Wired's web site "is going to stop paywalling articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act," their global editorial director announced this week: They're called public records for a reason, after all. And access to public documents is more important than ever at this moment, with government websites and records disappearing... [S]ome may argue that, from a business standpoint, not charging for stories primarily relying on public records automatically means fewer subscriptions and therefore less revenue. We disagree.

Sure, the FOIA process is time- and labor-intensive. Reporters face stonewalling, baseless denials, lengthy appeals processes, and countless other obstacles and delays. Investigative reports based on public records are among the most expensive stories to produce and share with the public... But while some readers might not subscribe to outlets that give away some of their best journalism for free, it's just as possible that readers will recognize this sacrifice and reward these outlets with more traffic and subscriptions in the long run...

We hope others will follow Wired's lead (and shoutout to outlets like 404 Media that also make their FOIA-based reporting available for free). We also hope those who stand to benefit from these outlets' leadership (that's you, reader) will do their part and subscribe if you can afford it. They're not asking for an arm and a leg... The Fourth Estate needs to step up and invest in serving the public during these unprecedented times. And the public needs to return the favor and support quality journalism, so that hopefully one day we can do away with those annoying paywalls altogether.

Besides administering standardized pre-college tests, America's nonprofit College Board designs college-level classes that high school students can take. But now they're also crafting courses "not just with higher education at the table, but industry partners such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the technology giant IBM," reports Education Week.

"The organization hopes the effort will make high school content more meaningful to students by connecting it to in-demand job skills." It believes the approach may entice a new kind of AP student: those who may not be immediately college-bound.... The first two classes developed through this career-driven model — dubbed AP Career Kickstart — focus on cybersecurity and business principles/personal finance, two fast-growing areas in the workforce." Students who enroll in the courses and excel on a capstone assessment could earn college credit in high school, just as they have for years with traditional AP courses in subjects like chemistry and literature. However, the College Board also believes that students could use success in the courses as a selling point with potential employers... Both the business and cybersecurity courses could also help fulfill state high school graduation requirements for computer science education...

The cybersecurity course is being piloted in 200 schools this school year and is expected to expand to 800 schools next school year... [T]he College Board is planning to invest heavily in training K-12 teachers to lead the cybersecurity course.
IBM's director of technology, data and AI called the effort "a really good way for corporations and companies to help shape the curriculum and the future workforce" while "letting them know what we're looking for." In the article the associate superintendent for teaching at a Chicago-area high school district calls the College Board's move a clear signal that "career-focused learning is rigorous, it's valuable, and it deserves the same recognition as traditional academic pathways."

Also interesting is why the College Board says they're doing it: The effort may also help the College Board — founded more than a century ago — maintain AP's prominence as artificial intelligence tools that can already ace nearly every existing AP test on an ever-greater share of job tasks once performed by humans. "High schools had a crisis of relevance far before AI," David Coleman, the CEO of the College Board, said in a wide-ranging interview with EdWeek last month. "How do we make high school relevant, engaging, and purposeful? Bluntly, it takes [the] next generation of coursework. We are reconsidering the kinds of courses we offer...."

"It's not a pivot because it's not to the exclusion of higher ed," Coleman said. "What we are doing is giving employers an equal voice."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.

Was the cutting of undersea cables part of a larger pattern? Russia and its proxies are accused by western officials of "staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine three years ago," reports the Associated Press.

That includes cyberattacks and committing acts of sabotage/vandalism/arson, as well as spreading propaganda and even plotting killings, according to the article. ("Western intelligence agencies uncovered what they said was a Russian plot to kill the head of a major German arms manufacturer that is a supplier of weapons to Ukraine...") The news agency documented 59 incidents "in which European governments, prosecutors, intelligence services or other Western officials blamed Russia, groups linked to Russia or its ally Belarus." [Western officials] allege the disruption campaign is an extension of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war, intended to sow division in European societies and undermine support for Ukraine... The incidents range from stuffing car tailpipes with expanding foam in Germany to a plot to plant explosives on cargo planes. They include setting fire to stores and a museum, hacking that targeted politicians and critical infrastructure, and spying by a ring convicted in the U.K. Richard Moore, the head of Britain's foreign intelligence service, called it a "staggeringly reckless campaign" in November...

