The European Commission has approved Apple's commitments to open its "tap to pay" iPhone payment system to rivals, avoiding a potentially hefty fine. The Guardian reports: Regulators had accused Apple in 2022 of abusing its dominant position by limiting access to its mobile payment technology. Apple responded by proposing in January to allow third-party mobile wallet and payment service providers access to the contactless payment function in its iOS operating system. After Apple tweaked its proposals following testing and feedback, the commission said those "final commitments" would address its competition concerns. "Today's commitments end our Apple Pay investigation," Margrethe Vestager, the commission's executive vice-president for competition policy, told a press briefing in Brussels. "The commitments bring important changes to how Apple operates in Europe to the benefit of competitors and customers." Apple said in a prepared statement that it is "providing developers in the European Economic Area with an option to enable NFC [near-field communication] contactless payments and contactless transactions" for uses like car keys, corporate badges, hotel keys and concert tickets. [...] Apple must open up its payment system in the EU's 27 countries plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein by July 25. "As of this date, developers will be able to offer a mobile wallet on the iPhone with the same 'tap-and-go' experience that so far has been reserved for Apple Pay," Vestager said. The changes will remain in force for a decade and will be monitored by a trustee. Breaches of EU competition law can draw fines worth up to 10% of a company's annual global revenue, which in Apple's case could have amounted to tens of billions of euros.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Taiwan's TSMC scaled a record high on Thursday after posting strong second-quarter revenue on booming demand for AI applications, cementing its position as Asia's most valuable company. TSMC also topped a trillion dollar market value this week. The AI frenzy has sparked a rally in chipmaker stocks across the globe. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, whose customers include AI poster child Nvidia, has especially benefited from the soaring demand for AI-capable chips. Foreign investors have poured $4.8 billion so far this year into Taiwan's stock market, which is dominated by TSMC. Asian funds, however, according to HSBC, still remain underweight on Taiwan, suggesting there could be room for further inflow. Shares of TSMC, whose customers also include Apple, have jumped nearly 80% this year, widely outperforming the benchmark Taiwan SE Weighted Index, which is up 35%. On Thursday, TSMC's Taipei-listed shares rose more than 2% to a record T$1,080, taking the company's market value to T$28 trillion ($861 billion) and making it Asia's most valuable publicly listed company.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The German government and mobile phone carriers have agreed in principle on steps to phase components by Chinese technology companies out of the nation's 5G wireless network over the next five years, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. Newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung as well as broadcasters NDR and WDR earlier jointly reported the news, saying the agreement gives network operators Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, and Telefonica Deutschland more time to replace critical parts. Under the preliminary agreement driven by security considerations, operators will initially rid the country's core network of 5G data centers of technology made by companies such as Huawei and ZTE in 2026, said the sources, adding that a final pact has yet to be signed. In a second phase, the role of Chinese makers' parts for antennas, transmission lines and towers should be all but eliminated by 2029, they added. "The government is acting on the basis of the national security strategy and China strategy to reduce possible security risks and dependencies," said a spokesperson for Germany's interior ministry.

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"Nature recently published an open-access article (not paywalled) that studies the lifecycle of lithium-ion batteries once they are manufactured," writes Slashdot reader NoWayNoShapeNoForm. "The study is a 'cradle-to-grave' look at these batteries and certain chemicals that they contain. The University researchers that authored the study found that the electrolytes and polymers inside lithium-ion batteries contain a class of PFAS known as bis-FASI chemicals. PFAS chemicals are internationally recognized pollutants, yet they are found in consumer and industrial processes, such as non-stick coatings, surfactants, and film-forming foams. PFAS chemicals have been found in windmill coatings, semiconductors, solar collectors, and photovoltaic cells." Phys.org reports: Texas Tech University's Jennifer Guelfo was part of a research team that found the use of a novel sub-class of per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) in lithium ion batteries is a growing source of pollution in air and water. Testing by the research team further found these PFAS, called bis-perfluoroalkyl sulfonimides (bis-FASIs), demonstrate environmental persistence and ecotoxicity comparable to older notorious compounds like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The researchers sampled air, water, snow, soil and sediment near manufacturing plants in Minnesota, Kentucky, Belgium and France. The bis-FASI concentrations in these samples were commonly at very high levels. Data also suggested air emissions of bis-FASIs may facilitate long-range transport, meaning areas far from manufacturing sites may be affected as well. Analysis of several municipal landfills in the southeastern U.S. indicated these compounds can also enter the environment through disposal of products, including lithium ion batteries. Toxicity testing demonstrated concentrations of bis-FASIs similar to those found at the sampling sites can change behavior and fundamental energy metabolic processes of aquatic organisms. Bis-FASI toxicity has not yet been studied in humans, though other, more well-studied PFAS are linked to cancer, infertility and other serious health harms. Treatability testing showed bis-FASIs did not break down during oxidation, which has also been observed for other PFAS. However, data showed concentrations of bis-FASIs in water could be reduced using granular activated carbon and ion exchange, methods already used to remove PFAS from drinking water. "Our results reveal a dilemma associated with manufacturing, disposal, and recycling of clean energy infrastructure," said Guelfo, an associate professor of environmental engineering in the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering. "Slashing carbon dioxide emissions with innovations like electric cars is critical, but it shouldn't come with the side effect of increasing PFAS pollution. We need to facilitate technologies, manufacturing controls and recycling solutions that can fight the climate crisis without releasing highly recalcitrant pollutants."

