Apple said it planned to hire an additional 20,000 staff in the US over the next four years as part of a $500 billion American investment plan. Financial Times: The $500 billion figure [non-paywalled source], spread over Trump's second term in office, includes regular spending on thousands of US suppliers, data centres and corporate facilities, as well as new initiatives such as an academy in Michigan "to train the next generation of US manufacturers." Apple will also open a manufacturing facility in Houston to build servers that can support its artificial intelligence ambitions.
President Trump "implied that the iPhone maker is investing locally because it does not want to pay tariffs," reports Bloomberg. They add pointedly that Apple "didn't say whether the new investments were already underway before Trump's win."

The Los Angeles Times publishes a weekly "Boiling Point" newsletter about climate change and energy issues. And this week they examined whether the scientific fact of a change climate is reflected in the mass media: For the second year running, nonprofit consulting firm Good Energy applied its Climate Reality Check to the actual Oscar-nominated films [which] tests whether a movie and its characters acknowledge global warming... Of last year's 13 Oscar-nominated films that met Good Energy's criteria (feature-length movies set in present-day or near-future Earth) three passed the test. This year, there were 10 eligible films. Only "The Wild Robot" passed...

Maybe a few years from now, studios will release a torrent of movies and shows reflecting the realities of a scary-but-still-salvageable world, helmed by producers and writers jolted into renewed awareness by the infernos. But for now, the picture is bleak. A peer-reviewed study slated for publication this month, led by Rice University English and environmental studies professor Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, analyzes climate change mentions in 250 of the most popular movies of the last decade. The authors found that just 12.8% of the films allude to global warming. Just 3.6% depict or mention the climate crisis in two or more scenes. "A lot of times, it's really being mentioned in passing," Schneider-Mayerson said...

[Good Energy Chief Executive Anna Jane Joyner] pointed to another analysis led by Schneider-Mayerson, which found that movies passing the Climate Reality Check and released in theaters earned 10% more at the box office, on average, than films failing the test. Netflix, meanwhile, says on its website that 80% of its customers "choose to watch at least one story on Netflix that helps them better understand climate issues or highlight hopeful solutions around sustainability...." [Netflix's "Sustainability Stories" collection includes Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, and Waterworld]

Sponsors are interested in selling audiences on climate-friendly products, too. I was sitting in a movie theater last weekend enjoying "Captain America: Brave New World" — the latest entry in Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe — when, to my surprise, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) got out of his SUV and pulled his iconic red-white-and-blue shield out of the front trunk. Yes, a front trunk, where an internal combustion engine would normally be. That meant Captain America was driving an electric vehicle, right? Indeed, he was. I did some research after I got home and learned that Wilson was driving a GMC Hummer EV, the result of a paid partnership between Marvel Studios and GMC parent company General Motors.
Ironically, the movie does not at any point acknowledge global warming, the article points out (adding "Also, SUVs kill more pedestrians and cyclists than smaller cars.")

"But the more movies and TV shows spotlight climate solutions — electric vehicles, solar panels, induction stoves — the more likely people are to support those solutions. For Hollywood, that's a step in the right direction."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Telegraph: Workers with an axe to grind against their employer are using AI to bombard businesses with costly and inaccurate lawsuits, experts have warned.

Frustration is growing among employment lawyers who say they are seeing a trend of litigants using AI to help them run their claims, which they say is generating "inconsistent, lengthy, and often incorrect arguments" and causing a spike in legal fees... Ailie Murray, an employment partner at law firm Travers Smith, said AI submissions are produced so rapidly that they are "often excessively lengthy and full of inconsistencies", but employers must then spend vast amounts of money responding to them. She added: "In many cases, the AI-generated output is inaccurate, leading to claimants pleading invalid claims or arguments.

"It is not an option for an employer to simply ignore such submissions. This leads to a cycle of continuous and costly correspondence. Such dynamics could overburden already stretched tribunals with unfounded and poorly pleaded claims."
There's definitely been a "significant increase" in the number of clients using AI, James Hockin, an employment partner at Withers, told the Telegraph. The danger? "There is a risk that we see unrepresented individuals pursuing the wrong claims in the UK employment tribunal off the back of a duff result from an AI tool."

