Condé Nast, the media conglomerate that owns publications like The New Yorker, Vogue and Wired, has announced a multi-year partnership OpenAI to display content from Condé Nast titles in ChatGPT as well as SearchGPT, the company’s prototype AI-powered search engine. The partnership comes amid growing concerns over the unauthorized use of publishers’ content by AI companies. Last month, Condé Nast sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI search startup Perplexity, accusing it of plagiarism for using its content to generate answers.

“Over the last decade, news and digital media have faced steep challenges as many technology companies eroded publishers’ ability to monetize content, most recently with traditional search,” Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch wrote to employees in a memo that was first reported by Semafor’s Max Tani. “Our partnership with OpenAI begins to make up for some of that revenue, allowing us to continue to protect and invest in our journalism and creative endeavors.” It's not clear how much money OpenAI will pay Condé Nast for the partnership. 

The move makes Condé Nast the latest in a growing line of publishers who have struck deals with OpenAI. These include News Corp, Vox, The Atlantic, TIME and Axel Springer among others. But not everyone is on board with the idea. Last year, the New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using information from the publisher’s articles in ChatGPT’s responses.

Lynch has been vocal about these concerns. In January, he warned that “many” media companies could face financial ruin by the time it would take for litigations against AI companies to conclude and called upon Congress to take “immediate action" to take "immediate action" and clarify that publishers must be compensated by AI companies for both training and output if they use their content. Earlier this month, three senators introduced the COPIED ACT, a bill that aims to protect journalists and artists from having their content scraped by AI companies without their permission.

Perplexity, which was recently accused by Forbes and Wired of stealing content, now plans to share a portion of potential advertising revenues with publishers who sign up for a newly-launched Publishers’ Program.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-will-now-use-content-from-wired-vogue-and-the-new-yorker-in-chatgpts-responses-193057432.html?src=rss

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© REUTERS / Reuters

The media company joins The Atlantic, Axel Springer, Vox Media, and a host of other publishers who have partnered with OpenAI.

Climax Studios has opened a new location in Edinburgh.

The studio opened its doors in February, and has been recruiting a team over the past few months.

The co-developer plans to continue hiring to further support the studio and "better collaborate with partners" which include firms such as Microsoft and Sony.

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The Sunday Times has published its first Gaming Rich List 2024, which includes the top 30 richest game developers and players in the UK.

Playrix founders Igor and Dmitry Bukhman topped the list, who have earned an estimated £12.54 billion. They also ranked at No.27 on The Sunday Times Rich List 2024.

Improbable co-founder and CEO Herman Narula came in second with £780 million, followed by King co-founder and former CEO Riccardo Zacconi at £410 million.

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Mad Crusader has announced it will invest $30 million in premium AA game IPs developed in its incubation program.

The Cyprus-based company will share the investment in four rounds within two years, which will support graduates in developing initial concepts into commercial IP products.

Investors and residents of the incubator program "will have an equity stake in the product, and an equity share in Mad Crusader's game development holding."

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Intel has sold its 1.18 million share stake in British semiconductor company Arm.

Disclosed in a regulatory filing, Intel reportedly raised an estimated $146.7 million from the sale based on Arm's average stock price between April and June, according to calculations by Reuters.

Arm debuted on the Nasdaq Fund Network in September last year, ending its first day of trading at $63.59 following an IPO price of $51. It was the fifth most traded stock in the world during its debut.

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German consumers spent €4.28 billion in the first six months of 2024, a dip of 6% compared to the same period last year.

The news comes from a report by German trade association Game, based on data from GfK and the Sensor Tower-owned Data.ai. It marks the market's first decline after several years of growth.

The sharpest drop in revenue was from hardware sales, which were down 18% year-on-year to €1.2 billion. This is due to slowing sales of PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series consoles, as well as Switch entering the eighth year of its lifecycle.

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Japanese game company Marvelous has announced structural changes within its subsidiaries Marvelous USA and Xseed Games.

Xseed will continue to publish third-party titles including upcoming games The Big Catch and Moonlight Peaks, while Marvelous USA will focus on publishing Marvelous games such as Story of Seasons and the Rune Factor series.

Marvelous USA will also provide its parent company with business, operational, and marketing support to its arcade business unit which is expanding to the West with Naruto Emblem Battle.

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Remedy has published its financial results for the first half of 2024, and reported an increase in revenue and "improved profitability" compared to the same period last year.

It also announced that, while Alan Wake 2 has yet to generate royalties, the game has recouped most of its development and marketing expenses since its release last October.

Q2 2024:

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Xsolla has opened a new office in Montreal in partnership with advertising firm GameAddik.

This is the Xsolla's first office in Canada, and will serve as its operations hub for the region. It aims to expand operations by hiring up to 50 new regional employees over the next two years.

The firm is planning to hire roles across business development, customer support, and technical services.

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Unity has released its financial results for the three months ended June 30, 2024, showing a decrease in revenue which "exceeded previous guidance" of between $420 million and $425 million for Q2.

It also announced the departure of CFO Luis Visoso, who joined the firm in 2021, and the appointment of current chief accounting officer Mark Barrysmith as interim CFO, followed by another two executive hires.

Create Solutions was the biggest revenue for Unity's business this quarter, which came primarily from game subscriptions (which grew 14%) and industries – the latter making up 18% of Create Solutions total revenue.

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Last month, My Games announced the launch of its new publishing label Knights Peak Interactive.

Led by vice president of publishing Eugenio Vitale, global brand and marketing director Mario Gerhold, and creative director Jan-Eric Lauble, Knights Peak is focused on premium PC and console titles. The label has already signed five projects, and plans to publish three this year.

We speak to Vitale about My Games' decision to launch its publishing label, with the executive telling us Knights Peak is a way for the company to add a new pillar to its business, focusing on the publishing of premium titles from second and third party studios.

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Nazara Technologies has acquired UK based Fusebox Games for $27.2 million.

Founded in 2016, Fusebox is a mobile free-to-play studio based in the UK. It publishes interactive story titles including Love Island, and has similar games in development based on other global television IPs.

"We see a large opportunity in building an IP based global gaming business that benefits from our core base in India where we can support global studios through enhanced user acquisition strategies, data analytics, live operations, and new initiatives," said Nazara CEO and founder Nitish Mittersain.

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Bandai Namco has published its first quarter financial results, and has recorded a significant increase in both its net sales and profits.

For the three months ended June 30, 2024, net sales increased by 24.8% year-over-year to ¥280 billion ($1.9 billion), while profit rose by 56.3% to ¥34 billion ($233 million).

The publisher saw a boost in its digital entertainment sales, which increased by 55.8% to ¥106 billion ($725 million).

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GameFromScratch.com
Marvel Snap Developer Moving to Godot Engine

The developer of the popular Unity mobile title Marvel Snap, have just announced they are using the Godot game engine for future game development. In addition they have invested in Godot based company W4Games (learn more). Details from Venture Beat: Second Dinner said it will invest in W4 Games and it will also […]

The post Marvel Snap Developer Moving to Godot Engine appeared first on GameFromScratch.com.

