Google plans to invest up to $40 billion more in Anthropic, starting with $10 billion now and another $30 billion tied to performance milestones. CNBC reports: Anthropic said the agreement expands on a longstanding partnership between the two companies. Earlier this month, Anthropic secured 5 gigawatts worth of computing capacity as part of an announcement with Google and Broadcom that will start to come online next year. Anthropic could decide to add additional gigawatts of compute in the future.

[...] The relationship between the two companies (Google and Anthropic) dates back to 2023, when Google invested $300 million in the AI lab for a stake of about 10%. Months later, Google poured in another $2 billion. Ahead of Friday's announcement, Google's investment in Anthropic exceeded $3 billion, and it reportedly owned a 14% stake in the company. Now, the leading tech companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in the frontier AI labs -- OpenAI and Anthropic -- in funding rounds that far exceed any prior investments in startups. Much of that investment will return in the form of revenue.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The French government agency that handles the issuing and management of citizens' identity documents, including national IDs, passports, and immigration documents, confirmed Wednesday that it experienced a data breach. In an announcement, the Agence Nationale des Titres Securises (ANTS) said the data stolen in the breach could include full names, dates and places of birth, mailing and email addresses, and phone numbers on an undisclosed number of citizens. ANTS said the investigation to determine how the breach happened and its impact is ongoing, and people whose data was affected are being notified.

ANTS, which said it detected the attack on April 15, did not specify how many people were affected by the breach. But some reporting suggests millions may have had some of their personal information stolen. According to Bleeping Computer, a hacker has advertised the stolen data on a hacking forum, claiming to have a database with 19 million records. The hacker's forum post referenced the same kind of stolen information as mentioned in ANTS' announcement and was published before ANTS publicly disclosed the breach on April 20.

kriston (Slashdot reader #7,886) writes: HP Anyware, the new name of the Teradici PCoIP remote desktop solution that was acquired by HP in 2021, is being discontinued.
"Maintenance and support for customers and partners with multi-year terms will continue until 31 October, 2029," a href="https://anyware.hp.com/hp-anyware-end-of-life">according to HP's announcement.

But HP is also announcing the planned End of Life for Anyware Trust Center and Trusted Zero Clients, with support now limited to setup and troubleshooting, no new updates or patches, and support ending in a little over six months on October 31, 2026. While for Desktop Access customers — Tera2 Zero Clients and PCoIP Management Console — "the previously announced EOL date remains December 31, 2029," sales have already ended for other customers. HP Anyware renewals are available for purchase through October 31 of 2027, but with a maximum one year term, with support ending October 31, 2028.

HP says the decision "enables us to focus our resources on product categories where we can deliver the greatest customer value and drive long-term innovation."

Ahead of December's release of Avengers: Doomsday, Disney has unveiled "Infinity Vision," reports Kotaku, which they describe as "a new theater-going experience that will be certain to transform your pedestrian $15 night out into an exotic $43 one." (Though those prices appear to be estimates...)

Disney's announcement calls it "a new certification for premium large format (PLF) theaters," helping ticket-buyers find "a huge screen with the sharpest, clearest color and sound," including laser projection "for superior brightness and clarity ") and "premium audio formats for fully immersive sound". Light on specifics, Disney says they will be certifying premium large format theaters for the Infinity Vision experience, highlighting laser projection and immersive audio quality. The new program will begin in the summer for a theater run of 2019's Avengers: Endgame ahead of Doomsday's holiday release.

Now you might be thinking: Giant screen? Booming audio? That sounds an awful lot like IMAX. The most consumer-recognized premium movie-going screen is the coveted throne for big blockbuster events, from Avatar to One Battle After Another. Unfortunately for Doomsday, IMAX screens are already booked for the holiday season by Dune: Part Three, the anticipated return to Arrakis, where Timothée Chalamet's Muad'Dib will begin to go worm-mode. Locked out of the popular choice for doubling your ticket price, Disney appears to have made up a new one...

