An anonymous reader shares a report: Buy a pair of wired headphones, and you'd be forgiven for thinking they're just plug and play. Stick them into your phone, and out goes the audio up copper cables into your earholes. Simple as that. Trouble is, that straightforward mechanism has gotten more complicated, and in recent years there has been an influx of budget wired earbuds that, counterintuitively, depend on Bluetooth to function, despite having those copper cables. The problem is largely present in earbuds designed for iPhones. In 2016, Apple removed universal 3.5-mm headphone jacks in its iPhones, which means there are nearly eight years worth of iPhones out in the world -- from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone 14 -- that can connect to headphones only via Bluetooth or Apple's proprietary Lightning ports. (Apple switched to USB-C ports in its iPhones last year after legislation from the European Union put pressure on device companies to standardize connection ports.) Apple used this move to push its wireless AirPods, and it also sells its own wired headphones that connect to its Lightning ports for $19. You can also get an official $9 dongle that adapts the Lightning port to a 3.5-mm output. These work as intended, connecting with the Lightning port to playback audio. But Apple also has strict certification processes called MFi that require any accessories for Apple products to meet certain requirements in order to work with the Lightning port as intended. That means companies have to pay for the privilege of being a genuine Apple accessory. (If you have an unlicensed accessory, you'll probably see an alert pop up every time you plug it in saying, "Accessory may not be supported.") This has led to a steady trickle of knockoff earbuds that have chosen to use roundabout ways of connecting to Apple's proprietary port. Namely, by requiring a Bluetooth connection -- even for wired buds.

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A new article in the Washington Post argues that a phenomenon called "Quiet vacationing" has "joined 'quiet quitting' and 'quiet firing' as the latest (and least poetic) scourge of the modern workplace. "Also known as the hush trip, workcation, hush-cation, or bleisure travel — you get the idea — quiet vacationing refers to workers taking time off, even traveling, without notifying their employers." Taking advantage of work-from-anywhere technology, they are logging in from hotels, beaches and campgrounds, sometimes using virtual backgrounds and VPNs to cover their tracks. Given the difficulty many employers already have trusting remote workers to be productive anywhere outside the office, you can bet they are not keen on the idea of their employees pretending to have their head in the game while their toes are in the sand. But employers also have legitimate legal reasons for keeping tabs on their employees' location when they're on the clock. "Evil HR Lady" Suzanne Lucas, writing in Inc. magazine, recently highlighted the many tax, employment, business-operation and security laws that focus on an employee's location. Workers secretly performing their jobs in other states or countries can trigger compliance headaches for their employers, Lucas notes, giving the hypothetical of an employee seeking workers' compensation after sustaining an injury while on unauthorized travel.... As with declines in birthrates, home purchases and demand for mined diamonds, the quiet-vacationing trend is being attributed primarily, though not exclusively, to millennial workers. But before launching into generational finger-pointing and stereotyping, it's worth taking a look at why they might feel the need to take their PTO on the DL. The U.S. Travel Association in a 2016 report proclaimed millennials to be a generation of "work martyrs," entering the workforce around the time average U.S. vacation usage began declining and mobile technology began enabling round-the-clock attachment to jobs... The work-vacation boundaries most premillennial workers took for granted growing up have gone the way of defined-benefit pensions and good tomatoes. Inadequate paid leave is another driving force. The United States continues to be the only nation among its industrialized economic peers that does not guarantee paid vacation, sick leave or holidays for all workers, leaving such benefits to the discretion of employers. Workers with limited PTO — whether new to the workforce or stuck in lower-paying, low-benefit industries — generally want to keep as much paid leave banked as possible, especially if they may need it for unpredictable emergencies like illness or caretaking. If you can preserve those precious hours by packing your laptop alongside your flip-flops, why wouldn't you? The article also mentions employers who begrudge vacation and employees who fear "becoming a target for future cost-cutting..."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The sound of the 1990s still resonates in the German capital. Like techno music, the fax machine remains on trend. According to the latest figures from Germany's digital industry association, four out of five companies in Europe's largest economy continue to use fax machines and a third do so frequently or very frequently. Much as Germany's reputation for efficiency is regularly undermined by slow internet connections and a reliance on paper and rubber stamps, fax machines are at odds with a world embracing artificial intelligence. But progress is on the horizon in the Bundestag -- the lower house of parliament -- where lawmakers have been instructed by the parliamentary budget committee to ditch their trusty fax machines by the end of June, and rely on email instead for official communication. Torsten Herbst, parliamentary whip of the pro-business Free Democrats, points out one fax machine after the other as he walks through the Bundestag. He says the public sector is particularly fond of faxing and that joining parliament was like going back in time.

