An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Chinese firms have begun rushing to order Nvidia's H20 AI chips as the company plans to resume sales to mainland China, Reuters reports. The chip giant expects to receive US government licenses soon so that it can restart shipments of the restricted processors just days after CEO Jensen Huang met with President Donald Trump, potentially generating $15 billion to $20 billion in additional revenue this year. Nvidia said in a statement that it is filing applications with the US government to resume H20 sales and that "the US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon." [...]

The H20 chips represent Nvidia's most capable AI processors legally available in China, though they contain less computing power than versions sold elsewhere due to export restrictions imposed in 2022. Nvidia is currently banned from selling its most powerful GPUs in China. Despite these limitations, Chinese tech giants, including ByteDance and Tencent, are reportedly scrambling to place orders for the lesser chip through what sources describe as an approved list managed by Nvidia. "The Chinese market is massive, dynamic, and highly innovative, and it's also home to many AI researchers," Reuters reports Huang telling Chinese state broadcaster CCTV during his visit to Beijing, where he is scheduled to speak at a supply chain expo on Wednesday. "Therefore, it is indeed crucial for American companies to establish roots in the Chinese market."

The resumption of H20 sales marks a shift in US-China technology relations after the chips were effectively banned in April with an onerous export license requirement, forcing Nvidia to take a $4.5 billion write-off for excess inventory and purchase obligations. According to Reuters, Chinese sales generated $17 billion in revenue for Nvidia in the fiscal year ending January 26, representing 13 percent of total sales. Nvidia also announced it will introduce a new "RTX Pro" chip model specifically tailored to meet regulatory rules in the Chinese market, though the company provided no details about its specifications or capabilities.

The UK secretly relocated thousands of Afghans to the UK after their personal details were disclosed in one of the country's worst ever data breaches, putting them at risk of Taliban retaliation. The operation cost around $2.7 billion and remained under a court-imposed superinjunction until recently lifted. Reuters reports: The leak by the Ministry of Defence in early 2022, which led to data being published on Facebook the following year, and the secret relocation program, were subject to a so-called superinjunction preventing the media reporting what happened, which was lifted on Tuesday by a court. British defence minister John Healey apologised for the leak, which included details about members of parliament and senior military officers who supported applications to help Afghan soldiers who worked with the British military and their families relocate to the UK. "This serious data incident should never have happened," Healey told lawmakers in the House of Commons. It may have occurred three years ago under the previous government, but to all whose data was compromised I offer a sincere apology."

The incident ranks among the worst security breaches in modern British history because of the cost and risk posed to the lives of thousands of Afghans, some of whom fought alongside British forces until their chaotic withdrawal in 2021. Healey said about 4,500 Afghans and their family members have been relocated or were on their way to Britain under the previously secret scheme. But he added that no-one else from Afghanistan would be offered asylum because of the data leak, citing a government review which found little evidence of intent from the Taliban to seek retribution against former officials.

Reddit has begun verifying users' ages in the UK to restrict access to "certain mature content" for minors, complying with the UK's Online Safety Act. The BBC reports: Reddit, known for its online communities and discussions, said that while it does not want to know who its audience is: "It would be helpful for our safety efforts to be able to confirm whether you are a child or an adult." Ofcom, the UK regulator, said: "We expect other companies to follow suit, or face enforcement if they fail to act." Reddit said that from 14 July, an outside firm called Persona will perform age verification for the social media platform either through an uploaded selfie or "a photo of your government ID," such as a passport. It said Reddit will not have access to the photo and will only retain a user's verification status and date of birth so people do not have to re-enter it each time they try to access restricted content. Reddit added that Persona "promises not to retain the picture for longer than seven days" and will not have access to a user's data on the site. The new rules in the UK come into force on 25 July. [...]

Companies that fail to meet the rules face fines of up to 18 million pounds or 10% of worldwide revenue, "whichever is greater." [Ofcom] added that in the most serious cases, it can seek a court order for "business disruption measures," such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phoronix: Merged yesterday to the latest development code for the LibreOffice open-source office suite is now recognizing Bitcoin "BTC" as a supported currency for use within the Calc spreadsheet program and elsewhere within this cross-platform free software office suite. Stemming from a recent bug report requesting Bitcoin as an official currency option within LibreOffice Calc, the necessary additions are now in place so it's a built-in preset like USD and EUR. Thus easier managing of Bitcoin transactions and the like from within LibreOffice Calc.

