According to The Verge, Best Buy conducted another round of layoffs and job restructurings to "right size" the business in response to declining sales post-pandemic. Further layoffs and changes are expected throughout the year. From the report: The layoffs appeared to have mostly targeted in-home sales roles called designers, who would go to customers' homes to help identify products that would work in their space. It's not clear how many were let go, but designers who weren't laid off have been moved into a different, largely in-store role. Also, pay scales for a similar, existing in-store "consultant" position were revamped. Best Buy confirmed the layoffs in an email to The Verge but declined to share how many people were let go or how pay was changing. "Many of our team members were moved to new areas or roles where our customers need it most," Best Buy spokesperson Ryan Furlong told The Verge. He said some employees in Best Buy's "Design and Consult workforce" -- the collection of roles with in-store workers (called consultants) and in-home field sales positions (called designers) -- will be transitioned into a new "Premium Designer role." Best Buy has been drastically restructuring in recent months, responding to factors like falling sales after the pandemic spiked consumer electronics spending. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry told investors in February that they should expect layoffs this year, and two months ago, mass layoffs of Geek Squad employees were reported. Barry repeated similar things during the company's first quarter earnings call in May, saying that many of Best Buy's moves to "right size" its business "are being implemented throughout this year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brazil's government is partnering with OpenAI to use AI for expediting the screening and analysis of thousands of lawsuits to reduce costly court losses impacting the federal budget. Reuters reports: The AI service will flag to government the need to act on lawsuits before final decisions, mapping trends and potential action areas for the solicitor general's office (AGU). AGU told Reuters that Microsoft would provide the artificial intelligence services from ChatGPT creator OpenAI through its Azure cloud-computing platform. It did not say how much Brazil will pay for the services. AGU said the AI project would not replace the work of its members and employees. "It will help them gain efficiency and accuracy, with all activities fully supervised by humans," it said. Court-ordered debt payments have consumed a growing share of Brazil's federal budget. The government estimated it would spend 70.7 billion reais ($13.2 billion) next year on judicial decisions where it can no longer appeal. The figure does not include small-value claims, which historically amount to around 30 billion reais annually. The combined amount of over 100 billion reais represents a sharp increase from 37.3 billion reais in 2015. It is equivalent to about 1% of gross domestic product, or 15% more than the government expects to spend on unemployment insurance and wage bonuses to low-income workers next year. AGU did not provide a reason for Brazil's rising court costs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York has launched its mobile ID program, "giving residents the option to digitize their driver's license or non-driver ID," reports The Verge. From the report: Beginning today, the New York Mobile ID app is available from Apple's App Store and Google Play. The app can be used for identity verification at airports. A physical license, permit, or non-driver ID is required to activate a mobile ID; you'll need to take a photo of the front and back with your phone during the enrollment process. The news was announced during a media briefing at LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday that included New York's and Transportation Security Administration federal security director Robert Duffy, among other speakers. Their pitch is that mobile IDs "will revolutionize the way New Yorkers protect their identities and will significantly enhance the way they get through security at airports across the nation." State officials are also emphasizing that it's a voluntary option meant for convenience. "When you offer your mobile ID to TSA or anyone else who accepts it, you are in full control of sharing that information. They can only see the information they request to see," Schroeder said. "If you only need to prove your age, you can withhold other information that a verifier doesn't need to see." The app is designed so that your phone remains in your possession at all times -- you should never freely hand a device over to law enforcement -- and shows a QR code that can be scanned to verify your identity. Any changes to your license status such as renewals or suspensions are automatically pushed to the mobile version, and the digital ID also mirrors data like whether you're an organ donor. For now, acceptance of mobile IDs by businesses (and the police) is completely voluntary -- and there's no deadline in place for compliance -- so it's definitely too soon to start leaving your physical one at home. But bars and other small businesses can start accepting them immediately if they install the state's verifier app. The New York Mobile ID app can be used "at nearly 30 participating airports across the country including all terminals at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports," according to a press release from Governor Kathy Hochul. New York joins a small list of states that have rolled out mobile driver's licenses, including Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, and Utah.