SiriusXM will shut down its podcast app Stitcher at the end of August. The Hollywood Reporter reports: In a memo sent to employees, executives from the satellite radio and audio company said SiriusXM will not be backing away from podcasting, but rather will be trying to move more listeners over to its SXM app in order to grow subscriber numbers ahead of new "streaming experience" launching this fall. The SiriusXM Podcast Network, which includes content production hubs Stitcher Studios and Earwolf, remains unchanged as part of this decision and there will not be layoffs as part of this.

"The scale and reach of our widely distributed podcasts has been and remains a crucial accelerant for our advertising sales business, while incorporating podcasts more holistically into our flagship SiriusXM subscription service will help to drive further growth. As a result, we have made the decision to sunset our stand-alone podcast listening app as we increase our focus on these priorities," reads an internal memo Tuesday from chief product and tech officer Joe Inzerillo, chief ad revenue officer John Trimble and chief content officer Scott Greenstein.

Damus, a decentralized social networking app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will be removed from the App Store due to Apple's strict payment rules. From a report: Apple had threatened to remove Damus earlier this month over the app's tips feature, claiming that it could be used by content creators to sell digital content on the platform. The tech giant has a long history of prohibiting developers from selling additional in-app content unless the transactions go through Apple, which takes a 30% cut. To avoid a ban, the team behind Damus had to tweak the app's tipping feature, which is made possible by way of Bitcoin's Lightning Network. The company previously explained in a tweet that it had to remove the tips button from posts and was only allowed to permit tips on profiles.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: When former Samsung executive Choi Jinseog won a contract with Taiwan's Foxconn in 2018, he tapped his former employer's supplier network to steal secrets to help his new client set up a chip factory in China, a sealed indictment by South Korean prosecutors alleges. Prosecutors announced the indictment on June 12, saying the theft caused more than $200 million in damages to Samsung Electronics, based on the estimated costs Samsung spent to develop the stolen data. The announcement did not name Choi and gave only limited details, although some media subsequently identified Choi and his links with Foxconn. The unreleased 18-page indictment, reviewed by Reuters, provides details in the case against Choi, including how he is alleged to have stolen Samsung's trade secrets and details about the planned Foxconn plant.

Choi, who has been detained in jail since late May, denied all the charges through his lawyer, Kim Pilsung. Choi's Singapore-based consultancy Jin Semiconductor won the contract with Foxconn around August 2018, according to the indictment. Within months, Choi had poached "a large number" of employees from Samsung and its affiliates and illegally obtained secret information related to building a chip factory from two contractors, prosecutors allege. Jin Semiconductor illegally used confidential information involving semiconductor cleanroom management obtained from Cho Young-sik who worked at one of the contractors, Samoo Architects & Engineers, the indictment alleges. Clean rooms are manufacturing facilities where the enclosed environment is engineered to remove dust and other particles that can damage highly sensitive chips. Samoo had participated in the 2012 construction of Samsung's chip plant in Xian, China. Prosecutors allege Choi's company also illegally obtained blueprints of Samsung's China plant from Chung Chan-yup, an employee at HanmiGlobal, which supervised its construction and floor layouts involving the chip manufacturing process. They have yet to establish how the information on floor layout was obtained, according to the indictment.

Choi signed a preliminary consulting contract in around 2018 with Foxconn to build the chip factory potentially in Xian, his lawyer said. However, Foxconn ended the contract just a year later and only paid salaries related to the project, the lawyer said. He declined to comment on why Foxconn ended the contract or to provide further details, citing the sensitivity of the matter. The person with direct knowledge of the case said prosecutors found Foxconn had agreed to provide 8 trillion won ($6 billion) to build the factory, and Foxconn also paid several million dollars to Choi's company every month until it pulled out of the contract for reasons the indictment did not disclose. Jin Semiconductor's financial statement in 2018 said it entered into an arrangement with "a major customer" for the provision of qualified manpower in the next five years. The customer paid an advance of $17,994,217 to the company, according to the statement. Choi's lawyer said his client may be a scapegoat in a campaign by the South Korean government, caught in a rivalry between China and the United States, seeking seek to slow China's progress in chip manufacturing. [...] Choi is charged along with five other former and current Jin Semiconductor employees and a Samsung contractor employee. Trial is set to begin on July 12, court records show.