On Wednesday Mozilla president Mark Surman "announced plans to tackle what he says are 'major headwinds' facing the company's ability to grow, make money, and remain relevant," reports the blog OMG Ubuntu: "Mozilla's impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways," says Surman... It will continue to invest in privacy-respecting advertising; fund, develop and push open-source AI features in order to retain 'product relevance'; and will go all-out on novel new fundraising initiatives to er, get us all to chip in and pay for it!

Mozilla is all-in on AI; Surman describes it as Mozilla's North Star for the work it will do over the next few years. I wrote about its new 'Orbit' AI add-on for Firefox recently...

Helping to co-ordinate, collaborate and come up with ways to keep the company fixed and focused on these fledgling effort is a brand new Mozilla Leadership Council.
The article argues that without Mozilla the web would be "a far poorer, much ickier, and notably less FOSS-ier place..." Or, as Mozilla's blog post put it Wednesday, "Mozilla is entering a new chapter — one where we need to both defend what is good about the web and steer the technology and business models of the AI era in a better direction.

"I believe that we have the people — indeed, we ARE the people — to do this, and that there are millions around the world ready to help us. I am driven and excited by what lies ahead."

"Amazon has long allowed you to download its ebooks to your computer," notes PCMag.com, "where they can serve as a backup or be transferred to other devices.

"However, that feature will end on February 26, 2025, along with the ability to transfer books from your computer to your Kindle via USB." If you attempt to download your ebooks right now, a message says: "Starting February 26, 2025, the 'Download & Transfer via USB' option will no longer be available. You can still send Kindle books to your Wi-Fi-enabled devices by selecting the 'Deliver or Remove from Device' option." After February 26, you will still be able to download Kindle books [onto your Kindle] from the Kindle Store via Wi-Fi, and you can also use the Send to Kindle page on Amazon to send a variety of files to your Kindle.

Should you want to transfer your titles from your Kindle to your computer while you still can, go to Amazon.com, sign in, and click Accounts & Lists > Content Library > Books. Navigate to the book you want to download and click More actions > Download & transfer via USB.
Tom's Guide shares their reaction: Most people probably won't notice this latest example of an Amazon service getting worse, but the feature has existed for over a decade and is useful for backing up your purchases or converting them to formats compatible with other non-Kindle e-Readers or devices. It's also useful for those times when you don't have access to Wi-Fi, and of course, there's peace of mind knowing you have copies of your books... All in all it is a reminder that you don't actually own many or most of your digital purchases, as what you are typically actually "buying" are licenses to use content that can be revoked at any time.

If you find this decision annoying and want to find alternatives, here are a few. To start, might we recommend the Libby app which lets you borrow ebooks from your local library. You can also borrow audiobooks... You can also try purchasing books from places like Google Books and Apple Books, both of which offer a number of ebooks. eBooks.com offers DRM free books and EPUB formats. For those looking for free ebooks there is always Project Gutenberg which has over 75,000 free books largely those in the public domain though there are some more recent titles as well.

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

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

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

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

California sued to fine a data-harvesting company, reports the Washington Post, calling it "a rare step to put muscle behind one of the strongest online privacy laws in the United States." Even when states have tried to restrict data brokers, it has been tough to make those laws stick. That has generally been a problem for the 19 states that have passed broad laws to protect personal information, said Matt Schwartz, a policy analyst for Consumer Reports. He said there has been only 15 or so public enforcement actions by regulators overseeing all those laws. Partly because companies aren't held accountable, they're empowered to ignore the privacy standards. "Noncompliance is fairly widespread," Schwartz said. "It's a major problem."

That's why California is unusual with a data broker law that seems to have teeth. To make sure state residents can order all data brokers operating in the state to delete their personal records [with a single request], California is now requiring brokers to register with the state or face a fine of $200 a day. The state's privacy watchdog said Thursday that it filed litigation to force one data broker, National Public Data, to pay $46,000 for failing to comply with that initial phase of the data broker law. NPD declined to comment through an attorney... This first lawsuit for noncompliance, Schwartz said, shows that California is serious about making companies live up to their privacy obligations... "If they can successfully build it and show it works, it will create a blueprint for other states interested in this idea," he said.
Last summer NPD "spilled hundreds of millions of Americans' Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online," according to the blog Krebs on Security, adding that another NPD data broker sharing access to the same consumer records "inadvertently published the passwords to its back-end database in a file that was freely available from its homepage..."

California's attempt to regulate the industry inspired the nonprofit Consumer Reports to create an app called Permission Slip that reveals what data companies collect and, for people in U.S. states, will "work with you to file a request, telling companies to stop selling your personal information."