U.S. District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas blocked the FTC's rule banning noncompete agreements, arguing the FTC lacks authority to implement such broad regulations and did not adequately justify the sweeping prohibition. Reuters reports: Brown had temporarily blocked the rule in July while she considered a bid by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest business lobby, and tax service firm Ryan to strike it down entirely. The rule was set to take effect Sept. 4. Brown in her ruling said that even if the FTC had the power to adopt the rule, the agency had not justified banning virtually all noncompete agreements. "The Commission's lack of evidence as to why they chose to impose such a sweeping prohibition ... instead of targeting specific, harmful non-competes, renders the Rule arbitrary and capricious," wrote Brown, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump. FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham said the agency was disappointed with the ruling and is "seriously considering a potential appeal." "Today's decision does not prevent the FTC from addressing noncompetes through case-by-base enforcement actions," Graham said in a statement. The Democratic-controlled FTC approved the ban on noncompete agreements in a 3-2 vote in May. The commission and supporters of the rule say the agreements are an unfair restraint on competition that violate U.S. antitrust law and suppress workers' wages and mobility.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has announced a partnership with Conde Nest, allowing the company's AI products to display content from Vogue, The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Wired, Bon Appetit and other outlets. CNBC reports: "With the introduction of our SearchGPT prototype, we're testing new search features that make finding information and reliable content sources faster and more intuitive," OpenAI wrote in a blog post. "We're combining our conversational models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources." OpenAI added that the SearchGPT prototype offers direct links to news stories and that the company plans "to integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future." It is the latest in a recent trend of some media outlets joining forces with AI startups such as OpenAI to enter into content deals.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nothing, a British startup seeking to challenge Apple's smartphone dominance, is hauling its employees back to the office full-time in the quest for growth. From a report: In a lengthy email disparaging remote work, which had been a tenet of Nothing CEO Carl Pei's workplace policy since its creation four years ago, Pei explained why his 450 employees needed to come to the office five days a week. "Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed," Pei said in an email to staff, which he shared on LinkedIn. Pei gave three reasons for the strict return-to-office mandate. First, he said, the logistics of developing a smartphone, where design, engineering, and manufacturing departments collaborate, weren't conducive to remote working. He added that creativity and innovation worked better in person, allowing the company to do more with fewer resources. Third, Pei said Nothing's ambitions to scale to become a "generation-defining company" wouldn't be achievable with remote work. According to Pei's email, the new mandate will take effect in two months, and he intends to hold a town hall in London to answer employees' questions. In his email, the Nothing CEO also suggested that employees who could not commit to five days in the office look for other employment. "We know it's not the right type of setup for everybody, and that's okay. We should look for a mutual fit. You should find an environment where you thrive, and we need to find people who want to go the full mile with us in the decades ahead."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

North America's eight primary data center markets added 515 megawatts (MW) of new supply in the first half of 2024 -- the equivalent of Silicon Valley's entire existing inventory -- according to a new report real-estate services firm CBRE. From a report: All of Silicon Valley has 459 MW of data center supply, while those main markets have a total of 5,689 MW. That's up 10% from a year ago and about double what it was five years ago. Data center space under construction is up nearly 70% from a year ago and is currently at a record high. But the vast majority of that is already leased, and vacancy rates have shrunk to a record low of 2.8%. In other words, developers are building an insane amount of data center capacity, but it's still not enough to meet the growing demands of cloud computing and artificial intelligence providers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung was in a spot of worry a few months ago, as its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips hadn't received Nvidia's certification for months. A few weeks ago, Samsung's HBM3 chips reportedly received Nvidia's certification for the Chinese market. However, even before the certification, Chinese firms had been reportedly stockpiling Samsung's HBM chips for months.

Chinese firms Baidu and Huawei have been reportedly stockpiling Samsung HBM chips for AI accelerators

According to a report from Reuters, Chinese tech giants Baidu and Huawei have been buying HBM chips from Samsung since earlier this year. The companies ramped up their purchases in anticipation of possible US curbs on exporting critical semiconductor chips to Chinese firms. The report claims that Chinese firms account for nearly 30% of Samsung's HBM chip sales globally.

It is reported that US authorities are planning to impose additional restrictions on chip shipments to China. The US already has curbs that restrict semiconductor chip firms from exporting 5nm (or more advanced) chips to be sold to Chinese firms. Newer export rules from the US may have specific parameters to restrict the export of HBM chips, which are crucial in AI processing.

Almost all AI accelerators, including AMD and Nvidia ones, are paired with HBM memory chips for faster data transfer. The only firms in the world that make HBM chips are Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix. While HBM3E is the most advanced HBM chip right now, Chinese firms have been primarily buying HBM2E chips, which are two generations older.

Since Micron's and SK Hynix's HBM manufacturing capacities have been fully booked by US-based tech firms, Chinese firms are dependent on Samsung's HBM chips. Haawking and Tencent are also said to be among those who bought Samsung's HBM chips. If the US brings additional restrictions on the supply of HBM chips to the Chinese market, Samsung might face business issues.

Apparently, Chinese firm CXMT has been developing HBM2-grade memory chips that are three generations behind. By the time they start using homemade HBM2 chips, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix would have released HBM4 chips.

Image Credits: Samsung

The post Chinese firms have been stockpiling Samsung’s HBM chips for months appeared first on SamMobile.

It’s time for a fresh quarterly report, and this time it’s coming out of Roblox, which saw its second quarter earnings for 2024 rise across the metrics that ravenous investors care about while the company’s long time CFO Michael Guthrie will be stepping down. According to the report, revenue rose by 31 percent YoY by […]

A new AA studio has reportedly been set up within Blizzard.

That's according to a report by Windows Central, which said Microsoft and Activision had allegedly "approved the creation of a new team" within Blizzard mostly made up of employees from mobile developer King.

Sources told the publication that the new studio will work on AA games "based on existing franchises within the Blizzard universes", highlighting games such as World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and StarCraft.

Read more

Developer and publisher Look North World has raised an additional $2.25 million in seed funding, bringing the total raised to $4.5 million.

The round was led by London Venture Partners, with participation from Bandai Namco Entertainment 021 Fund, Overwolf, Crush Ventures, the venture arm of Crush Music, Hasbro, Pix Capital, and Hibbard Road Partners.

Funding will support development of original titles, of which the studio currently has 15 in development, and researching how games are built using user generated content.

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The German games market grew by 6% to €10 billion in 2023, with revenue from mobile games having almost doubled to €2.9 billion since 2018 when revenues were estimated to be €1.5 billion.

That's according to new figures released by the German Games Industry Association (Game), based on data collected by Data.ai. The report shows solid improvement over the 1% growth recorded last year.

This year's growth was attributed to sales of games consoles and accessories, in addition to in-game and in-app purchases.

Read more

New global advisory firm Agora Gaming Partners has raised $600,000 at launch.

Founded by Pontus Mahler (former vice president at Global Top Round) and Jacques Benchetrit (former head of M&A and fundraising at Global Top Round), AGP will provide publishing and equity deals in addition to fundraising services for gaming startups and developers.

