Non-fungible tokens and memecoins are neither securities nor commodities, according to White House crypto czar David Sacks. Instead, he defines them as "collectibles." From a report: "It's like a baseball card or a stamp," Sacks said in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday, referencing Trump's explosively popular memecoin. "People buy it because they want to commemorate something."

The famous venture capitalist's comments touched on a long-running debate about the crypto industry in general: how exactly to treat different digital assets. Some argue that digital assets are securities, which are tradable financial assets like stocks. But others say they're commodities, or raw materials that can be bought and sold, like gold and wheat. The classification differences have vast regulatory implications. "There's a few different categories here, so defining the market structure is important," said Sacks.

Walgreens Boots Alliance has ended a $200 million digital display venture with startup Cooler Screens after widespread technical failures and poor revenue, removing thousands of smart screens from its store freezer doors [non-paywalled link]. The screens, which displayed product information and ads, frequently crashed, showed incorrect inventory, and occasionally caught fire, Bloomberg reports.

Cooler Screens CEO Arsen Avakian cut data feeds to over 100 Chicago-area stores in December 2023 during a contract dispute, prompting Walgreens to obtain a restraining order. Walgreens completed removal of 10,300 screens from 700 stores in August 2024, replacing them with traditional glass doors. The screens generated just $215 per door annually, less than half the contractual minimum, according to Walgreens. Nearly $50 million worth of custom-made screens now sit unused in a Texas warehouse.

Epic Games is expanding its mobile app store to include nearly 20 third-party games on Android and EU iOS, launching a free games program, and temporarily covering Apple's Core Technology Fee for participating developers to counter platform restrictions. "Our aim here isn't just to launch a bunch of different stores in different places, but to build a single, cross-platform store in which, within the era of multi-platform games, if you buy a game or digital items in one place, you have the ability to own them everywhere," Epic CEO Tim Sweeney told reporters during a press briefing. The Verge reports: Under the program, Epic will offer new free games in the store each month before eventually switching to a weekly schedule. However, the games aren't actually in the store yet -- Epic said on Thursday that it "ran into a few bugs that we're working through now" and "we'll provide an update once the games are live and ready to play!"

To sweeten the deal for developers that participate in the free games program on iOS, Epic will help defray the cost of using third-party marketplaces. For one year, it will pay these developers' Core Technology Fee (CTF): a 50 euro cent fee levied on every install of an iOS app that uses third-party stores after it exceeds 1 million annual downloads. (Apple gives developers with less than 10 million euros in global revenue a three-year on-ramp.) [...] Epic writes in its blog post that covering the fee "is not financially viable for every third party app store or for Epic long term, but we'll do it while the European Commission investigates Apple's non-compliance with the law."

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that "sets a federal agenda meant to move U.S. digital assets businesses into friendly oversight," reports CoinDesk. The order creates a cryptocurrency working group tasked with proposing a new regulatory framework for digital assets. It will be "made up of the Treasury secretary, attorney general and chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with other agency heads," notes Reuters.

The directive also explores the creation of a "national digital asset stockpile," orders protections for banking services for crypto companies, and bans the creation of central bank digital currencies which could compete with existing cryptocurrencies.

Britain's competition watchdog launched investigations into Apple and Google's mobile ecosystems on Thursday under new powers to tackle digital market abuses that took effect this year. The Competition and Markets Authority will examine whether the tech giants' control over operating systems, app stores and browsers constitutes "strategic market status" requiring regulatory intervention.

The probe will focus on potential barriers to competition, preferential treatment of their own apps, and whether developers face unfair terms for app distribution. The regulator could force changes including mandatory access to key mobile functions or allowing users to download apps outside official stores.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: [Amber Case is a speaker and author of Calm Technology.] Case's book, inspired by the work of Xerox PARC researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown, outlines eight principles for calm technology; examples include the idea that technology "should require the smallest possible amount of attention" while in use, and that it "should work even when it fails." The book's ideas gained the attention of major technology companies, including Microsoft and Amazon, and Case gave talks at TED and the Thinking Digital Conference, among others. "But that wasn't enough," says Case. While her ideas received plenty of interest, she noticed that interest didn't translate to concrete action. Companies designing new products were unclear on what was right, or wrong, and uncertain about how they might put calm technology ideals into practice.