Pirate ebook repository Z-Library has released a dedicated desktop application that should make it easier to access the site going forward. The service is at the center of a criminal crackdown and has lost hundreds of domain names, which in part triggered the development of this new software. TorrentFreak reports: Over the past few months, Z-Library users accessed the site through a dedicated URL, which redirected them to a 'personal' domain that provided access to the library. This worked well but the entire operation could easily be wiped out by yet another round of domain seizures. The new desktop launcher, which is available on the Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, will automatically redirect users to the right place, without being tied to a single domain name. The new desktop launcher, which is available on the Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, will automatically redirect users to the right place, without being tied to a single domain name.

In addition to simplifying access, the new Z-Library launcher software is able to connect over the Tor network. This can help to evade blocking efforts while adding an extra privacy layer. The software may trigger a warning noting that it's from an unverified developer. According to Z-Library, this is a standard notice but, aside from the copyright infringement angle, people should always treat third-party applications with caution.

Amazon plans to tap thousands of U.S. small businesses, from bodegas to florists, to deliver its packages by the end of the year. From a report: Amazon on Monday will start actively recruiting existing small businesses in 23 states including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, and Washington. At least 20 dense cities across the country, including Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, will be targeted by the program.

The company is interested in working with a wide range of businesses such as florists, coffee shops, clothing stores, among others. Amazon notes they don't need delivery experience to make the partnership work. Dubbed Amazon Hub Delivery, this is the tech and logistics giant's latest attempt to expand its "last mile" network -- the last stage in logistics where packages are ultimately delivered to customers -- through external workforces.

The "BepiColombo" mission, a joint European-Japanese effort, "has recently completed its third of six planned flybys of Mercury, capturing dozens of images in the process," reports the Byte: At its closest, the spacecraft soared within just 150 miles of Mercury. This occurred on the night side of the planet, however, too dark for optimal imaging. Instead, the first and nearest image was taken 12 minutes after the closest approach, at the still impressive proximity of some 1,100 miles above the surface.
Now the ESA has spliced together 217 images from that flyby into a short video, which culminates with a zoomed-in closeup of Mercury's cratered surface. And the music in that video had a little help from AI, reports Phys.org: Music was composed for the sequence by ILÄ (formerly known as Anil Sebastian), with the assistance of AI tools developed by the Machine Intelligence for Musical Audio group, University of Sheffield.

Music from the previous two flyby movies — composed by Maison Mercury Jones' creative director ILÄ and Ingmar Kamalagharan — was given to the AI tool to suggest seeds for the new composition, which ILÄ then chose from to edit and weave together with other elements into the new piece.

The team at the University of Sheffield has developed an Artificial Musical Intelligence (AMI), a large-scale general-purpose deep neural network that can be personalized to individual musicians and use cases. The project with the University of Sheffield is aimed at exploring the boundaries of the ethics of AI creativity, while also emphasizing the essential contributions of the (human) composer.
From the ESA's announcement: BepiColombo's next Mercury flyby will take place on 5 September 2024, but there is plenty of work to occupy the teams in the meantime... BepiColombo's Mercury Transfer Module will complete over 15 000 hours of solar electric propulsion operations over its lifetime, which together with nine planetary flybys in total — one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury — will guide the spacecraft towards Mercury orbit.

The ESA-led Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the JAXA-led Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter modules will separate into complementary orbits around the planet, and their main science mission will begin in early 2026.
One spaceflight blog notes the propulsive energy required for an eventual entry into the orbit of Mercury "is greater than that of a mission to fly by Pluto.

"Only one other spacecraft has orbited Mercury, and that was NASA's MESSENGER probe, which orbited the planet from 2011 to 2015."

Long-time Slashdot reader Zak3056 shared this report from the Washington Post: U.S. Navy acoustic sensors detected the likely implosion of the Titan submersible hours after the vessel began its fatal descent on Sunday, U.S. Navy officials said Thursday, a revelation that means the sprawling search for the vessel was conducted even though senior officials already had some indication the Titan was destroyed...

