability".

An anonymous reader shares a report: Now more than a year into the tech "correction," the denial phase is over. There appears to be a broad consensus that lower valuations are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. But for well-capitalized private companies, it can take a while for the dominos to fall. We've started to see once highly valued businesses sell for disappointing outcomes or shut down altogether. There's a term for these erstwhile unicorns that have seen their valuations crash: unicorpses.

We're starting to see businesses that were valued at hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on paper, evaporate. While last year saw ill-fated failures for fintech business Fast and crypto money mis-manager FTX, the pace of unicorn deaths seems to be accelerating. Just last week we saw the fire sale of truck software business Embark, which went public in 2021 via a SPAC, valued at $4.25 billion. It sold to a private buyer for just over $70 million. Then there was the case of Plastiq, a highly valued lending and payments business that was supposed to go public via a SPAC last year, but failed to list. The company has now filed for bankruptcy. Not to mention, Elizabeth Holmes finally went to jail this week for her famously fraudulent business, Theranos.

Apple's savings account, a partnership with Goldman Sachs, launched in April to great fanfare. Some customers say it has been hard to get their money out. From a report: Nathan Thacker, who lives outside Atlanta, had been trying to transfer $1,700 from his Apple account to JPMorgan Chase since May 15. Each time he called Goldman's customer service department, he said, he was told to give it a few more days. The money arrived in his Chase account Thursday morning, he said, after The Wall Street Journal contacted Goldman about his and other customers' experiences. Others said they also had trouble transferring money from their new Apple accounts. Customer service representatives at Goldman, which holds the deposits, sometimes gave differing responses about what to do, they said. Sometimes, their money appeared to have simply vanished, not showing up in their Apple account or in the account they were trying to move it to.

[...] On brand-new accounts, like Apple's, transfers that make up a large share of the overall balance can trigger anti-money-laundering alerts or other security concerns that require additional review, according to people in the AML field. Those delays usually last five or so days, they said. It can also be a red flag when a customer tries to transfer a large amount of money from a newly opened savings account into an account that is different from the one where the money originally came from.

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on Sunday that the student loan payment pause is "gone" in the debt ceiling deal announced by the California Republican and President Biden late Saturday night. "The pause is gone within 60 days of this being signed. So that is another victory because that brings in $5 billion each month to the American public," McCarthy told Fox News on Sunday. McCarthy's remarks came after he and Biden came to an agreement in principle late Saturday to cap spending and raise the debt ceiling.

"What the president did, he went unconstitutionally and said he was going to waive certain people part of their debt for student loan, but then he paused everybody's student loan. So everybody who borrowed a student loan within 60 days of the signing is going to have to pay that back," McCarthy added. "The Supreme Court is taking up that case. But if the Supreme Court came back and said that was unconstitutional, the president could still say he's pausing, not waiving it. But now that this is in law, the Supreme Court decision will have to be upheld, that they would have to pay."

Earlier this month, the NY Times warned students and their families to "Expect Interest Rates on Federal Student Loans to Rise" to as high as 8.05% for new PLUS loans this fall. That news came as Apple, just days after a recent $90 billion share buyback, filed a prospectus with the SEC for a new $5 billion bond program with longer-term bonds expected to have a coupon rate of approximately 5%. The imbalance between loan rates for students and Apple shareholders was actually far more pronounced before the Fed fund rate hikes started last year in response to inflation. During the pandemic, Apple -- which reported around $166.3 billion in cash and investments on its balance sheet as of March 31 -- held a bond sale worth $14 billion for stock buybacks and dividends to benefit from borrowing rates as low as 0.70%. Direct PLUS student loan rates at that time were down to 5.30% for new loans but as high as 8.5% for existing loans (the U.S. Dept. of Education does not offer refinancing of its up-to-30-year fixed rate loans in times of much lower interest rates). Unlike the tax-deductible interest Apple pays, annual deductions on student loan interest are capped by the IRS at $2,500 (or lower, depending on the borrower's income).

Despite presumably benefiting from stock buybacks and dividends facilitated by Apple's low-interest bonds -- some of which carry rates as much as 90%+ lower than certain federal student loans -- some of the Senators identified as Apple shareholders by NBCLX are vehemently opposed to the idea of student loan relief for high interest-paying borrowers. Senator Shelley Capito (R-WV) opposes the program as "not fair", Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) called it "grossly unfair", and other Apple-shareholder Senators joined (PDF) colleagues in a Supreme Court filing calling student loan relief "unnecessary".