AGP will launch with six clients, with investment backed by several unnamed angel investors who specialise in gaming.

Read more

Davide Soliani has left Ubisoft after being with the developer for over two decades.

Ubisoft Milan's creative director shared the news on social media, in which he said it was time "to embark on a new adventure."

"After 25 years, 11 of which [were] beautifully spent working with Nintendo on Mario + Rabbids along [with] the company of our incredible community of players, I have decided to leave Ubisoft to embark on a new adventure," he wrote. "I can't say more now. Thanks a lot for everything, truly."

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Gaming and esports brand GiantX has acquired AI esports coaching start-up iTero Gaming.

While the full sum was undisclosed, the company said the acquisition was a "multi-million [dollar] deal."

As part of the acquisition, iTero founder Jack J Williams has been appointed head of gaming technology at GiantX. He founded iTero Gaming in 2022.

Read more

Capcom is aiming to increase its percentage of female managers to 15%.

In a general Q&A at a recent shareholders meeting, Capcom said currently 21.2% of employees at the firm are female, with 13.6% of its core talent being made up by women.

It's unclear what distinction Capcom makes between employees and core talent.

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AppMagic has raised $3 million in a series A funding round led by GEM Capital.

The investment company contributed $2.5 million to the mobile market intelligence tool, while venture fund Vibranium provided $500,000.

The funding will support research and development in AppMagic's software, and will be used to establish new sales teams for the US, China, Korea, and Japan.

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Game commerce firm Xsolla has opened a new office in Beijing, China.

The Xsolla Greater China Region office will help facilitate new programs and partnerships to provide support for marketing, game development, and monetisation strategies.

"The opening of our office in Beijing marks a pivotal step in Xsolla's journey to facilitate the global expansion of games created and developed in China," said Xsolla head of the Greater China region Jingbo Chen.

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Google is in deep trouble after a federal judge ruled that the company illegally abused a monopoly over the search industry. The ruling follows a 10-week trial held in 2023 that stemmed from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice and several states. 

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in the ruling. "It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act."

Mehta has not imposed any remedies on Google at the time of writing. The judge may order Google to change how it operates or even sell parts of its business. 

The lawsuit claimed that Google illegally acted to maintain its dominant position in search through a number of actions, such as paying the likes of Apple, Samsung and Mozilla billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on their phones and web browsers. The DOJ argued that Google facilitates almost 90 percent of web searches and that by paying to be the default option, it prevented rivals from achieving the kind of scale needed to compete. As such, Google is deemed to benefitted in terms of both revenue and data collection.

"Those search access points are preset with a 'default' search engine," the ruling reads. "The default is extremely valuable real estate. Because many users simply stick to searching with the default, Google receives billions of queries every day through those access points. Google derives extraordinary volumes of user data from such searches. It then uses that information to improve search quality."

According to Mehta, Google has acknowledged that losing its position as the default search engine on various platforms would harm its bottom line. "For instance, Google has projected that losing the Safari default would result in a significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost revenues," the ruling states. 

Google released the following statement from Kent Walker, President of Global affairs, on X regarding the judge's decision:

"This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available. We appreciate the Court’s finding that Google is ‘the industry’s highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users,’ that Google ‘has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices,’ ‘has continued to innovate in search’ and that ‘Apple and Mozilla occasionally assess Google’s search quality relative to its rivals and find Google’s to be superior.’ Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal. As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”

During the trial, Google argued that its significant slice of market share was due to having a better product that consumers appreciated. 

In addition, the DOJ claimed that Google held a monopoly over ads that appear in search results. It argued that Google artificially inflated the prices of ads beyond what they'd cost in a free market.

In his ruling, Mehta agreed that "Google has exercised its monopoly power by charging supracompetitive prices for general search text ads. That conduct has allowed Google to earn monopoly profits." However, the judge added that Google does not hold monopoly power in the broader market of search advertising.

Meanwhile, Mehta declined to impose sanctions on Google for failing to preserve employee chat messages that may have been pertinent to the case. The ruling notes that, since 2008, Google deletes chat messages between its employees by default after 24 hours.

"The court’s decision not to sanction Google should not be understood as condoning Google’s failure to preserve chat evidence," Mehta wrote. "Any company that puts the onus on its employees to identify and preserve relevant evidence does so at its own peril. Google avoided sanctions in this case. It may not be so lucky in the next one."

Google and the DOJ are set to return to federal court in September over an ad tech case.

Update, August 5 2024, 4:40PM ET: This story was updated to include Google's statement on the ruling.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-is-a-monopolist-in-search-us-judge-rules-in-antitrust-case-193358356.html?src=rss

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Here we go again. Elon Musk has filed another lawsuit against OpenAI and the company's CEO Sam Altman, two months after withdrawing a previous one. Musk once again alleges that OpenAI breached its founding commitments by putting commercial concerns ahead of the public good.

This time around, though, the suit has been filed in federal court rather than in a state court. That's because the new filing alleges that OpenAI violated federal racketeering laws by conspiring to defraud Musk, according to his lawyer, Marc Toberoff. “The previous suit lacked teeth — and I don’t believe in the tooth fairy,” Toberoff told The New York Times. “This is a much more forceful lawsuit.”

The latest suit claims that Altman and fellow OpenAI founder Greg Brockman knowingly misled Musk when the trio (and others) formed the company. It alleges that Altman and Brockman walked back on their pledge to open source OpenAI's tech by instead granting Microsoft an exclusive license to it. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI's for-profit subsidiary and holds a 49 percent stake (the FTC is said to be investigating those business dealings).

Furthermore, Musk has asked the court to determine whether OpenAI has achieved artificial general intelligence (AGI), a form of AI that's the equivalent of a human brain. Altman said in January that AGI could be developed in the “reasonably close-ish future.”

Per the suit, Microsoft's contract with OpenAI stipulates that once the latter has reached AGI, it can no longer use the company's tech. If OpenAI has reached AGI in the eyes of the court, then its pact with Microsoft should be declared null and void, according to the filing.

Musk filed the original suit in February. He withdrew it in June, one day before a judge was set to rule on OpenAI's request to dismiss it, but did not provide a reason for doing so.

In a response to the original suit, which it claimed was "incoherent," OpenAI says it aimed to serve the public good by creating AGI. It claims that it needed far more resources than initially thought to do so. The company added that it (and Musk) agreed that a for-profit arm was required to accrue enough resources. However, the parties disagreed on how to go about this, according to OpenAI. The company said Musk wanted full control or for OpenAI to merge with Tesla. Musk ultimately left OpenAI and eventually went on to start his own AI company, xAI.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/elon-musk-drags-openai-into-federal-court-152709507.html?src=rss

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According to Bloomberg and The New York Times, Meta is in talks with the likes of Keegan-Michael Key, Awkwafina and Dame Judi Dench, among others, for its AI projects. The company apparently intends to incorporate their voices into a conversational generative AI-slash-digital assistant called MetaAI, which is rumored to be like Siri and Google Assistant, which could live within Facebook, Meta hardware, and all the other parts of the multimillion-dollar social network company.