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A recent study has exposed a method of artificially inflating citation counts through "sneaked references," which are extra citations included in metadata but not in the actual text of articles. This manipulation, uncovered in journals by Technoscience Academy, distorts citation metrics that are critical for research funding and academic promotions. The Conversation reports: The investigation began when Guillaume Cabanac, a professor at the University of Toulouse, wrote a post on PubPeer, a website dedicated to post-publication peer review, in which scientists discuss and analyze publications. In the post, he detailed how he had noticed an inconsistency: a Hindawi journal article that he suspected was fraudulent because it contained awkward phrases had far more citations than downloads, which is very unusual. The post caught the attention of several sleuths who are now the authors of the JASIST article. We used a scientific search engine to look for articles citing the initial article. Google Scholar found none, but Crossref and Dimensions did find references. The difference? Google Scholar is likely to mostly rely on the article's main text to extract the references appearing in the bibliography section, whereas Crossref and Dimensions use metadata provided by publishers. To understand the extent of the manipulation, we examined three scientific journals that were published by the Technoscience Academy, the publisher responsible for the articles that contained questionable citations. [...] In the journals published by Technoscience Academy, at least 9% of recorded references were "sneaked references." These additional references were only in the metadata, distorting citation counts and giving certain authors an unfair advantage. Some legitimate references were also lost, meaning they were not present in the metadata. In addition, when analyzing the sneaked references, we found that they highly benefited some researchers. For example, a single researcher who was associated with Technoscience Academy benefited from more than 3,000 additional illegitimate citations. Some journals from the same publisher benefited from a couple hundred additional sneaked citations. We wanted our results to be externally validated, so we posted our study as a preprint, informed both Crossref and Dimensions of our findings and gave them a link to the preprinted investigation. Dimensions acknowledged the illegitimate citations and confirmed that their database reflects Crossref's data. Crossref also confirmed the extra references in Retraction Watch and highlighted that this was the first time that it had been notified of such a problem in its database. The publisher, based on Crossref's investigation, has taken action to fix the problem. To combat this practice of "sneaked references," the authors suggest several measures: rigorous verification of metadata by publishers and agencies like Crossref, independent audits to ensure data reliability, and increased transparency in managing references and citations.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Fast-food chain Whataburger's app has gone viral in the wake of Hurricane Beryl, which left around 1.8 million utility customers in Houston, Texas without power. Hundreds of thousands of those people may remain without power for days as Houston anticipates a heat wave, with temperatures climbing into the mid-90s. Amid frustrations with the local utility company CenterPoint Energy, which doesn't offer an app, some Houstonians got creative with their attempts to track the power outages. They turned to the Whataburger app instead. Whataburger is a San Antonio-based fast-food chain with 127 stores in the Houston area, according to Newsweek. On the Whataburger app, users can see a map of Whataburger locations, with an orange logo indicating a store is open, and a grey logo meaning it's closed. Since CenterPoint Energy doesn't have an online map of outages, an X user with the screen name BBQBryan found that the map of which Whataburger stores are open could be a useful tool for seeing where there's power. This viral moment seems to have boosted Whataburger's download numbers. In the iOS App Store, Whataburger is currently ranked 16th in the food and drink category. Just three weeks ago, it was ranked 40th. "The Whataburger app works as a power outage tracker, handy since the electric company doesn't show a map," BBQBryan wrote in a post that now has over 22,000 likes and 6.9 million impressions. "Well there's a use for our app we didn't think of!" the Whataburger X account replied. "We hope you and everyone else are okay!"