Disney says they aim to certify 75 theaters in the United States and 300 internationally for the Infinity Vision program.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Sam Altman's iris-scanning, humanity-verifying World project announced at an event in San Francisco on Friday that Tinder users around the globe can now put a digital badge on their profiles signaling to potential suitors that they're a real human, provided they've already stared into one of World's glossy white Orbs and allowed their eyes to be scanned. The announcement follows a pilot project for Tinder verification that World previously conducted in Japan.

[...] In addition to the Tinder global expansion, Tools for Humanity, the company behind World, announced a number of other consumer and enterprise partnerships on Friday at its Lift Off event in San Francisco. The startup says Tinder users who verify with their World ID will receive five free "boosts," typically a paid feature that increases the number of users who see a profile by up to 10 times for 30 minutes. The videoconferencing platform Zoom also says that users can now require other participants to verify their identity with World before joining a call. Docusign, the contract signing software, will allow users to require World's identity verification technology.

Tiago Sada, Tools for Humanity's chief product officer, tells WIRED the company sees major platform partnerships as key to helping World become a mainstream identity-verification technology. Sada said he's especially interested in working with social media companies in the future, and was encouraged to see that Reddit has started testing World as a solution to help users distinguish bots from real people. [...] World is also launching a tool called Concert Kit, which lets artists reserve concert tickets for verified humans, a pitch aimed squarely at the bot-driven scalping problem that critics say has plagued sites like TicketMaster. World will test the feature on the upcoming Bruno Mars World Tour featuring Anderson .Paak, who is scheduled to play a verified-humans-only show under his alias DJ Pee .Wee in San Francisco on Friday night. "The idea that World ID is not just private, but it's one of the most private things you've ever used, that's not obvious," says Sada. "We're just not used to this kind of technology. Many people used to tape their [iPhone's sensor used to enable] Face ID when it came out, then we got used to it."

Allbirds made a surprise announcement this morning: it's pivoting from sustainable shoes to AI compute infrastructure, rebranding as NewBird AI after selling its brand assets and closing its U.S. full-price stores. The move sent shares soaring more than 700%. CNBC reports: The move boosted shares of the miniscule market cap company -- it was valued at about $21 million at Tuesday's close -- by more than 700%. The shares, which were under $3 a day ago, jumped to above $17. [...] The new company, which expects to be called NewBird AI, announced a deal to raise up to $50 million in funding, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. Allbirds announced a deal with American Exchange Group to sell its intellectual property and other assets for $39 million last month. "The Company will initially seek to acquire high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and provide access under long-term lease arrangements, meeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service," the company said in the announcement.

Forbes estimates he's worth roughly $110 billion, "placing him ahead of Bill Gates."

And now Changpeng Zhao, the 49-year-old billionaire founder of Binance, "has written a memoir..." It arrives with the unmistakable timing of a man determined to tell the world his version of his meteoric crypto rise and fall, and foreshadow his comeback. The book, Freedom of Money: A Memoir of Protecting Users, Resilience, and the Founding of Binance, runs 364 pages, self-published in English and Chinese.... Zhao also recounts Binance's long battle with U.S. regulators, the company's record $4.3 billion settlement for fostering unscrupulous money launderers, his four-month prison sentence in California, where he says he began writing the book, and his recent pardon by President Trump...

In Zhao's telling, the case brought by multiple U.S. agencies was less about what Binance had done than about what it had become... "It didn't make sense to me, or any of my lawyers. Other than the fact that we were the biggest in the industry." The U.S. government alleged something more specific: that Binance failed to implement programs to prevent or report suspicious transactions — including those tied to Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades, Al Qaeda, and ISIS — while also processing trades between U.S. users and those in sanctioned jurisdictions like Iran, North Korea, and Syria. In total, regulators alleged the exchange willfully failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions, including those involving terrorist organizations, ransomware attackers, child sexual exploitation material, frauds and scams... The final settlement amount — $4.3 billion, split across the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Office of Foreign Assets Control and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission — was the largest corporate penalty in the history of nearly each agency involved. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said at the time of the announcement: "Binance became the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed."