U.S. prosecutors and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have officially closed their investigations into Polymarket, the decentralized, blockchain-powered prediction market platform where users bet with real cryptocurrency on the outcomes of future events. "The DOJ was investigating Polymarket last year, reportedly for allowing U.S. users to place bets on the site despite Polymarket being required to block U.S. traders," reports CoinDesk.

The FBI raided Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's Manhattan apartment last November, seizing his phone and electronic devices. A source close to the matter told The New York Post it was politically motivated due to Polymarket's successful prediction of Trump's election win. It's "grand political theater at its worst," the source said. "They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons."

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Blender 4.5 has arrived and it's a long-term support release. That means users get two full years of updates and bug fixes, making it a smart choice for anyone looking for stability in serious projects. Whether you're a solo artist or part of a studio pipeline, this version is built to last. Here's a list of key features and changes in this release:

- Vulkan backend replaces OpenGL (faster, smoother UI)
- Adaptive subdivision up to 14x faster with multithreading
- New Geometry Nodes: Camera Info, Instance Bounds
- GPU-accelerated compositor nodes with standardized inputs
- New Boolean solver: Manifold (cleaner, faster mesh operations)
- UV maps visible in Object Mode + improved selection behavior
- Grease Pencil render pass and Geometry Nodes integration
- Improved file import support: PLY, OBJ, STL, CSV, VDB
- Deprecations: Collada, Big Endian, legacy .blend, Intel Mac support
- Cycles OptiX now requires NVIDIA driver v535+
- New shader variants for add-on developers (POLYLINES_*, POINT_*)
~500 bug fixes across all major systems

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: CoreWeave is expanding a data center that is projected to double the electricity needs of a city near Dallas, another example of the strains that artificial intelligence workloads are placing on the US power supply. Local officials have grappled with how to handle the increased stress on the electricity grid from the project, according to a late 2024 presentation and emails seen by Bloomberg. The site is being developed by Core Scientific and will be used by OpenAI in Denton, Texas. Last week, CoreWeave announced it would acquire Core Scientific for about $9 billion, in part, to gain direct control of its data centers aimed at supplying AI work.

Denton, about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, has almost doubled its population in the last 25 years to about 166,000 residents. To meet the spike in AI-related power demand, the city is passing on any extra costs to the data center operator and constructing additional grid infrastructure, Antonio Puente, general manager of local utility Denton Municipal Electric, said in an interview. "To serve the entire load from Core Scientific, we do have some transmission challenges," Puente said. "We will have to make some additional transmission investments." [...] Like some other large AI data center projects, the site in Denton was focused on cryptocurrency mining before pivoting to AI workloads in December. This transition means unrelenting power consumption -- the site will no longer curtail operations when power prices are high -- which will increase grid strain. "Now you're talking about a facility that has to have energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," Puente said. That challenge will be mitigated by the addition of backup generators and batteries, he added.

Unlike many large projects, the Denton data center didn't receive local tax exemptions. Officials expect more than $600 million in property and sales tax from the data center expansion, more than double the costs it plans to incur, according to an analysis document seen by Bloomberg. It also anticipates that 135 new jobs will be created, according to the document. The Denton site, which is already being rented by CoreWeave, is Core Scientific's largest planned project at about 390 megawatts of power. It's "utilizing the majority of extra system capacity" in the city, wrote a utility executive in a January email seen by Bloomberg. Any additional large power users will exacerbate overloads on the grid, the executive added. "When fully built out, it will host one of the largest GPU clusters in North America," Core Scientific Chief Executive Officer Adam Sullivan said of the site during a May call. "Denton is a flagship facility."

The report notes that Texas could face electricity shortages as soon as 2026 due to surging power demand from data centers, oil and gas operations, and crypto mining.

Saudi Arabia has asked consultants to reassess the feasibility of The Line, its ambitious 170km linear city project and centerpiece of the Neom initiative, as rising costs and falling oil prices force the kingdom to scale back its megaprojects. Middle East Eye reports: In April, The Financial Times reported that the CEO of Neom had launched a "comprehensive review" of the kingdom's megaproject. Neom, along with luxury Red Sea hotels and a ski resort, is the flagship project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 plan to transform the kingdom's economy and reduce its dependence on oil revenue. Bloomberg reported in 2024 that Saudi Arabia was cutting back plans for The Line. Instead of 1.5 million people living there by 2030, Saudi officials were said to anticipate fewer than 300,000 residents. Meanwhile, only 2.4km of the city is expected to be completed by 2030.