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Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from TIME Magazine: On an evening in December 2023, 43-year-old small business owner Sarah Rosenkranz collapsed in her home in Granbury, Texas and was rushed to the emergency room. Her heart pounded 200 beats per minute; her blood pressure spiked into hypertensive crisis; her skull throbbed. "It felt like my head was in a pressure vise being crushed," she says. "That pain was worse than childbirth." Rosenkranz's migraine lasted for five days. Doctors gave her several rounds of IV medication and painkiller shots, but nothing seemed to knock down the pain, she says. This was odd, especially because local doctors were similarly vexed when Indigo, Rosenkranz's 5-year-old daughter, was taken to urgent care earlier that year, screaming that she felt a "red beam behind her eardrums." It didn't occur to Sarah that these symptoms could be linked. But in January 2024, she walked into a town hall in Granbury and found a room full of people worn thin from strange, debilitating illnesses. A mother said her 8-year-old daughter was losing her hearing and fluids were leaking from her ears. Several women said they experienced fainting spells, including while driving on the highway. Others said they were wracked by debilitating vertigo and nausea, waking up in the middle of the night mid-vomit. None of them knew what, exactly, was causing these symptoms. But they all shared a singular grievance: a dull aural hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep. The hum, local law enforcement had learned, was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area -- and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis. Over the course of several months in 2024, TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks. At least 10 people went to urgent care or the emergency room with these symptoms. The development of large-scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new, and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one. But there is an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage. And one local doctor -- ears, nose, and throat specialist Salim Bhaloo -- says he sees patients with symptoms potentially stemming from the Bitcoin mine's noise on an almost weekly basis. "I'm sure it increases their cortisol and sugar levels, so you're getting headaches, vertigo, and it snowballs from there," Bhaloo says. "This thing is definitely causing a tremendous amount of stress. Everyone is just miserable about it." "By the end of 2024, we intend to have replaced the majority of air-cooled containers with immersion cooling, with no expansion required," said a representative for Marathon Digital Holdings, the company that owns the mine. "Initial sound readings on immersion containers indicate favorable results in sound reduction and compliance with all relevant state noise ordinances." They did not answer questions about the health impacts their mining site was causing. "We're living in a nightmare," said Rosenkranz. She clocked the hum at 72 decibels in Indigo's bedroom in the dead of night. "Indigo's room directly faces the mine, which sits about a mile and a half away," notes TIME. She had to be pulled from her school after she developed so many ear infections from the sound. The report also said a resident's dog "started going bald and developed debilitating anxiety shortly after the Bitcoin mine began operating four blocks away." TIME added: "Directly next door, Tom Weeks' dog Jack Rabbit Slim started shaking and hyperventilating uncontrollably for hours on end; a vet placed him on the seizure medication Gabapentin. Rosenkranz's chickens stopped laying eggs for months. And Jerry and Patricia Campbell's centuries-old oak tree, which had served as the family's hub and protector for generations of backyard family reunions and even a wedding, died suddenly three months ago."

