A Brazilian judge has ordered Apple to open its iOS platform to alternative app stores within 90 days, according to Valor International. The ruling cited Apple's compliance with similar requirements in the European Union under the Digital Markets Act without showing "significant impact or irreparable harm to its economic model."

The case originated from a 2022 complaint by Mercado Livre. Brazil previously issued a 20-day deadline in November for Apple to permit alternative payment options and sideloading, but that injunction was overturned in December. Apple plans to appeal.

Denmark's state-run postal service, PostNord, is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century. From a report: The decision brings to an end 400 years of the company's letter service. Denmark's 1,500 post boxes will start to disappear from the start of June. Transport Minister Thomas Danielsen sought to reassure Danes, saying letters would still be sent and received as "there is a free market for both letters and parcels." Postal services across Europe are grappling with the decline in letter volumes. Germany's Deutsche Post said on Thursday it was axing 8,000 jobs, in what it called a "socially responsible manner."

Deutsche Post has 187,000 employees and staff representatives said they feared more cuts were to come. Denmark had a universal postal service for 400 years until the end of 2023, but as digital mail services have taken hold, the use of letters has fallen dramatically. PostNord says it will switch its focus to parcel deliveries and that any postage stamps bought this year or in 2024 can be refunded for a limited period in 2026.

Budget carrier Ryanair has delayed its move to 100% paperless boarding passes to the start of its winter schedule on November 3. From a report: Media reports had suggested that the change could come in May, ahead of the busy summer season. But the implementation will now begin at the start of the winter season in November, and means Ryanair passengers will no longer download and print a physical paper boarding pass. Instead they will use the digital boarding pass generated in their 'myRyanair' app during check-in.

Currently almost 80% of Ryanair's 200 million annual passengers already use this digital boarding pass. As a result of this initiative, Ryanair expects to eliminate almost all airport check-in fees from November, as all passengers will have checked-in online or in-app to generate their digital boarding pass. The airline said it will also reduce passengers' carbon footprint by eliminating unnecessary paper, saving more than 300 tonnes in paper waste each year.

India's income tax department will gain powers to access citizens' social media accounts, emails and other digital spaces beginning April 2026 under the new income tax bill, in a significant expansion of its search and seizure authority.

The legislation, which has raised privacy concerns among legal experts, allows tax officers to "gain access by overriding the access code" to computer systems and "virtual digital spaces" if they suspect tax evasion.

The bill broadly defines virtual digital spaces to include email servers, social media accounts, online investment accounts, banking platforms, and cloud servers.

"The expansion raises significant concerns regarding constitutional validity, potential state overreach, and practical enforcement," Sonam Chandwani, Managing Partner at KS Legal and Associates, told Indian newspaper Economic Times.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google has open sourced an AI model, SpeciesNet, designed to identify animal species by analyzing photos from camera traps. Researchers around the world use camera traps -- digital cameras connected to infrared sensors -- to study wildlife populations. But while these traps can provide valuable insights, they generate massive volumes of data that take days to weeks to sift through. In a bid to help, Google launched Wildlife Insights, an initiative of the company's Google Earth Outreach philanthropy program, around six years ago. Wildlife Insights provides a platform where researchers can share, identify, and analyze wildlife images online, collaborating to speed up camera trap data analysis.

Many of Wildlife Insights' analysis tools are powered by SpeciesNet, which Google claims was trained on over 65 million publicly available images and images from organizations like the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and the Zoological Society of London. Google says that SpeciesNet can classify images into one of more than 2,000 labels, covering animal species, taxa like "mammalian" or "Felidae," and non-animal objects (e.g. "vehicle"). SpeciesNet is available on GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used commercially largely sans restrictions.

U.S. publishers are increasingly abandoning paperback editions of nonfiction books, eliminating a traditional second chance for authors to reach readers with lower-priced versions of their work. New adult nonfiction paperback titles plummeted 42% between 2019 and 2024 [non-paywalled source] to under 40,000, while hardcover titles fell just 9% during the same period, according to Bowker Books in Print.

"It's profoundly demoralizing that a book that might have taken four years to write and was published with such promise is done after five months," Dan Conaway, a senior literary agent with Writers House, told WSJ. The shift reflects changing consumer habits, the rise of digital formats, and market realities where Amazon sometimes prices hardcovers below paperbacks. Barnes & Noble now promotes just one nonfiction paperback monthly.

