VMware has resumed offering a free hypervisor. News of the offering emerged in a throwaway line in the Release Notes for version 8.0 Update 3e of the Broadcom business unit's ESXi hypervisor. From a report: Just below the "What's New" section of that document is the statement: "Broadcom makes available the VMware vSphere Hypervisor version 8, an entry-level hypervisor. You can download it free of charge from the Broadcom Support portal." VMware offered a free version of ESXi for years, and it was beloved by home lab operators and vAdmins who needed something to tinker with. But in February 2024, VMware discontinued it on grounds that it was dropping perpetual licenses and moving to subscriptions.

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The European Commission is issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some US-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage [non-paywalled source], a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China. Financial Times: Commissioners and senior officials travelling to the IMF and World Bank spring meetings next week have been given the new guidance, according to four people familiar with the situation. They said the measures replicate those used on trips to Ukraine and China, where standard IT kit cannot be brought into the countries for fear of Russian or Chinese surveillance. "They are worried about the US getting into the commission systems," said one official. The treatment of the US as a potential security risk highlights how relations have deteriorated since the return of Donald Trump as US president in January. Trump has accused the EU of having been set up to "screw the US" and announced 20 per cent so-called reciprocal tariffs on the bloc's exports, which he later halved for a 90-day period. At the same time, he has made overtures to Russia, pressured Ukraine to hand over control over its assets by temporarily suspending military aid and has threatened to withdraw security guarantees from Europe, spurring a continent-wide rearmament effort. "The transatlantic alliance is over," said a fifth EU official.

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OpenAI unveiled its GPT-4.1 model family on Monday, prioritizing coding capabilities and instruction following while expanding context windows to 1 million tokens -- approximately 750,000 words. The lineup includes standard GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano variants, all available via API but not ChatGPT. The flagship model scores 54.6% on SWE-bench Verified, lagging behind Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro (63.8%) and Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet (62.3%) on the same software engineering benchmark, according to TechCrunch. However, it achieves 72% accuracy on Video-MME's long video comprehension tests -- a significant improvement over GPT-4o's 65.3%. OpenAI simultaneously announced plans to retire GPT-4.5 -- their largest model released just two months ago -- from API access by July 14. The company claims GPT-4.1 delivers "similar or improved performance" at substantially lower costs. Pricing follows a tiered structure: GPT-4.1 costs $2 per million input tokens and $8 per million output tokens, while GPT-4.1 nano -- OpenAI's "cheapest and fastest model ever" -- runs at just $0.10 per million input tokens. All models feature a June 2024 knowledge cutoff, providing more current contextual understanding than previous iterations.

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Apple is readying a substantial overhaul for iPadOS 19 that will transform the tablet experience to function more like macOS, according to Bloomberg. The update will focus on productivity features, multitasking capabilities, and app window management - areas where iPad power users have long requested improvements. The software revamp comes approximately a year after Apple introduced the M4 chip to the iPad Pro lineup and coincides with the expected arrival of new iPad Pro models featuring M5 processors. According to Bloomberg, many users have expressed frustration that iPad hardware capabilities have consistently outpaced software functionality. While the company won't fully port macOS to iPad as some users have wished, the changes will reportedly be substantial enough to satisfy much of the professional user base that has been pushing for more desktop-like functionality. The upcoming changes are expected to be highlighted at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Requests to remove books from library shelves are on the rise in the UK, as the influence of pressure groups behind book bans in the US crosses the Atlantic, according to those working in the sector. Although "the situation here is nowhere [near] as bad, censorship does happen and there are some deeply worrying examples of library professionals losing their jobs and being trolled online for standing up for intellectual freedom on behalf of their users," said Louis Coiffait-Gunn, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip). Ed Jewell, president of Libraries Connected, an independent charity that represents public libraries, said: "Anecdotal evidence from our members suggests that requests to remove books are increasing." The School Library Association (SLA) said this year has seen an "increase in member queries about censorship." Most of the UK challenges appear to come from individuals or small groups, unlike in the US, where 72% of demands to censor books last year were brought forward by organised groups, according to the American Library Association earlier this week. However, evidence suggests that the work of US action groups is reaching UK libraries too. Alison Hicks, an associate professor in library and information studies at UCL, interviewed 10 UK-based school librarians who had experienced book challenges. One "spoke of finding propaganda from one of these groups left on her desk," while another "was directly targeted by one of these groups." Respondents "also spoke of being trolled by US pressure groups on social media, for example when responding to free book giveaways."