The actors’ representatives are still negotiating for stricter limits, though SAG-AFTRA has reportedly agreed on terms with Meta. SAG-AFTRA, if you recall, fought for provisions to protect actors from the threat of job loss due to AI.

Didn’t Meta already do something like this? Yes. During its Connect event last year, the company also introduced a chatbot platform with 28 “characters” voiced by celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Dwyane Wade and Kendall Jenner. However, those celebrity chatbots’ pages have since disappeared, and The Information reports that Meta has just quietly scrapped that project.

This appears to be more central to Meta’s AI ambitions.

— Mat Smith

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Apple has finally started sending out payments from its butterfly keyboard settlement

It agreed to pay $50 million.

Payments relating to a class action lawsuit filed in 2018 over Apple’s butterfly MacBook keyboards have reportedly begun. The settlement website now states that payments for approved claims will go out in August, and claimants will receive checks. For some, it could mean a check of up to $395.

After Apple introduced the butterfly keyboard in 2015, complaints arose over “sticky” and unresponsive keys. A lawsuit filed in 2018 accused Apple of knowing its keyboards had problems and concealing this from consumers. While Apple denied the lawsuit’s allegations of defective keyboards, it agreed to pay $50 million as part of a settlement. It also started phasing out the keyboard design in 2019.

Continue reading.

Instagram scammer faces felony charges after bragging on a podcast

Idriss Qibaa is being charged over death threats in social media extortion.

A guest who appeared on a podcast to boast about a hack-and-payback scheme involving his victims’ social media accounts is now facing the wrath of the FBI. It received a tip about Qibaa’s alleged extortion scheme on April 1, pointing to his appearance on the No Jumper podcast. Qibaa outlined a financial scheme using over 200 victims’ social media accounts, in which he would lock them out of their pages and charge them to regain access. He added he made about $600,000 a month.

Continue reading.

Game Informer magazine is shutting down

After 33 years.

Game Informer

Game Informer announced its parent company, GameStop, is shutting the magazine after 33 years in the business. The entire website and its archives are gone, redirecting to the magazine’s final statement of thanks to its readers. The publication’s content director, Kyle Hilliard, said on X the bad news about the mass staff layoffs landed right when they were in the middle of creating an issue. Game Informer launched in August 1991 with Sonic the Hedgehog sprinting across its cover.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-meta-is-reportedly-offering-millions-to-get-hollywood-voices-into-its-ai-projects-111549125.html?src=rss

© Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Payments relating to a class action lawsuit filed in 2018 over Apple’s butterfly MacBook keyboards have reportedly begun to arrive. The settlement website now states that payments for approved claims will go out in August — and sure enough, 9to5Mac’s Michael Burkhardt reports that he received two settlement checks in the mail on Saturday. Just how much eligible MacBook owners will get varies depending on the extent of the repairs their devices needed. But for some, it could mean a check (or multiple) of up to $395.

After Apple introduced the butterfly keyboard in 2015, complaints arose over “sticky” and unresponsive keys, susceptibility to debris and other major issues. The company ultimately started phasing out the design in 2019. The lawsuit filed in 2018 accused Apple of knowing that its keyboards had problems and concealing this from consumers. While Apple denied the lawsuit’s allegations of defective keyboards and did not admit to any wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $50 million as part of a settlement.

Per the settlement website, people who got two or more topcase replacements within four years of purchasing one of the affected MacBooks are expected to get between $300-$395. MacBook owners who got just one topcase replacement could get up to $125. Claimants who only needed keycap replacements will get a maximum of $50. Of course, to receive a payment, you’d need to have filed any claims by the deadlines outlined in the settlement. And, when the settlement was first reached in 2022, Reuters reported that it will only apply to customers who bought the affected laptops in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington. You can find the full details in the case’s FAQ.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-has-finally-started-sending-out-payments-from-its-butterfly-keyboard-settlement-210754935.html?src=rss

© Nathan Ingraham/Engadget

The surprise 2022 hit PowerWash Simulator has already seen loads of extra content like a DeLorean car washing DLC and even a special edition to aid mental health research. However, the latest update gave users more than developer FuturLab bargained for, according to a recent post on X.

The company released a cruise ship DLC yesterday (Summer Seasonal 2024), but multiple users on Steam complained that they couldn't play it. While a fix was being readied, an upcoming level called "Muckingham Files 4" was somehow released for free onto Steam. Consequently, users on that platform (and no others) can now play both levels.

The Summer Seasonal release lets you make a rusty, grubby cruise ship sparkle again. Meanwhile, Muckingham Files 4 lets users blast graffiti off the vandalized mansion of crypto enthusiast Devon King or clean the firefighting plane of Floraine Perez following a flight over "Mount Rushless."

Much like certain YouTube videos, PowerWash Simulator provides the simple but satisfying experience of blasting gunk off of different objects and... nothing else, really. Folks on Steam get to double up the fun this month, but FuturLab apparently doesn't want them to rub it in the faces of other platforms' users. "Just pretend it didn't happen," the developer advised. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/powerwash-simulators-developers-accidentally-gave-steam-players-a-free-update-120056355.html?src=rss

© FuturLab

Thanks to a string of leaks and Google’s own teases — usually following said leaks — we know we’ll get the official reveal of the Pixel 9 lineup. 

The Pixel 9 and 9 Pro will be straight-up successors to the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro but rumors suggest Google will add a Pixel 9 Pro XL, with a larger screen. All three of the phones are expected to have a redesigned, chonky camera module and possibly even a new chipset.

Engadget

Alongside all those phones, we’re expecting a lot more news on Gemini, Google’s flavor of AI powered assistant, and Android 15. Yep, we’re on no. 15 already. More leaks and rumors point to updated smartwatches and wireless buds too. And, dare I say, a new streaming box. The Made by Google event kicks off August 13 at 1PM ET. Plenty of time for more leaks, right?

— Mat Smith

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AI startup says scraping every song on the internet is ‘fair use’

Suno admitted it trained its AI model on copyrighted songs.

In June, music labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Group sued music AI startups Udio and Suno, claiming they trained their AI models by scraping copyrighted materials from the internet. In today’s court filing, Suno acknowledged its neural networks do, in fact, scrape copyrighted material. It argued the scraping was all part of a backend tech process to create “non infringing” new products. These don’t contain samples, so where’s the problem? Well, everywhere according to the RIAA, which represents music labels and initiated the lawsuit.

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There’s even a problem with the Fortnite version of the Cybertruck

A bug in the Cybertruck–Fornite crossover has now been patched out.

Fortnite

A new DLC pack for Fortnite offered players a chance to drive the Tesla Cybertruck in-game. Now, a week later, several players have posted videos of a glitch when they used the Cybertruck during a match. Art imitates life: Tesla’s real world Cybertruck is contending with issues with its windshield wiper that could reduce the driver’s visibility. Then there was the stuck accelerator pedal recall from April.

Continue reading.

The Republican National Committee loses its legal challenge to Gmail

It claimed it was disproportionately impacted by spam filtering.