Apple users noticed a change in 2023, "when streaming platforms like Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, and the Criterion Channel imposed a quiet embargo on the screenshot," noted the film blog Screen Slate: At first, there were workarounds: users could continue to screenshot by using the browser Brave or by downloading extensions or third-party tools like Fireshot. But gradually, the digital-rights-management tech adapted and became more sophisticated. Today, it is nearly impossible to take a screenshot from the most popular streaming services, at least not on a Macintosh computer. The shift occurred without remark or notice to subscribers, and there's no clear explanation as to why or what spurred the change...

For PC users, this story takes a different, and happier, turn. With the use of Snipping Tool — a utility exclusive to Microsoft Windows, users are free to screen grab content from all streaming platforms. This seems like a pointed oversight, a choice on the part of streamers to exclude Mac users (though they make up a tiny fraction of the market) because of their assumed cultural class.
"I'm not entirely sure what the technical answer to this is," tech blogger John Gruber wrote this weekend, "but on MacOS, it seemingly involves the GPU and video decoding hardware..." These DRM blackouts on Apple devices (you can't capture screenshots from DRM video on iPhones or iPads either) are enabled through the deep integration between the OS and the hardware, thus enabling the blackouts to be imposed at the hardware level. And I don't think the streaming services opt into this screenshot prohibition other than by "protecting" their video with DRM in the first place. If a video is DRM-protected, you can't screenshot it; if it's not, you can.

On the Mac, it used to be the case that DRM video was blacked-out from screen capture in Safari, but not in Chrome (or the dozens of various Chromium-derived browsers). But at some point a few years back, you stopped being able to capture screenshots from DRM videos in Chrome, too -- by default. But in Chrome's Settings page, under System, if you disable "Use graphics acceleration when available" and relaunch Chrome, boom, you can screenshot everything in a Chrome window, including DRM video...

What I don't understand is why Apple bothered supporting this in the first place for hardware-accelerated video (which is all video on iOS platforms -- there is no workaround like using Chrome with hardware acceleration disabled on iPhone or iPad). No one is going to create bootleg copies of DRM-protected video one screenshotted still frame at a time -- and even if they tried, they'd be capturing only the images, not the sound. And it's not like this "feature" in MacOS and iOS has put an end to bootlegging DRM-protected video content.
Gruber's conclusion? "This 'feature' accomplishes nothing of value for anyone, including the streaming services, but imposes a massive (and for most people, confusing and frustrating) hindrance on honest people simply trying to easily capture high-quality (as opposed to, say, using their damn phone to take a photograph of their reflective laptop display) screenshots of the shows and movies they're watching."

Despite a January announcement that America would explore the idea of a national digital asset stockpile, the exact cryptocurrecies weren't specified. Today on social media the president posted that it would include bitcoin, ether, XRP, Solana's SOL token and Cardano's ADA, reports CNBC — prompting a Sunday rally in cryptocurrencies trading. XRP surged 33% after the announcement while the token tied to Solana jumped 22%. Cardano's coin soared more than 60%. Bitcoin rose 10% to $94,425.29, after dipping to a three-month low under $80,000 on Friday. Ether, which has suffered some of the biggest losses in crypto year-to-date, gained 12%... This is the first time Trump has specified his support for a crypto "reserve" versus a "stockpile." While the former assumes actively buying crypto in regular installments, a stockpile would simply not sell any of the crypto currently held by the U.S. government.
"The total cryptocurrency market has risen about 10%," reports Reuters, "or more than $300 billion, in the hours since Trump's announcement, according to CoinGecko, a cryptocurrency data and analysis company."

"A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry..." the president posted, promising to "make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World," reports The Hill: His announcement comes just after the White House announced it would be welcoming cryptocurrency industry professionals on March 7 in a first-of-its-kind summit... It's unclear what exactly Trump's crypto reserve would look like, and while he previously dismissed crypto as a scam, he's embraced the industry throughout his most recent campaign.

Memory safety bugs are "eroding trust in technology and costing billions," argues a new post on Google's security blog — adding that "traditional approaches, like code auditing, fuzzing, and exploit mitigations — while helpful — haven't been enough to stem the tide."