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Blue Origin's New Shepard completed its 31st mission Monday morning, carrying the first all-female crew to space since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's 1963 solo flight. The NS-31 mission lifted off from West Texas at 9:30 a.m. EDT, with hundreds of thousands watching via livestream as the autonomous vehicle crossed the Karman line 62 miles above Earth. The 10-minute suborbital journey carried six passengers: journalist and Bezos' fiancee Lauren SÃnchez, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe, bioastronautics researcher Amanda Nguyen, CBS journalist Gayle King, pop star Katy Perry, and film producer Kerianne Flynn. Bowe conducted three research experiments during the flight, while Nguyen became the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman in space. The fully reusable New Shepard system features a pressurized capsule that separates from its booster before returning to Earth with three parachutes.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: An attorney for the Federal Trade Commission told a judge that Facebook, fearing the competitive threat of Instagram posted to their social media network, acquired both as a way to "neutralize" the rival. "They decided that competition was too hard," the FTC's attorney, Daniel Matheson, said in his opening statement in the government's antitrust case against the Meta Platforms social media empire. He argued that with Meta's monopoly in social media, "consumers do not have reasonable alternatives they can turn to," even as satisfaction has declined. At stake is the potential breakup of Facebook-parent Meta, as the government has zeroed in on the 2012 acquisition of Instagram and 2014 purchase of WhatsApp.

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Nvidia has announced plans to manufacture AI supercomputers entirely within the United States, commissioning over 1 million square feet of manufacturing space across Arizona and Texas. Production of Blackwell chips has begun at TSMC's Phoenix facilities, while supercomputer assembly will occur at new Foxconn and Wistron plants in Houston and Dallas respectively. "The engines of the world's AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time," said Jensen Huang, Nvidia's founder and CEO. "Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resiliency." The company will deploy its own AI, robotics, and digital twin technologies in these facilities, using Nvidia Omniverse to create digital twins of factories and Isaac GR00T to build manufacturing automation robots. Nvidia projects an ambitious $500 billion in domestic AI infrastructure production over the next four years, with manufacturing expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

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Abstract of a paper on NBER: There is much disagreement about the extent to which financial incentives motivate study participants. We elicit preferences for being paid for completing a survey, including a one-in-twenty chance of winning a $100 electronic gift card, a guaranteed electronic gift card with the same expected value, and an option to refuse payment. More than twice as many participants chose the lottery as chose the guaranteed payment. Given that most people are risk averse, this pattern suggests that factors beyond risk preferences -- such as hassle costs -- influenced their decision-making. Almost 20 percent of participants actively refused payment, demonstrating low monetary motivation. We find both systematic and unobserved heterogeneity in the characteristics of who turned down payment. The propensity to refuse payment is more than four times as large among individuals 50 and older compared to younger individuals, suggesting a tradeoff between financially motivating participants and obtaining a representative sample. Overall, our results suggest that modest electronic gift card payments violate key requirements of Vernon Smith's induced value theory.

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Facebook Marketplace has emerged as the dominant feature within the social media platform, amassing 1.2 billion monthly active buyers by 2023 and overtaking eBay as a peer-to-peer selling platform. According to recent data, approximately 16 percent of Facebook's monthly active users now access the site exclusively to participate in Marketplace. The feature's growth accelerated following the pandemic's supply chain disruptions and subsequent inflation, which increased demand for used goods. Facebook reports that Marketplace is attracting younger demographics who have otherwise abandoned the platform's social features. This shift represents a fundamental transformation of Facebook's core function from "digital connector" to "digital bazaar," with the platform increasingly hosting transactions rather than social connections.