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Framework, a company known for its modular laptops, has announced a fourth round of iterative updates and upgrade options for its Framework Laptop 13. The upgrades include motherboards and pre-built laptops featuring new Intel Meteor Lake Core Ultra processors with Intel Arc dedicated GPUs, lower prices for AMD Ryzen 7000 and 13th-gen Intel editions, and a new display with a higher resolution and refresh rate. The Core Ultra boards come with three CPU options, with prices starting at $899 for a pre-built or DIY model. Upgrading from an older Intel Framework board requires an upgrade to DDR5 RAM, and Framework charges $40 for every 8GB of DDR5-5600, which is above market rates. The new 13.5-inch display has a resolution of 2880x1920, a 120 Hz refresh rate, and costs $130 more than the standard display.

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Speaking of Samsung, samleecole shares a report about the contract the South Korean firm requires repair shops to sign: In exchange for selling them repair parts, Samsung requires independent repair shops to give Samsung the name, contact information, phone identifier, and customer complaint details of everyone who gets their phone repaired at these shops, according to a contract obtained by 404 Media. Stunningly, it also requires these nominally independent shops to "immediately disassemble" any phones that customers have brought them that have been previously repaired with aftermarket or third-party parts and to "immediately notify" Samsung that the customer has used third-party parts. "Company shall immediately disassemble all products that are created or assembled out of, comprised of, or that contain any Service Parts not purchased from Samsung," a section of the agreement reads. "And shall immediately notify Samsung in writing of the details and circumstances of any unauthorized use or misappropriation of any Service Part for any purpose other than pursuant to this Agreement. Samsung may terminate this Agreement if these terms are violated."

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The recent surge in bitcoin prices has the phones at crypto wallet recovery firms ringing off the hook, as retail investors locked out of their digital vaults make frantic calls to regain access to their accounts. From a report: Cryptocurrencies exist on a decentralized digital ledger known as blockchain and investors may opt to access their holdings either through a locally stored software wallet or a hardware wallet, to avoid risks related to owning crypto with an exchange, as in the case of the former FTX. Losing access to a crypto wallet is a well-known problem. Investors forgetting their intricate passwords is a primary reason, but loss of access to two-factor authentication devices, unexpected shutdowns of cryptocurrency exchanges and cyberattacks are also common. Wallet passwords are usually alphanumeric and the wallet provider also offers a set of randomized words, known as "seed phrases," for additional security - both these are known only to the user. If investors lose the passwords and phrases, access to their wallets is cut off. With bitcoin prices regaining traction since last October and hitting a record high of $73,803.25 in March, investors seem to be suffering from a classic case of FOMO, or the fear of missing out. Reuters spoke to nearly a dozen retail investors who had lost access to their crypto wallets. Six of them contacted a recovery services firm and managed to regain access to their holdings.

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Marc Whitten, Unity Create's chief product and technology officer, is stepping down on June 1, 2024, following the company's contentious Runtime Fee policy. Whitten will assist with the transition until December 31, 2024. The now-discarded Runtime Fee, announced in September 2023, faced severe backlash from developers who viewed it as a punitive per-install tariff. Unity reworked the fee and acknowledged its lack of communication with developers. CEO John Riccitiello also departed in October 2023, succeeded by Matthew Bromberg. Upon resignation, Whitten will receive a total of $814,801 in various payouts and benefits.