So the blog post calls for a "common framework" for "defining specific, measurable criteria for achieving different levels of memory safety assurance." The hope is this gives policy makers "the technical foundation to craft effective policy initiatives and incentives promoting memory safety" leading to "a market in which vendors are incentivized to invest in memory safety." ("Customers will be empowered to recognize, demand, and reward safety.")

In January the same Google security researchers helped co-write an article noting there are now strong memory-safety "research technologies" that are sufficiently mature: memory-safe languages (including "safer language subsets like Safe Buffers for C++"), mathematically rigorous formal verification, software compartmentalization, and hardware and software protections. (With hardware protections including things like ARM's Memory Tagging Extension and the (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions, or "CHERI", architecture.) Google's security researchers are now calling for "a blueprint for a memory-safe future" — though Importantly, the idea is "defining the desired outcomes rather than locking ourselves into specific technologies."

Their blog post this week again urges a practical/actionable framework that's commonly understood, but one that supports different approaches (and allowing tailoring to specific needs) while enabling objective assessment: At Google, we're not just advocating for standardization and a memory-safe future, we're actively working to build it. We are collaborating with industry and academic partners to develop potential standards, and our joint authorship of the recent CACM call-to-action marks an important first step in this process... This commitment is also reflected in our internal efforts. We are prioritizing memory-safe languages, and have already seen significant reductions in vulnerabilities by adopting languages like Rust in combination with existing, wide-spread usage of Java, Kotlin, and Go where performance constraints permit. We recognize that a complete transition to those languages will take time. That's why we're also investing in techniques to improve the safety of our existing C++ codebase by design, such as deploying hardened libc++.

This effort isn't about picking winners or dictating solutions. It's about creating a level playing field, empowering informed decision-making, and driving a virtuous cycle of security improvement... The journey towards memory safety requires a collective commitment to standardization. We need to build a future where memory safety is not an afterthought but a foundational principle, a future where the next generation inherits a digital world that is secure by design.
The security researchers' post calls for "a collective commitment" to eliminate memory-safety bugs, "anchored on secure-by-design practices..." One of the blog post's subheadings? "Let's build a memory-safe future together."

And they're urging changes "not just for ourselves but for the generations that follow."

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said his firm, San Francisco's largest private employer, does not plan to hire engineers this year because of the success of AI agents created and used by the company. From a report: "My message to CEOs right now is that we are the last generation to manage only humans," Benioff said Wednesday on Salesforce's earnings call, indicating that companies of the future will have hybrid human and digital workforces. Benioff added that Salesforce's mission is to become "the No. 1 digital labor provider, period" to other companies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Thousands" of complaints about the volume of TV commercials have flooded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in recent years. Despite the FCC requiring TV stations, cable operators, and satellite providers to ensure that commercials don't bring a sudden spike in decibels, complaints around loud commercials "took a troubling jump" in 2024, the government body said on Thursday.

Under The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, broadcast, cable, and satellite TV providers are required to ensure that commercials "have the same average volume as the programs they accompany," per the FCC. The FCC's rules about the volume of commercials took effect in December 2012. The law also requires linear TV providers to use the Advanced Television Systems Committee's (ATSC's) recommended practices. The practices include guidance around production, post production, metadata systems usage, and controlling dynamic range. If followed, the recommendations "result in consistency in loudness and avoidance of signal clipping," per the ATSC [PDF]. The guidance reads: "If all programs and commercials were produced at a consistent average loudness, and if the loudness of the mix is preserved through the production, distribution, and delivery chain, listeners would not be subjected to annoying changes in loudness within and between programs."

As spotted by PC Mag, the FCC claimed this week that The Calm Act initially reduced complaints about commercials aggressively blaring from TVs. However, the agency is seeing an uptick in grievances. The FCC said it received "approximately" 750 complaints in 2022, 825 in 2023, and "at least" 1,700 in 2024 [PDF]. Since The Calm Act regulates a commercial's average loudness, some advertisers may be skirting the spirit of the law by making commercials very loud at the start (to get viewers' attention) before quieting down for the rest of the ad. In response to growing complaints, the FCC is reexamining its rules and this week announced that it's seeking comment from "consumers and industry on the extent to which The CALM Act rules are effective." The FCC is also asking people to weigh in on what future actions the FCC, the TV industry, or standard developers could take. The FCC is considering whether to extend the Calm Act to online streaming services, which are increasingly offering plans with ad-supported models and live event broadcasts.