The acoustic detection was one significant piece of information, but the search had to continue to exhaust all possibilities, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies... The United States has used a network of devices to detect undersea noises for decades. The fact that the Titan's implosion was detected this way isn't surprising, Cancian said. "I would be surprised if they hadn't heard it."
A Las Vegas financier had bought tickets on the ill-fated submarine for himself, plus his 20-year-old son Sean and a friend. The son now tells People that "The whole reason my dad didn't go was because I told him, 'Dude, this submarine cannot survive going that deep in the ocean.'"

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told the financier that their submarine was safer than crossing the street. "He was a good guy, great heart, really believed in what he was doing and saying," the financier tells People. "But he didn't want to hear anything that conflicted with his world view, and he would just dismiss it... He was so passionate about this project, and he was such a believer. He drank his own Kool-Aid, and there was just no talking him out of it." For Sean, the first red flag that alarmed him about Rush was his arrival in Las Vegas, where Sean, Jay and Rush were set to meet. He says they asked why Rush was landing at a North Las Vegas airport rather than the commercial airports like McCarran. "He's like, 'Yeah, I built this plane with my hands, and I'm test-flying it right now.' And we're like, 'What?' That was my first red flag," he explains.
OceanGate's CEO later even tried offering the financier a substantial discount on the three tickets, calling his son "uninformed."

OceanGate had also claimed their submarine was designed and engineered in collaboration with experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington — but now ABC News says the company exaggerated those partnerships: OceanGate's founder and CEO Stockton Rush — who was aboard the missing vessel — made similar statements about his company's partnerships during an interview with CBS News correspondent David Pogue in 2022, who asked about the construction of the Titan submersible, which Rush said used some minor parts purchased from consumer retailers like Camping World. "The pressure vessel is not MacGyvered at all because that's where we worked with Boeing and NASA, [and] University of Washington," Rush said...

Kevin Williams, the executive director of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, told ABC News the school and laboratory were also not involved in the "design, engineering or testing" of the Titan submersible. Victor Balta, a UW spokesperson, added that OceanGate and UW's Applied Physics Laboratory initially signed a $5 million collaborative research agreement, but the two entities "parted ways" after only $650,000 of work was completed. That research only resulted in the development of another OceanGate submersible, the shallow-diving Cyclops I submersible, according to Balta. The steel-hulled Cyclops I is only rated to reach 500 meters, compared to the Titan, which is constructed from carbon fiber and titanium to reach depths of 4,000 meters, the company said...

When asked about the details of those relationships with OceanGate, a Boeing representative told ABC News that the aerospace company was not involved in designing or building the deep-sea submersible. "Boeing was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it," a Boeing spokesperson told ABC News in a statement...

In a statement to ABC News, NASA confirmed it consulted on materials and manufacturing for the Titan submersible pursuant to an agreement with OceanGate. "NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which was done elsewhere by OceanGate," the statement said.
CNN reports that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now exploring whether "criminal, federal, or provincial laws may possibly have been broken."

Motherboard reports: Scientists are currently searching for the submerged remains of an interstellar object that crashed into the skies near Papua New Guinea in January 2014 and probably sprinkled material from another star system into the Pacific Ocean, according to an onboard diary by Avi Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who is leading the expedition. The effort, which kicked off on June 14, aims to recover what is left of the otherworldly fireball using a deep-sea magnetic sled.

The team has already turned up "anomalous" magnetic spherules, steel shards, curious wires, and heaps of volcanic ash, but has not identified anything that is unambiguously extraterrestrial — or interstellar — at this point. However, Loeb is optimistic that the crew will identify pieces of Interstellar Meteor 1 (IM1), the mysterious half-ton object that struck Earth nearly a decade ago, which he thinks could be an artifact, or "technosignature," from an alien civilization...