A federal judge dismissed a case brought by the Republican National Committee (RNC) against Google over its Gmail service. The suit alleged that Google’s email platform labeled GOP fundraising emails as spam at a higher rate than those from the other side of the aisle. The ruling marks the second case the RNC has lost over allegations of unfair filtering by Gmail. The RNC filed a lawsuit in the same court in 2022. This dismissal with prejudice means it cannot bring the case to another court — but it can still file an appeal against Calabretta’s decision. That is unless the RNC is busy with other things, like, perhaps, a presidential election.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-what-were-expecting-at-googles-2024-pixel-event-111538002.html?src=rss

© Google

When most tech companies are challenged with a lawsuit, the expected defense is to deny wrongdoing. To give a reasonable explanation of why the business' actions were not breaking any laws. Music AI startups Udio and Suno have gone for a different approach: admit to doing exactly what you were sued for.

Udio and Suno were sued in June, with music labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Group claiming they trained their AI models by scraping copyrighted materials from the Internet. In a court filing today, Suno acknowledged that its neural networks do in fact scrape copyrighted material: "It is no secret that the tens of millions of recordings that Suno’s model was trained on presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case." And that's because its training data "includes essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet," which likely include millions of illegal copies of songs. 

But the company is taking the line that its scraping falls under the umbrella of fair use. "It is fair use under copyright law to make a copy of a protected work as part of a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product," the statement reads. Its argument seems to be that since the AI-generated tracks it creates don't include samples, illegally obtaining all of those tracks to train the AI model isn't a problem.

Calling the defendants' actions "evading and misleading," the RIAA, which initiated the lawsuit, had an unsurprisingly harsh response to the filing. "Their industrial scale infringement does not qualify as ‘fair use’. There’s nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals," a spokesperson for the organization said. "Defendants had a ready lawful path to bring their products and tools to the market – obtain consent before using their work, as many of their competitors already have. That unfair competition is directly at issue in these cases."

Whatever the next phase of this litigation entails, prepare your popcorn. It should be wild.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/ai-startup-argues-scraping-every-song-on-the-internet-is-fair-use-233132459.html?src=rss

© Suno

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology proposed a new EUV litho technology using only four reflective mirrors and a new method of illumination optics that it claims will use 1/10 the power and cost half as much as existing EUV technology from ASML.

Applied Materials may not receive expected U.S. funding to build a $4 billion research facility in Sunnyvale, CA, due to internal government disagreements over how to fund chip R&D, according to Bloomberg.

SEMI published a position paper this week cautioning the European Union against imposing additional export controls to allow companies, encouraging them to  be “as free as possible in their investment decisions to avoid losing their agility and relevance across global markets.” SEMI’s recommendations on outbound investments are in response to the European Economic Security Strategy and emphasize the need for a transparent and predictable regulatory framework.

The U.S. may restrict China’s access to HBM chips and the equipment needed to make them, reports Bloomberg. Today those chips are manufactured by two Korean-based companies, Samsung and SK hynix, but U.S.-based Micron expects to begin shipping 12-high stacks of HBM3E in 2025, and is currently working on HBM4.

Synopsys executive chair and founder Dr. Aart de Geus was named the winner of the Semiconductor Industry Association’s Robert N. Noyce Award. De Geus was selected due to his contributions to EDA technology over a career spanning more than four decades.

The top three foundries plan to implement high-NA EUV lithography as early as 2025 for the 18 angstrom generation, but the replacement of single exposure high-NA (0.55) over double patterning with standard EUV (NA = 0.33) depends on whether it provides better results at a reasonable cost per wafer.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Market Reports and Earnings
Education and Training
Security
Product News
Research
Events and Further Reading

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Global

Belgium-based Imec released part 2 of its chiplets series, addressing testing strategies and standardization efforts, as well as guidelines and research “towards efficient ESD protection strategies for advanced 3D systems-on-chip.”

Also in Belgium, BelGan, maker of GaN chips, filed for bankruptcy according to the Brussels Times.

TSMC‘s Dresden, Germany, plant will break ground this month.

The UK will dole out more than £100 million (~US $128 million) in funding to develop five new quantum research hubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford, and London.

MassPhoton is opening Hong Kong‘s first ultra-high vacuum GaN epitaxial wafer pilot line and will establish a GaN research center.

Infineon completed the sale of its manufacturing sites in the Philippines and South Korea to ASE.

Israel-based RAAAM Memory Technologies received a €5.25 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to support the development and commercialization of its innovative memory solutions. This funding will enable RAAAM to advance its research in high-performance and energy-efficient memory technologies, accelerating their integration into various applications and markets.

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In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter this week, featuring these top stories and video:

• Chip Security Now Depends On Widening Supply Chain
• Defining Chip Threat Models To Determining Security Risks
• Post-Quantum Computing Threatens Fundamental Transport Protocols

And:

• Where Power Savings Really Count
• Making Electronics More Efficient (video)

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Market Reports and Earnings

The semiconductor equipment industry is on a positive trajectory in 2024, with moderate revenue growth observed in Q2 after a subdued Q1, according to a new report from Yole Group. Wafer Fab Equipment revenue is projected to grow by 1.3% year-on-year, despite a 12% drop in Q1. Test equipment lead times are normalizing, improving order conditions. Key areas driving growth include memory and logic capital expenditures and high-bandwidth memory demand.

Worldwide silicon wafer shipments increased by 7% in Q2 2024, according to SEMI‘s latest report. This growth is attributed to robust demand from multiple semiconductor sectors, driven by advancements in AI, 5G, and automotive technologies.

The RF GaN market is projected to grow to US $2 billion by 2029, a 10% CAGR, according to Yole Group.

Counterpoint released their Q2 smartphone top 10 report.

Renesas completed their acquisition of EDA firm Altium, best known for its EDA platform and freeware CircuitMaker package.

It’s earnings season and here are recently released financials in the chip industry:

AMD  Advantest   Amkor   Ansys  Arteris   Arm   ASE   ASM   ASML
Cadence  IBM   Intel   Lam Research   Lattice   Nordson   NXP   Onsemi 
Qualcomm   Rambus  Samsung    SK Hynix   STMicro   Teradyne    TI  
Tower  TSMC    UMC  Western Digital

Industry stock price impacts are here.

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Education and Training

Rochester Institute of Technology is leading a new pilot program to prepare community college students in areas such as cleanroom operations, new materials, simulation, and testing processes, with the intent of eventual transfer into RIT’s microelectronic engineering program.

Purdue University inked a deal with three research institutions — University of Piraeus, Technical University of Crete, and King’s College London —to develop joint research programs for semiconductors, AI and other critical technology fields.

The European Chips Skills Academy formed the Educational Leaders Board to help bridge the talent gap in Europe’s microelectronics sector.  The Board includes representatives from universities, vocational training providers, educators and research institutions who collaborate on strategic initiatives to strengthen university networks and build academic expertise through ECSA training programs.

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Security

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is encouraging Apple users to review and apply this week’s recent security updates.