The cases are varied, and the largest concentrations are in countries that are major supporters of Ukraine... In about a quarter of the cases, prosecutors have brought charges or courts have convicted people of carrying out the sabotage. But in many more, no specific culprit has been publicly identified or brought to justice.
Despite that, "more and more governments are publicly attributing attacks to Russia," the article points out.

This week a nonprofit, bipartisan think tank on global policy released a report which "found that Russian attacks in Europe quadrupled from 2022 to 2023 and then tripled again from 2023 to 2024," reports the New York Times. Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland noted in a social media post on Monday that Lithuanian officials had confirmed his assessment that Russia was responsible for a series of fires in shopping centers in Warsaw and Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital...

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is pushing to cut bureaucracy by reducing management layers, according to a recording of a recent internal all-hands meeting obtained by Business Insider. Amazon plans to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by 15% by March-end, a process the company says is now complete and affected a "relatively small subset of employees."

"The way to get ahead at Amazon is not to go accumulate a giant team and fiefdom," Jassy told employees, stressing that successful leaders "get the most done with the least amount of resources." Jassy has established a "No Bureaucracy" email alias that has received over a thousand suggestions, leading to more than 375 changes aimed at speeding operations. "It's a meritocracy," Jassy said, urging employees to "move fast and act like owners."

Yahoo on Friday said it has struck a deal to sell TechCrunch, the 20-year-old tech journalism site, to Regent, a media investment firm. Axios: Yahoo's business centers mostly on aggregation. Journalism isn't its core focus. Regent is trying to pull together a portfolio of tech news sites and is eager to invest in news. Earlier this week, it acquired Foundry, which houses a slew of online tech publications, such as PCWorld, Macworld and TechAdvisor.

In a statement, Regent said it is "thrilled to expand its reach as it provides breaking technology news, opinions, and analysis on tech companies worldwide to our audience." Financial deal terms were not disclosed. The deal will not require regulatory review, which is normally needed for deals valued at roughly more than $100 million.

Google has filed a lawsuit against alleged scammers who created and sold fake business profiles on Google Maps, the company said. The legal action follows an investigation that uncovered and eliminated more than 10,000 illegitimate listings.

The investigation began after a Texas business reported an unlicensed locksmith impersonating them on the platform. Google discovered the scams primarily targeted "duress verticals" -- services needed in urgent situations like locksmiths and towing companies. "Once we're alerted to the actual fraud, we take extreme efforts to identify similar fraudulent listings," said Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google's general counsel.

The scammers used tactics including bait-and-switch schemes and intercepting calls to legitimate businesses through "lead generation services." They also sold fraudulent positive reviews to suppress negative feedback.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday walked back comments he made in January, when he cast doubt on whether useful quantum computers would hit the market in the next 15 years. From a report: At Nvidia's "Quantum Day" event, part of the company's annual GTC Conference, Huang admitted that his comments came out wrong. "This is the first event in history where a company CEO invites all of the guests to explain why he was wrong," Huang said.

In January, Huang sent quantum computing stocks reeling when he said 15 years was "on the early side" in considering how long it would be before the technology would be useful. He said at the time that 20 years was a timeframe that "a whole bunch of us would believe." In his opening comments on Thursday, Huang drew comparisons between pre-revenue quantum companies and Nvidia's early days. He said it took over 20 years for Nvidia to build out its software and hardware business.

He also expressed surprise that his comments were able to move markets, and joked he didn't know that certain quantum computing companies were publicly traded. "How could a quantum computer company be public?" Huang said.

Google is introducing an AI-powered update to Gmail search that prioritizes "most relevant" results based on recency, frequent contacts, and most-clicked emails. The feature aims to help users more efficiently locate specific messages in crowded inboxes. The update is rolling out globally to personal Google accounts, with business accounts to follow at an unspecified date. Users will have the option to toggle between the new AI-powered "most relevant" search and the traditional reverse chronological "most recent" view.

IBM is laying off thousands of employees across the United States, with approximately 25% of staff at its Cloud Classic operation affected, The Register reports, citing a source. "Concrete numbers are being kept private," a source told the publication. "It is in the thousands."

Staff reductions have occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Dallas, Texas; and California, the report said. Affected departments include consulting, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, and internal systems teams. The report adds: With regard to IBM Cloud Classic -- the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) outfit offering built on IBM's 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer -- another source told us: "It's a resource action. I don't know how many people are in IaaS classic. They don't typically make that information easy to find. What I can say is that they have been making a lot of changes to shift employment to India as much as possible."