So, Case decided on a new approach. She founded the Calm Tech Institute in May 2024 to develop and promote a Calm Tech certification. "A standard is a good way of rewarding that behavior," says Case. The certification includes 81 points that span six categories: attention, periphery, durability, light, sound, and materials. Some of the certification's specifications are quite stringent. It outlines minimum standards for user interface (UI) design, such as consistent use of icons and font typography, asks that all but the "most crucial" notifications be turned off by default, and requires an instruction booklet with a list of replacements and compatible parts.

The first handful of devices that earned the Calm Tech certification were announced at, or just before, CES 2025. This first batch included, for example, the reMarkable Paper Pro. Released on September 4, 2024, the Paper Pro looks like an iPad and has a color eInk display, but it's tightly focused on writing and organizing notes with the tablet's included stylus. ReMarkable purposefully constrains the device's features to maintain a distraction-free experience. Though it can sync notes online, the Paper Pro doesn't have an app store, a web browser, or widgets. It doesn't even display the time. [...]

Another early adopter was Mui Labs, creator of the Mui Board, a smart home device that looks like a piece of finely finished decorative wood but, when touched, illuminates to reveal a smart home interface. [...] Several other devices earned certification in late 2024. These include the AirThings View Plus, an air quality monitor with a simple eInk display that I highlighted during the 2021 wildfire season; the Daylight Computer, a portable PC with an eInk display and custom OS meant to reduce distractions; and Unpluq, a physical dongle that can lock apps on Android and iOS devices until the dongle is moved close to the device. Calm Tech Institute's certification is not yet publicly available, though it does hope to have it published "soon," says Case.

Spectrum notes that Calm is "also exploring research into calm technology and working with neuroscientists to study the 'cognitive need for dimensionality and texture' in user interfaces."

Britain will launch a digital wallet app later this year allowing citizens to store government documents on their smartphones, UK Science Secretary Peter Kyle announced on Tuesday. The GOV.UK Wallet, available on Android and iOS, will first support veteran cards followed by driver's licenses in late 2025, with plans to eventually include passports, marriage certificates and benefit documents.

The app will use facial recognition for security. "The overflowing drawer rammed with letters from the government and hours spent on hold to get a basic appointment will soon be consigned to history," Kyle said. The Labour government aims to have all UK agencies offering digital alternatives to physical documents by 2027. Officials said users can recover their digital credentials if phones are lost, adding the system complies with existing data protection laws.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday revoked a 2023 executive order signed by Joe Biden that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security. Biden's order required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government, in line with the Defense Production Act, before they were released to the public. Four days before leaving office, Biden issued a comprehensive cybersecurity executive order that also targeted AI usage. The directive aimed to leverage AI's security benefits, implement digital identities for citizens, and address vulnerabilities that have allowed Chinese and Russian intrusions into U.S. government systems, among other things. It's unclear at this time if it, too, will be revoked.

Many of the world's largest tech companies, including Meta, Google, TikTok, and X, have pledged to European lawmakers that they will do more to prevent and remove illegal hate speech on their platforms. The revised set of voluntary commitments unveiled on Monday aim to help platforms "demonstrate their compliance" with the Digital Services Act (DSA) obligations regarding illegal content moderation. The Verge reports: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, X, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Dailymotion, Jeuxvideo.com, Rakuten Viber, and Microsoft-hosted consumer services have all signed the "Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online Plus" -- which is not a terribly named streaming service but an update to a 2016 Code. The revised code commits signatories to transparency around hate speech detection and reduction, to allowing third-party monitors to assess how hate speech notices are reviewed by the platforms, and to review "at least two-thirds of hate speech notices" within 24 hours. These EU Codes of Conduct are voluntary commitments and companies face no penalties if they decide to back out of the agreement [...].