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mspohr shares a report: The solar storm that brought the aurora borealis to large parts of the United States this weekend also broke critical GPS and precision farming functionality in tractors and agricultural equipment during a critical point of the planting season, 404 Media has learned. These outages caused many farmers to fully stop their planting operations for the moment. One chain of John Deere dealerships warned farmers that the accuracy of some of the systems used by tractors are "extremely compromised," and that farmers who planted crops during periods of inaccuracy are going to face problems when they go to harvest, according to text messages obtained by 404 Media and an update posted by the dealership. The outages highlight how vulnerable modern tractors are to satellite disruptions, which experts have been warning about for years. "All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now shut down because of the solar storm," Kevin Kenney, a farmer in Nebraska, told me. "No GPS. We're right in the middle of corn planting. I'll bet the commodity markets spike Monday." Specifically, some GPS systems were temporarily knocked offline. This caused intermittent connections and accuracy problems with "Real-Time Kinematic" (RTK) systems, which connect to John Deere "StarFire" receivers that are in modern tractors and agricultural equipment. RTK systems use GPS plus a stream of constantly-updating "correction" data from a fixed point on the ground to achieve centimeter-level positional accuracy for planting crops, tilling fields, spraying fertilizer and herbicide, etc.

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OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is exploring whether users should be allowed to create AI-generated pornography and other explicit content with its products. From a report:While the company stressed that its ban on deepfakes would continue to apply to adult material, campaigners suggested the proposal undermined its mission statement to produce "safe and beneficial" AI. OpenAI, which is also the developer of the DALL-E image generator, revealed it was considering letting developers and users "responsibly" create what it termed not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content through its products. OpenAI said this could include "erotica, extreme gore, slurs, and unsolicited profanity." It said: "We're exploring whether we can responsibly provide the ability to generate NSFW content in age-appropriate contexts ... We look forward to better understanding user and societal expectations of model behaviour in this area." The proposal was published as part of an OpenAI document discussing how it develops its AI tools. Joanne Jang, an employee at the San Francisco-based company who worked on the document, told the US news organisation NPR that OpenAI wanted to start a discussion about whether the generation of erotic text and nude images should always be banned from its products. However, she stressed that deepfakes would not be allowed.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: One Raspberry Pi often leads to another. Soon enough, you're running out of spots in your free RealVNC account for your tiny boards and "real" computers. Even if you go the hardened route of SSH or an X connection, you have to keep track of where they all are. All of this is not the easiest thing to tackle if you're new to single-board computers or just eager to get started. Enter Raspberry Pi Connect, a new built-in way to access a Raspberry Pi from nearly anywhere you can open a browser, whether to control yourself or provide remote assistance. On a Raspberry Pi 4, 5, or Pi 400 kit, you install Pi connect with a single terminal line, reboot the Pi, and then click a new tray icon to connect the Pi to a Raspberry Pi ID (and then enable two-factor authentication, of course). From then on, visiting connect.raspberrypi.com gives you an encrypted connection to your desktop. It's a direct connection if possible, and if not, it runs through relay servers in London, encrypting it with DTLS and keeping only the metadata needed for the service to work. The Pi will show a notification in its tray that somebody has connected, and you can manage screen sharing from there.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from SFGate: Late last year, tales of tech workers paying $700 a month for tiny "bed pods" in downtown San Francisco went viral. The story provided a perfect distillation of SF's wild (and wildly expensive) housing market — and inspired schadenfreude when the city deemed the situation illegal. But the provocative living situation wasn't an anomaly, according to a city official. "We've definitely seen an uptick of these 'pod'-type complaints," Kelly Wong, a planner with San Francisco's code enforcement and zoning and compliance team, told SFGATE... Wong stressed that it's not that San Francisco is inherently against bed pod-type arrangements, but that the city is responsible for making sure these spaces are safe and legally zoned. So Brownstone Shared Housing is still renting one bed pod location — but not accepting new tenants — after citations for failing to get proper permits and having a lock on the front door that required a key to exit. And SFGate also spoke to Alex Akel, general manager of Olive Rooms, which opened up a co-living and co-working space in SoMa earlier this year (and also faced "a flurry of complaints.") "Unfortunately, we had complaints from neighbors because of foot traffic and noise, and since then we cut the number of people to fit the ordinance by the city," Akel wrote. Olive Rooms describes its space as targeted at "tech founders from Central Asia, giving them opportunities to get involved in the current AI boom." Akel added that its residents are "bringing new energy to SF," but that the program "will not accept new residents before we clarify the status with the city." In April, the city also received a complaint about a group called Let's Be Buds, which rents out 14 pods in a loft on Divisadero Street that start at $575 per month for an upper bunk. While this recent burst of complaints is new, bed pods in San Francisco have been catching flak for years... a company called PodShare, which rents — you guessed it — bed pods, squared itself away with the city and has operated in SF since 2019. Brownstone's CEO told SFGate "A lot of people want to be here for AI, or for school, or different opportunities." He argues that "it's literally impossible without a product like ours," and that their residents had said the option "positively changed the trajectory of their lives."