In April, Goldman Sachs painted a bleak picture for Saudi Arabia's projects in a note to clients, projecting "pretty significant" budget deficits and more scaling back of megaprojects. Neom has already faced internal challenges. Nadhmi al-Nasr, who managed Neom's construction from 2018 to 2024, departed from his post in November. Nasr earned a chilling reputation managing Neom. He bragged that he put everyone to work "like a slave," adding, "When they drop down dead, I celebrate. That's how I do my projects." Two other foreign executives also left Neom at the end of 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Armagh Observatory is marking a very special meteorological milestone as the institute celebrates 230 years of continuous weather observation. From a report: The unbroken tradition of handwritten data makes it the longest sequence of continuous weather information gathered anywhere in the UK and Ireland. Events are being held at Armagh Observatory on Monday to mark the significant anniversary. Nowadays, most weather data is gathered only by automated weather stations, but not in Armagh, where the human touch remains.

The first handwritten recording was made on the evening of 14 July 1795, when a measurement of the temperature and air pressure was recorded on a graph at the observatory that sits above the city of Armagh. The measurement was repeated the next day and every subsequent day for the next 230 years.

Air India's chief executive urged staff to avoid drawing premature conclusions about what caused one of the airline's Boeing triangle jets to crash last month, after a preliminary investigation ruled out mechanical or maintenance issues, turning attention to the pilots' actions. WSJ: Campbell Wilson told staff that the probe into the crash was "far from over," according to an internal memo, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, in which he set out some of the findings of a report issued by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau at the end of last week.

Wilson's memo didn't mention one of the AAIB's findings: that the airplane's fuel-control switches had been turned off one by one, seconds after takeoff, starving both engines of fuel. The switches, which sit between the two seats in the cockpit, were turned back on about 10 seconds later, but the engines apparently couldn't fully restart and gain thrust fast enough, the report said.

The crash of the London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner killed all but one of the 242 passengers and crew on board, as well as 19 people on the ground, when the plane slammed into a residential area beyond the airport in the Indian city of Ahmedabad. In the memo, Wilson said "over the past 30 days, we've seen an ongoing cycle of theories, allegations, rumours and sensational headlines, many of which have later been disproven."

"Steam quietly welcomed another indie game this week, but this one is distinctly different for a lot of reasons," writes Notebookcheck: Dogwalk, which debuted on July 11, is the kind of short, gentle experience that almost forces you to smile. Developed by Blender Studio, the game introduces players to a gorgeous winter landscape. You play as a cute, fluffy dog, with a small child in tow...

What's particularly interesting here is that Dogwalk is more than just another charming indie project. It's Blender Studio's showcase for what's possible using fully open-source tools. The entire project — assets, animations, and code — is made with Blender and the popular Godot Game Engine. Unlike industry giants such as Unity or Unreal, Godot is completely open source, meaning it doesn't require developers to pay royalties or follow strict licensing agreements. This should make it great for small studios and independent creators, as it lowers the entry barrier to game creation.

Dogwalk is 100% free, which fits neatly into its open-source philosophy

Can carbon-reducing projects "offset" a company's emissions? "The reality has been less encouraging," according to a Science magazine editorial by Cary Coglianese, a law/political science professor at University of Pennsylvania, and Cynthia Giles, a former senior advisor at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In a new paper published Wednesday, they found that more than half of all currently-certified carbon auditors signed off on projects later found to be "overclaiming" carbon benefits.

Their conclusion? "Criticism should be directed not at individual auditors as much as the structure of the system that fosters these outcomes." Most carbon offset projects that have been closely scrutinized — including projects for forest protection, renewable energy, and methane-reducing methods of rice cultivation — have greatly exaggerated their climate benefits. More than 80% of issued credits might not reflect real emission reductions. This has alarmed potential offset purchasers and stalled carbon offset markets.

Efforts to resuscitate the beleaguered offset market tout third-party auditing as "essential" to ensuring credit integrity. That reliance is misplaced... [E]xtensive research from many contexts shows that auditors selected and paid by audited organizations often produce results skewed toward those entities' interests. A field experiment in India, for example, found that air and water pollution auditors who were randomly assigned and paid from a central fund reported emissions at levels 50 to 70% higher than auditors selected and paid by audited firms. Auditors — like all people — are subject to a well-established and largely unconscious cognitive phenomenon of self-serving bias, causing them to interpret evidence in favor of their clients...