A third source, newly let go by Big Blue, said it was fair to characterize this a layoff. "Everyone I know that was affected, myself included, was simply offered a separation agreement," this individual said, estimating that 10 percent of the Cloud group (which is not the same as Cloud Classic) has been let go.

The credit-card market has quietly split in two, Atlantic argues in a new story: one offering generous benefits to wealthy Americans, the other offering expensive debt to the poor. Credit-card balances have reached an all-time high of $1.2 trillion, with serious delinquency rates climbing to their highest point since the Great Recession.

"Transactors" pay off balances monthly and earn valuable rewards worth up to $3,000 annually in taxable income equivalent, while "revolvers" carry balances at a brutal 21.5% average APR. The poor subsidize the rich through two mechanisms: swipe fees that drive up retail prices by $1,700 annually for the average family, and late fees and interest charges that finance rewards programs. Interest revenue for credit-card companies has ballooned from $76 billion in 2020 to $170 billion in 2024.

The economy now appears to be slowing down. High-income families are increasingly resembling working-class families in credit data, with three in five households earning over $80,000 annually carrying balances for more than a year. Card companies are now offering fewer cards to subprime borrowers, creating a troubling dilemma - while expensive credit cards are harmful, having no credit access might be worse. Bipartisan legislation now aims to cap interest rates and lower swipe fees.

Streaming service provider Plex announced Wednesday its first price increase in a decade for its premium Plex Pass subscription, raising monthly rates to $6.99 from $4.99, yearly subscriptions to $69.99 from $39.99, and lifetime access to $249.99 from $119.99, effective April 29. The company is also making remote playback of personal media a paid feature, introducing a Remote Watch Pass subscription at $1.99 monthly or $19.99 annually for users who don't need full Plex Pass features, and removing its one-time mobile activation fee.

The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders, the company said.

According to Politico, Gov. Gavin Newsom has distributed prepaid burner phones to around 100 California business leaders, giving them direct access to him and reinforcing his pro-business stance. "If you ever need anything, I'm a phone call away," read one of the notes. From the report: It was Newsom's idea, a representative said, and has already yielded some "valuable interactions." That arrangement surprised some people POLITICO spoke with, largely because Newsom is already known as an inveterate texter whose digits live in many business titans' contacts. He's also long been seen as more aligned with business interests than the Legislature, the proverbial adult in the room when private pillars like Silicon Valley need a sympathetic ear or a veto. But Newsom wanted to convey that he's intent on maintaining California's competitive edge. Phones are still going out.

The California Protocol Foundation picked up the tab. That organization gets money from businesses and nonprofits for gubernatorial expenses like trips abroad -- or, evidently, burner phones -- so taxpayers aren't on the hook. It also drew leftover funds from Newsom's inauguration account, which itself drew business, so in a roundabout way California's private sector helped fund phones nurturing ties with the private sector.

The Federal Trade Commission has removed over 300 business guidance blogs published during former President Biden's term, including consumer protection information on AI and privacy lawsuits against Amazon and Microsoft, WIRED reported Tuesday, citing current and former FTC employees.

Deleted posts included guidance about Amazon's alleged use of Ring camera data to train algorithms, Microsoft's $20 million settlement over Xbox children's data collection, and compliance standards for AI chatbots. New FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has pledged to pursue tech companies but with focus on alleged conservative censorship rather than data collection practices.

The Dutch parliament approved motions urging the government to reduce reliance on U.S. software companies by developing a sovereign cloud platform and reconsidering contracts with American firms. Reuters reports: While such initiatives have foundered in the past due to a lack of viable European alternatives, lawmakers said changing relations with the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump have given the issue fresh urgency. "The question we as Europeans must ask ourselves is: do we feel comfortable with people like Trump, (Meta CEO Mark) Zuckerberg and (X owner Elon) Musk ruling over our data?" said Marieke Koekkoek of the pro-European Volt party, who authored one of the eight motions, in an email to Reuters.

In addition to launching a sovereign cloud services platform, the motions called on the government to re-examine a decision to use Amazon's web services for the Netherlands' internet domain hosting, and to develop alternatives to U.S. software and preferential treatment for European firms in public tenders. [...] Bert Hubert, a Dutch technology expert who has advocated for reducing dependency on the U.S., said: "This is only the first step in potentially doing something." But he said one important outcome would be forcing agencies to publicly report on risks related to their reliance on U.S. cloud firms. "With the advent of Trump 2.0, it has become clear that this is not something you can harmlessly sign off on," he said.