Microsoft Azure experienced a nearly 10 hour DDoS attack this week, leading to global service disruption for many customers.  “While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which activated our DDoS protection mechanisms, initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defenses amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” stated Microsoft in a release.

NIST published:

• “Recommendations For Increasing U.S. Participation and Leadership in Standards Development,” a report outlining cybersecurity recommendations and mitigation strategies.
• Final guidance documents and software to help improve the “safety, security and trustworthiness of AI systems.”
• Cloud Computing Forensic Reference Architecture guide.

Delta Air Lines plans to seek damages after losing $500 million in lost revenue due to security company CrowdStrike‘s software update debacle.  And shareholders are also angry.

Recent security research:

• Physically Secure Logic Locking With Nanomagnet Logic (UT Dallas)
• WBP: Training-time Backdoor Attacks through HW-based Weight Bit Poisoning (UCF)
• S-Tune: SOT-MTJ Manufacturing Parameters Tuning for Secure Next Generation of Computing ( U. of Arizona, UCF)
• Diffie Hellman Picture Show: Key Exchange Stories from Commercial VoWiFi Deployments (CISPA, SBA Research, U. of Vienna)

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Product News

Lam Research introduced a new version of its cryogenic etch technology designed to enhance the manufacturing of 3D NAND for AI applications. This technology allows for the precise etching of high aspect ratio features, crucial for creating 1,000-layer 3D NAND.

Fig.1: 3D NAND etch. Source: Lam Research

Alphawave Semi launched its Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express Die-to-Die IP. The subsystem offers 8 Tbps/mm bandwidth density and supports operation at 24 Gbps for D2D connectivity.

Infineon introduced a new MCU series for industrial and consumer motor controls, as well as power conversion system applications. The company also unveiled its new GoolGaN Drive product family of integrated single switches and half-bridges with integrated drivers.

Rambus released its DDR5 Client Clock Driver for next-gen, high-performance desktops and notebooks. The chips include Gen1 to Gen4 RCDs, power management ICs, Serial Presence Detect Hubs, and temperature sensors for leading-edge servers.

SK hynix introduced its new GDDR7 graphics DRAM. The product has an operating speed of 32Gbps, can process 1.5TB of data per second and has a 50% power efficiency improvement compared to the previous generation.

Intel launched its new Lunar Lake Ultra processors. The long awaited chips will be included in more than 80 laptop designs and has more than 40 NPU tera operations per second as well as over 60 GPU TOPS delivering more than 100 platform TOPS.

Brewer Science achieved recertification as a Certified B Corporation, reaffirming its commitment to sustainable and ethical business practices.

Panasonic adopted Siemens’ Teamcenter X cloud product lifecycle management solution, citing Teamcenter X’s Mendix low-code platform, improved operational efficiency and flexibility for its choice.

Keysight validated its 5G NR FR1 1024-QAM demodulation test cases for the first time. The 5G NR radio access technology supports eMBB and was validated on the 3GPP TS 38.521-4 test specification.

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Research

In a 47-page deep-dive report, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology delved into all of the scientific breakthroughs from 1980 to present that brought EUV lithography to commercialization, including lessons learned for the next emerging technologies.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute developed a high-performance X-ray tomography technique using burst ptychography, achieving a resolution of 4nm. This method allows for non-destructive imaging of integrated circuits, providing detailed views of nanostructures in materials like silicon and metals.

MIT signed a four-year agreement with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme at University of Copenhagen, focused on accelerating quantum computing hardware research.

MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) developed a mechanically flexible wafer-scale integrated photonics fabrication platform. This enables the creation of flexible photonic circuits that maintain high performance while being bendable and stretchable. It offers significant potential for integrating photonic circuits into various flexible substrate applications in wearable technology, medical devices, and flexible electronics.

The Naval Research Lab identified a new class of semiconductor nanocrystals with bright ground-state excitons, emphasizing an important advancement in optoelectronics.

Researchers from National University of Singapore developed a novel method, known as tension-driven CHARM3D,  to fabricate 3D self-healing circuits, enabling the 3D printing of free-standing metallic structures without the need for support materials and external pressure.

Find more research in our Technical Papers library.

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Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Event	Date	Location
Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD 2024)	Aug 4 – 7	Helsinki
Flash Memory Summit	Aug 6 – 8	Santa Clara, CA
USENIX Security Symposium	Aug 14 – 16	Philadelphia, PA
SPIE Optics + Photonics 2024	Aug 18 – 22	San Diego, CA
Cadence Cloud Tech Day	Aug 20	San Jose, CA
Hot Chips 2024	Aug 25- 27	Stanford University/ Hybrid
Optica Online Industry Meeting: PIC Manufacturing, Packaging and Testing (imec)	Aug 27	Online
SEMICON Taiwan	Sep 4 -6	Taipei
DVCON Taiwan	Sep 10 – 11	Hsinchu
AI HW and Edge AI Summit	Sep 9 – 12	San Jose, CA
GSA Executive Forum	Sep 26	Menlo Park, CA
SPIE Photomask Technology + EUVL	Sep 29 – Oct 3	Monterey, CA
Strategic Materials Conference: SMC 2024	Sep 30 – Oct 2	San Jose, CA
Find All Upcoming Events Here

Upcoming webinars are here, including topics such as quantum safe cryptography, analytics for high-volume manufacturing, and mastering EMC simulations for electronic design.

Find Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters here:

Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing
Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials

 

The post Chip Industry Week in Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

NVIDIA is the world's leading supplier of AI accelerators. It has a borderline monopoly on the market right now as it accounted for 97.2% of the sector last year. The company has invested considerably in its next-gen AI accelerators to maintain this dominance even as rivals amp up their efforts for a piece of the pie.

As a supplier of high-bandwidth memory solutions used in these AI chips, Samsung stands to benefit if NVIDIA or others buy chips from it. With NVIDIA potentially facing delays in mass production of its next-gen accelerators, Samsung stands to benefit if those that it has alliances with step up to fill the gap.

NVIDIA expects a three-month delay in Blackwell-based AI chips

NVIDIA has reportedly informed Microsoft and other top customers that its next-generation Blackwell AI accelerator shipments have been delayed by three months, potentially even more, due to flaws in the design. Reports suggest that the processor die used to connect the two Blackwell GPUs on the GB200 has a flaw that will take some time to rectify.

Tech companies like Microsoft and Google can't get enough of these AI accelerators as they develop new solutions that require much greater processing power. They're expected to look for a replacement from AMD with which both companies have already been developing next-gen chips. Microsoft has already purchased AMD's MI300X AI accelerators.

Major tech companies are already concerned about over reliance on one company, NVIDIA, for their AI accelerator needs, even as they've ordered billions worth of GB200s from NVIDIA. If AMD sells more of its AI accelerators, that results in more money in Samsung's pocket, as it supplies fourth-generation HBM3 chips to AMD and is also on track to supply advanced HBM3E memory modules to the US-based chip designer.