[A]uditors have been required all along and have failed to prevent substantial credit overclaiming. It is rarely acknowledged that all of the credit overclaiming projects that have stirred so much controversy were ratified by third-party auditors under the same auditor selection and payment system that offset advocates rely on today... Auditors are unlikely to stay in business if they disapprove credits at the high rates that research suggests would be appropriate today...

Given the high planetary stakes in carbon policy choices being made now, it is past time to recognize that third-party auditors selected and paid by the audited organizations are not the bulwark for credit integrity they are claimed to be.

At an Amazon warehouse that employs 3,700 people, hundreds of workers recently lost their job, reports the New York Times.

"They are among thousands of foreign workers across the country who have been swept up in a quiet purge, pushed out of jobs in places where their labor was in high demand and at times won high praise." While raids to nab workers in the country without legal permission in fields and Home Depot parking lots have grabbed attention, the job dismissals at the Amazon warehouse are part of the Trump administration's effort to thin the ranks of immigrants who had legal authorization to work... Such dismissals are happening at many of Amazon's more than 1,000 facilities around the country, including in Massachusetts and the warehouse in Staten Island that fills orders for millions of New Yorkers. At one fulfillment center in Florida, hundreds were let go, a person familiar with the site said... "We're supporting employees impacted by the government's recent changes in immigration policy," Richard Rocha, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement. The company has pointed workers to various resources, including outside free or low-cost legal services...

The dismissals came with remarkable speed. On May 30, the Supreme Court granted temporary approval for the Trump administration to revoke a program known as "humanitarian parole," which had allowed more than 500,000 migrants feeling political turmoil in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to quickly get work permits if they had a fiscal sponsor... On June 12, the Department of Homeland Security said it had begun notifying enrollees that the program was ending, saying the immigrants had been poorly vetted and undercut American workers...

On June 22, Amazon told managers around the country in an email, which was obtained by The New York Times, that it had "received the first list from D.H.S. identifying impacted Amazon employees" from the parole program, as well as "some employees outside of this specific program whose work authorization is similarly affected." Amazon let the managers know that the next day, the affected workers would receive push notifications in the employee app about the change. Unless the workers could provide alternate work authorization documents in the next five days, they would be suspended without pay and ultimately dismissed.

HGP Storage is a (real) Texas company providing distributed battery-based, utility-scale energy storage systems. Founded in 2013, it has "successfully developed over 20+ sites and closed over 200 MW of distributed energy projects," according to its web site.

And they just teamed up with Enron, reports the Houston Chronicle: The company that took over the defunct Enron brand, led by a "Birds Aren't Real" cofounder [28-year-old Connor Gaydos], held a mostly satirical quarterly earnings call Thursday afternoon but gave updates to an application to become a legitimate Texas energy provider... DJ Withee, chief operating officer and legal counsel at HGP Storage, a company developing utility-scale battery storage farms, was introduced as Enron's vice president of energy service. Withee said he was brought on by Gaydos to set up the customer-facing energy services business.

Enron Energy Texas LLC, a subsidiary of Enron, filed to become a Texas retail electric provider in January. Gaining this designation would allow Enron to sell electricity plans to Texas consumers. "Our business model is actually going to be very simple," Withee said. "We buy wholesale electricity, just like everybody else, but because of our efficiency, because of our use of technology, we are going to have lower costs than our competitors. Lower costs means greater savings that we can pass back to our customers...." According to Withee, Enron's goal is to provide energy at a competitive lower cost that will not only make energy more accessible but also push other Texas retail companies to drop their own prices...

Enron's filing in January included sworn and notarized affidavits from a man named Gregory Forero, who was identified in the documents as vice president of Enron Texas Energy LLC. Forero is the founder and CEO of HGP Storage.
"Forero, who signed his name to three sworn affidavits attesting to the accuracy of the application, could risk perjury charges if the statements of intention to start a legitimate retail electric company are found to be false, according to the Texas Penal Code..."

But does this replace Enron's plan to sell egg-shaped home nuclear reactors?

An underwater turbine has been spinning for more than six years "to harness the power of ocean tides for electricity," reports the Associated Press. The long-running turbine (off the coast of Scotland) has now proven the commercial viability of the technology: Keeping a large, or grid-scale, turbine in place in the harsh sea environment that long is a record that helps pave the way for bigger tidal energy farms and makes it far more appealing to investors, according to the trade association Ocean Energy Europe. Tidal energy projects would be prohibitively expensive if the turbines had to be taken out of the water for maintenance every couple of years.