The notorious hacker IntelBroker claims to have stolen data from HPE systems, including source code, private repositories, digital certificates, and access to certain services. SecurityWeek reports: The compromised data allegedly includes source code for products such as Zerto and iLO, private GitHub repositories, digital certificates, Docker builds, and even some personal information that the hacker described as "old user PII for deliveries." IntelBroker is also offering access to some services used by HPE, including APIs, WePay, GitHub and GitLab. Contacted by SecurityWeek, HPE said it's aware of the breach claims and is conducting an investigation.

"HPE became aware on January 16 of claims being made by a group called IntelBroker that it was in possession of information belonging to HPE. HPE immediately activated our cyber response protocols, disabled related credentials, and launched an investigation to evaluate the validity of the claims," said HPE spokesperson Adam R. Bauer. "There is no operational impact to our business at this time, nor evidence that customer information is involved," Bauer added.

The CIA has developed a chatbot to talk to virtual versions of foreign presidents and prime ministers. "Understanding leaders around the world is one of the CIA's most important jobs. Teams of analysts comb through intelligence collected by spies and publicly available information to create profiles of leaders that can predict behaviors," reports the New York Times. "A chatbot powered by artificial intelligence now helps do that work." From the report: The chatbot is part of the spy agency's drive to improve the tools available to CIA analysts and its officers in the field, and to better understand adversaries' technical advances. Core to the effort is to make it easier for companies to work with the most secretive agency. William Burns, CIA director for the past four years, prioritized improving the agency's technology and understanding of how it is used. Incoming Trump administration officials say they plan to build on those initiatives, not tear them down. [...]

The CIA has long used digital tools, spy gadgets and even AI. But with the development of new forms of AI, including the large language models that power chatbots, the agency has stepped up its investments. Making better use of AI, Burns said, is crucial to US competition with China. And better AI models have helped the agency's analysts "digest the avalanche of open-source information out there," he said. The new tools have also helped analysts process clandestinely acquired information, Burns said. New technologies developed by the agency are helping spies navigate cities in authoritarian countries where governments use AI-powered cameras to conduct constant surveillance on their population and foreign spies.

Donald and Melania Trump have launched a pair of meme coins just before President Trump was sworn into office. The coins are already worth billions of dollars, raising "serious ethical questions and conflicts of interest," said Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota. CNN reports: Melania Trump launched her cryptocurrency $MELANIA in a social media post Sunday, sending her husband's cryptocurrency $TRUMP, announced two days earlier, plummeting. "The Official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $MELANIA now. https://melaniameme.com," the future first lady wrote on X Sunday. Meme coins are a type of highly volatile cryptocurrency inspired by popular internet or cultural trends. They carry no intrinsic value but can soar, or plummet, in price. "My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE!" Trump wrote on X Friday. "It's time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW. Go to http://gettrumpmemes.com -- Have Fun!" Both coins are trading on the Solana blockchain. [...]

$TRUMP is the first cryptocurrency endorsed by the incoming president, who once trashed bitcoin as "based on thin air." [...] While executive branch employees must follow conflict of interest criminal statutes that prevent them from participating in matters that impact their own financial interests, the law does not apply to the president or the vice president. [...] The Trump coin's market capitalization, which is based on the 200 million coins circulating, is capped at $13 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. The meme coin's website said there will be 1 billion Trump coins over the next three years. Both $MELANIA and $TRUMP's websites contain disclaimers saying the coins are "intended to function as a support for, and engagement with" the values of their respective brands and "are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type."