"Over the past 13 years, Tim Taylor and Christine Dennison have scoured the ocean floor using autonomous underwater robots," according to a history writer's commentary on CNN, "to discover and document the wrecks of seven US submarines lost in World War II." Taylor and Dennison are ensuring that more families of those lost know where their loved ones' deep-water graves reside. They are racing against time as underwater development threatens many of these wrecks... Budget constraints hinder the Navy from devoting resources to undertaking these kinds of searches, according to Taylor, and his team is showing how private groups can fill the gap.
A philanthropic private investment group funds the expeditions, the article points out, adding that Taylor and Dennison "hope to employ the special autonomous underwater technology they created to help others map the ocean floor for environmental and other purposes."

Their latest find was part of the 82-day battle of Okinawa in 1945: The USS Mannert L. Abele, which the explorers found 4,500 feet under the Pacific Ocean and 81 miles from the nearest landmass, was the first American ship sunk by an unusual type of rocket-powered Japanese kamikaze plane... Though the Abele managed to shoot down two aircraft and damage or fend off others, at six minutes in, a Japanese fighter plunged into the destroyer's engine room and exploded, cutting off all electrical power. Just a minute later, another, much more unusual, plane slammed into the destroyer's hull. The Abele had been struck by a unique rocket-propelled kamikaze plane called the MXY7 Ohka ("Cherry Blossom"), which due to its very short range had to be carried under the belly of a larger bomber until close to US ships, whereupon it was released to soar toward its target at immense speed.

The detonation of this manned missile's 1.3 tons of explosives caused the ship to seemingly break into two and begin sinking. In a matter of minutes, 84 sailors and officers had been killed. Japanese aircraft strafed the surviving crew as they jumped into the oil-slick water, but two smaller landing craft escorting the Abele shot down two more planes and beat off the rest, managing to rescue 255 crew members.

Nearly eight decades later, modern robotics technologies allowed Taylor and Dennison to find the destroyer's submerged hull. In the past, Taylor noted, it would have been practically inconceivable for a small, private team to have undertaken the cumbersome search process that, Taylor estimated, would have taken four to five times as long and cost significantly more money...

It was on their last remaining day of a more-than-month-long search, just before bad weather would force them to conclude the expedition, that they spotted the Abele's wreck.

Somewhere in Maryland, an app that lets homeowners rent their swimming pools "has sharply divided suburban residents of Montgomery County as the local government considers formally regulating the short-term amenity rentals," reports the Washington Post, "potentially becoming the first in the nation to do so." Neighbors have spied on neighbors, reporting unwanted outsiders flocking to their quiet residential streets. "Our entire block has been disturbed," Constance Kiggans, a Chevy Chase resident, said in written testimony to the Montgomery County Council. "It is, for all intents and purposes, like having a pool club on the street..." Unlike long-established home rental and ride sharing apps, newer apps that let people rent out their pools, home gyms and backyards have largely been unregulated across the United States so far. In fact, several jurisdictions, from the city of San Jose to towns across New Jersey to the state of Wisconsin, have tried over the past three years to ban the rentals or set up strict rules that require private pools to meet the same standards as a public pool...

Many homeowners are eager to earn easy money by renting out a backyard pool, despite a murky legal landscape that does not offer clear guidance on whether the rentals are legal or not...

Chief among the complaints detailed by pool sharing opponents is the noise... [36 residents who signed a letter of complaint] argued that the rentals turn quiet residential neighborhoods into bustling business districts, without the infrastructure to support commercial activity. They raised dozens of concerns, largely over the added nuisance of strangers pouring into their neighborhoods because of the apps, congested roads, scarce parking, and noise and safety. Their complaints have shut down at least one pool rental in the county.

"An independent report looking into the development of NASA's new moon rocket has found significant cost overruns and delays that could harm the agency's plans to put astronauts back on the moon," reports Space.com.

Their article cites specifically "increases in costs related to contracts awarded to Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman for SLS's propulsion systems," citing a 50-page report published Thursday by NASA's Inspector General: Altogether, the four contracts for the rocket's booster and engine were initially projected to cost $7 billion over a span of 14 years, but are now projected to cost at least $13.1 billion over nearly 25 years. "NASA continues to experience significant scope growth, cost increases, and schedule delays on its booster and RS-25 engine contracts, resulting in approximately $6 billion in cost increases and over 6 years in schedule delays above NASA's original projections," the report found.

These significant increases were caused by a variety of long-standing, interrelated management issues impacting both the SLS development campaign and the wider Artemis program, the report notes, including "some of which represent potential violations of federal contracting requirements." The use of heritage RS-25 engines and boosters from the space shuttle and Constellation programs for the new SLS rocket was intended to bring significant cost and schedule savings over developing new systems. But the "complexity of developing, updating, and integrating new systems along with heritage components proved to be much greater than anticipated," according to the report.