More than 90% of UK undergraduate students now use AI in their studies, up from two-thirds a year ago, according to a Higher Education Policy Institute survey released Wednesday. The poll of 1,041 full-time undergraduates found 88% used generative AI such as ChatGPT for assessments, compared with 53% in 2024, with science students more likely to use the technology than humanities peers. Half of students cited "saving time" and "improving work quality" as their primary motivations.

The proportion considering it acceptable to include AI-generated text after editing rose to 25% from 17% last year, while only 6% approved using AI content without editing. "Every assessment must be reviewed in case it can be completed easily using AI," said Josh Freeman, policy manager at Hepi. The report identified "persistent digital divides" in AI competency, with men and students from wealthier backgrounds more likely to be frequent users.

Denmark is set to ban mobile phones in schools and after-school clubs, following a government commission's recommendation that children under 13 should not have their own smartphones. The Guardian reports: The government said it would change existing legislation to force all folkeskole -- comprehensive primary and lower secondary schools -- to become phone-free, meaning that almost all children aged between seven and 16-17 will be required by law not to bring their phones into school. The announcement marks a U-turn by the government, which had previously refused to introduce such a law. It comes as governments across Europe are trying to impose tighter regulations on children's access to phones and social media.

The Danish wellbeing commission was set up by the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, in 2023 to investigate growing dissatisfaction among children and young people. Its long-awaited report, published on Tuesday, raised the alarm over the digitisation of children and young people's lives and called for a better balance between digital and analogue life. Among its 35 recommendations was the need for government legislation banning phones from schools and after-school clubs.

The minister for children and education, Mattias Tesfaye, told Politiken: "There is a need to reclaim the school as an educational space, where there is room for reflection and where it is not an extension of the teenage bedroom." There will be scope for local authorities to make exceptions, including for children with special educational needs, but he said mobile phones and personal tablets "do not belong in school, neither during breaks nor during lessons." He said the government had started preparing a legislative amendment.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you're not really buying an ebook or video game. From a report: Wyden's letter, shared with The Verge, requests guidance to "ensure that consumers who purchase or license digital goods can make informed decisions and understand what ownership rights they are obtaining."

Wyden wants the guidance to include how long a license lasts, what circumstances might expire or revoke the license, and if a consumer can transfer or resell the license. The letter also calls for the information "before and at the point of sale" in a way that's easily understandable. "To put it simply, prior to agreeing to any transaction, consumers should understand what they are paying for and what is guaranteed after the sale," Wyden says.

Chegg has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of using AI-generated overviews to undermine publishers by reducing site traffic and eroding financial incentives for original content. Chegg claims this practice violates antitrust laws and threatens the integrity of the online information ecosystem. Reuters reports: This will eventually lead to a "hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust," the company said. The Santa Clara, California-based company has said Google's AI overviews have caused a drop in visitors and subscribers. Chegg was trading at around $1.63 on Monday, down more than 98% from its peak price in 2021.

The company announced it would lay off 21% of its staff in November. Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg, said on Monday that Google is profiting off the company's content for free. "Our lawsuit is about more than Chegg -- it's about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries," he said.

Publishers allow Google to crawl their websites to generate search results, which Google monetizes through advertising. In exchange, the publishers receive search traffic to their sites when users click on the results, Chegg said. But Google has started coercing publishers to let it use the information for AI overviews and other features that result in fewer site visitors, the company said. Chegg argued the conduct violates a law against conditioning the sale of one product on the customer selling or giving its supplier another product.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Cloud communications software firm Bird, one of the Netherlands' most prominent tech startups, plans to move most of its operations out of Europe, its CEO said, citing restrictive regulations and difficulties hiring skilled technology workers. "We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology," CEO Robert Vis told Reuters on Monday. "We foresee that regulations in Europe will block true innovation in a global economy moving extremely fast to AI," he said in a text message response to Reuters queries.