Even if NVIDIA manages to get the Blackwell project back on track, Samsung stands to benefit from that as well, since it's been trying to win approval from NVIDIA to supply it with HBM3E memory as well. Whatever happens, Samsung's got itself in a good position to cash in on the AI boom.

The post NVIDIA’s AI chip delays could be beneficial for Samsung appeared first on SamMobile.

The office closure marks the end of an era for the site formerly known as Twitter.

Nearly a year after the US government took Google to trial, a judge has found that the tech giant violated antitrust laws. A new trial will determine how Google should be penalized.

While it easily passed the Senate, the House began a recess without bringing the bill—which critics say would keep young people from accessing vital information on topics like sexual health—to the floor for a vote.

The video-conferencing app is trying to create an "everything workplace" app in a crowded market.

Lost amid the drive to expand alcohol delivery in the wake of COVID-19 has been the corresponding push—actually starting even before the pandemic—to allow more types of stores to sell alcohol. While more and more states have allowed grocery stores to sell booze in recent years, these efforts have been fiercely resisted by independent liquor store owners who claim that their small businesses will be forced to shutter if large chain retailers are suddenly able to sell alcohol.

Up until now, these debates have largely been devoid of actual data, but new empirical research has been published showing that grocery store alcohol sales don't really impact mom-and-pop liquor stores after all. At long last, this is one protectionist argument that can finally kick the bucket—if only policy makers will let it die.

Currently, 11 states still forbid wine from being sold in grocery stores while four still prohibit beer. In recent years, states as politically diverse as Mississippi, Connecticut, and Maryland have considered bills to expand wine and/or beer to their grocery store outlets, only to be met with a tidal wave of opposition. Any place where such reform legislation appears, it is immediately opposed by liquor stores in the state—sometimes called "package stores"—which already sell wine and beer and want to prevent any grocery store from becoming their new competitors in the market.

The impact of this protectionism extends far beyond the alcohol market, as well. It is why less populated states that restrict grocery store booze, such as Mississippi, have only one Costco and one Whole Foods in the entire state—and zero Trader Joe's outlets. These stores often depend on their alcohol selections, including their private-label alcohol offerings, to make their business models viable in more locales. Restricting grocery store booze can actually lock entire food stores out of a state.

This setup works just fine for liquor store owners. As one store owner claimed when discussing a Mississippi reform bill: "out of state retail corporations harvest money that could be recirculating in our local economies….Big out-of-state grocery and box retailers have had years of practice of profiting off the destruction of public health in other states." He went on to note that alcohol markets are "unable to regulate themselves without being destructive to public health and safety" and that if alcohol consumption increased, it would put "undue burden" on taxpayers, public safety officials, and the health care industry. One would be hard-pressed to find a business owner who so loathes the very product he sells, but these arguments are sadly par for the cronyist course when it comes to blocking grocery store booze sales.

While it is unclear how one might go about "harvesting" money, it is clear what this package store owner is really concerned about: protecting his bottom line. Unfortunately, package and liquor store lobbying associations are extremely influential in many states, which leads to reform efforts silently dying in committee year after year.

That's why states like Oklahoma and Colorado have opted for ballot initiatives to expand grocery store alcohol sales, as consumers overwhelmingly are in favor of it. But even successful ballot initiatives have not ended the debate, as a group of Colorado legislators introduced a bill in this year's legislative session to overturn the state's wine-in-grocery-stores ballot initiative (which only went into effect in 2023).

The main argument in favor of this repeal bill? "I don't want to see the independent liquor stores put out of business. They are owned by diverse entrepreneurs—50 percent are women- and minority-owned businesses—and provide jobs," said Colorado state Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder area Democrat who cosponsored the legislation. 

In other words, Justice Antonin Scalia's famous quip about the notorious Lemon test in Supreme Court jurisprudence—analogizing it to "some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried"—could just as readily apply to antigrocery alcohol claims.

After years of scaremongering and anecdotal supposition about whether grocery stores will or will not kill off mom-and-pop booze stores, facts have finally been injected into the debate by FMI, a food industry group. A new FMI paper by Vincenzina Caputo of Michigan State University studies the impact of Tennessee's 2016 reform that allowed wine to be sold in grocery stores in the Volunteer State. The paper compared the number of liquor licenses in post-2016 Tennessee with a hypothetical "synthetic version" of Tennessee in which the reforms were never passed. (This was done via a weighted average of control states that did not pass wine-in-grocery-store legislation.)

The report—a copy of which I obtained from FMI—shows just 62 fewer liquor stores selling wine in postreform Tennessee compared to the nonreform synthetic version of Tennessee—a result which was found to be not statistically significant. Overall, the quantity of liquor stores selling wine in Tennessee increased from 505 stores in 2004 to 733 in 2022, and liquor stores still held the greatest number of wine-selling licenses in the state in the postreform years. 

Further, the Tennessee wine-in-grocery-store reform accounted for a 23 percent increase in wine sales tax volume for the state—undermining the idea that chain stores "harvest" away money from local economies and the tax base.

These results show that our favorite mom-and-pop shops can do just fine in the wake of grocery stores being allowed to sell alcohol. In fact, many of these smaller stores have found a niche specializing in craft beer or hard-to-find wines and liquor that grocery stores have little interest in carrying, a point that both independent store owners and economists have made.

This new research provides a much-overdue corrective to the protectionist claims that small liquor stores have been peddling for years. Now lawmakers just need to listen.

The post Grocery Store Booze Doesn't Hurt Mom-and-Pop Stores appeared first on Reason.com.

In his desperation for campaign cash, Trump is courting crypto bros by promising that he will be nice to them when he becomes President. Last week, he spoke at a conference for Bitcoin enthusiasts and pretended to know what Bitcoin is and how it works. — Read the rest

The post "Intellectually very high level": Watch Trump's hilarious attempt to understand Bitcoin  appeared first on Boing Boing.

Payments relating to a class action lawsuit filed in 2018 over Apple’s butterfly MacBook keyboards have reportedly begun to arrive. The settlement website now states that payments for approved claims will go out in August — and sure enough, 9to5Mac’s Michael Burkhardt reports that he received two settlement checks in the mail on Saturday. Just how much eligible MacBook owners will get varies depending on the extent of the repairs their devices needed. But for some, it could mean a check (or multiple) of up to $395.

After Apple introduced the butterfly keyboard in 2015, complaints arose over “sticky” and unresponsive keys, susceptibility to debris and other major issues. The company ultimately started phasing out the design in 2019. The lawsuit filed in 2018 accused Apple of knowing that its keyboards had problems and concealing this from consumers. While Apple denied the lawsuit’s allegations of defective keyboards and did not admit to any wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $50 million as part of a settlement.

Per the settlement website, people who got two or more topcase replacements within four years of purchasing one of the affected MacBooks are expected to get between $300-$395. MacBook owners who got just one topcase replacement could get up to $125. Claimants who only needed keycap replacements will get a maximum of $50. Of course, to receive a payment, you’d need to have filed any claims by the deadlines outlined in the settlement. And, when the settlement was first reached in 2022, Reuters reported that it will only apply to customers who bought the affected laptops in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington. You can find the full details in the case’s FAQ.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-has-finally-started-sending-out-payments-from-its-butterfly-keyboard-settlement-210754935.html?src=rss

© Nathan Ingraham/Engadget

The surprise 2022 hit PowerWash Simulator has already seen loads of extra content like a DeLorean car washing DLC and even a special edition to aid mental health research. However, the latest update gave users more than developer FuturLab bargained for, according to a recent post on X.