Tidal energy technologies are still in the early days of their commercial development, but their potential for generating clean energy is big. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, marine energy, a term researchers use to refer to power generated from tides, currents, waves or temperature changes, is the world's largest untapped renewable energy resource.
This long-running tidal energy project off the coast of Scotland has four 1.5-megawatt turbines — enough to power 7,000 homes for a year, according to the article. But they plan to add 20 turbines in 2030 ("after needed upgrades to the electricity grid are finished"), and the site "could eventually hold as many as 130 turbines that are more powerful than those at the site today."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.

"Firefox is dead to me," wrote Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols last month for The Register, complaining about everything from layoffs at Mozilla to Firefox's discontinuation of Pocket and Fakespot, its small market share, and some user complaints that the browser might be becoming slower. But a new rebuttal (also published by The Register) argues instead that Mozilla just has "a management layer that doesn't appear to understand what works for its product nor which parts of it matter most to users..."

"Steven's core point is correct. Firefox is in a bit of a mess — but, seriously, not such a bad mess. You're still better off with it — or one of its forks, because this is FOSS — than pretty much any of the alternatives." Like many things, unfortunately, much of computing is run on feelings, tradition, and group loyalties, when it should use facts, evidence, and hard numbers. Don't bother saying Firefox is getting slower. It's not. It's faster than it has been in years. Phoronix, the go-to site for benchmarks on FOSS stuff, just benchmarked 21 versions, and from late 2023 to now, Firefox has steadily got faster and faster...

Ever since Firefox 1.0 in 2004, Firefox has never had to compete. It's been attached like a mosquito to an artery to the Google cash firehose... Mozilla's leadership is directionless and flailing because it's never had to do, or be, anything else. It's never needed to know how to make a profit, because it never had to make a profit. It's no wonder it has no real direction or vision or clue: it never needed them. It's role-playing being a business. Like we said, don't blame the app. You're still better off with Firefox or a fork such as Waterfox. Chrome even snoops on you when in incognito mode...

One observer has been spectating and commentating on Mozilla since before it was a foundation — one of its original co-developers, Jamie Zawinksi... Zawinski has repeatedly said: "Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?"

"In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

— Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
— Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
— There is no 3."


Perhaps this is the only viable resolution. Mozilla, for all its many failings, has invented a lot of amazing tech, from Rust to Servo to the leading budget phone OS. It shouldn't be trying to capitalize on this stuff. Maybe encourage it to have semi-independent spinoffs, such as Thunderbird, and as KaiOS ought to be, and as Rust could have been. But Zawinski has the only clear vision and solution we've seen yet. Perhaps he's right, and Mozilla should be a nonprofit, working to fund the one independent, non-vendor-driven, standards-compliant browser engine.

Robinhood's stock hit is up more than 160% for 2025, reports CNBC, and the trading platform's own stock hit an all-time high on Friday. But "Despite its stellar year, the online broker is facing several headwinds..." Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier opened a formal investigation into Robinhood Crypto on Thursday, alleging the platform misled users by claiming to offer the lowest-cost crypto trading. "Robinhood has long claimed to be the best bargain, but we believe those representations were deceptive," Uthmeier said in a statement. The probe centers on Robinhood's use of payment for order flow — a common practice where market makers pay to execute trades — which the AG said can result in worse pricing for customers.

Robinhood is also facing opposition to a new 25% cut of staking rewards for U.S. users, set to begin October 1. In Europe, the platform will take a smaller 15% cut. Staking allows crypto holders to earn yield by locking up their tokens to help secure blockchain networks like ethereum, but platforms often take a percentage of those rewards as commission. Robinhood's 25% cut puts it in line with Coinbase, which charges between 25.25% and 35% depending on the token. The cut is notably higher than Gemini's flat 15% fee. It marks a shift for the company, which had previously steered clear of staking amid regulatory uncertainty...

The company now offers blockchain-based assets in Europe that give users synthetic exposure to private firms like OpenAI and SpaceX through special purpose vehicles, or SPVs. An SPV is a separate entity that acquires shares in a company. Users then buy tokens of the SPV and don't have shareholder privileges or voting rights directly in the company. OpenAI has publicly objected, warning the tokens do not represent real equity and were issued without its approval... "What's important is that retail customers have an opportunity to get exposure to this asset," [Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in an interview with CNBC], pointing to the disruptive nature of AI and the historically limited access to pre-IPO companies. "It is true that these are not technically equity," Tenev added, noting that institutional investors often gain similar exposure through structured financial instruments...