The prison passages are among the most vivid in the book. Zhao says he was worried about extortion because the media had reported he was the richest person in U.S. prison history, but then realized no one read the WSJ or Bloomberg or recognized him. Zhao also writes about the food, the routines and the specific indignity of confinement, including sharing a cell with a man serving 30 years for killing two people... Writes Zhao of his cellmate, "Soon, I discovered that the most lethal thing about him wasn't his murder conviction, it was his snoring. He snored more loudly than thunder strikes, the sound of which rose even above the constant toilet flushings."
Binance at one point held a roughly 20% stake in Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX and about $580 million in FTT tokens, the article points out. "As FTX neared collapse in late 2022, Zhao writes, Sam Bankman-Fried called to ask for a couple of billion dollars 'nonchalantly, as if he was asking for a bologna sandwich.'

"Some believe that Binance's brief show of interest in acquiring FTX, followed by its abrupt withdrawal from the deal, hastened FTX's spiral into bankruptcy..."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader destinyland for sharing the article.

Anthropic says its annualized revenue run rate has surpassed $30 billion and disclosed plans to secure roughly 3.5 gigawatts of next-generation Google TPU compute starting in 2027. Broadcom will supply the key chips and networking gear for the effort, the company announced. The Register reports: News of the two deals emerged today in a Broadcom regulatory filing that opens with two items of news. One is a "Long Term Agreement for Broadcom to develop and supply custom Tensor Processing Units ("TPUs") for Google's future generations of TPUs." Google and Broadcom have collaborated to produce custom TPUs. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan recently shared his opinion that hyperscalers don't have the skill to create custom accelerators and predicted Broadcom's chip business will therefore win over $100 billion of revenue from AI chips in 2027 alone.

Working on next-gen TPUs for Google will presumably help to make that prediction a reality. So will the second part of Broadcom's announcement: a "Supply Assurance Agreement for Broadcom to supply networking and other components to be used in Google's next-generation AI racks through up to 2031." Broadcom's filing also revealed one user of Google's next-gen TPU will be Anthropic, which starting in 2027, "will access through Broadcom approximately 3.5 gigawatts as part of the multiple gigawatts of next generation TPU-based AI compute capacity committed by Anthropic."

The Internet Bug Bounty program "has been paused for new submissions," they announced last week.

Running since 2012, the program is funded by "a number of leading software companies," reports InfoWorld, "and has awarded more than $1.5m to researchers who have reported bugs " Up to now, 80% of its payouts have been for discoveries of new flaws, and 20% to support remediation efforts. But as artificial intelligence makes it easier to find bugs, that balance needs to change, HackerOne said in a statement. "AI-assisted research is expanding vulnerability discovery across the ecosystem, increasing both coverage and speed. The balance between findings and remediation capacity in open source has substantively shifted," said HackerOne.

Among the first programs to be affected is the Node.js project, a server-side JavaScript platform for web applications known for its extensive ecosystem. While the project team will continue to accept and triage bug reports through HackerOne, without funding from the Internet Bug Bounty program it will no longer pay out rewards, according to an announcement on its website...

[J]ust last month, Google also put a halt to AI-generated submissions provided to its Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program.
The Internet Bug Bounty stressed that "We have a responsibility to the community to ensure this program effectively accomplishes its ambitious dual purpose: discovery and remediation. Accordingly, we are pausing submissions while we consider the structure and incentives needed to further these goals..."

"We remain committed to strengthening open source security. Working with project maintainers and researchers, we're actively evaluating solutions to better align incentives with open source ecosystem realities and ensure vulnerability discoveries translate into durable remediation outcomes."