The fireball that sparked the hunt smashed into the atmosphere on January 8, 2014, and was detected by NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which keeps track of extraterrestrial impacts using a network of sensors around the world. Years later, Loeb and his student, Amir Siraj, concluded that the meteor's high velocity at impact suggested that it was interstellar in origin, a hypothesis that was ultimately supported by the United States Space Command using classified sensor data.
Today Loeb posted on Medium that "by now, we have 25 spherules from the site of the first recognized interstellar meteor," with a cumulative weight of about 30 milligrams — estimated to be one part in ten million of the original fireball's mass: The success of the Interstellar Expedition constitutes the first opportunity for astronomers to learn about interstellar space by using a microscope rather than a telescope. It opens the door for a new branch of observational astronomy.
Updates about the expedition are running on the Mega Screen in New York's Times Square, Motherboard reports. And Loeb writes that "If further analysis of the 50 milligrams retrieved from IM1's site will inform us that IM1's composition requires a technological origin, we will know that we are not alone."

He also shared an email that responded to his online diaries: I had a heart attack four weeks ago and am now in rehab. I read your IM1 diary every day and it always gives me new courage to face life. There are still so many things to discover and I want to live long enough to see some of them. I wish you and your team all the best.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed new rules to crack down on hidden fees charged by cable and satellite video providers. "My administration's top priority is lowering the cost of living for the middle class, and that includes cracking down on companies' use of junk fees to hide true costs from families, who end up paying more as a result," Biden said in a statement on Tuesday. Ars Technica reports: As Biden noted, the FCC "proposed a new rule that would require cable and satellite TV providers to give consumers the all-in price for the service they're offering up front." The proposed rule would force companies like Comcast, Charter Spectrum, and DirecTV to publish more accurate prices. Biden continued: "Too often, these companies hide additional junk fees on customer bills disguised as "broadcast TV" or "regional sports" fees that in reality pay for no additional services. These fees really add up: according to one report, they increase customer bills by nearly 25 percent of the price of base service."

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel first floated pricing transparency rules for the TV services offered by cable and satellite companies in March. That effort took a step forward on Tuesday when the commission approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that seeks public comment on rules that would force video providers to offer accurate prices in advertising. "Consumers who choose a video service based on an advertised monthly price may be surprised by unexpected fees related to the cost of video programming that raise the amount of the bill significantly," the NPRM said. The cable and satellite TV companies' practice of listing "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees separately from the advertised price "can be potentially misleading and interpreted as a government-imposed tax or fee, instead of a company-imposed service fee increase," and make it hard for customers to compare prices across providers, the FCC said.

The docket is available here, and comments will be accepted for 60 days after the NPRM is published in the Federal Register. The FCC said its proposal "would require cable operators and DBS [direct broadcast satellite] providers to clearly and prominently display the total cost of video programming service." The FCC is also seeking comment on whether it has the authority to impose similar requirements on other types of video providers. But Rosenworcel reportedly said in a congressional hearing that the FCC's authority under US law doesn't extend to streaming services.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Internet service providers in both the US and Europe are clamoring for new payments from Big Tech firms. European broadband providers are much closer to realizing the long-held goal of payments from tech companies, as the European Union government is holding an official consultation on the proposal. As the EU process unfolds, the telco lobby group USTelecom is hoping to push the US down a similar but not quite identical path. In a blog post on Friday, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter argued that the biggest technology companies should contribute toward a fund that subsidizes the building of broadband networks. Spalter wrote that Amazon and similar Internet companies should fill what he called a "conspicuously empty seat at the collective table of global high-speed connectivity."

Given that "six companies account for half of all Internet traffic worldwide... Does it still make sense that the government and broadband providers alone fund this critical infrastructure? Is there no shared obligation from the primary financial beneficiaries of these networks -- the world's most powerful Internet companies?" Spalter wrote. "We need a modern reset that more equitably shares these financial obligations among those who benefit the most from these connections," he argued. USTelecom members include AT&T, Verizon, Lumen (formerly CenturyLink), Windstream, and other telcos. It's one of the biggest trade groups that lobbies for US-based Internet service providers.

[...] USTelecom pointed to the Biden administration's comments in its pitch to make Big Tech firms pay into a central fund like the existing Universal Service Fund (USF) managed by the Federal Communications Commission. "We concur with the US government's position that rather than the payments to broadband providers proposed in the EU, such 'publicly accountable funding mechanisms can better ensure that resources are devoted to key policy objectives, such as improving access and strengthening network security, while avoiding discriminatory measures that distort competition,'" Spalter wrote. The Biden administration's comments didn't call for tech companies to pay into a government-run fund, though. The document noted that the US "approach to financing improvements to broadband infrastructure involves private investments, a national Universal Service Fund, and significant public funding made from general appropriations," but didn't argue for any changes to who pays into the fund.