General Motors is partnering with Nvidia to enhance its self-driving and manufacturing capabilities by leveraging Nvidia's AI chips, software, and simulation tools. "GM says it will apply several of Nvidia's products to its business, such as the Omniverse 3D graphics platform which will run simulations on virtual assembly lines with an eye on reducing downtime and improving efficiency," reports The Verge. "The automaker also plans to equip its next-generation vehicles with Nvidia's 'AI brain' for advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving. And it will employ the chipmaker's AI training software to make its vehicle assembly line robots better at certain tasks, like precision welding and material handling." From the report: GM already uses Nvidia's GPUs to train its AI software for simulation and validation. Today's announcement was about expanding those use cases into improving its manufacturing operations and autonomous vehicles, GM CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. (Dave Richardson, GM's senior VP of Software and Services Engineering will be joining NVIDIA's Norm Marks for a fireside chat at the conference.) "AI not only optimizes manufacturing processes and accelerates virtual testing but also helps us build smarter vehicles while empowering our workforce to focus on craftsmanship," Barra said. "By merging technology with human ingenuity, we unlock new levels of innovation in vehicle manufacturing and beyond."

GM will adopt Nvidia's in-car software products to build next-gen vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities. That includes the company's Drive AGX system-on-a-chip (SoC), similar to Tesla's Full Self-Driving chip or Intel's Mobileye EyeQ. The SoC runs the "safety-certified" DriveOS operating system, built on the Blackwell GPU architecture, which is capable of delivering 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of high-performance compute, the company says. [...] In a briefing with reporters, Ali Kani, Nvidia's vice president and general manager of automotive, described the chipmaking company's automotive business as still in its "infancy," with the expectation that it will only bring in $5 billion this year. (Nvidia reported over $130 billion in revenue in 2024 for all its divisions.)

Nvidia's chips are in less than 1 percent of the billions of cars on the road today, he added. But the future looks promising. The company is also announcing deals with Tier 1 auto supplier Magna, which helped build Sony's Afeela concept, to use Drive AGX in the company's next-generation advanced driver assist software. "We believe automotive is a trillion dollar opportunity for Nvidia," Kani said.

Nvidia unveiled its next wave of AI processors at GTC on Tuesday, announcing Blackwell Ultra chips that will ship in the second half of 2025, followed by the Vera Rubin architecture in 2026. CEO Jensen Huang also revealed that its 2028 chips will be named after physicist Richard Feynman.

The Blackwell Ultra maintains the same 20 petaflops of AI performance as standard Blackwell chips but increases memory from 192GB to 288GB of HBM3e. Nvidia claims these chips can process 1,000 tokens per second -- ten times faster than its 2022 hardware -- enabling AI reasoning tasks like running DeepSeek-R1 models with 10-second response times versus 1.5 minutes on H100 chips.

Vera Rubin will deliver a substantial leap to 50 petaflops in 2026, featuring Nvidia's first custom Arm-based CPU design called Olympus. Nvidia is also changing how it counts GPUs -- Rubin itself contains two dies working as one chip. The annual release cadence represents a strategic shift for Nvidia, which previously introduced new architectures every two years before the AI boom transformed its business.

HR software startup Rippling has sued competitor Deel, alleging that Deel orchestrated corporate espionage by recruiting an employee within Rippling to steal trade secrets, including customer data, sales strategies, and internal records. The lawsuit (PDF) claims the spy shared confidential information with Deel executives and a reporter, leading to legal action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Deel denies wrongdoing and plans to counter the claims. CNBC reports: The two startups are among the most world's most valuable. Investors valued Rippling at $13.5 billion in a funding round announced last year, while Deel told media outlets in 2023 that it was worth $12 billion. Deel ranked No. 28 on CNBC's 2024 Disruptor 50 list. "Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and seeding falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims," a Deel spokesperson told CNBC in an email. "We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims."

Rippling confirmed its findings earlier this month. The company's general counsel sent a letter to three Deel executives that referred to a new Slack channel, and the Deel spy quickly looked for it. Rippling subsequently served a court order to the spy at its office in Dublin, Ireland requiring him to preserve information on his mobile phone. "Deel's spy lied to the court-appointed solicitor about the location of his phone, and then locked himself in a bathroom -- seemingly in order to delete evidence from his phone -- all while the independent solicitor repeatedly warned him not to delete materials from his device and that his non-compliance was breaching a court order with penal endorsement," Rippling said in Monday's filing. "The spy responded: 'I'm willing to take that risk.' He then fled the premises." "We always prefer to win by building the best products and we don't turn to the legal system lightly," Parker Conrad, Rippling's co-founder and CEO, said in a Monday X post. "But we are taking this extraordinary step to send a clear message that this type of misconduct has no place in our industry."