The website says the meme coin is not politically affiliated. But 80% of the coin's supply is held by Trump Organization-affiliate CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC, which are both subject to a three-year unlocking schedule -- so they cannot sell all of their holdings at once. Trump coin's fully diluted value (which reflects the eventual total supply of Trump coins) stood at around $54 billion as of Monday morning, according to CoinMarketCap. At that value, the 80% linked to Trump is worth a staggering $43 billion, at least on paper. The $TRUMP coin's website says it is "the only official Trump meme. Now, you can get your piece of history. This Trump Meme celebrates a leader who doesn't back down, no matter the odds," the website reads. "Trump owning 80% and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it," Nick Tomaino, a former Coinbase executive, said in a post on X. "Trump should be airdropping to the people rather than enriching himself or his team on this."

Technology giants must do more to co-operate with law enforcement on encryption or they risk threatening European democracy, according to the head of Europol, as the agency gears up to renew pressure on companies at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. From a report: Catherine De Bolle told the Financial Times she will meet Big Tech groups in the Swiss mountain resort to discuss the matter, claiming that companies had a "social responsibility" to give the police access to encrypted messages that are used by criminals to remain anonymous. "Anonymity is not a fundamental right," said the EU law enforcement agency's executive director.

"When we have a search warrant and we are in front of a house and the door is locked, and you know that the criminal is inside of the house, the population will not accept that you cannot enter." In a digital environment, the police needed to be able to decode these messages to fight crime, she added. "You will not be able to enforce democracy [without it]."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Leading AI developers, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, are threading a delicate needle to sell software to the United States military: make the Pentagon more efficient, without letting their AI kill people. Today, their tools are not being used as weapons, but AI is giving the Department of Defense a "significant advantage" in identifying, tracking, and assessing threats, the Pentagon's Chief Digital and AI Officer, Dr. Radha Plumb, told TechCrunch in a phone interview.

"We obviously are increasing the ways in which we can speed up the execution of kill chain so that our commanders can respond in the right time to protect our forces," said Plumb. The "kill chain" refers to the military's process of identifying, tracking, and eliminating threats, involving a complex system of sensors, platforms, and weapons. Generative AI is proving helpful during the planning and strategizing phases of the kill chain, according to Plumb. The relationship between the Pentagon and AI developers is a relatively new one. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta walked back their usage policies in 2024 to let U.S. intelligence and defense agencies use their AI systems. However, they still don't allow their AI to harm humans. "We've been really clear on what we will and won't use their technologies for," Plumb said, when asked how the Pentagon works with AI model providers.

The Los Angeles Times calls it "a guns-blazingly funny documentary about two out-of-work British actors who spent a chunk of their COVID-19 lockdown staging Shakespeare's masterpiece on the mean streets of Grand Theft Auto V."

Grand Theft Hamlet won SXSW's Jury Award for best documentary, and has now opened in U.S. theatres this weekend (and begun streaming on Mubi), after opening in the U.K. and Ireland. But nearly the entire film is set in Grand Theft Auto's crime-infested version of Los Angeles, the Times reports, "where even the good guys have weapons and a nihilistic streak — the vengeful Prince of Denmark fits right in." Yet when Sam Crane, a.k.a. @Hamlet_thedane, launches into one of the Bard's monologues, he's often murdered by a fellow player within minutes. Everyone's a critic.

Crane co-directed the movie with his wife, Pinny Grylls, a first-time gamer who functions as the film's camera of sorts. What her character sees, where she chooses to stand and look, makes up much of the film, although the editing team does phenomenal work splicing in other characters' points of view. (We're never outside of the game until the last 30 seconds; only then do we see anyone's real face....) The Bard's story is only half the point. Really, this is a classic let's-put-on-a-pixilated-show tale about the need to create beauty in the world — even this violent world — especially when stage productions in England have shuttered, forcing Crane, a husband and father, and Mark Oosterveen, single and lonely, to kill time speeding around the digital desert...