Today, Rivian announced that it is switching from the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard to the North American Charging Standard (NACS), tesla's competing standard, in 2024. The automaker joins Ford and General Motors in adopting Tesla's charging plugs for its future electric vehicles. Ars Technica reports: "We're excited to work with Tesla and to see collaborations like this help advance the world toward carbon neutrality. The adoption of the North American Charging Standard will enable our existing and future customers to leverage Tesla's expansive Supercharger network while we continue to build out our Rivian Adventure Network. We look forward to continuing to find new ways to accelerate EV adoption," said Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe in a statement.

In an email to customers, Rivian said that it would make adapters available, so people should not wait for the factory to switch over to the NACS port from CCS1. It also says that it will add Tesla charging sites to its mobile and vehicle navigation apps. From 2025, it will start building NACS ports into its vehicles. Like GM, Rivian is in the midst of deploying thousands of DC fast chargers with CCS1 plugs, and like GM, Rivian says that the switch to NACS does not affect those plans. As with Ford and GM, there are no details as to the terms of the deal between Rivian and Tesla.

According to a recently discovered patent application, Mastercard plans to develop software optimized for bitcoin and blockchain transactions. The second-largest payment-processing corporation also aims to facilitate crypto-based transactions by reducing connections between virtual asset service providers. Crypto News reports: The trademark application is a fascinating window into Mastercard's plans for the future of digital currency. Details have been revealed about creating a downloadable application programming interface (API) designed to verify transactions inside blockchain networks and ease the handling or trading of cryptocurrency. By standardizing this API software, communication between VASPs may be streamlined and crypto transactions easier. Mastercard wants to set up a platform for financial institutions to exchange customer information to verify compliance. This new step is significant for Mastercard's fast-growing presence in the cryptocurrency sector. The corporation announced its intention to offer a limited number of cryptocurrencies on its network in February 2021.

Recent graduates from Generation Z, who have primarily experienced virtual classes and remote internships during college, may need to improve their soft skills such as email writing, casual conversation, and appropriate work attire. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, companies like KPMG, Deloitte, and PwC are offering training programs to help these employees adapt to the office, focusing on in-person communication, eye contact, conversation pauses, and professional dress. Insider reports: KPMG is offering new hires introductory training that includes how to talk to people in person, with tips on the appropriate level of eye contact and pauses in a conversation, the company's vice chair of talent and culture, Sandy Torchia, told the Journal. Deloitte and PwC also began offering similar trainings earlier this year, the Financial Times reported in May. Similarly, the consulting company Proviti said it expanded its training for new hires during the pandemic to include a series of virtual meetings that focus on issues like how to make authentic conversation, according to the Journal. Scott Redfearn, Protiviti's executive vice president of global human resources, told the Journal the company has had to remind new hires to avoid casual attire like blue jeans with holes in them.

Some universities have also stepped in to bridge the gap. Michigan State University's director of career management, Marla McGraw, told the Journal that companies need to be more direct when it comes to telling new hires what to wear and how to act in the office. The school now requires many of its business majors to take classes that foster soft skills like how to network in person. The Journal reported that one course breaks down a networking conversation by reminding students to pause after they introduce themselves in order to let the other person say their name, as well as respond to signs the other person might be looking to end the conversation. While it's common for companies to host onboarding sessions that cover office dynamics like attire and rules for interpersonal relationships, some experts say younger employees need these reminders now more than ever.

Trial lawyer Kyle Roche has led an interesting life, according to the New York Times. He once earned $100 million selling bitcoin. He helped win a case against Craig Wright (who claims to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto) through his law firm Roche Freedman. And Roche also founded a startup that lets people bet on the outcome of (civil) lawsuits, "to make access to justice more affordable."