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"For 55 years, San Diego Comic-Con has been offering fans and aficionados of all things comic and movie related a place to meet, gawk, show off, and in general bask in their geekery," writes longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. "That may be coming to an end. Due to hotels' price gouging the cost of rooms, Comic-Con may be moving." Forbes reports: "We would never want to leave, but if push came to shove and it became untenable for us, it's something that we would certainly have to look into," said David Glanzer, Chief Communication and Strategy Officer for Comic-Con International, the nonprofit group that puts on SDCC and WonderCon, in a phone interview Monday. "As event planners, we're always contacted by different cities and it would be reckless for us to not at least acknowledge that." Asked if the show was locked in to San Diego for 2025, Glanzer responded, "2025 is when our contract expires, unless something happens before the convention this year. And if so, I imagine we would make an announcement during the show." The sticking point for the Convention is the behavior of some of the hotels in the area. For decades, SDCC has negotiated block rates for rooms that they offer to out-of-town attendees, exhibitors, professionals and guests at a discount. Typically, the more deluxe hotels within walking distance of the convention center run $275-335/night, and ones further out can be had for as low as $215 through the Con's hotel site for registered attendees. Competition for rooms in the desirable hotels has become so intense that the day the reservations open has become known as "Hotelocapylse." Recently, Glanzer said some hotels have been making fewer and fewer rooms available in the blocks, knowing they can charge top dollar on the open market. Rates for non-block rooms during Comic-Con weekend at some of the bigger hotels can go for two or three times the ordinary high season rate, and even smaller hotels and Airbnbs in the area charge significantly more to take advantage of the peak demand. Now that opportunistic behavior is threatening to kill the golden goose that brings hundreds of thousands of visitors and hundreds of millions of dollars into the city in a single week. "If attendees opt not to come because they can't afford to stay at a hotel here, they'll go to another convention," said Glanzer. "And if that starts to happen, the studios won't be able to make as big an impact, and it becomes a downward spiral that no one wants to go down. If we can't accommodate the people who want to attend the show then we're in a pretty bad situation." "I think there is a belief that because we opened the Comic-Con Museum here [in San Diego] and we have always had the show here, that we are anchored to San Diego and could never leave. Well, we don't want to leave, but we've run conventions in Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Jose, and they were very successful. I think there are a lot of cities that would want to accommodate us. In my experience with other science fiction cons I have attended, cities would bid for the convention."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: The Girls in Tech nonprofit women's tech community is closing its doors after 17 years, according to a newsletter from founder Adriana Gascoigne. Gascoigne said the decision was made with "sadness and devastation" and was not made lightly. "It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that Girls in Tech will be closing its doors. This decision was not made lightly, and the sadness and devastation we feel cannot be overstated," Gascoigne wrote. "For 17 incredible years, we have offered a welcoming community based on empowerment, support, and inspiration for women in the tech industry. Together, we have made a profound impact, helping women reach for the stars and excel in their careers, while working tirelessly to eliminate the gender gap in tech worldwide." The group reached more than 250,000 individuals across 35 chapters in 30 countries on six continents. It was founded in Silicon Valley, but Gascoigne relocated the group to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2022 during the pandemic. I interviewed her numerous times about the group's mission and goals, and how it rose to greater relevance in fighting the "toxic culture" of Silicon Valley. The group's programs included a mentorship program, hackathons, coding bootcamps, the Girls in Tech Conference, a startup challenge, global classroom, podcast, blog, jobs board, and shop. The group organized thousands of in-person and virtual events, producing educational and engaging content. Without explanation, Gascoigne said in closing, "Though Girls in Tech is closing its doors, the movement we started must and will continue. I encourage each of you to carry on the fight to eliminate the gender gap in tech. Our mission will live on in other forms, driven by the same passion and commitment that have always defined us. I will miss you all deeply. Thank you for being a part of this incredible journey."

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A bipartisan group of senators reached a new agreement on legislation that would ban members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children, as well as the president and vice president, from purchasing and selling stocks while in office. According to CNBC, it would also give lawmakers 90 days to sell their stocks. From the report: The proposal is the latest chapter in a yearslong saga in Congress to pass regulations that limit lawmakers' ability to buy and sell stocks, and the first one to get formal consideration by a Senate committee -- in this case the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee on July 24. Ethics experts say that legislators' access to the kind of information they receive gives them the potential of having an unfair advantage to the investing public. Sens. Hawley, Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., negotiated and announced the new details. If passed, the bill would also prohibit lawmakers' spouses and dependent children from trading stocks, beginning March 2027. Also starting that year, the U.S. president, vice president and all members of Congress would have to divest from any covered investments. The penalty for violating the divestment mandate, as proposed by the senators, would cost a lawmaker the greater amount of either their monthly salary, or 10% of the value of each covered asset in violation.