To our surprise (and theirs), the play's tussles with depression and anguish and inertia become increasingly resonant as the production and the pandemic limps toward their conclusions. When Crane and Oosterveen's "Grand Theft Auto" avatars hop into a van with an anonymous gamer and ask this online stranger for his thoughts on Hamlet's suicidal soliloquy, the man, a real-life delivery driver stuck at home with a broken leg, admits, "I don't think I'm in the right place to be replying to this right now...."
In 2014 Hamlet was also staged in Guild Wars 2, the article points out. "This is, however, the first attempt I'm aware of that attempts to do the whole thing live in one go, no matter if one of the virtual actors falls to their doom from a blimp.

"As Grylls says, 'You can't stop production just because somebody dies.'"

ABC News reported that the official newspaper of China's communist party is claiming TikTok refugees on RedNote found a "new home," and "openness, communication, and mutual learning are... the heartfelt desires of people from all countries."

But in fact, Wired reports, "China's Cyberspace Administration, the country's top internet watchdog, has reportedly already grown concerned about content being shared by foreigners on Xiaohongshu," and "warned the platform earlier this week to 'ensure China-based users can't see posts from U.S. users,' according to The Information."

And that's just the beginning. Wired reports that RedNote is now also "scrambling to hire English-speaking moderators." Social media platforms in China are legally required to remove a wide range of content, including nudity and graphic violence, but especially information that the government deems politically sensitive... "RedNote — like all platforms owned by Chinese companies — is subject to the Chinese Communist Party's repressive laws," wrote Allie Funk, research director for technology and democracy at the nonprofit human rights organization Freedom House, in an email to WIRED. "Independent researchers have documented how keywords deemed sensitive to those in power, such as discussion of labor strikes or criticism of Xi Jinping, can be scrubbed from the platform."

But the influx of American TikTok users — as many as 700,000 in merely two days, according to Reuters — could be stretching Xiaohongshu's content moderation abilities thin, says Eric Liu, an editor at China Digital Times, a California-based publication documenting censorship in China, who also used to work as a content moderator himself for the Chinese social media platform Weibo... Liu reposted a screenshot on Bluesky showing that some people who recently joined Xiaohongshu have received notifications that their posts can only be shown to other users after 48 hours, seemingly giving the company time to determine whether they may be violating any of the platform's rules. This is a sign that Xiaohongshu's moderation teams are unable to react swiftly, Liu says...

While the majority of the new TikTok refugees still appear to be enjoying their time on Xiaohongshu, some have already had their posts censored. Christine Lu, a Taiwanese-American tech entrepreneur who created a Xiaohongshu account on Wednesday, says she was suspended after uploading three provocative posts about Tiananmen, Tibet, and Taiwan. "I support more [Chinese and American] people engaging directly. But also, knowing China, I knew it wouldn't last for long," Lu tells WIRED.
Despite the 700,000 signups in two days, "It's also worth nothing that the migration to RedNote is still very small, and only a fraction of the 170 million people in the US who use TikTok," notes The Conversation. (And they add that "The US government also has the authority to pressure Apple to remove RedNote from the US App Store if it thinks the migration poses a national security threat.")

One nurse told the Los Angeles Times Americans signed up for the app because they "just don't want to give in" to "bullying" by the U.S. government. (The Times notes she later recorded a video acknowledging that on the Chinese-language app, "I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I'm reading, I'm just pressing buttons.") On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese officials had discussed the possibility of selling TikTok to a trusted non-Chinese party such as Elon Musk, who already owns social media platform X. However, analysts said that Bytedance is unlikely to agree to a sale of the underlying algorithm that powers the app, meaning the platform under a new owner could still look drastically different.