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Adobe has deleted all its posts on Twitter-alternative Bluesky after a disastrous April 8 debut that drew over 1,600 angry comments from digital creators. The software giant's innocuous first post asking "What's fueling your creativity right now?" triggered immediate criticism targeting Adobe's controversial subscription model, continual price increases, and AI implementation. "Y'all keep raising your prices for a product that keeps getting worse," wrote one user, while another referenced Adobe's "subscription model" with "I assume you'll be charging us monthly to read your posts." Recent price hikes have been substantial, with one commenter reporting a 53.88% increase from CDN$14.68 to CDN$22.59 monthly.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The number of European travellers visiting the US has fallen sharply as political and economic tension and fears of a hostile border under President Donald Trump threaten the world's most lucrative air routes. Visitors from western Europe who stayed at least one night in the US fell by 17 per cent in March from a year ago, according to the International Trade Administration. Travel from some countries -- including Ireland, Norway and Germany -- fell by more than 20 per cent, an FT analysis of ITA data showed. The trend poses a threat to the US tourism industry, which accounts for 2.5 per cent of the country's GDP. Some airlines and hotel groups have warned of waning demand for transatlantic travel and a "bad buzz" about visiting the US. The total number of overseas visitors travelling to the US dropped by 12 per cent year-on-year in March, the steepest decline since March 2021 when the travel sector was reeling from pandemic restrictions, according to the ITA data.

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A group of ex-OpenAI employees on Friday filed a proposed amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, opposing OpenAI's planned conversion from a nonprofit to a for-profit corporation. From a report: The brief, filed by Harvard law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, names 12 former OpenAI employees: Steven Adler, Rosemary Campbell, Neil Chowdhury, Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, Gretchen Krueger, Todor Markov, Richard Ngo, Girish Sastry, William Saunders, Carrol Wainwright, and Jeffrey Wu. It makes the case that, if OpenAI's non-profit ceded control of the organization's business operations, it would "fundamentally violate its mission." Several of the ex-staffers have spoken out against OpenAI's practices publicly before. Krueger has called on the company to improve its accountability and transparency, while Kokotajlo and Saunders previously warned that OpenAI is in a "reckless" race for AI dominance. Wainwright has said that OpenAI "should not [be trusted] when it promises to do the right thing later."

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The International Civil Aviation Organization plans to eliminate boarding passes and check-ins within three years through a new "digital travel credential" system. Passengers will store passport data on their phones and use facial recognition to move through airports, while airlines will automatically detect arrivals via biometric scanning. The system will dynamically update "journey passes" for flight changes and delays, potentially streamlining connections. "The last upgrade of great scale was the adoption of e-ticketing in the early 2000s," said Valerie Viale from travel technology company Amadeus, who noted passenger data will be deleted within 15 seconds at each checkpoint to address privacy concerns.

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Fedora has proposed a major change for its upcoming version 43 release that aims to achieve 99% package reproducibility, addressing growing concerns about supply-chain security. According to the change proposal announced March 31, Fedora has already reached 90% reproducibility through infrastructure changes including "clamping" file modification times and implementing a Rust-based "add-determinism" tool that standardizes metadata. The remaining 10% will require individual package maintainer involvement, treating reproducibility failures as bugs. The effort will use a public instance of rebuilderd to independently verify that binary packages can be reproduced from source code. Unlike Debian's bit-by-bit reproducibility definition, Fedora allows differences in package signatures and some metadata while requiring identical payloads. The initiative follows similar efforts by Debian and openSUSE, and comes amid heightened focus on supply-chain security after the recent XZ backdoor incident.

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Germany will get a new "super-high-tech ministry" responsible for research, technology, and aerospace, according to the coalition agreement published by the incoming government this week. From a report: The announcement is one of several nods to science in the 144-page agreement, unveiled on 9 April following weeks of negotiations between the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) -- who together won the most seats in February's federal elections -- and the center-left Social Democrats. The agreement is expected to be formally approved by the three parties by early May, paving the way for CDU leader Friedrich Merz to be elected chancellor. [...] The new agreement lists a number of scientific priorities for the new government, including support for artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, biotechnology, microchip development and production, and fusion energy. "Our goal is that the world's first fusion reactor should be realized in Germany," the text states. It also mentions personalized medicine, oceans research, and sustainability research as "strategic" areas. But the agreement does not include any budget estimates, and observers caution it is unclear where the money for new programs would come from. The agreement does affirm current commitments to increase the budgets of the country's main research organizations by 3% per year through 2030.