But something very bad for his career happened in January of 2022 when two businessmen flew Roche from Miami to the U.K. to discuss an investment. When he woke up the next morning, Roche said, he felt groggy... The brain fog was odd because he didn't think he'd had all that much to drink. As he flew back to Miami a few days later, Roche couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss.

Months passed. Then, one day last summer, Roche's world detonated. A website called Crypto Leaks posted two dozen videos of him that had been secretly recorded during his meetings with Villavicencio and Ager-Hanssen. The videos portrayed Roche and his law firm, Roche Freedman, as being in the pocket of one of their crypto clients [Ava Labs]... In other clips, Roche made it sound like his sole concern, even when representing other clients, was to promote Ava Labs' interests...

One after another, companies that Roche Freedman had sued filed motions to disqualify the firm from their cases. In October, the first of those motions succeeded: A federal judge in New York tossed Roche Freedman from a case it had filed against Tether, the operator of the world's most used "stablecoin." Within days, Roche was forced to resign from the law firm he had founded. With his career in tatters, he said, he enrolled in ethics classes and began to see a therapist.
Roche calls the recorded remarks baseless bluster to impress a prospective investor (and alleges in court there are signs of deep fake alterations). While Roche "was felled by his own loose lips and his overly cozy relationship with a client," the Times reports "he also was the victim of an elaborate international setup." On April 3, 2020, Roche Freedman filed lawsuits seeking class-action status against seven issuers of digital coins, alleging they had pumped what amounted to unregistered securities with false statements and then dumped them, leaving retail investors holding the bag... Those suits were just an opening salvo: Sixteen months later, Roche filed his biggest securities fraud case yet. It alleged that a British entrepreneur, Dominic Williams, and entities he controlled had swindled investors out of billions of dollars by aggressively promoting, and then dumping, a digital coin tied to a grandiose plan to revolutionize computing. Williams had boldly proclaimed that his Internet Computer blockchain — a decentralized network of computers powered by a digital token called ICP — would supplant the big cloud services offered by Amazon and Microsoft and become humanity's primary computing platform. But after an initial surge that briefly made it one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies, ICP had plummeted 92% — a collapse that Roche's lawsuit attributed to "massive" selling by Williams and other insiders. (Williams denied the allegations.)
The Times reports that Roche's prospective investor Ager-Hanssen, "in addition to running his venture capital firm, has long had a sideline digging up dirt on behalf of wealthy clients entangled in business disputes in Britain and Scandinavia. On multiple occasions, he has secretly recorded his targets. For example, in a 2014 interview, he recounted how he had snared the adversary of a Swedish financier with a hidden microphone and boasted that he employed former intelligence officers from the CIA, MI6 and Mossad..." Roche believes them because he thinks he knows who hired Ager-Hanssen: Williams, the British entrepreneur who was the target of Roche Freedman's biggest pump-and-dump lawsuit... On May 12, 2022, Williams wrote on Twitter that he was "coming for" his critics. That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered. That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered. Then, on June 9, 2022, the Crypto Leaks website went live. Billing itself as the defender of "the honest crypto community," it posted two reports that aligned with Williams' interests...

The first espoused a complicated theory about the ICP token crash that Williams had previously floated on Twitter. The second attacked the Times for an article it had published about the crash. Williams tweeted a link to that Crypto Leaks report, calling it "Gobsmacking." The Dfinity Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit that Williams created to oversee his blockchain, has since sued the Times for defamation in New York. The Times is seeking to dismiss the suit. The videos of Roche were the crux of Crypto Leaks' third exposé. After they were published, Williams and Dfinity filed a motion to disqualify Roche Freedman as plaintiffs' counsel in the pump-and-dump lawsuit, saying Roche's comments demonstrated "a disregard for the integrity of the judicial system...."

Last month, the judge overseeing the pump-and-dump case granted Williams' motion and disqualified Freedman Normand Friedland as plaintiffs' counsel.