Anthropic's making a big and sudden change — and connecting its Claude AI to third-party agentic tools "is about to get a lot more expensive," writes the Verge: Beginning April 4th at 3PM ET, users will "no longer be able to use your Claude subscription limits for third-party harnesses including OpenClaw," according to an email sent to users on Friday evening. Instead, if users want to use OpenClaw with Claude, they'll have to use a "pay-as-you-go option" that will be billed separate from their Claude subscription.
Anthropic's announcement added these extra usage bundles are "now available at a discount." Users can also try Anthropic's API, notes VentureBeat, "which charges for every token of usage rather than allowing for open-ended usage up to certain limits, as the Pro and Max plans have allowed so far. " The technical reality, according to Anthropic, is that its first-party tools like Claude Code, its AI vibe coding harness, and Claude Cowork, its business app interfacing and control tool, are built to maximize "prompt cache hit rates" — reusing previously processed text to save on compute. Third-party harnesses like OpenClaw often bypass these efficiencies... [Claude Code creator Boris Cherny explained on X that "I did put up a few PRs to improve prompt cache hit rate for OpenClaw in particular, which should help for folks using it with Claude via API/overages."] Growth marketer Aakash Gupta observed on X that the "all-you-can-eat buffet just closed," noting that a single OpenClaw agent running for one day could burn $1,000 to $5,000 in API costs. "Anthropic was eating that difference on every user who routed through a third-party harness," Gupta wrote. "That's the pace of a company watching its margin evaporate in real time."

However, Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw who was recently hired by OpenAI, took a more skeptical view of the "capacity" argument."Funny how timings match up," Steinberger posted on X. "First they copy some popular features into their closed harness, then they lock out open source." Indeed, Anthropic recently added some of the same capabilities that helped OpenClaw catch-on — such as the ability to message agents through external services like Discord and Telegram — to Claude Code...

User @ashen_one, founder of Telaga Charity, voiced a concern likely shared by other small-scale builders: "If I switch both [OpenClaw instances] to an API key or the extra usage you're recommending here, it's going to be far too expensive to make it worth using. I'll probably have to switch over to a different model at this point."

"I know it sucks," Cherny replied. "Fundamentally engineering is about tradeoffs, and one of the things we do to serve a lot of customers is optimize the way subscriptions work to serve as many people as possible with the best mode..." OpenAI appears to be positioning itself as a more "harness-friendly" alternative, potentially using this moment as a customer acquisition channel for disgruntled Claude power users.

By restricting subscription limits to their own "closed harness," Anthropic is asserting control over the UI/UX layer. This allows them to collect telemetry and manage rate limits more granularly, but it risks alienating the power-user community that built the "agentic" ecosystem in the first place. Anthropic's decision is a cold calculation of margins versus growth. As Cherny noted, "Capacity is a resource we manage thoughtfully." In the 2026 AI landscape, the era of subsidized, unlimited compute for third-party automation is over. For the average user on Claude.ai, the experience remains unchanged; for the power users running autonomous offices, the bell has tolled.

OpenAI is acquiring tech news podcast TBPN, a fast-growing daily show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays. OpenAI says TBPN will keep its editorial independence, even though the acquisition is widely viewed as part of a broader effort to influence public discourse around AI. CNBC reports: In the announcement, OpenAI CEO of AGI Deployment Fidji Simo wrote that their mission of bringing artificial general intelligence comes with a responsibility to have a space for "constructive conversation about the changes AI creates." Altman has appeared on TBPN multiple times and is a frequent presence across media and podcasts, even hitting NBC's "Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in December.

The announcement says TBPN will maintain editorial independence and continue to choose its own guests. "TBPN is my favorite tech show. We want them to keep that going and for them to do what they do so well," Altman wrote in a post on X. "I don't expect them to go any easier on us, am sure I'll do my part to help enable that with occasional stupid decisions." OpenAI did not disclose the terms of the deal but said TBPN will be housed within its strategy organization. "While we've been critical of the industry at times, after getting to know Sam and the OpenAI team, what stood out most was their openness to feedback and commitment to getting this right," wrote Hays in a statement. "Moving from commentary to real impact in how this technology is distributed and understood globally is incredibly important to us."