To remedy this, the report makes a number of recommendations to NASA management to increase transparency, accountability and affordability of the SLS booster and engine contracts, including switching from "cost-plus" awards towards a fixed-price contract structure. However, the assessment still finds the enormous cost of SLS hard to manage for NASA and damaging to its long term "Moon to Mars" plans. "Without greater attention to these important safeguards, NASA and its contracts will continue to exceed planned cost and schedule, resulting in a reduced availability of funds, delayed launches, and the erosion of the public's trust in the Agency's ability to responsibly spend taxpayer money and meet mission goals and objectives — including returning humans safely to the moon and onward to Mars."
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared the article along with a YouTube video with excerpts from recently released high-resolution video of the rocket's last launch.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times: Snippets of computer code. More than six million pages of emails, Slack messages and other digital records. And a small black notebook, filled with handwritten observations. For months, federal prosecutors building the criminal case against the fallen cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried have assembled a vast and unusually varied array of evidence. The documents include crypto transaction logs and encrypted group chats from Mr. Bankman-Fried's collapsed exchange, FTX, as well as strikingly personal reflections recorded by a key witness in the case. The mountain of evidence ranks among the largest ever collected in a white-collar securities fraud case prosecuted by the federal authorities in Manhattan, according to data provided by a person with knowledge of the matter...

The diversity and growing volume of materials in the FTX case underscore the legal challenges facing Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, who is charged with 13 criminal counts, including accusations that he misappropriated billions of dollars in customer money, defrauded investors and violated campaign finance laws. He has pleaded not guilty. With the trial set for October, prosecutors have gathered evidence ranging from phones and laptops to the contents of Mr. Bankman-Fried's Google accounts, which amounted to 2.5 million pages alone. At a hearing in March, Nicolas Roos, a federal prosecutor investigating FTX, said the government had obtained a laptop crammed with so much information that the F.B.I.'s technicians were struggling to decipher all of it. "It is a massive amount to sift through, and sometimes you can find incredibly useful information," said Moira Penza, a former federal prosecutor who's now in private practice. "It is a real challenge...."

Many of FTX's corporate records, including emails, Slack messages and transaction logs, were held by Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm that took control of the exchange after it declared bankruptcy... In a January court filing, Sullivan & Cromwell displayed an excerpt from FTX's underlying code base, showing a feature that allowed Alameda to borrow virtually unlimited amounts of money from the exchange.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: HP printers have received a lot of flak historically and recently for invasive firmware updates that end up preventing customers from using ink with their printers. HP also encourages printer customers to sign up for HP+, a program that includes a free ink-subscription trial and irremovable firmware that allows HP to brick the ink when it sees fit. Despite this, HP markets dozens of its printers with Dynamic Security and the optional HP+ feature as being in the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) registry, suggesting that these printers are built with the environment in mind and, more specifically, do not block third-party ink cartridges. Considering Dynamic Security and HP+ printers do exactly that, the International Imaging Technology Council (IITC) wants the General Electronics Council (GEC), which is in charge of the EPEAT registry, to revoke at least 101 HP printer models from the EPEAT registry, which HP has "made a mockery of."

For a printer to make the EPEAT registry, it's supposed to comply with the EPEAT Imaging Equipment Category Criteria, which is based on the 1680.2-2012 IEEE Standard for Environmental Assessment of Imaging Equipment (PDF). The IITC is hung up on section 4.9.2.1, which requires that registered products do not "prevent the use of nonmanufacturer cartridges and non-manufacturer containers" and that vendors provide documentation showing that the device isn't "designed to prevent the use of a non-manufacturer cartridge or non-manufacturer container." Well, as the IITC and consumers who found their inked bricked mid-print will tell you, that sounds an awful lot like what HP does with its Dynamic Security printers.

Diving deeper, the IITC's complaint claims that "in the last 8 weeks alone, HP has released 4 killer firmware updates targeting dozens of EPEAT-registered inkjet printers." "At least one of these recent updates specifically targeted a single producer of remanufactured cartridges while not having any impact on non-remanufactured third-party cartridges using functionally identical non-HP chips," the complaint reads. The trade group also claimed at least 26 "killer firmware updates" occurred on EPEAT-registered HP laser printers since October 2020. The complaint argues that the error message that users see -- "The indicated cartridges have been blocked by the printer firmware because they contain non-HP chips. This printer is intended to work only with new or reused cartridges that have a new or reused HP chip. Replace the indicated cartridges to continue printing" -- go against EPEAT requirements, yet HP markets dozens of Dynamic Security printers with EPEAT ecolabels. "The nonprofit trade association was founded in 2000 and says it represents 'toner and inkjet cartridge remanufacturers, component suppliers, and cartridge collectors in North America,'" notes Ars. "So its members stand to lose a lot of money from tactics like Dynamic Security. The IITC already filed a complaint to the GEC about HP in 2019 for firmware blocking non-HP ink, but there didn't seem to be any noticeable results."