According to Dish, the company says it now covers 70 percent of the U.S. population and has "also satisfied all other June 14, 2023 FCC commitments." The Verge reports: In meeting this FCC milestone, Dish says it has deployed over 15,000 5G cell sites and would like to remind us that it's still the first wireless provider in the country to launch voice calling over 5G, known as VoNR -- Voice over New Radio. This is all well and good, but Dish's wireless service still doesn't look quite the same as AT&T's or Verizon's. The network itself is very much still in beta testing under its Project Genesis program, which requires you to purchase a new phone specially equipped to use new network features like three-carrier aggregation. The network is available to Boost customers in supported markets, but they need to use a phone that supports band 70 to access Dish's 5G -- and those are still uncommon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Wargraphs, a one-man-band startup behind a popular companion app for League of Legends called Porofessor, which helps players track and improve their playing stats, is getting acquired for up to [$54 million], half up front and half based on meeting certain earnings and growth targets. MOBA Networks, a company founded out of Sweden that buys, grows and runs online gaming communities (MOBA is short for "multiplayer online battle arena"), is buying the startup and its existing products. The plan is to expand them to more markets, in particular across Asia, and to build analytics for more titles.

I write "startup", but that might be with the loosest interpretation of the term. There is only a single employee, the mild-mannered Jean-Nicholas, and he has also entirely bootstrapped the business on his own. But that hasn't held him back. Wargraphs currently also builds analytics for Legends of Runeterra and Teamfight Tactics, but the League of Legends business has been its biggest it by far. Porofessor has had 10 million downloads of its app on Overwolf -- which is where Porofessor was built -- and more than 1.25 million daily active users if you combine traffic both from that platform and its own direct website. The company, such as it is, has been around for some 10 years, has pretty much always been profitable with revenues of 12.3 million euros in its last fiscal year. Jean-Nicholas told TechCrunch's Ingrid Lunden that he wants to build "a game" next. "Specifically, a card game that will compete against Hearthstone, coincidentally published by Activision Blizzard," writes Lunden. "He has no plans to raise outside funding for this, but he might hire an employee or two."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The French recipient of Europe's largest ever seed round doesn't have a product and was founded four weeks ago. The few employees it has only started work in the last few days. All the same, Mistral AI hoovered up [$113 million] from lead investor Lightspeed Venture Partners with contributions from Eric Schmidt, French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel, and state-backed investment bank Bpifrance. The clue as to why the Paris-based startup is now valued at [$259 million] could be as simple as its name. New AI companies in the US inhaled as much as $25 billion from venture capitalists in the first three months of 2023, and with the artificial intelligence bubble centered on the States, Europe has yet to respond in kind.

There is also the small matter of personnel. Mistral AI chief exec Arthur Mensch used to be a researcher with Google DeepMind and founded the new company with Meta alumni Timothee Lacroix and Guillaume Lample. Presumably these credentials, combined with the promise of a homegrown European AI, are all it takes for investors to part with millions these days. Lightspeed partner Antoine Moyroud sure seems to think so. He told the Financial Times "There's a pool of 80 to 100 people globally who have the level of experience they have. Right now, for better or for worse, the capital requirements in compute and top-tier talent make [launching an AI startup] quite a capital-intensive game."

The promise of Mistral as it stands four weeks after it first emerged blinking in the daylight is another "large language model." That's it. This is the same type of technology that underpins OpenAI's ChatGPT -- a neural network of tens of million to billions of parameters trained on large quantities of unlabeled text using self-supervised learning or semi-supervised learning. That is all we know of the untold riches held in the minds of Mistral's power trio. Its website, a minimalist single-page affair, says little other than: "We're assembling a world-class team to develop the best generative AI models." It also provides an email address, asking for candidates with "a strong background as a researcher, software engineer or product developer in AI."

Mensch said: "There is a rising awareness of the fact that this technology is transformative and Europe needs to do something about it, both as a regulator, as a customer and an investor." Tech investment tracker Dealroom.co pegged the seed round as Europe's largest, which is indicative of the hope that AI will positively transform entire industries by taking humans out of the equation -- computer programs don't eat, sleep or unionize. So while venture capitalists are feeling FOMO and paying high prices to get a foot in the door of the latest tech gold rush, Europe is also pretty desperate, with only $4 billion stuffed into AI businesses this year compared to $25 billion in the United States. [...] Now you don't even need a product, or even the promise of something groundbreaking, just a handsome CV and "AI" in the company name. What we on the outside do know, however, is that at least one person on the Mistral team knows some HTML.