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Mercury News: Krista DeWeese has been laid off four times in the last eight years. She wakes up every morning feeling anxious. Will I lose my job today -- again? Will I have enough to pay the rent? Even though she's an educated, experienced marketing professional, worrisome thoughts trail the 47-year-old Fremont native's every waking moment. Currently a contract worker at a health science company, she has been struggling to find secure work that pays enough to keep up with the exorbitant cost of living in the Bay Area. She has a lot of company. The past year has been tough for the Bay Area, as thousands of layoffs skittered across the region. Even workers at Silicon Valley's tech titans -- including Meta, Apple and Google -- have faced job cuts. Since 2022, tech companies in the region have slashed roughly 40,000 jobs. And with each layoff, workers are entering a market that is less friendly to job seekers than it used to be. New research from tech advocacy organization Women Impact Tech, which examined job and salary data nationwide from 2020 to 2023, affirmed what many people already know: companies are tightening their belts -- slicing jobs and salaries alike -- and many people are struggling to find work that pays enough to live comfortably in the Bay Area. Despite having the highest tech salaries in the country, Silicon Valley has experienced the biggest drop in pay compared to other tech hubs, falling 15% from 2022 to 2023, according to Women Impact Tech. And with inflation, DeWeese and others are watching their spending power shrink. More than 10 years ago, she was earning over $100,000 in total compensation. That amount has dropped 15% since she was laid off from Yahoo in 2016, and has not increased since. "I feel like my career has been frozen in time," DeWeese said. "Things have been at a standstill." Paula Bratcher Ratliff, president of New York-based Women Impact Tech, said that the shrinking pay hits especially hard for women, given the continuing gender pay gap. "The Bay Area took one of the largest hits," Ratliff said. "Women make up about 28% of the entire workforce in tech. When you're seeing an overall decline at 15%, and for pay equity, women have not made much traction." [...] Despite the trend of shrinking salaries in the world's tech capital, Ratliff, with Women Impact Tech, doesn't believe it's necessarily a race to the bottom. "Today, about every company is a tech company, whether they're in retail, consumer goods or hospitality," Ratliff said. "There's so many opportunities in tech without having to focus on those jobs with the tech organizations alone. We're seeing great companies emerge." While it's still unclear where the light is at the end of the tunnel for DeWeese, she remains hopeful her situation will improve. "You have to have hope or else you're just going to live in fear of being let go, again and again," she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday, Apple made waves in the media when it revealed a partnership with OpenAI during its annual WWDC keynote. That announcement centered on Apple's decision to bring ChatGPT natively to iOS 18, including Siri and other first-party apps. During a followup interview on Monday, Apple executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea hinted at a possible agreement with Google Gemini and other AI chatbots in the future. 9to5Mac reports: Moderated by iJustine, the interview was held in Steve Jobs Theater this afternoon, featuring a discussion with John Giannandrea, Apple's Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, and Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering. During the interview, Federighi specifically referenced Apple's hopes to eventually let users choose between different models to use with Apple Intelligence. While ChatGPT from OpenAI is the only option right now, Federighi suggested that Google Gemini could come as an option down the line: "We think ultimately people are going to have a preference perhaps for certain models that they want to use, maybe one that's great for creative writing or one that they prefer for coding. And so we want to enable users ultimately to bring a model of their choice. And so we may look forward to doing integrations with different models like Google Gemini in the future. I mean, nothing to announce right now, but that's our direction." The decision to focus on ChatGPT at the start was because Apple wanted to "start with the best," according to Federighi.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

British police have arrested two individuals involved in an SMS-based phishing campaign using a unique device police described as a "homemade mobile antenna," "an illegitimate telephone mast," and a "text message blaster." This first-of-its-kind device in the UK was designed to send fraudulent texts impersonating banks and other official organizations, "all while allegedly bypassing network operators' anti-SMS-based phishing, or smishing, defenses," reports The Register. From the report: Thousands of messages were sent using this setup, City of London Police claimed on Friday, with those suspected to be behind the operation misrepresenting themselves as banks "and other official organizations" in their texts. [...] Huayong Xu, 32, of Alton Road in Croydon, was arrested on May 23 and remains the only individual identified by police in this investigation at this stage. He has been charged with possession of articles for use in fraud and will appear at Inner London Crown Court on June 26. The other individual, who wasn't identified and did not have their charges disclosed by police, was arrested on May 9 in Manchester and was bailed. [...] Without any additional information to go on, it's difficult to make any kind of assumption about what these "text message blaster" devices might be. However, one possibility, judging from the messaging from the police, is that the plod are referring to an IMSI catcher aka a Stingray, which acts as a cellphone tower to communicate with people's handhelds. But those are intended primarily for surveillance. What's more likely is that the suspected UK device is perhaps some kind of SIM bank or collection of phones programmed to spam out shedloads of SMSes at a time.