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The ubiquitous but often overlooked Wi-Fi router lies at the heart of one of Washington's biggest national security dilemmas -- and a rift between two brothers on opposite sides of the Pacific. From a report: US investigators are probing the China ties of TP-Link, the new American incarnation of a consumer Wi-Fi behemoth, following its rapid growth and a spate of cyber attacks by Chinese state-sponsored actors targeting many router brands. The inquiry is testing whether TP-Link's corporate makeover represents enough of a divorce from China to spare it from a ban in a crucial market. While TP-Link's recent restructuring split the company into separate US- and China-headquartered businesses, a Bloomberg News investigation found that the resulting American venture still has substantial operations in mainland China. If US officials conclude TP-Link's China connections pose an "unacceptable risk," they could use a powerful new authority to ban the company from the US. Such an outcome could also unravel plans by the owner of its US business, Jeffrey Chao, to start fresh in California following an estrangement from his older brother, who started the router business with him in Shenzhen nearly three decades ago. In an interview -- the first Jeffrey Chao said he has ever given -- he told Bloomberg he's quitting China. He opened a new headquarters in Irvine last year and said he will invest $700 million in the US to build a factory and jumpstart research and development on highly secure routers while awaiting the green card he said he applied for in January. He has also traded his perch in a Hong Kong skyscraper for a 1980s-era split-level near his office, joined a neighborhood evangelical church, and is now eyeing a Cadillac Escalade for road trips, he said, burnishing his American credentials. "I know the current relationship between the US and China is complex," Chao said in the interview last month. "I have chosen the US."

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Ubisoft has triggered fresh debate over digital ownership by claiming in court that customers who purchased The Crew never truly owned the game. The legal battle began when California plaintiffs sued after Ubisoft deactivated servers for the 2014 racing title, rendering it unplayable beyond a restricted demo version. Unlike most delisted games where previously purchased copies remain accessible, Ubisoft completely removed The Crew from customers' libraries. The plaintiffs, who bought physical copies years ago, contend that Ubisoft misled consumers and point to competitors who provided offline modes for end-of-life titles. Ubisoft counters that packaging clearly stated purchases only granted temporary licenses. The case has expanded to include claims about in-game currency qualifying as gift certificates under California law and activation codes promised to work until 2099.

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France is to tighten its ban on the use of mobile phones in middle schools, making pupils at the ages of 11 to 15 shut away their devices in a locker or pouch at the start of the day and access them again only as they are leaving. A report adds: The education minister told the senate she wanted children to be fully separated from their phones throughout the school day in all French middle schools from September. Elisabeth Borne said: "At a time when the use of screens is being widely questioned because of its many harmful effects, this measure is essential for our children's wellbeing and success at school." In 2018, France banned children from using mobile phones in all middle schools -- known as colleges. Phones must remain switched off in schoolbags and cannot be used anywhere in the school grounds, including at break-time. Schools have reported a positive effect, with more social interaction, more physical exercise, less bullying and better concentration. But some did report a few children would sneak into the toilets to watch videos on phones at break.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: China's Anker, one of Amazon's largest sellers offering products from power banks to phone cases, has raised prices on a fifth of its products on the U.S. platform since Thursday, in a sign that tariffs on Chinese goods are being passed on to U.S. shoppers. Some 127 Anker products have seen an average increase of 18% since Thursday last week, with the majority of those occurring after Monday, April 7, when U.S. President Donald Trump added an extra 50% import duty on Chinese goods, according to data from e-commerce services provider SmartScout. U.S. import tariffs on Chinese products now stand at 145%. Beijing on Friday raised its tariff on U.S. goods to 125%, as a trade war between the world's top two economies intensifies.

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Director James Cameron argues that blockbuster filmmaking can only survive if the industry finds ways to "cut the cost of [VFX] in half," with AI potentially offering solutions that don't eliminate jobs. "If we want to continue to see the kinds of movies that I've always loved and that I like to make -- 'Dune,' 'Dune: Part Two,' or one of my films or big effects-heavy, CG-heavy films -- we've got to figure out how to cut the cost of that in half," Cameron said. Rather than staff reductions, Cameron envisions AI accelerating VFX workflows: "That's about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster, and artists get to move on and do other cool things."

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Almost 200 pesticides have been found by a study examining dust in homes around Europe, as scientists say regulators need to take "toxic cocktails" of chemicals into account when banning or restricting the use of pesticides. From a report: Scientists say their research supports the idea that regulators should assess the risks posed by pesticides when they react with other chemicals, as well as individually. They say this should apply to substances already in use, as well as those yet to be approved. In preliminary findings from the largest study of its kind, scientists examining household dust from homes in 10 European countries in 2021 detected 197 pesticides in total. More than 40% of the pesticides found in the dust have been linked to highly toxic effects, including cancer and disruption of the hormonal system in humans. The number of pesticides in each home ranged between 25 and 121, and levels of pesticides tended to be higher in the homes of farmers. Prof Paul Scheepers, of the Radboud Institute for Biological and Environmental Sciences, said: "We have many epidemiological studies showing that diseases are associated with mixtures of pesticides."