According to Axios, Google has told the EU it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking or removing content, despite the requirements of a new EU law. From the report: In a letter written to Renate Nikolay, the deputy director general under the content and technology arm at the European Commission, Google's global affairs president Kent Walker said the fact-checking integration required by the Commission's new Disinformation Code of Practice "simply isn't appropriate or effective for our services" and said Google won't commit to it. The code would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside Google's search results and YouTube videos. It would also force Google to build fact-checking into its ranking systems and algorithms.

Walker said Google's current approach to content moderation works and pointed to successful content moderation during last year's "unprecedented cycle of global elections" as proof. He said a new feature added to YouTube last year that enables some users to add contextual notes to videos "has significant potential." (That program is similar to X's Community Notes feature, as well as new program announced by Meta last week.)

The EU's Code of Practice on Disinformation, introduced in 2022, includes several voluntary commitments that tech firms and private companies, including fact-checking organizations, are expected to deliver on. The Code, originally created in 2018, predates the EU's new content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which went into effect in 2022.

The Commission has held private discussions over the past year with tech companies, urging them to convert the voluntary measures into an official code of conduct under the DSA. Walker said in his letter Thursday that Google had already told the Commission that it didn't plan to comply. Google will "pull out of all fact-checking commitments in the Code before it becomes a DSA Code of Conduct," he wrote. He said Google will continue to invest in improvements to its current content moderation practices, which focus on providing people with more information about their search results through features like Synth ID watermarking and AI disclosures on YouTube.

Google has partnered with Indian startup Varaha to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits by 2030, marking its largest deal in India and the largest involving biochar, a carbon removal solution made from biomass. TechCrunch reports: The offtake agreement credits will be delivered to Google by 2030 from Varaha's industrial biochar project in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the two firms said on Thursday. [...] Biochar is produced in two ways: artisanal and industrial. The artisanal method is community-driven, where farmers burn crop residue in conical flasks without using machines. In contrast, industrial biochar is made using large reactors that process 50-60 tons of biomass daily.

Varaha's project will generate industrial biochar from an invasive plant species, Prosopis Juliflora, using its pyrolysis facility in Gujarat. The invasive species impacts plant biodiversity and has overtaken grasslands used for livestock. Varaha will harvest the plant and make efforts to restore native grasslands in the region, the company's co-founder and CEO Madhur Jain said in an interview. Once the biochar is produced, a third-party auditor will submit their report to Puro.Earth to generate credits. Although biochar is seen as a long-term carbon removal solution, its permanence can vary between 1,000 and 2,500 years depending on production and environmental factors.

Jain told TechCrunch that Varaha tried using different feedstocks and different parameters within its reactors to find the best combination to achieve permanence close to 1,600 years. The startup has also built a digital monitoring, reporting and verification system, integrating remote sensing to monitor biomass availability. It even has a mobile app that captures geo-tagged, time-stamped images to geographically document activities, including biomass excavation and biochar's field application. With its first project, Varaha said it processed at least 40,000 tons of biomass and produced 10,000 tons of biochar last year.

Microsoft has patched a Windows vulnerability that allowed attackers to bypass Secure Boot, a critical defense against firmware infections, the company said. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2024-7344, affected Windows devices for at least seven months. Security researcher Martin Smolar discovered the vulnerability in a signed UEFI application within system recovery software from seven vendors, including Howyar.

The application, reloader.efi, circumvented standard security checks through a custom PE loader. Administrative attackers could exploit the vulnerability to install malicious firmware that persists even after disk reformatting. Microsoft revoked the application's digital signature, though the vulnerability's impact on Linux systems remains unclear.

U.S. President Joe Biden has issued a comprehensive cybersecurity executive order, four days before leaving office, mandating improvements to government network monitoring, software procurement, AI usage, and foreign hacker penalties.

The 40-page directive aims to leverage AI's security benefits, implement digital identities for citizens, and address vulnerabilities that have allowed Chinese and Russian intrusions into U.S. government systems. It requires software vendors to prove secure development practices and gives the Commerce Department eight months to establish mandatory cybersecurity standards for government contractors.