"The group is biased regarding this topic, but its complaint still mirrors many problems and concerns that consumers and class-action lawsuits have detailed regarding HP printers' exclusive stance on ink. You can find the full complaint here."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Executives at the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) decided to replace hotline workers with a chatbot named Tessa four days after the workers unionized. NEDA, the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to eating disorders, has had a helpline for the last twenty years that provided support to hundreds of thousands of people via chat, phone call, and text. "NEDA claims this was a long-anticipated change and that AI can better serve those with eating disorders. But do not be fooled -- this isn't really about a chatbot. This is about union busting, plain and simple," helpline associate and union member Abbie Harper wrote in a blog post.

According to Harper, the helpline is composed of six paid staffers, a couple of supervisors, and up to 200 volunteers at any given time. A group of four full-time workers at NEDA, including Harper, decided to unionize because they felt overwhelmed and understaffed. "We asked for adequate staffing and ongoing training to keep up with our changing and growing Helpline, and opportunities for promotion to grow within NEDA. We didn't even ask for more money," Harper wrote. "When NEDA refused [to recognize our union], we filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board and won on March 17. Then, four days after our election results were certified, all four of us were told we were being let go and replaced by a chatbot."

The chatbot, named Tessa, is described as a "wellness chatbot" and has been in operation since February 2022. The Helpline program will end starting June 1, and Tessa will become the main support system available through NEDA. Helpline volunteers were also asked to step down from their one-on-one support roles and serve as "testers" for the chatbot. According to NPR, which obtained a recording of the call where NEDA fired helpline staff and announced a transition to the chatbot, Tessa was created by a team at Washington University's medical school and spearheaded by Dr. Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft. The chatbot was trained to specifically address body image issues using therapeutic methods and only has a limited number of responses. "Please note that Tessa, the chatbot program, is NOT a replacement for the Helpline; it is a completely different program offering and was borne out of the need to adapt to the changing needs and expectations of our community," a NEDA spokesperson told Motherboard. "Also, Tessa is NOT ChatGBT [sic], this is a rule-based, guided conversation. Tessa does not make decisions or 'grow' with the chatter; the program follows predetermined pathways based upon the researcher's knowledge of individuals and their needs."

The NEDA spokesperson also told Motherboard that Tessa was tested on 700 women between November 2021 through 2023 and 375 of them gave Tessa a 100% helpful rating. "As the researchers concluded their evaluation of the study, they found the success of Tessa demonstrates the potential advantages of chatbots as a cost-effective, easily accessible, and non-stigmatizing option for prevention and intervention in eating disorders," they wrote.

Delaware's low elevation mixed with crowded beaches and limited exit routes make the state particularly vulnerable to massive flooding, but officials hope an influx of federal infrastructure money will trigger future evacuation plans automatically via artificial intelligence. From a report: The Biden administration was set to announce a total of $53 million in grants Thursday to Delaware and seven other states aimed at high-tech solutions to traffic congestion problems. Although the money comes from the infrastructure law the president signed in 2021, many of the programs -- including the $5 million for flood response efforts in Biden's home state -- have evolved since then.

"What's new is the predictive analysis; the machine learning," U.S. Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt, Delaware's former transportation secretary, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Because now we have access to all this data, it's hard for us as humans to figure out what is data and what is actionable information." Delaware officials pull off evacuation-type procedures every week during the tourism season, with long lines of cars headed to the beaches on weekend mornings and back at night. But flooding presents a unique problem -- including standing water on roads that can make the most direct routes out of town even more treacherous than simply sheltering in place.

Nintendo is facing a potential class-action lawsuit filed by a young gamer and backed by his father, alleging that the microtransactions in the mobile game Mario Kart Tour are "immoral." Axios reports: The suit calls for refunds for all minors in the U.S. who paid to use Mario Kart Tour's "Spotlight Pipes," which delivered players in-game rewards using undisclosed odds. Until last year, Mario Kart Tour players could spend real money to repeatedly activate the pipes, in the hope they'd randomly produce useful upgrades. The suit alleges that Nintendo intentionally made the game difficult to proceed in without paying, using "dark patterns," an industry term for tricking consumers, to steer players toward spending more.

The suit was filed in March but emerged on the federal docket last week after it was moved out of state court. Its plaintiff, identified as N.A., spent more than $170 on Mario Kart Tour microtransactions, via his father's credit card, which was linked to their Nintendo user account. "Defendant's lootbox mechanism capitalized on and encouraged addictive behaviors akin to gambling," according to N.A.'s suit. It states that minors are particularly susceptible to systems that involve surprise rewards. Axios notes that Nintendo "discontinued use of spotlight pipes in Mario Kart Tour last September, switching to a system that lets players directly purchase items offered in its in-game shop."