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A Miami-based CEO will serve over six years in prison for selling counterfeit Cisco equipment to numerous buyers on Amazon and eBay, with some of the shoddy hardware ending up in sensitive US government systems. From a report: On Wednesday, 40-year-old Onur Aksoy was sentenced to six years and six months in prison for raking in at least $100 million from the counterfeit sales. Aksoy committed the fraud from at least 2013 to 2022 -- the year he was arrested -- by buying the fake Cisco equipment from suppliers in China. The counterfeits were then resold as legitimate Cisco products for an estimated retail value of over $1 billion. "Aksoy sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of counterfeit computer networking equipment that ended up in US hospitals, schools, and highly sensitive military and other governmental systems, including platforms supporting sophisticated US fighter jets and military aircraft," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said in a statement.

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LastPass, the password manager company, has officially separated from its parent company, GoTo, following a series of high-profile hacks in recent years. The company will now operate under a shareholder holding company called LMI Parent. LastPass -- owned by private equity firms Francisco Partners and Elliott Management -- has faced criticism for its handling of the breaches, which resulted in the theft of customer data and encryption keys. The company has since enforced a 12-character minimum for master passwords to improve security.

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Captchas that aim to distinguish humans from nefarious bots are demanding more brain power. WSJ: The companies and cybersecurity experts who design Captchas have been doing all they can to stay one step ahead of the bad actors figuring out how to crack them. A cottage industry of third-party Captcha-solving firms -- essentially, humans hired to solve the puzzles all day -- has emerged. More alarmingly, so has technology that can automatically solve the more rudimentary tests, such as identifying photos of motorcycles and reading distorted text. "Software has gotten really good at labeling photos," said Kevin Gosschalk, the founder and CEO of Arkose Labs, which designs what it calls "fraud and abuse prevention solutions," including Captchas. "So now enters a new era of Captcha -- logic based." That shift explains why Captchas have started to both annoy and perplex. Users no longer have to simply identify things. They need to identify things and do something with that information -- move a puzzle piece, rotate an object, find the specter of a number hidden in a roomscape. Compounding this bewilderment is the addition to the mix of generative AI images, which creates new objects difficult for robots to identify but baffles humans who just want to log in. "Things are going to get even stranger, to be honest, because now you have to do something that's nonsensical," Gosschalk said. "Otherwise, large multimodal models will be able to understand."