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A Finnish startup called Flow Computing is making one of the wildest claims ever heard in silicon engineering: by adding its proprietary companion chip, any CPU can instantly double its performance, increasing to as much as 100x with software tweaks. If it works, it could help the industry keep up with the insatiable compute demand of AI makers. Flow is a spinout of VTT, a Finland state-backed research organization that's a bit like a national lab. The chip technology it's commercializing, which it has branded the Parallel Processing Unit, is the result of research performed at that lab (though VTT is an investor, the IP is owned by Flow). The claim, Flow is first to admit, is laughable on its face. You can't just magically squeeze extra performance out of CPUs across architectures and code bases. If so, Intel or AMD or whoever would have done it years ago. But Flow has been working on something that has been theoretically possible -- it's just that no one has been able to pull it off. Central Processing Units have come a long way since the early days of vacuum tubes and punch cards, but in some fundamental ways they're still the same. Their primary limitation is that as serial rather than parallel processors, they can only do one thing at a time. Of course, they switch that thing a billion times a second across multiple cores and pathways -- but these are all ways of accommodating the single-lane nature of the CPU. (A GPU, in contrast, does many related calculations at once but is specialized in certain operations.) "The CPU is the weakest link in computing," said Flow co-founder and CEO Timo Valtonen. "It's not up to its task, and this will need to change." CPUs have gotten very fast, but even with nanosecond-level responsiveness, there's a tremendous amount of waste in how instructions are carried out simply because of the basic limitation that one task needs to finish before the next one starts. (I'm simplifying here, not being a chip engineer myself.) What Flow claims to have done is remove this limitation, turning the CPU from a one-lane street into a multi-lane highway. The CPU is still limited to doing one task at a time, but Flow's Parallel Processing Unit (PPU), as they call it, essentially performs nanosecond-scale traffic management on-die to move tasks into and out of the processor faster than has previously been possible. [...] Flow is just now emerging from stealth, with [about $4.3 million] in pre-seed funding led by Butterfly Ventures, with participation from FOV Ventures, Sarsia, Stephen Industries, Superhero Capital and Business Finland. The primary challenge Flow faces is that for its technology to be integrated, it requires collaboration at the chip-design level. This means chipmakers need to redesign their products to include the PPU, which is a substantial investment. Given the industry's cautious nature and the existing roadmaps of major chip manufacturers, the uptake of this new technology might be slow. Companies are often reluctant to adopt unproven technologies that could disrupt their long-term plans. The white paper can be read here. A Flow Computing FAQ is also available here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A committee of independent advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Monday that the benefits outweigh the risks of the newest experimental drug for Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's afflicts more than six million Americans. It has no cure, and there is no treatment or lifestyle modification that can restore memory loss or reverse cognitive decline. The drug, made by Eli Lilly, is donanemab. It modestly slowed cognitive decline in patients in the early stages of the disease but also had significant safety risks, including swelling and bleeding in the brain. The committee concluded, though, that the consequences of Alzheimer's are so dire that even a modest benefit can be worthwhile. The F.D.A. usually follows the advice of the agency's advisory committees but not always. The drug is based on a long-held hypothesis that Alzheimer's disease begins when rough hard balls of amyloid, a protein, pile up in patients' brains, followed by a cascade of reactions leading to the death of neurons. The idea is to treat Alzheimer's by attacking amyloid, clearing it from the brain. Two similar amyloid-fighting drugs were approved recently: Leqembi, made by Eisai and Biogen, was approved last year. That drug's risks and modest benefits are similar to those of donanemab. Aduhelm, made by Biogen, is the other drug and was approved in 2021 but was discontinued because there was insufficient evidence that it could benefit patients. Donanemab was expected to be approved earlier this year, but in March, the F.D.A. decided that, instead, it would require donanemabto undergo the scrutiny of an independent advisory committee, a surprise to Eli Lilly. The vote, said Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer at Lilly, confirmed his 25-year quest to find a way to intervene in the Alzheimer's disease. Now, he said, the company is starting a study that, it hopes, will stop the disease before symptoms even begin. At issue before the committee on Monday were some unusual aspects of donanemab's clinical trials, especially that study participants stopped taking the drug as soon as their amyloid was cleared. Some experts questioned whether stopping was the best strategy and whether clinical practice should include halting the treatment after amyloid clearance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After announcing