Bird's operations in future will be mostly split between New York, Singapore and Dubai, he said. Vis first announced the move abroad in a LinkedIn post over the weekend. Bird, formerly known as Message Bird, was founded in Amsterdam in 2011. It is a competitor of U.S.-based Twilio in the market for helping companies manage their communications with consumers across digital mediums such as messaging, email and video apps. It says it has developed an AI-powered platform that automates and streamlines business operations across entire organizations including tech leaders.

Major corporations are reshaping their workforces around AI with Salesforce announcing it will not hire software engineers in 2025 and other companies laying off thousands while shifting focus to AI-specific roles. Duolingo has laid off thousands after implementing ChatGPT-4, UPS cut 4,000 jobs in its largest layoff in 116 years, and IBM paused hiring for back-office and HR positions that AI can now handle.

Amazon is redirecting staff from Alexa to AI areas, while Intuit is laying off 10% of its non-AI workforce. Cisco plans to cut 7% of employees in its second round of job cuts this year as it prioritizes AI and cybersecurity. Salesforce reports its AI platform is boosting software engineering productivity by 30%. SAP is restructuring 8,000 positions to focus on AI-driven business areas. The trend extends globally, with Microsoft relocating thousands during an "exodus" from China, while entry-level jobs on Wall Street are becoming obsolete.

A study found that 3 out of 10 companies replaced workers with AI last year, with over one-third of firms using AI likely to automate more roles in 2025. Job listings at large privately-held AI companies have dropped 14.2% over six months, JP Morgan wrote in a note seen by Slashdot. The transformation is creating new opportunities, with rising demand for AI skills in job postings. A survey of more than 1,200 users found nearly two-thirds of young professionals use AI tools at work, with 93% not worried about job threats, as business leaders view Generation Z's digital skills as beneficial for leveraging AI.

"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.

Remember that battery plant fire last month in Moss Landing, California? Tuesday night local firefighters "determined that a group of lithium batteries in an area that had previously burned during the January 16 fire had smoldered and reignited," reports SFGate.

Fire Chief Joel Mendoza said the flames burned at varying intensities throughout Tuesday night before the fire burned itself out at about 8 a.m. on Wednesday. Additional flare-ups at the site are expected due to weather exposure and damage to the remaining batteries. "Rekindling is very, very likely — almost a certainty," said EPA onsite coordinator Eric Sandusky, adding that rain and humidity can interact with the damaged batteries, leading to short circuits and reignition. To further reduce fire risk, Sandusky said the EPA is working with Vistra to begin "de-linking the batteries," a process that disconnects them to lower the risk of propagation and prevent a large-scale fire...
"Vistra said that since the January 16 fire, they have brought in a private fire crew that is on-site at all times to monitor the Moss 300 building," according to a local news site.

Fire Chief Joel Mendoza shared more details with the digital newspaper Lookout Santa Cruz. "We've been saying all along that batteries exposed to heat that didn't burn can ignite. We were hoping that it wouldn't happen, but it did."

America's Labor Department includes the fact-finding Bureau of Labor Statistics — and they recently explained how AI impacts their projections for the next 10 years. Their conclusion, writes Investopedia, was that "tech workers might not have as much to worry about as one might think." Employment in the professional, scientific, and technical services sector is forecast to increase by 10.5% from 2023 to 2033, more than double the national average. According to the BLS, the impact AI will have on tech-sector employment is highly uncertain. For one, AI is adept at coding and related tasks. But at the same time, as digital systems become more advanced and essential to day-to-day life, more software developers, data managers, and the like are going to be needed to manage those systems. "Although it is always possible that AI-induced productivity improvements will outweigh continued labor demand, there is no clear evidence to support this conjecture," according to BLS researchers.
Their employment projections through 2033 predict the fastest-growing sector within the tech industry will be computer system design, while the fastest-growing occupation will be data scientist.

And they also project that from 2023 through 2033 AI will "primarily affect occupations whose core tasks can be most easily replicated by GenAI in its current form." So over those 10 years they project a 4.7% drop in employment of medical transcriptionists and a 5.0% drop in employment of customer service representatives. Other occupations also may see AI impacts, although not to the same extent. For instance, computer occupations may see productivity impacts from AI, but the need to implement and maintain AI infrastructure could in actuality boost demand for some occupations in this group.
They also project decreasing employment for paralegals, but with actual lawyers being "less affected."