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AMD shares are up following the announcement that it plans to acquire Finnish artificial intelligence company Silo AI for about $665 million. Reuters reports: Acquiring Silo AI will help AMD improve the development and deployment of AMD-powered AI models and help potential customers build complex AI models with the company's chips, AMD said. Silo AI will also strengthen AMD's software development capabilities. While the deal will not impact AMD's financial performance, it "unlocks a significant amount of business moving forward," AMD Senior Vice President of AI, Vamsi Boppana said in an interview. AMD declined to discuss how much business the acquisition would generate over time. Helsinki, Finland-based Silo AI specializes in end-to-end AI-driven solutions that help customers integrate the tech into their products and services. With operations in Europe and North America, the startup counts companies, including Philips, Rolls-Royce, and Unilever, among its customers. Silo AI's CEO and co-founder Peter Sarlin will continue to lead the unit as part of the AMD Artificial Intelligence Group, AMD said. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2024.

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Amazon Web Services is the latest entrant to the generative AI game with the announcement of App Studio, a groundbreaking tool capable of building complex software applications from simple written prompts. TechCrunch's Ron Miller reports: "App Studio is for technical folks who have technical expertise but are not professional developers, and we're enabling them to build enterprise-grade apps," Sriram Devanathan, GM of Amazon Q Apps and AWS App Studio, told TechCrunch. Amazon defines enterprise apps as having multiple UI pages with the ability to pull from multiple data sources, perform complex operations like joins and filters, and embed business logic in them. It is aimed at IT professionals, data engineers and enterprise architects, even product managers who might lack coding skills but have the requisite company knowledge to understand what kinds of internal software applications they might need. The company is hoping to enable these employees to build applications by describing the application they need and the data sources they wish to use. Examples of the types of applications include an inventory-tracking system or claims approval process. The user starts by entering the name of an application, calling the data sources and then describing the application they want to build. The system comes with some sample prompts to help, but users can enter an ad hoc description if they wish. It then builds a list of requirements for the application and what it will do, based on the description. The user can refine these requirements by interacting with the generative AI. In that way, it's not unlike a lot of no-code tools that preceded it, but Devanathan says it is different. [...] Once the application is complete, it goes through a mini DevOps pipeline where it can be tested before going into production. In terms of identity, security and governance, and other requirements any enterprise would have for applications being deployed, the administrator can link to existing systems when setting up the App Studio. When it gets deployed, AWS handles all of that on the back end for the customer, based on the information entered by the admin.

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At its Galaxy Unpacked event today, Samsung unveiled a slew of new devices ushering in the "Next Frontier of Mobile AI." With "cross-device intelligence," each device has its own set of AI features that Samsung said will be personalized for users, good for humanity, and empowering for creators. Ars Technica's Kevin Purdy reports: Aiming to put its Galaxy AI onto your wrist and fingers, Samsung announced a seventh version of its Galaxy Watch, a rugged and larger Galaxy Watch Ultra, and the first version of a Galaxy Ring. [...] The Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra are strikingly similar to their inspirations: the Apple Watch Ultra and the previous Galaxy Watch, respectively. [...] The Galaxy Z Fold 6 ($1,900) and Z Flip 6 ($1,100) have the kinds of boosts from their prior models you might expect. There's a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip inside. The folding glass on both is supposedly stronger and now rated for IP48, which means dust resistance went from "X" (good luck) to "4" (1 mm and greater particles), which is still unfortunate at these price points, but that's life on the folding edge. The outward-facing screen on the Z Fold 6 got a smidge bigger (6.2 to 6.3 inches), though it has the same inner display. Its cameras are much the same (50 megapixel main, 10 megapixel telephoto, 12 megapixel ultrawide), though the ultrawide claims better low-light performance. The Z Flip 6's most notable upgrade is its 4,000 mAh battery and a vapor cooling chamber inside. The base model gets 12GB of RAM instead of 8GB and 512GB of storage instead of 256GB on the base model. There are other products not mentioned here announced by Samsung today, including its Galaxy Buds3 and Buds3 Pro, which are wireless earbuds that will remind you of certain other very popular wireless earbuds. What Samsung really had to pitch today was how its own Galaxy AI was the connective tissue between all of them. The screens on the Fold and Flip models are ideal for circling things to search them. The cameras can auto-zoom, the notes can be summarized, and translations, in particular, are everywhere. The watches and rings can track your health and suggest ways to make it better in all kinds of ways that merit a lot of disclosure about where all that data is going. Rick Osterloh, Google's devices and services chief, showed up to give a kind of Gemini blessing to Samsung's efforts.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: US officials say they have taken action against an AI-powered information operation run from Russia, including nearly 1,000 accounts pretending to be Americans. The accounts on X were designed to spread pro-Russia stories but were automated "bots" -- not real people. In court documents made public Tuesday the US justice department said the operation was devised by a deputy editor at Kremlin-owned RT, formerly Russia Today. RT runs TV channels in English and several other languages, but appears much more popular on social media than on conventional airwaves. The justice department seized two websites that were used to issue emails associated with the bot accounts, and ordered X to turn over information relating to 968 accounts that investigators say were bots. According to the court documents, artificial intelligence was used to create the accounts, which then spread pro-Russian story lines, particularly about the war in Ukraine. "Today's actions represent a first in disrupting a Russian-sponsored generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm," said FBI Director Christopher Wray. "Russia intended to use this bot farm to disseminate AI-generated foreign disinformation, scaling their work with the assistance of AI to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government," Mr Wray said in a statement. The accounts now appear to have been deleted by X, and screenshots shared by FBI investigators indicated that they had very few followers.