a shut down date in February, Google's "GPay" app has officially stopped working for users in the U.S. "Starting on June 4, GPay -- as was the name of the app on Android homescreens -- automatically signed US users out," reports 9to5Google. "Attempting to login again explains how: 'The Google Pay US app is no longer available. You can still tap to pay using the Google Wallet app.'" From the report: Additionally, Google no longer offers peer-to-peer payments in the US. You can use the Google Pay website to view and transfer your balance -- money you've received or rewards -- to a bank account after June. The focus is now on Google Wallet and digitizing everything in your physical wallet. There's no equivalent finance tracking functionality. Meanwhile, "Google Pay" still exists as the name for what you're actually using when making a physical or online purchase with your phone.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have discovered early morning frost on the summits of Martian volcanoes near the planet's equator, indicating that water ice forms overnight in colder months and evaporates after sunrise. "While the frosty layer is exceptionally thin, it covers an enormous area," reports The Guardian. "Scientists calculate that in the more frigid Martian seasons, 150,000 tons of water, equivalent to 60 Olympic swimming pools, condense daily on the tops of the towering mountains." From the report: "It's the first time we've discovered water frost on the volcano summits and the first time we've discovered water frost in the equatorial regions of Mars," said Adomas Valantinas, a planetary scientist at the University of Berne in Switzerland and Brown University in the US. "What we're seeing could be a trace of a past Martian climate," Valantinas said of the frost-tipped volcanoes. "It could be related to atmospheric climate processes that were operating earlier in Martian history, maybe millions of years ago." Valantinas spotted the frost-capped volcanoes in high-resolution colour images snapped in the early morning hours on Mars by the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). With colleagues, he confirmed the discovery using a spectrometer on TGO and further images taken by the agency's Mars Express orbiter. The frost appears as a bluish hue on the caldera floors and is absent from well-lit slopes. [...] [W]riting in Nature Geoscience, the researchers describe how Martian winds may blow up the mountainsides and carry more moist air into the calderas where it condenses and settles as frost at particular times of year. Modeling of the process suggests the frost is water ice as the peaks are not cold enough for carbon dioxide frost to form.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A study claims to have proof of what some have suspected: return to office mandates are just back-channel layoffs and post-COVID work culture is making everyone miserable. HR software biz BambooHR surveyed more than 1,500 employees, a third of whom work in HR. The findings suggest the return to office movement has been a poorly-executed failure, but one particular figure stands out -- a quarter of executives and a fifth of HR professionals hoped RTO mandates would result in staff leaving. While that statistic essentially admits the quiet part out loud, there was some merit to that belief. People did quit when RTO mandates were enforced at many of the largest companies, but it wasn't enough, the study reports. More than a third (37 percent) of respondents in leadership roles believed their employers had undertaken layoffs in the past 12 months as a result of too few people quitting in protest of RTO mandates, the study found. Nearly the same number thought their management wanted employees back in the office to monitor them more closely. The end result has been the growth of a different office culture, one that's even more performative, suspicious, and divisive than before the COVID pandemic, the study concludes. According to the report, most employees working remotely and in-person both feel the need to demonstrate productivity, which for more than a third of employees means being seen socializing and moving around the office. That intense need to be visible may actually be harming productivity, study author and BambooHR's own head of HR Anita Grantham concluded in her findings. A full 42 percent of employees who responded to the Bamboo survey said they show up solely to be seen by bosses and managers. If bosses think their presence in the office is making any difference to the amount of work getting done, the results indicate that's not the case. Remote employees and in-office employees both report spending around two hours of every day not working. Those in-office ones, of course, are probably spending those ten hours a week looking as busy as possible. Away from the office, employees feel the need to demonstrate presence by being hyper-available and never going offline -- the so-called "green status effect," the data suggests. "The distrusting and performative cultures some companies are cultivating are harmful to bottom-line growth," Grantham said, adding that RTO policies are okay, but not if they don't consider individual employee needs. "The conversation around work modes is one of the most important things to address and get clear on as a business," Grantham said. "It often gets reduced to just RTO, but it's actually a much bigger conversation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times has confirmed that its internal source code was leaked on 4chan after being stolen from the company's GitHub repositories in January 2024. BleepingComputer reports: As first seen by VX-Underground, the internal data was leaked on Thursday by an anonymous user who posted a torrent to a 273GB archive containing the stolen data. "Basically all source code belonging to The New York