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the termination of multiple IT and consulting contracts with firms including Accenture, Deloitte, and Booz Allen Hamilton, describing them as "wasteful spending." A Department of Defense memo indicates the cuts target the Defense Health Agency's consulting services contract and the Air Force's agreement with Accenture to "re-sell third-party Enterprise Cloud IT Services," services the government can "already fulfill directly with existing procurement resources." The terminations also include 11 other contracts supporting "non-essential" activities like DEI programs, climate initiatives, and COVID-19 response efforts. The cuts represent $5.1 billion in spending and will yield nearly $4 billion in savings, according to Hegseth. The funds will be redirected toward "critical priorities to Revive the Warrior Ethos, Rebuild the Military, and Reestablish Deterrence," with Hegseth noting the money would better serve "healthcare for our warfighters and their families, instead of $500 an hour business process consultant."

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China responded to President Trump's tariffs on Friday, raising its own tariffs on American goods to 125%, from 84%. The New York Times: The announcement by China's State Council came after Trump administration officials clarified on Thursday that China was now facing a minimum tariff rate of 145% on all exports to United States. China said its new tariffs will take effect on Saturday. China said it plans to ignore any further increases announced by Washington from here. Bloomberg: In a statement following China's retaliatory move, the Commerce Ministry said Washington's repeated use of excessively high tariffs has become little more than a numbers game -- economically meaningless and revealing its use of tariffs as a tool for bullying and coercion. "It's become a joke," the ministry said. CNN: The trade war between the world's two economic superpowers has tanked international markets and fueled fears of a global recession. "There are no winners in a trade war, and going against the world will only lead to self-isolation," [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Beijing on Friday, according to state broadcaster CCTV. "For over 70 years, China's development has relied on self-reliance and hard work -- never on handouts from others, and it is not afraid of any unjust suppression," Xi added.

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The Food and Drug Administration says it would begin phasing out animal testing requirements for antibody therapies and other drugs and move toward AI-based models and other tools it deems "human-relevant." Axios: The FDA said it would launch a pilot program over the next year allowing select developers of monoclonal antibodies to use a primarily non-animal-based testing strategy. Commissioner Marty Makary in a statement said the shift would improve drug safety, lower research and development costs and address ethical concerns about animal experimentation.

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Some of the best AI models today still struggle to resolve software bugs that wouldn't trip up experienced devs. TechCrunch: A new study from Microsoft Research, Microsoft's R&D division, reveals that models, including Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet and OpenAI's o3-mini, fail to debug many issues in a software development benchmark called SWE-bench Lite. The results are a sobering reminder that, despite bold pronouncements from companies like OpenAI, AI is still no match for human experts in domains such as coding. The study's co-authors tested nine different models as the backbone for a "single prompt-based agent" that had access to a number of debugging tools, including a Python debugger. They tasked this agent with solving a curated set of 300 software debugging tasks from SWE-bench Lite. According to the co-authors, even when equipped with stronger and more recent models, their agent rarely completed more than half of the debugging tasks successfully. Claude 3.7 Sonnet had the highest average success rate (48.4%), followed by OpenAI's o1 (30.2%), and o3-mini (22.1%).

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Military chiefs at Nato have been warned of global internet blackouts following a string of suspected Russian attacks on subsea cables. From a report: Telecoms companies including Vodafone, O2 owner Telefonica and Orange have written to UK, EU and Nato officials warning that a rise in sabotage incidents was putting critical services at risk. In an open letter, they wrote: "The repercussions of damage to subsea cables extend far beyond Europe, potentially affecting global internet and power infrastructure, international communications, financial transactions and critical services worldwide." It comes after a spike in incidents relating to fibre optic cables on seabeds that carry huge volumes of data, voice and internet traffic between countries. More than 500 cables carry around 95pc of all international data, while their remote location makes them difficult and costly to monitor. At least 11 subsea cables have been damaged in the Baltic Sea since October 2023 and similar outages have been reported in the North Sea. The incidents have fuelled fears of sabotage by hostile actors, with more than 50 Russian ships observed in areas of high cable density in the Baltic Sea. The UK is monitoring the Russian spy ship Yantar amid concerns that it is mapping critical underwater infrastructure. Concerns have also been raised about Chinese sabotage following a number of incidents around Taiwan.