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On Monday, the biggest labor union at Samsung Electronics launched its first strike in the tech giant's 55-year history, vowing to continue indefinitely until its demands for better pay and benefits are met. According to Reuters, "The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), whose roughly 30,000 members make up almost a quarter of the firm's South Korean workforce, said it has decided to continue striking because management has shown no indication of holding talks [...]." From the report: "We haven't spoken to management since we started the strike on Monday," said Lee Hyun-kuk, the union's vice president. The union said it would extend the strike initially planned to last three days through Wednesday. Lee told Reuters that the union found its strike has disrupted production on certain chip lines such as with equipment running more slowly. Samsung previously said the strike has caused no disruption to production. Lee said about 6,500 workers have been participating in the strike and that the union will encourage more members to join. Union officials have disputed reports of low participation, telling Reuters that the five-year-old body did not have enough time to educate members about the labor issues. The union held a training session on Tuesday and will conduct another on Wednesday. Analysts said it would be difficult to verify whether the strike has disrupted production unless the union provides details of wafers and processes. The union said it has revised demands to include a 3.5% increase in base salary and, instead of an extra day's annual leave, a day off to mark the union's founding. Lee said the management previously offered a 3% rise in base salary but the union wants 3.5% to better reflect inflation.

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A US District Court judge in San Francisco has largely dismissed a class-action lawsuit against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI, which challenged the legality of using code samples to train GitHub Copilot. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to establish a claim for restitution or unjust enrichment but allowed the claim for breach of open-source license violations to proceed. InfoWorld reports: The lawsuit, first filed in Nov. 2022, claimed that GitHub's training of the Copilot AI on public GitHub code repositories violated the rights of the "vast number of creators" who posted code under open-source licenses on GitHub. The complaint (PDF) alleged that "Copilot ignores, violates, and removes the Licenses offered by thousands -- possibly millions -- of software developers, thereby accomplishing software piracy on an unprecedented scale." [...] In a decision first announced on June 24, but only unsealed and made public on July 5, California Northern District judge Jon S. Tigar wrote that "In sum, plaintiff's claims do not support the remedy they seek. Plaintiffs have failed to establish, as a matter of law, that restitution for any unjust enrichment is available as a measure of plaintiffs' damages for their breach of contract claims." Judge Tigar went on to state that "court dismisses plaintiffs' section 1202(b) claim, this time with prejudice. The Court declines to dismiss plaintiffs' claim for breach of contract of open-source license violations against all defendants. Finally, the court dismisses plaintiffs' request for monetary relief in the form of unjust enrichment, as well as plaintiffs' request for punitive damages."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Northwest Oregon had never seen anything like it. Over the course of three days in June 2021, Multnomah County -- the state's most populous county, which rests in the swayback along Oregon's northern border -- recorded highs of 108, 112, and 116 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures were so hot that the metal on cable cars melted and the asphalt on roadways buckled. Nearly half the homes in the county lacked cooling systems because of Oregon's typically gentle summers, where average highs top out at 81 degrees. Sixty-nine people perished from heat stroke, most of them in their homes. When scientific studies showed that the extreme temperatures were caused by heat domes, which experts say are influenced by climate change, county officials didn't just chalk it up to a random weather occurrence. They started researching the large fossil fuel companies whose emissions are driving the climate crisis -- including ExxonMobil, Shell, and Chevron -- and sued them (PDF). "This catastrophe was not caused by an act of God," said Jeffrey B. Simon, a lawyer for the county, "but rather by several of the world's largest energy companies playing God with the lives of innocent and vulnerable people by selling as much oil and gas as they could." Now, 11 months after the suit was filed, Multnomah County is preparing to move forward with the case in Oregon state court after a federal judge in June settled (PDF) a monthslong debate over where the suit should be heard. About three dozen lawsuits have been filed by states, counties, and cities seeking damages from oil and gas companies for harms caused by climate change. Legal experts said the Oregon case is one of the first focused on public health costs related to high temperatures during a specific occurrence of the "heat dome effect." Most of the other lawsuits seek damages more generally from such ongoing climate-related impacts as sea level rise, increased precipitation, intensifying extreme weather events, and flooding. [...] The Multnomah County lawsuit says that Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and others engaged in a range of improper practices, including negligence, creating a public nuisance, fraud, and deceit. The suit alleges that the companies were aware of the harms of fossil fuels and engaged in a "scheme to rapaciously sell fossil fuel products and deceptively promote them as harmless to the environment, while they knew that carbon pollution emitted by their products into the atmosphere would likely cause deadly extreme heat events like that which devastated Multnomah County." "We know that climate-induced weather events like the 2021 Heat Dome harm the residents of Multnomah County and cause real financial costs to our local government," Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said in a statement. "The Court's decision to hear this lawsuit in State Court validates our assertion that the case should be resolved here -- it's an important win for this community." In the suit, officials in Portland's Multnomah County said that they will ultimately incur costs in excess of $1.5 billion to deal with the effects of the 2021 heat dome. "We allege that this is just like any other kind of public health crisis and mass destruction of property that is caused by corporate wrongdoing," said Simon, partner in the law firm of Simon Greenstone Panatier. "We contend that these companies polluted the atmosphere with carbon from the burning of fossil fuels; that they foresaw that extreme environmental harm would be caused by it; that some of them, we contend, deliberately misled the public about that."