The company released a cruise ship DLC yesterday (Summer Seasonal 2024), but multiple users on Steam complained that they couldn't play it. While a fix was being readied, an upcoming level called "Muckingham Files 4" was somehow released for free onto Steam. Consequently, users on that platform (and no others) can now play both levels.

The Summer Seasonal release lets you make a rusty, grubby cruise ship sparkle again. Meanwhile, Muckingham Files 4 lets users blast graffiti off the vandalized mansion of crypto enthusiast Devon King or clean the firefighting plane of Floraine Perez following a flight over "Mount Rushless."

Much like certain YouTube videos, PowerWash Simulator provides the simple but satisfying experience of blasting gunk off of different objects and... nothing else, really. Folks on Steam get to double up the fun this month, but FuturLab apparently doesn't want them to rub it in the faces of other platforms' users. "Just pretend it didn't happen," the developer advised. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/powerwash-simulators-developers-accidentally-gave-steam-players-a-free-update-120056355.html?src=rss

© FuturLab

Thanks to a string of leaks and Google’s own teases — usually following said leaks — we know we’ll get the official reveal of the Pixel 9 lineup. 

The Pixel 9 and 9 Pro will be straight-up successors to the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro but rumors suggest Google will add a Pixel 9 Pro XL, with a larger screen. All three of the phones are expected to have a redesigned, chonky camera module and possibly even a new chipset.

Engadget

Alongside all those phones, we’re expecting a lot more news on Gemini, Google’s flavor of AI powered assistant, and Android 15. Yep, we’re on no. 15 already. More leaks and rumors point to updated smartwatches and wireless buds too. And, dare I say, a new streaming box. The Made by Google event kicks off August 13 at 1PM ET. Plenty of time for more leaks, right?

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Intel will cut over 15,000 jobs in a sweeping cost-cutting effort

I really want to like Star Wars Outlaws

Meta’s Threads has 200 million users

Don Lemon is suing Elon Musk and X

Boeing eats another $125 million loss over Starliner woes

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

AI startup says scraping every song on the internet is ‘fair use’

Suno admitted it trained its AI model on copyrighted songs.

In June, music labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Group sued music AI startups Udio and Suno, claiming they trained their AI models by scraping copyrighted materials from the internet. In today’s court filing, Suno acknowledged its neural networks do, in fact, scrape copyrighted material. It argued the scraping was all part of a backend tech process to create “non infringing” new products. These don’t contain samples, so where’s the problem? Well, everywhere according to the RIAA, which represents music labels and initiated the lawsuit.

Continue reading.

There’s even a problem with the Fortnite version of the Cybertruck

A bug in the Cybertruck–Fornite crossover has now been patched out.

Fortnite

A new DLC pack for Fortnite offered players a chance to drive the Tesla Cybertruck in-game. Now, a week later, several players have posted videos of a glitch when they used the Cybertruck during a match. Art imitates life: Tesla’s real world Cybertruck is contending with issues with its windshield wiper that could reduce the driver’s visibility. Then there was the stuck accelerator pedal recall from April.

Continue reading.

The Republican National Committee loses its legal challenge to Gmail

It claimed it was disproportionately impacted by spam filtering.

A federal judge dismissed a case brought by the Republican National Committee (RNC) against Google over its Gmail service. The suit alleged that Google’s email platform labeled GOP fundraising emails as spam at a higher rate than those from the other side of the aisle. The ruling marks the second case the RNC has lost over allegations of unfair filtering by Gmail. The RNC filed a lawsuit in the same court in 2022. This dismissal with prejudice means it cannot bring the case to another court — but it can still file an appeal against Calabretta’s decision. That is unless the RNC is busy with other things, like, perhaps, a presidential election.

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-what-were-expecting-at-googles-2024-pixel-event-111538002.html?src=rss

© Google

When most tech companies are challenged with a lawsuit, the expected defense is to deny wrongdoing. To give a reasonable explanation of why the business' actions were not breaking any laws. Music AI startups Udio and Suno have gone for a different approach: admit to doing exactly what you were sued for.

Udio and Suno were sued in June, with music labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Group claiming they trained their AI models by scraping copyrighted materials from the Internet. In a court filing today, Suno acknowledged that its neural networks do in fact scrape copyrighted material: "It is no secret that the tens of millions of recordings that Suno’s model was trained on presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case." And that's because its training data "includes essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet," which likely include millions of illegal copies of songs. 

But the company is taking the line that its scraping falls under the umbrella of fair use. "It is fair use under copyright law to make a copy of a protected work as part of a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product," the statement reads. Its argument seems to be that since the AI-generated tracks it creates don't include samples, illegally obtaining all of those tracks to train the AI model isn't a problem.

Calling the defendants' actions "evading and misleading," the RIAA, which initiated the lawsuit, had an unsurprisingly harsh response to the filing. "Their industrial scale infringement does not qualify as ‘fair use’. There’s nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals," a spokesperson for the organization said. "Defendants had a ready lawful path to bring their products and tools to the market – obtain consent before using their work, as many of their competitors already have. That unfair competition is directly at issue in these cases."

Whatever the next phase of this litigation entails, prepare your popcorn. It should be wild.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/ai-startup-argues-scraping-every-song-on-the-internet-is-fair-use-233132459.html?src=rss

© Suno

A federal judge dismissed a case brought by the Republican National Committee (RNC) against Google over its Gmail service. The suit alleged that Google’s email platform labeled GOP fundraising emails as spam at a higher rate than those from the other side of the aisle.

District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta from the Eastern California District Court dismissed the case with prejudice, preventing the Republican party from bringing its case against Google back to court. The dismissal with prejudice means it cannot bring the case to another court but can still file an appeal to Calabretta’s decision, according to The Verge.

Calabretta wrote in his dismissal order that the RNC failed to state a claim under “any legislative policy” or prove there was “sufficient harm to users of Gmail.”

“The RNC has not shown Google’s alleged conduct has violated any other law, which is a necessary element of intentional interference with economic relations,” Calabretta wrote in his dismissal order. “Accordingly, the court grants Google’s motion to dismiss, this time with prejudice.” Calabretta had previously dismissed the case without prejudice.

Thursday’s ruling marks the second case that the RNC has lost over allegations of unfair filtering by Gmail. The RNC filed a lawsuit in the same court in 2022 seeking damages from Google for “donations it allegedly lost as a result” of labeling fundraising emails as spam. Calabretta called the lawsuit a “close case” but ultimately ruled that the RNC “failed to plausibly allege its claims” that Google’s spam filtering was committed in bad faith, according to court filings.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-republican-national-committee-loses-its-legal-challenge-to-gmail-184122392.html?src=rss

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