Just six days ago — and 30 minutes after a Disney-OpenAI meeting about a project with Sora — Disney's team was "blindsided" with the news Sora was being discontinued, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, describing OpenAI's move as "a big rug-pull."

Even some Sora employees were surprised by the cancellation. It was just 14 weeks ago Disney announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI's AI-powered video generation tool — plus a three-year licensing deal. But that deal "never closed," Reuters adds, citing two other people familiar with the matter, "and no money changed hands." (Although the two sides are still "discussing if there is another way they can partner or invest with one another, one of the people familiar with the matter said.")

But Variety wonders if the end of the Sora deal is "a blessing in disguise" for Disney: Before Disney's officially sanctioned AI-generated versions of Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, Baby Yoda, Deadpool and more debuted in OpenAI's Sora, the AI company abruptly pulled the plug on the video app...

[M]any aficionados of Disney's franchises were not, in fact, excited about what Sora's video generator might do to the likes of the Avengers superheroes or the characters from Frozen or Moana. And despite [departed Disney CEO Bob] Iger's bullishness on the Sora deal, other Disney execs were said to be concerned that going into business with OpenAI would expose the Magic Kingdom's crown jewels to the risk of being turned into so much AI slop, according to industry sources. Hollywood unions — for which AI adoption has been a hot-button issue — weren't thrilled about the Disney-Sora deal either. "Disney's announcement with OpenAI appears to sanction its theft of our work and cedes the value of what we create to a tech company that has built its business off our backs," the Writers Guild of America said in December... [S]ources say, Disney was encountering roadblocks in getting the OK from voice actors for the Sora pact...

At least publicly, Disney says it is still looking at ways it can tap into the AI ecosystem. The company, in a statement Tuesday, said, "we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators." But at this point, Disney may decide that "meeting fans where they are" means keeping its beloved and world-famous characters away from the AI machinery.
Or, as Gizmodo puts it, "Disney Says It Will Find Ways to Peddle Slop Elsewhere After Pulling Out of OpenAI Deal."

But Deadline sees the deal's collapses as a lost opportunity: The OpenAI partnership was a template on which to build, potentially allowing for other deals that end the exploitation of human creativity by unscrupulous AI models. It was also the kind of partnership that was palatable for the Human Artistry Campaign and Creators Coalition on AI, lobby groups that have been critical of tech business models and command support from A-listers including Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Dr. Moiya McTier, an advisor to the Human Artistry Campaign, puts it this way: Part of the problem is getting "artsy people and the techie people to talk." OpenAI sinking Sora will not make these discussions easier. It's a move that starkly exposes Hollywood's vulnerability to the capriciousness of big tech.

"IBM says its quantum computer can now simulate real magnetic materials and match actual lab experiment results," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, "which is something people have been waiting years to see." Instead of just theoretical output, the system reproduced neutron scattering data from a known material, meaning it lines up with real world physics. It still relies on a mix of quantum and classical computing and this is a narrow use case for now, but it is one of the first times quantum hardware has produced results that scientists can directly validate against experiments, which makes it a lot more interesting than the usual hype.
Classical computers "are not great at modeling quantum systems," according to this article at Nerds.xyz. "The math gets messy fast, and scientists end up relying on approximations... Quantum computers are supposed to solve that problem..." If this direction continues, it could start to matter in areas like superconductors, battery tech, and even drug development. Those are the kinds of problems where better simulations can actually lead to better outcomes, not just nicer charts in a research paper.
"I am extremely excited about what this means for science," said study co-author Allen Scheie from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In an announcement from IBM, Scheie calls this "the most impressive match I've seen between experimental data and qubit simulation, and it definitely raises the bar for what can be expected from quantum computers."