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Eton College, Britain's elite boarding school with alumni that includes Princes William and Harry, as well as George Orwell and a long list of others, is banning incoming students from having smartphones. Instead, the school will provide students with a Nokia "brick" phone, which will only be capable of making calls and sending text messages. CBS News reports: Parents of first-year students at Eton -- where tuition exceeds $60,000 per year -- were informed of the changes in a letter, which said that incoming 13-year-old boarders should have their smart devices taken home after their SIM cards are transferred to offline Nokia phones provided by the school, which can only make calls and send simple text messages. Eton's previous rules on smartphones required first-year students to hand over their devices overnight. "Eton routinely reviews our mobile phone and devices policy to balance the benefits and challenges that technology brings to schools," a spokesperson for the school told CBS News on Tuesday, adding that those joining in Year 9, essentially the equivalent of freshman year in high school for American students, "will receive a 'brick' phone for use outside the school day, as well as a school-issued iPad to support academic study." The spokesperson added that "age-appropriate controls remain in place for other year groups." The ban follows a recent guidance issued by the UK government backing school principals who decide to ban smartphones during the school day. The goal is to help minimize disruption and improve classroom behavior.

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Scharon Harding reports via Wired: In 2019, Nike got closer than ever to its dreams of popularizing self-tying sneakers by releasing the Adapt BB. Using Bluetooth, the sneakers paired to the Adapt app that let users do things like tighten or loosen the shoes' laces and control its LED lights. However, Nike has announced that it's "retiring" the app on August 6 (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), when it will no longer be downloadable from Apple's App Store or the Google Play Store; nor will it be updated. In an announcement recently spotted by The Verge, Nike's brief explanation for discontinuing the app is that Nike "is no longer creating new versions of Adapt shoes." The company started informing owners about the app's retirement about four months ago. Those who already bought the shoes can still use the app after August 6, but it's expected that iOS or Android updates will eventually make the app unusable. Also, those who get a new device won't be able to download Adapt after August 6. Without the app, wearers are unable to change the color of the sneaker's LED lights. The lights will either maintain the last color scheme selected via the app or, per Nike, "if you didn't install the app, light will be the default color." While owners will still be able to use on-shoe buttons to turn the shoes on or off, check its battery, adjust the lace's tightness, and save fit settings, the ability to change lighting and control the shoes via mobile phone were big selling points of the $350 kicks.

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