A newly FDA-approved form of adaptive deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease adjusts electrical stimulation in real time based on an individual's brain signals, improving symptom control and reducing medication dependence. Scientific American: For decades, Keith Krehbiel took high doses of medications with a debilitating side effect -- severe nausea -- following his diagnosis with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 42 in 1997. When each dose wore off, he experienced dyskinesia -- involuntary, repetitive muscle movements. In his case, this consisted of head bobbing and weaving. Krehbiel is among one million Americans who live with this progressive neurological disorder, which causes slowed movements, tremors and balance problems. But soon after surgery to implant electrodes into specific areas of his brain in 2020, his life dramatically improved. "My tremor went away almost entirely," says Krehbiel, now age 70 and a professor emeritus of political science at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose Parkinson's symptoms began at age 40 and were initially misdiagnosed as repetitive stress injury from computer use. "I reduced my Parkinson's meds by more than two thirds," he adds. "And I no longer have a sensation of a foggy brain, nor nausea or dyskinesia."

Krehbiel was the first participant to enroll in a clinical trial testing a new form of deep-brain stimulation (DBS), a technology that gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Parkinson's tremor and essential tremor in 1997 (it was later approved for other symptoms and conditions). The new adaptive system adjusts stimulation levels automatically based on the person's individual brain signals. In late February it received FDA approval for Parkinson's disease "based on results of the international multicenter trial, which involved participants at 10 sites across a total of four countries -- the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada and France. This technology is suitable for anyone with Parkinson's, not just individuals in clinical trials, says Helen Bronte-Stewart, the recent trial's global lead investigator and a neurologist specializing in movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. "Like a cardiac pacemaker that responds to the rhythms of the heart, adaptive deep-brain stimulation uses a person's individual brain signals to control the electric pulses it delivers," Bronte-Stewart says. "This makes it more personalized, precise and efficient than older DBS methods."

"Traditional DBS delivers constant stimulation, which doesn't always match the fluctuating symptoms of Parkinson's disease," adds neurologist Todd Herrington, another of the trial's investigators and director of the deep-brain stimulation program at Massachusetts General Hospital. With adaptive DBS, "the goal is to adjust stimulation in real time to provide more effective symptom control, fewer side effects and improved patient quality of life." Current FDA approval of this adaptive system is for the treatment of Parkinson's only, not essential tremor, dystonia (a neurological disorder that causes excessive, repetitive and involuntary muscle contractions) or epilepsy, which still rely on traditional, continuous DBS, Herrington says.

Roku is testing autoplaying video ads that play before users can access the home screen. While Roku claims this is just an experiment, users are threatening to abandon the platform if the change becomes permanent. Ars Technica reports: Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS' home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: "I just turned on my Roku and got an unskippable ad for a movie, before I got to the regular Roku home screen." Multiple apparent users reported seeing an ad for the movie Moana 2. When reached for comment, a Roku spokesperson shared a company statement that confirms that the autoplaying ads are expected behavior but not a permanent part of Roku OS currently. Instead, Roku claimed, it was just trying the ad capability out.

Roku's representative said that Roku's business "has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content, and our first-rate advertising products," adding: "Our recent test is just the latest example, as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user experience."

Google's parent company Alphabet is reportedly in talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for approximately $30 billion. Last July, negotiations had advanced on a $23 billion deal, but the talks were put on hold to prioritize Wiz's IPO. Around the same time, Alphabet also walked away from a potential acquisition of online marketing software company HubSpot. Reuters reports: The startup provides cloud-based cybersecurity solutions powered by artificial intelligence that help companies identify and remove critical risks on cloud platforms. A buyout of this size will most likely face regulatory scrutiny as tech giants are kept under close watch for possible monopolistic practices.

If the deal goes through, it could help Alphabet tap into the cybersecurity industry and expand its booming cloud infrastructure segment, which generated more than $43 billion in revenue last year. Wiz was last valued at $12 billion in a private funding round in May 2024.