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Microsoft is starting to gradually roll out a preview of Recall, its feature that captures screenshots of what you do on a Copilot Plus PC to find again later, to Windows Insiders. From a report: This new rollout could indicate that Microsoft is finally getting close to launching Recall more widely. Microsoft originally intended to launch Recall alongside Copilot Plus PCs last June, but the feature was delayed following concerns raised by security experts. The company then planned to launch it in October, but that got pushed as well so that the company could deliver "a secure and trusted experience."

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Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a "universal" checkout experience, was charged with defrauding investors on Wednesday, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. From a report: Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, most recently raising a $38 million Series A in 2021 led by Renegade Partners. Nate said its app's users could buy from any e-commerce site with a single click, thanks to AI. In reality, however, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete those purchases, the DOJ's Southern District of New York alleges. Saniger raised millions in venture funding by claiming that Nate was able to transact online "without human intervention," except for edge cases where the AI failed to complete a transaction. But despite Nate acquiring some AI technology and hiring data scientists, its app's actual automation rate was effectively 0%, the DOJ claims.

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The electricity consumption of data centres is projected to more than double by 2030, according to a report from the International Energy Agency published today. The primary culprit? AI. Nature: The report covers the current energy footprint for data centres and forecasts their future needs, which could help governments, companies, and local communities to plan infrastructure and AI deployment. IEA's models project that data centres will use 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2030, roughly equivalent to the current annual electricity consumption of Japan. By comparison, data centres consumed 415 TWh in 2024, roughly 1.5% of the world's total electricity consumption. The projections largely focus on data centres, which also run computing tasks other than AI. Although the agency estimated the proportion of servers in data centres devoted to AI. They found that servers for AI accounted for 24% of server electricity demand and 15% of total data centre energy demand in 2024.

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OpenAI has expanded ChatGPT's memory functionality to include references from all past conversations. The system now builds upon existing saved memories by automatically incorporating previous interactions to deliver more contextually relevant responses for writing, learning, and advisory tasks, the startup said Thursday. Subscribers can disable the feature through settings or request memory modifications directly in chat. Those already opted out of memory features won't have past-chat references enabled by default. Temporary chats remain available for interactions that users prefer to keep isolated from memory systems. The update is rolling out immediately to Plus and Pro subscribers, excluding users in the EEA, UK, Switzerland, and other European markets.

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Meta says in its Llama 4 release announcement that it's specifically addressing "left-leaning" political bias in its AI model, distinguishing this effort from traditional bias concerns around race, gender, and nationality that researchers have long documented. "Our goal is to remove bias from our AI models and to make sure that Llama can understand and articulate both sides of a contentious issue," the company said. "All leading LLMs have had issues with bias -- specifically, they historically have leaned left," Meta stated, framing AI bias primarily as a political problem. The company claims Llama 4 is "dramatically more balanced" in handling sensitive topics and touts its lack of "strong political lean" compared to competitors.

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Hours after Donald Trump imposed record 125% tariffs on Chinese products entering the US, China has announced it will further curb the number of US films allowed to screen in the country. From a report: "The wrong action of the US government to abuse tariffs on China will inevitably further reduce the domestic audience's favourability towards American films," the China Film Administration said in a statement on Thursday. "We will follow the market rules, respect the audience's choice, and moderately reduce the number of American films imported." The move mirrors the potential countermeasure suggested by two influential Chinese bloggers earlier in the week, warning that "China has plenty of tools for retaliation." Both Liu Hong, a senior editor at Xinhuanet, the website of the state-run Xinhua news agency, as well as Ren Yi, the grandson of former Guangdong party chief Ren Zhongyi, posted an identical proposal involving a heavy reduction on the import of US movies and further investigation of the intellectual property benefits of American companies operating in China. China is the world's second largest film market after the US.

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Meta is partnering with Blumhouse to launch "Movie Mate" technology that encourages moviegoers to use their phones during theatrical screenings, beginning with an April 30 showing of "Megan" at Blumhouse's "Halfway to Halloween Film Festival." According to Variety, the system enables viewers to chat with a Megan-themed AI chatbot, answer trivia questions, and access behind-the-scenes information while watching the film in theaters.