Times Company, 270GB," reads the 4chan forum post. "There are around 5 thousand repos (out of them less than 30 are additionally encrypted I think), 3.6 million files total, uncompressed tar." While BleepingComputer did not download the archive, the threat actor shared a text file containing a complete list of the 6,223 folders stolen from the company's GitHub repository. The folder names indicate that a wide variety of information was stolen, including IT documentation, infrastructure tools, and source code, allegedly including the viral Wordle game. A 'readme' file in the archive states that the threat actor used an exposed GitHub token to access the company's repositories and steal the data. The company said that the breach of its GitHub account did not affect its internal corporate systems and had no impact on its operations. The Times said in a statement to BleepingComputer: "The underlying event related to yesterday's posting occurred in January 2024 when a credential to a cloud-based third-party code platform was inadvertently made available. The issue was quickly identified and we took appropriate measures in response at the time. There is no indication of unauthorized access to Times-owned systems nor impact to our operations related to this event. Our security measures include continuous monitoring for anomalous activity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jay Peters reports via The Verge: The iPad is finally getting a Calculator app as part of iPadOS 18. The long-requested app was just announced by Apple at WWDC 2024. On its face, the app looks a lot like the calculator you might be familiar with from iOS. But it also supports Apple Pencil, meaning that you can write down math problems and the app will solve them thanks to a feature Apple calls Math Notes. Other features included in iPadOS 18 include a new, customizable floating tab bar; enhanced SharePlay functionality for easier screen sharing and remote control of another person's iPad; and Smart Script, a handwriting feature that refines and improves legibility using machine learning.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The definition of the word "bot" is shifting to become an insult to someone you know is human, according to researchers who analyzed more than 22 million tweets. Researchers found this shift began around 2017, with left-leaning users more likely to accuse right-leaning users of being bots. "A potential explanation might be that media frequently reported about right-wing bot networks influencing major events like the [2016] US election," says Dennis Assenmacher at Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences in Cologne, Germany. "However, this is just speculation and would need confirmation." NewScientist reports: To investigate, Assenmacher and his colleagues looked at how users perceive what is a bot or not. They did so by looking at how the word "bot" was used on Twitter between 2007 and December 2022 (the social network changed its name to X in 2023, following its purchase by Elon Musk), analyzing the words that appeared next to it in more than 22 million English-language tweets. The team found that before 2017, the word was usually deployed alongside allegations of automated behavior of the type that would traditionally fit the definition of a bot, such as "software," "script" or "machine." After that date, the use shifted. "Now, the accusations have become more like an insult, dehumanizing people, insulting them, and using this as a technique to deny their intelligence and deny their right to participate in a conversation," says Assenmacher. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Eighteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia feature a new, dedicated Passwords app for faster access to important credentials. The Passwords app replaces iCloud Keychain, which is currently only accessible via a menu in Settings. Now, passwords are available directly via a standalone app for markedly quicker access, bringing it more in line with rival services. The Passwords app consolidates various credentials, including passwords, passkeys, and Wi-Fi passwords, into a single, easily accessible location. Users can filter and sort their accounts based on various criteria, such as recently created accounts, credential type, or membership in shared groups. Passwords is also compatible with Windows via the iCloud for Windows app, extending its utility to users who operate across different platforms. The developer beta versions of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia are available today with official release to the public scheduled for the fall, providing an early look at the Passwords app.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has announced visionOS 2 for its Vision Pro spatial computing headset, bringing mouse support, an ultrawide virtual Mac display option, and new Photo features. The company says it's expected to launch "later this year." The Verge reports: The most significant update, for all the productivity heads out there, is a new ultrawide virtual display feature. Apple says that in visionOS 2, you'll be able to connect a Vision Pro to a Mac to generate a dual 4K-equivalent curved ultrawide display. Right now, the virtual display feature only does a single up to 5K one. Also, the company will finally add mouse support to the Vision Pro -- at launch, the headset could work with trackpads like the one on a MacBook Air or the standalone Magic Trackpad 2, but oddly left out mouse support. You can still use one inside a mirrored display in the Vision Pro, but not outside of that screen in, say, an iPad or Vision Pro app. Apple says that in the new update, users will be able to convert any image in the Photos app to a spatial one. Also, visionOS 2 will have train support, so the Vision Pro's travel mode will no longer be limited to just airplanes. The company also says it's adding SharePlay to the visionOS Photos app, which means that you can share the app with another Vision Pro owner using Spatial Personas [...]