Despite the regulatory noise, many investors remain focused on Robinhood's upside, and particularly the political tailwinds.

China "accounts for more than half of global coal use," reports Asia Times, "even as it builds the world's largest solar-panel and EV industries." Much of the world's solar gear is made on fossil power. The International Energy Agency finds that "coal generates over 60% of the electricity used for global solar PV manufacturing," far above coal's ~36% share of typical grids. That is because over 80% of PV factories sit in Chinese provinces like Xinjiang and Jiangsu, where coal dominates the grid.

China has poured over $50 billion into solar factories since 2011, roughly ten times Europe's investment, cutting panel costs by about 80% and fueling a worldwide solar boom. But those panels were produced on coal. In one analysis, they repay their manufacturing CO2 in only months, meaning the emissions were dumped up-front in China's coal plants. Any major disruption to China's coal power or factories (from grid shocks to trade barriers) could thus send ripples through the global PV market.

China's coal and heavy industries also feed its clean-tech supply chain. Coal-fired steel mills supply the aluminum and metal parts for EVs and panels, and coal chemicals provide battery precursors and silicon for solar... At the same time, Chinese oil and gas giants (CNPC, Sinopec) have set up solar, wind and battery divisions, redirecting fossil profits into green ventures.
Another interesting statistic from the article: "In Thailand, Asia's long-time auto hub, Chinese EV brands now command more than 70% of EV sales."

Thanks to Slashdot reader RossCWilliams for sharing the news.

The advocacy group Free Press on Friday blasted America's Federal Communications Commission chief "for an order that rips net neutrality rules off the books, without any time for public comment, following an unfavorable court ruling," reports the nonprofit progressive news site Common Dreams: A panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled in January that broadband is an "information service" instead of a "telecommunications service" under federal law, and the FCC did not have the authority to prohibit internet service providers (ISPs) from creating online "fast lanes" and blocking or throttling web content... FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a Friday statement that as part of his "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative, "we're continuing to clean house at the FCC, working to identify and eliminate rules that no longer serve a purpose, have been on our books for decades, and have no place in the current Code of Federal Regulations...."

Responding in a lengthy statement, Free Press vice president of policy and general counsel Matt Wood said that "the FCC's so-called deletion today is little more than political grandstanding. It's true that the rules in question were first stayed by the 6th Circuit and then struck down by that appellate court — in a poorly reasoned opinion. So today's bookkeeping maneuver changes very little in reality... There's no need to delete currently inoperative rules, much less to announce it in a summer Friday order. The only reason to do that is to score points with broadband monopolies and their lobbyists, who've fought against essential and popular safeguards for the past two decades straight...."

Wood noted that "the appeals process for this case has not even concluded yet, as Free Press and allies sought and got more time to consider our options at the Supreme Court. Today's FCC order doesn't impact either our ability to press the case there or our strategic considerations about whether to do so," he added. "It's little more than a premature housekeeping step..."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: JPMorgan Chase has told financial-technology companies that it will start charging fees amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars for access to their customers' bank account information -- a move that threatens to upend the industry's business models. The largest US bank has sent pricing sheets to data aggregators -- which connect banks and fintechs -- outlining the new charges, according to people familiar with the matter. The fees vary depending on how companies use the information, with higher levies tied to payments-focused companies, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.

A representative for JPMorgan said the bank has invested significant resources to create a secure system that protects consumer data. "We've had productive conversations and are working with the entire ecosystem to ensure we're all making the necessary investments in the infrastructure that keeps our customers safe," the spokesperson said in a statement. The fees -- expected to take effect later this year depending on the fate of a Biden-era regulation -- aren't final and could be negotiated. [The open-banking measure, finalized in October, enables consumers to demand, download and transfer their highly-coveted data to another lender or financial services provider for free.]

The charges would drastically reshape the business for fintech firms, which fundamentally rely on their access to customers' bank accounts. Payment platforms like PayPal's Venmo, cryptocurrency wallets such as Coinbase and retail-trading brokerages like Robinhood all use this data so customers can send, receive and trade money. Typically, the firms have been able to get it for free. Many fintechs access data using aggregators such as Plaid and MX, which provide the plumbing between fintechs and banks. The new fees -- which vary from firm to firm -- could be passed from the aggregators to the fintechs and, ultimately, consumers. The aggregator firms have been in discussions with JPMorgan about the charges, and those talks are constructive and ongoing, another person familiar with the matter said.