Other data-protecting options suggested by The Washington Post:

• Use Firefox, Brave or DuckDuckGo, "which can automatically tell websites not to sell or share your data. Those demands from the web browsers are legally binding or will be soon in at least nine states."

• Use Privacy Badger, an EFF browser extension which the EFF says "automatically tells websites not to sell or share your data including where it's required by state law."

The Register's Lindsay Clark reports: Fifteen years of big data hype, and guess what? Less than one in four of those in charge of analytics projects actually measure the value of the activity to the organization they work for. The result from Gartner -- a staggering one considering the attention heaped on big data and its various hype-oriented successors -- found that in a survey of chief data and analytics (D&A) officers, only 22 percent had defined, tracked, and communicated business impact metrics for the bulk of their data and analytics use cases.

It wasn't for lack of interest though. For more than 90 percent of the 504 respondents, value-focused and outcome-focused areas of the D&A leader's role have gained dominance over the past 12 to 18 months, and will continue to be a concern in the future. It is difficult, though: 30 percent of respondents say their top challenge is the inability to measure data, analytics and AI impact on business outcomes.

"There is a massive value vibe around data, where many organizations talk about the value of data, desire to be data-driven, but there are few who can substantiate it," said Michael Gabbard, senior director analyst at Gartner. He added that while most chief data and analytics officers were responsible for data strategy, a third do not see putting in place an operating model as a primary responsibility. "There is a perennial gap between planning and execution for D&A leaders," he said.

OpenAI has banned a group of Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to develop an AI-powered social media surveillance tool. Engadget reports: The campaign, which OpenAI calls Peer Review, saw the group prompt ChatGPT to generate sales pitches for a program those documents suggest was designed to monitor anti-Chinese sentiment on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The operation appears to have been particularly interested in spotting calls for protests against human rights violations in China, with the intent of sharing those insights with the country's authorities.

"This network consisted of ChatGPT accounts that operated in a time pattern consistent with mainland Chinese business hours, prompted our models in Chinese, and used our tools with a volume and variety consistent with manual prompting, rather than automation," said OpenAI. "The operators used our models to proofread claims that their insights had been sent to Chinese embassies abroad, and to intelligence agents monitoring protests in countries including the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom."

According to Ben Nimmo, a principal investigator with OpenAI, this was the first time the company had uncovered an AI tool of this kind. "Threat actors sometimes give us a glimpse of what they are doing in other parts of the internet because of the way they use our AI models," Nimmo told The New York Times. Much of the code for the surveillance tool appears to have been based on an open-source version of one of Meta's Llama models. The group also appears to have used ChatGPT to generate an end-of-year performance review where it claims to have written phishing emails on behalf of clients in China.

According to The Information (paywalled), OpenAI plans to shift most of its computing power from Microsoft to SoftBank-backed Stargate by 2030. TechCrunch reports: That represents a major shift away from Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest shareholder, who fulfills most of the startup's power needs today. The change won't happen overnight. OpenAI still plans to increase its spending on Microsoft-owned data centers in the next few years.

During that time, OpenAI's overall costs are set to grow dramatically. The Information reports that OpenAI projects to burn $20 billion in cash during 2027, far more than the $5 billion it reportedly burned through in 2024. By 2030, OpenAI reportedly forecasts that its costs around running AI models, also known as inference, will outpace what the startup spends on training AI models.

HP has ended its controversial practice of imposing mandatory 15-minute wait times for customer support calls in several European countries, following internal pushback and customer complaints.

The company confirmed the reversal and said it will "continue to prioritize timely access to live phone support."

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has experienced $1.46 billion worth of "suspicious outflows," according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT. From a report: The wallet in question appears to have sent 401,346 ETH ($1.1 billion) as well as several other iterations of staked ether (stETH) to a fresh wallet, which is now liquidating mETH and stETH on decentralized exchanges, etherscan shows. The wallet has sold around $200 million worth of stETH so far. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou wrote on X that a hacker "took control of the specific ETH cold wallet and transferred all the ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address."

AI coding assistants are reshaping software development, but they're unlikely to replace human programmers entirely, according to industry experts and developers. GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke projects AI could soon generate 80-90% of corporate code, transforming developers into "conductors of an AI-empowered orchestra" who guide and direct these systems.