CERN has confirmed it will host an expanded version of Open Research Europe, the EU-backed fee-free open access publishing platform that works to "keep knowledge in public hands." Research Professional News reports: A little over a year ago, 10 European research organizations announced that they would add their support to Open Research Europe, to broaden eligibility beyond only those researchers funded by the EU research program. Earlier this year, RPN reported that this group had expanded further and that Cern was set to host the broadened version of ORE, currently provided by the publisher F1000.

On March 26, Cern itself finally announced the news, saying it will "provide the technical and operational infrastructure" for the broader version. It said this will build on its "longstanding experience in developing and maintaining open science infrastructures and community-governed services." [...] In its own announcement, the Commission said ORE will have a budget of 17 million euros for 2026-31, with the EU providing 10 million euros.

Since it launched five years ago, ORE has published more than 1,200 articles. Cern said the platform is "expected to support a growing number of research outputs each year." Last month, experts told RPN they thought uptake of the increased eligibility will depend on how the newly participating national organizations engage with their communities. Eleven members of Science Europe, a group of major research funding and performing organizations, are part of the expansion.

Reddit is rolling out human-verification checks for accounts that show signs of bot-like behavior, while also labeling approved automated accounts that provide useful services. The social media company stressed that these checks will only happen if something appears "fishy," and that it is "not conducting sitewide human verification." TechCrunch reports: To identify potential bots, Reddit is using specialized tooling that looks at account-level signals and other factors -- like how quickly the account is attempting to write or post content. Using AI to write posts or comments, however, is not against its policies (though community moderators may set their own rules).

To verify an account is human, Reddit will leverage third-party tools like passkeys from Apple, Google, YubiKey, and other third-party biometric services, like Face ID or even Sam Altman's World ID -- or, in some countries, the use of government IDs. Reddit notes this last category may be required in some countries like the U.K. and Australia and some U.S. states, because of local regulations on age verification, but it's not the company's preferred method. "If we need to verify an account is human, we'll do it in a privacy-first way," Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman wrote in the announcement Wednesday. "Our aim is to confirm there is a person behind the account, not who that person is. The goal is to increase transparency of what is what on Reddit while preserving the anonymity that makes Reddit unique. You shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Stephen Colbert already has a new job lined up for when he ends his 11-year run as host of "The Late Show" in May -- the comedian and well-known J.R.R. Tolkien superfan announced he will co-write and develop a new film in the blockbuster "Lord of the Rings" franchise. Colbert joined "LOTR" director Peter Jackson to reveal the news in a video announcement.

"I'm pretty happy about it. You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me," the late-night host told Jackson, who led the Oscar-winning team behind the nearly $6 billion original "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" trilogies. [...] Colbert said the next installment will be based on parts of Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring" book that didn't make it into the original movies. "The thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in (The Fellowship of the Ring) that y'all never developed into the first movie back in the day ... and I thought, 'Oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story.'" he said.

Colbert said he discussed the idea with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, to work out the framing of the story. "It took me a few years to scrape my courage into a pile and give you a call, but about two years ago, I did. You liked it enough to talk to me about it," Colbert told Jackson. Colbert said he, McGee and Jackson have been working alongside screenwriter Philippa Boyens on the development of the story. "I could not be happier to say that they loved it, and so that's what we're going to be working on," Colbert said. Colbert's LOTR movie, tentatively titled "Shadow of the Past," will be the second of two new upcoming films in the franchise from Warner Bros. Discovery. The first of which is called "The Hunt for Gollum" due to be released in 2027.

Epic Games is cutting more than 1,000 jobs as usage of its flagship title, Fortnite, falls. "The layoffs aren't related to AI," CEO Tim Sweeney noted. Reuters reports: The cuts, along with more than $500 million in savings from lower contracting and marketing spending and unfilled roles would put the company in "a more stable place," Sweeney said in a note to employees. [...]

"We've had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic," Sweeney said, adding "market conditions today are the most extreme" since the early days of the company founded in 1991.

The move marks Epic's second major round of layoffs in three years. In September 2023, the company cut about 830 jobs, or roughly 16% of its workforce. It was not immediately clear what percentage of staff would be impacted by Tuesday's announcement.