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Lenovo's latest ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 laptop is set to be the first to use the new LPCAMM2 memory form factor, the successor to SODIMM sticks. From a report: While Lenovo has largely focused on the AI performance of its new laptop, which is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra CPU and Nvidia RTX 3000 Ada GPU, the company also noted that its device was the first in the world to use the LPCAMM2 memory standard. LPCAMM2 uses 64 percent less space than SODIMM and 61 percent less active power, according to Lenovo. This is thanks to it being based on LPDDR5X memory instead of regular DDR5. Designed specifically for laptops, the LPCAMM2 standard actually has its origins in tech developed by Dell. Simply termed CAMM (Compression Attached Memory Module), it first debuted as a proprietary type of memory in Dell's Precision 7670 in 2022. However, in 2023 the PC giant donated its intellectual property to JEDEC, the organization that standardizes memory technologies. CAMM became LPCAMM2 (Low-Power Compression Attached Memory Module) in September 2023 when JEDEC finally confirmed its specifications. Samsung promptly announced plans to produce LPCAMM2 sticks, and claimed they would have 50 percent more performance and 70 percent more efficiency than their SODIMM-based predecessors. Plus, LPCAMM2 can offer dual-channel memory without requiring a second module.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Qualcomm is cheating on the Snapdragon X Plus/Elite benchmarks given to OEMs and the press. SemiAccurate doesn't use these words lightly but there is no denying what multiple sources are telling us. [...] Then there were the actual 'briefings' for the X Pro SoC. To call them pathetic is giving them more than their due. The deck was 11 slides, three of which were empty/fluff, five 'benchmark' slides with woefully inadequate disclosure, and two infographic summary slides. The last was the slide below with the 'deep technical' stats [screenshots in the linked article], much of which we told you about last week. And more. The rest of the 'disclosure' for Snapdragon X Pro was a list of features that all fall under the guise of exactly what you would expect. The rest was filled with deep 'details' like the GPU capabilities of 3.8TFLOPS. That's it. No specs, no capabilities, no nothing. It was truly pathetic. But wait there is more, or less really, with statements like it having AV1 encode and decode. Trivialities like frame rates and resolutions were seemingly not needed for such technical briefs. See what we mean by pathetic? Those 10 cores are arranged how again? That 42MB of cache is what level? Shall I go on about the bare minimum basics or do you get the point now? SemiAccurate was planning to ask Qualcomm about their cheating on benchmarks at the promised briefing but, well, they lied to us and cut us out of the pathetic bits they did brief on. We honestly would have liked to know why they were cheating but we kind of think they will do their usual response to bad news and pretend it never happened like last time. If they actually do explain things we will of course update this article as we always do.

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"After a year of cracking down with rigid return-to-office mandates, defeated CEOs are now finally accepting that hybrid working is here to stay," reports Fortune: KPMG surveyed U.S. CEOs of companies turning over at least $500 million and found that just one-third expect a full return to the office in the next three years. So it's official: Leaders who believe that office workers will be back at their desks five days a week in the near future are now in the small minority. It's a complete 360 on their stance last year, when 62% of CEOs surveyed predicted that working from home would end by 2026. At the time, 90% of CEOs even admitted that they were so steadfast on summoning staff back to their vertical towers that they were sweetening the pot with salary raises, promotions, and favorable assignments to those who showed face more. But now, bosses are backtracking: Nearly half of CEOs have concluded that the future of work is hybrid — up from 34% last year. What's more, a sizable chunk of CEOs aren't just embracing working from home on Fridays, they're going one step further and ditching the workday altogether. KPMG found that a third of CEOs are exploring the feasibility of a four-day week at their firm... Research has echoed that nearly half of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated, and 29% of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. It perhaps explains why, as KPMG's data shows, CEOs are now waking up to the fact that the future of work is probably the happy medium of hybrid... Lewis Maleh, CEO of the global executive recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, has already witnessed a U-turn to more flexible job ads. "I've noticed a definite rise in job postings advertising remote or hybrid work," Maleh tells Fortune. "We haven't worked on any searches that require the candidate to be in the office five days per week in the past six months globally." "The shift demonstrates the cementing of hybrid work models, as CEOs increasingly recognize flexibility as a key factor in attracting and retaining top talent."

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Kobo, a leading e-reader company, is set to release its first color e-readers on April 30: the Kobo Clara Colour ($149.99) and Kobo Libra Colour ($219.99). These devices feature colorful screens, waterproofing, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth, USB-C, and an adjustable frontlight. The Clara has a 6-inch screen, while the Libra boasts a 7-inch display and supports the Kobo Stylus. Both utilize E Ink's Kaleido 3 technology, offering 4,096 colors and improved resolution. Kobo's competitive pricing undercuts other color e-readers, which typically start at $300. The company is also updating its black-and-white Clara model, now called Clara BW, with a faster processor at a lower price of $129.99.

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Magnetic switches are emerging as a potential game-changer for mechanical keyboards. By using magnets instead of physical contacts, these switches allow users to adjust the actuation point of each key. While still a nascent technology lacking standardization, magnetic switches could bring a new level of customization to keyboards, TechCrunch writes.

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