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Amazon has to operate like the "world's largest startup" as it works to meet demand for AI and cut bureaucracy in its ranks, Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said in his annual letter to shareholders. From a report: "If your customer experiences aren't planning to leverage these intelligent models, their ability to query giant corpuses of data and quickly find your needle in the haystack, their ability to keep getting smarter with more feedback and data, and their future agentic capabilities, you will not be competitive," Jassy wrote in the letter on Thursday. "It's moving faster than almost anything technology has ever seen." Amazon, like most of the largest technology companies, has bet heavily on artificial intelligence, committing much of its $100 billion in planned capital expenditures this year to AI-related projects.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Following U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pause some of the exorbitant tariffs that he put in place earlier today, he spoke to the press at the White House and provided some commentary that could be a positive for Apple. When asked whether he would consider exempting some U.S. companies from the tariffs in the future, Trump said that he would. "As time goes by, we're going to take a look at it," he said. "There are some that by the nature of the company get hit a little bit harder, and we'll take a look at that," he added, claiming that he will "show a little flexibility." [...] When speaking to the press, Trump reiterated his aim of bringing manufacturing to the United States, and he claimed that Apple "building" in China is unsustainable. "If you look at Apple, Apple is going to spend $500 billion building a plant. They wouldn't be doing that if I didn't do this. They'd just keep building them in China. And that's unsustainable," he said.

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Increasingly autonomous AI programs could end up manipulating markets and intentionally creating crises in order to boost profits for banks and traders, the Bank of England has warned. From a report: Artificial intelligence's ability to "exploit profit-making opportunities" was among a wide range of risks cited in a report by the Bank of England's financial policy committee (FPC), which has been monitoring the City's growing use of the technology. The FPC said it was concerned about the potential for advanced AI models -- which are deployed to act with more autonomy -- to learn that periods of extreme volatility were beneficial for the firms they were trained to serve. Those AI programs may "identify and exploit weaknesses" of other trading firms in a way that triggers or amplifies big moves in bond prices or stock markets.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta's latest whistleblower, Sarah Wynn-Williams, got a warm reception on Capitol Hill Wednesday, as the Careless People author who the company has fought to silence described the company's chief executive as someone willing to shapeshift into whatever gets him closest to power. The message was one that lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and counterterrorism were very open to. Their responses underscore that amid CEO Mark Zuckerberg's latest pivot in cozying up to the right, his perception in Washington has not yet totally changed, even as he reportedly lobbies President Donald Trump to drop the government's antitrust case against the company. "He's recently tried a reinvention in which he is now a great advocate of free speech, after being an advocate of censorship in China and in this country for years," subcommittee Chair Josh Hawley (R-MO) said, pointing to longtime conservative allegations that Meta has suppressed things like vaccine skepticism and the Hunter Biden laptop story. "Now that's all wiped away. Now he's on Joe Rogan and says that he is Mr. Free Speech, he is Mr. MAGA, he's a whole new man, and his company, they're a whole new company. Do you buy this latest reinvention of Mark Zuckerberg?" "If he is such a fan of freedom of speech, why is he trying to silence me?" Wynn-Williams asked in response. Meta convinced an arbitrator to order her to stop making disparaging statements and halt further publishing and promotion of the book, which details Meta's alleged dealings with the Chinese government and claims of sexual harassment from a top executive.

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BrianFagioli writes: In a move that is sure to make longtime PC users do a double take, the Library of Congress has added two very unexpected sounds to its National Recording Registry. No, it's not another classic rock album or jazz staple. Believe it or not, it's actually the "Reboot Chime" from Windows 95 (that played when the operating system started) and the soundtrack from Minecraft!

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The U.S. Army told the government it had a lot of success using AI to "process targets" during a recent deployment. It said that it had used AI systems to identify targets at a rate of 55 per day but could get that number up to 5,000 a day with "advanced artificial intelligence tools in the future." 404 Media: The line comes from a new report from the Government Accountability Office -- a nonpartisan watchdog group that investigates the federal government. The report is titled "Defense Command and Control" and is, in part, about the Pentagon's recent push to integrate AI systems into its workflow. Across the government, and especially in the military, there has been a push to add or incorporate AI into various systems. The pitch here is that AI systems would help the Pentagon ID targets on the battlefield and allow those systems to help determine who lives and who dies. The Ukrainian and Israeli military are already using similar systems but the practice is fraught and controversial.

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