Last week, hackers launched a cyberattack on an Iowa company called Intoxalock that left some drivers unable to start their court-mandated breathalyzer-equipped cars. Wired reports: Intoxalock, an automotive breathalyzer maker that says it's used daily by 150,000 drivers across the U.S., last week reported that it had been the target of a cyberattack, resulting in its "systems currently experiencing downtime," according to an announcement posted to its website. Meanwhile, drivers that use the breathalyzers have reported being stranded due to the devices' inability to connect to the company's services. "Our vehicles are giant paperweights right now through no fault of ours," one wrote on Reddit. "I'm being held accountable at work and feel completely helpless."

The lockouts appear to be the result of Intoxalock's breathalyzers needing periodic calibrations that require a connection to the company's servers. Drivers who are due for a calibration and can't perform one due to the company's downtime have been stuck, though the company now states on its website that it's offering 10-day extensions on those calibrations due to its cybersecurity disruption, as well as towing services in some cases. In the meantime, Intoxalock hasn't explained what sort of cyberattack it's facing or whether hackers have obtained any of the company's user data.

Apple is reportedly preparing to add search ads to Apple Maps, "and it could start to roll out to users by the summer," reports AppleInsider, citing sources from Bloomberg (paywalled). From the report: Apple will make an announcement as soon as March. This will bring ads to search queries within the navigation app, which will operate similar to Google's advertising system. Retailers and brands will be able to bid for ad spots located against search queries for specific terms, such as types of food or services. The winning bid will be able to show an ad at the top of the results, pointing to a related location for that business. Apple also announced in January that it would add more ads within the App Store, starting March in the UK and Japan.

A new bill proposed in California "goes after big tech companies" writes Semafor. Supported by Y Combinator, Cory Doctorow , and the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future, it's called the "BASED" act — an acronym which stands for "Blocking Anticompetitive Self-preferencing by Entrenched Dominant platforms."

As announced by San Francisco state representative Scott Wiener, the bill "will restore competition to the digital marketplace by prohibiting any digital platform with a market capitalization greater than $1 trillion and serving 100 million or more monthly users in the U.S., from favoring their own products and services on the platforms they operate."

More from Scott Wiener;s announcement: For years, giant digital platforms like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta have used their immense power to promote their own products and services while stifling competitors — a practice also known as self-preferencing. The result has been higher prices, diminished service, and fewer options for consumers, and less innovation across the technology ecosystem.

Self-preferencing also locks startups and mid-sized companies out of the online marketplace unless they play by rules set by their competitors. As a new generation of AI-powered startups seeks to enter the marketplace, their success — and public access to the innovations they produce — depends on their ability to compete on an even playing field.

"Anticompetitive behavior is everywhere on the internet," said Senator Wiener, "from rigged search results, to manipulative nudges boosting the 'house' product, to anti-discount policies that raise prices, to the dreaded green bubble that 'breaks' the group chat. When the world's largest digital platforms rig the game to favor their own products and services, we all lose. By prohibiting these anticompetitive practices, the BASED Act will protect competition online, empower consumers and startups, and promote innovations to improve all our lives."
The announcement includes a quote from Teri Olle, VP of the nonprofit Economic Security California Action, saying the act would "safeguard merit-based market competition. This legislation stands for a simple principle: owning the stadium doesn't mean that you get to rig the game." Some conduct prohibited by the proposed bill includes

• Manipulating the order of search results to favor a provider's products or services, irrespective of a merit-based process,

• Using non-public data generated by third-party sellers — including sales volumes, pricing, and customer behavior — to develop competing products that are subsequently boosted above the third-party sellers' product...

And the announcement also notes that "under the terms of the bill, providers could not prevent consumers from obtaining a portable copy of their own data or restrict voluntary data sharing (by consumers) with third parties."

Read on for reactions from DuckDuckGo, Proton, Yelp, Y Combinator, and Cory Doctorow.