Security researchers at Mandiant say China-backed hackers are likely behind the mass-exploitation of a recently discovered security flaw in Barracuda Networks' email security gear, which prompted a warning to customers to remove and replace affected devices. From a report: Mandiant, which was called in to run Barracuda's incident response, said the hackers exploited the flaw to compromise hundreds of organizations likely as part of an espionage campaign in support of the Chinese government. Almost a third of the targeted organizations are government agencies, Mandiant said in a report published Thursday.

Last month, Barracuda discovered the security flaw affecting its Email Security Gateway (ESG) appliances, which sit on a company's network and filter email traffic for malicious content. Barracuda issued patches and warned that hackers had been exploiting the flaw since October 2022. But the company later recommended customers remove and replace affected ESG appliances, regardless of patch level, suggesting the patches failed or were unable to block the hacker's access. In its latest guidance, Mandiant also warned customers to replace affected gear after finding evidence that the China-backed hackers gained deeper access to networks of affected organizations.

Experts say the subsea cable market is in danger of dividing into eastern and western blocs amid fears of espionage and geopolitical tensions. From a report: Nearly 1.4mn kilometres of metal-encased fibre criss-crosses the world's oceans, speeding internet traffic seamlessly around the globe. The supply and installation of these cables has been dominated by companies from France, the US and Japan. The Chinese government started successfully penetrating the global market, but consecutive US administrations have since managed to freeze China out of large swathes of it. This was ostensibly because of concerns of espionage and worries about what Beijing might do to disrupt strategic assets operated by Chinese companies in the event of a conflict. Despite being routinely blocked from international subsea cable projects involving US investment, Chinese companies have adapted by building international cables for China and many of its allied nations. This has raised fears of a dangerous division in who owns and manages the infrastructure underpinning the global web.

In 2018, Amazon, Meta and China Mobile agreed to work together on a cable connecting California to Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. But a spate of manoeuvres in Washington to block Chinese participation in US cables led to China Mobile pulling out of the consortium. Meta and Amazon filed a new application for the system in 2021, this time with no Chinese investment, no connection to Hong Kong, and a new name: Cap-1. Then, last year, the application for Cap-1 was withdrawn altogether, even though most of the 12,000km cable had already been built. China's original involvement remained a security concern for the US government, according to two people briefed on the discussions. "There are hundreds of millions of dollars sunk in the Pacific," said a person involved in the aborted project. Over the last five years, as tensions between the two countries have mounted and fears have grown in Washington about the risks of espionage, the US government has sought to pull apart an interwoven network of internet cables that had developed through international collaboration over decades.

Next year Intel introduces a new transistor — RibbonFET — and a new way of powering it called "PowerVia."

This so-called "backside power" approach "aims to separate power and I/O wiring, shifting power lines to the back of the wafer," reports Tom's Hardware, which "eliminates any possible interference between the data and power wires and increases logic transistor density." IEEE Spectrum explains this approach "leaves more room for the data interconnects above the silicon," while "the power interconnects can be made larger and therefore less resistive."

And Intel has already done some successful powering tests using it on Intel's current transistors: The resulting cores saw more than a 6 percent frequency boost as well as more compact designs and 30 percent less power loss. Just as important, the tests proved that including backside power doesn't make the chips more costly, less reliable, or more difficult to test for defects. Intel is presenting the details of these tests in Tokyo next week at the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits...

[C]ores can be made more compact, decreasing the length of interconnects between logic cells, which speeds things up. When the standard logic cells that make up the processor core are laid out on the chip, interconnect congestion keeps them from packing together perfectly, leaving loads of blank space between the cells. With less congestion among the data interconnects, the cells fit together more tightly, with some portions up to 95 percent filled... What's more, the lack of congestion allowed some of the smallest interconnects to spread out a bit, reducing parasitic capacitance that hinders performance...

With the process for PowerVia worked out, the only change Intel will have to make in order to complete its move from Intel 4 to the next node, called 20A, is to the transistor... Success would put Intel ahead of TSMC and Samsung, in offering both nanosheet transistors and backside power.