. The company says Red Bull is making a new immersive sports series, while Apple is making its first scripted immersive feature. Apple also said that Canon is releasing a new spatial lens for the EOS R7, one designed specifically for creating content for the Vision Pro. Finally, the company is rolling out the Vision Pro abroad. Apple is going to start taking preorders in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore on June 13th at 6PM PT, and it'll be available in those countries on June 28th. Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK will get preorders later, on June 28th at 5AM PT, with the headset officially available on July 12th.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Covered last week on Phoronix was a new patch from Intel that with tuning to the P-State CPU frequency scaling driver was showing big wins for Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" performance and power efficiency. I was curious with the Intel claims posted for a couple benchmarks and thus over the weekend set out to run many Intel Meteor Lake benchmarks on this one-line kernel patch... The results are great for boosting the Linux performance of Intel Core ultra laptops with as much as 72% better performance. [...] When looking at the CPU power consumption overall, for the wide variety of workloads tested it was just a slight uptick in power use and thus overall leading to slightly better power efficiency too. See all the data here. So this is quite a nice one-line Linux kernel patch for Meteor Lake and will hopefully be mainlined to the Linux kernel for Linux 6.11 if not squeezing it in as a "fix" for the current Linux 6.10 cycle. It's just too bad though that it took six months after launch for this tuned EPP value to be determined. Fresh benchmarks between Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen on the latest Linux software will be coming up soon on Phoronix.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Internet service providers are again urging the Federal Communications Commission to impose new fees on Big Tech firms and use the money to subsidize broadband network deployment and affordability programs. If approved, the request would force Big Tech firms to pay into the FCC's Universal Service Fund (USF), which in turn distributes money to broadband providers. The request was made on June 6 by USTelecom, a lobby group for AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink/Lumen, and smaller telcos. USTelecom has made similar arguments before, but its latest request to the FCC argues that the recent death of a broadband discount program should spur the FCC to start extracting money from Big Tech. "Through focusing on the Big Tech companies who benefit most from broadband connectivity, the Commission will fairly allocate the burden of sustaining USF," USTelecom wrote in the FCC filing last week. The USF spends about $8 billion a year. Phone companies must pay a percentage of their revenue into the fund, and telcos generally pass those fees on to consumers with a "Universal Service" line item on telephone bills. The money is directed back to the telco industry with programs like the Connect America Fund and Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which subsidize network construction in unserved and underserved areas. The USF also funds Lifeline program discounts for people with low incomes. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel hasn't stated any intention to expand USF contributions to Big Tech. Separately, she rejected calls to impose Universal Service fees on broadband, leaving phone service as the only source of USF revenue. The USTelecom filing came in response to the FCC asking for input on its latest analysis of competition in the communications marketplace. USTelecom says the USF is relevant to the proceeding because "the Universal Service Fund is critical for maintaining a competitive marketplace and an expanded contributions base is necessary to sustain the fund." No changes to the USF would be made in this proceeding, though USTelecom's comments could be addressed in the FCC's final report.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HP is facing something of a challenge as the number of printed pages has decreased by 20% since the pandemic. "On the office space, clearly, the amount of pages that is being printed is lower than before the pandemic," HP boss Enrique Lores told tech investors at Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decision Conference last week. "And this is really driven by what we call hybrid work. There are less people in the office every day, and this has driven the amount of pages down." The Register reports: "I use pages as a proxy because, depending on what happens with pages, happens eventually with devices. Before the pandemic, our estimates were that we were expecting to see a 20 percent reduction of printing. And actually, we were looking at the numbers ... and this is more or less where we are." In terms of users printing at home, "during the pandemic, we saw a spike of pages printed, and since then, the number of pages has been declining," Lores added. The levels are not unexpected, though, he said. The industrial customer base was "impacted during the last two or three years by a reduction of capital investments," but recovery is showing up, with those customers printing more labels and packaging. Previous research by IDC showed around 450 billion fewer pages were printed in homes and office worldwide in 2020 versus the year before the pandemic, equating to a 19 percent plunge. It merely accelerated the long-term trend. [...]

Read more of this story at Slashdot.