Current AI coding tools, including Microsoft's GitHub Copilot, are delivering 10-30% productivity gains in business environments. At KPMG, developers report saving 4.5 hours weekly using Copilot, while venture investment in AI coding assistants tripled to $1.6 billion in 2024. The tools are particularly effective at automating routine tasks like documentation generation and legacy code translation, according to KPMG AI expert Swami Chandrasekaran.

They're also accelerating onboarding for new team members. Demand for junior developers remains soft, however, though analysts say it's premature to attribute this directly to AI adoption. Training programs like Per Scholas are already adapting, incorporating AI fundamentals alongside traditional programming basics to prepare developers for an increasingly AI-augmented workplace.

Rivian reported its first-ever positive gross profit of $170 million in Q4 2024, driven by cost reductions and increased regulatory credit sales, despite a $4.7 billion net loss for the year. The company said it expects to sell 46,000-51,000 vehicles this year and achieve "modest gross profit." The Verge reports: Rivian reported $170 million in positive gross profits, which includes production and sales but does not factor in other expenses, for the three-month period that ended December 31, 2024. That was based on $1.7 billion in revenues. The company said its net loss for the fourth quarter was $743 million, as compared to $1.5 billion in net losses in the same period in 2023.

Rivian earned $4.5 billion in revenue for the full year 2024, based on the delivery of 51,579 vehicles. It record a net loss of $4.7 billion, compared to $5.4 billion in 2023. Rivian cited increased revenue from the sale of regulatory credits to other automakers, which is also a primary revenue driver for Tesla. The company said it saw a $260 million increase in regulatory credit sales in the fourth quarter year over year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The chief executive of streaming giant Netflix on Thursday announced a $1 billion investment to produce some 20 films and TV series in Mexico annually over the next four years. Speaking at President Claudia Sheinbaum's morning press conference in Mexico City, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said he looked forward to entering more partnerships with producers in the Latin American nation. Sheinbaum said the investments in the film industry should produce many jobs beyond immediate production needs, such as hospitality for actors and crew members, fashion designers and also spur tourism. "It's an industry that gives a lot of mileage to the economy," Sheinbaum said. "It's not only important for Mexico to be seen in the world, but also because of the economic development and jobs generated by a production."

Amazon has dethroned Walmart in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. From a report: Amazon said earlier this month that it brought in $187.8 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter. That beat out Walmart's sales for the period, which came in at $180.5 billion, the company reported on Thursday. Since 2012, Walmart has held the distinction of being the top revenue generator each quarter, a title it gained after overtaking oil giant Exxon Mobil. Walmart still leads the way in annual sales, though Amazon is gaining ground. Walmart is projected to reel in $708.7 billion in the fiscal year ahead while Amazon's full year revenue for 2025 is expected to reach $700.8 billion, according to FactSet.

Amazon will discontinue its workplace communications platform Chime in February 2026 and has stopped accepting new customers, the company's cloud division AWS said in a blog post. The service, which Amazon employees widely used for video calls, messaging and business communications, is among several products being phased out. The company also recently shuttered Inspire, its TikTok-style video feed feature in its mobile app, and announced plans to shut down its Android app store earlier today.

Nikola, the hydrogen-truck maker that briefly sported a market value comparable to Ford Motor, has filed for bankruptcy with plans to wind down its business. From a report: Nikola on Wednesday said that it made the chapter 11 filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware and that it plans to conduct a court-supervised auction of its assets.

The Phoenix company said it worked for months with its financial and legal advisers to find a way to sustain its operations before determining that a structured sale process was the best way to maximize the value of its assets.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Niantic, the company behind the 2016 hit Pokemon Go, is in talks to sell its video-game business to Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely, according to several people familiar with the discussions. A deal could be announced in coming weeks. The price being discussed is about $3.5 billion, according to one of the people. Any agreement would involve the Pokemon title as well as other mobile games, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. There's no assurance an agreement will be reached.

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has launched Thinking Machines Lab with several leaders from OpenAI on board, including John Schulman, Barrett Zoph, and Jonathan Lachman. Their mission is "to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable," with a commitment to publishing technical research and code. The Verge reports: In a press release shared with The Verge, the company suggests that it's building products that help humans work with AI, rather than fully autonomous systems. "We're building a future where everyone has access to the knowledge and tools to make AI work for their unique needs and goals," says the press release.