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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gothamist: City regulators on Tuesday accused Uber and DoorDash of deliberately altering their app interfaces to discourage customers from tipping food delivery workers, a move that has cost the employees more than $550 million over the last two years. A report (PDF) published by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection argues that food delivery app giants retaliated against minimum wage rules for delivery drivers that took effect in December 2023 by implementing "design tricks" that obscure opportunities to offer a tip in their mobile apps. DoorDash explicitly blames the new wage rules for removing the simpler tipping option. "In response to regulations in New York City, you will now only be able to add a tip for your Dasher after they have been assigned," a message on the app's checkout page states. Other food delivery apps like GrubHub allow customers the option to add a tip before checking out. The average tip for DoorDash and Uber Eats drivers in the city fell from $2.17 to 76 cents per delivery after the companies made the changes to their apps, the report found. Both companies also issue messages to customers in the city telling them the prices for their orders were "set by an algorithm using your personal data." Further reading: Uber and DoorDash Try To Halt NYC Law That Encourages Tipping

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The U.S. has approved limited sales of Nvidia's H200 AI chips to China, the Department of Commerce said on Tuesday. Exports will be allowed to "approved customers" with security safeguards and a 25% U.S. government cut. The company's most advanced Blackwell chips will remain restricted. The BBC reports: The H200, Nvidia's second-most-advanced semiconductor, had been restricted by Washington over concerns that it would give China's technology industry and military an edge over the U.S. The Commerce Department said the chips can be shipped to China granted that there is sufficient supply of the processors in the U.S. Nvidia's spokesperson told the BBC that the company welcomed the move, saying it will benefit manufacturing and jobs in the U.S. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security said its revised export policy applies to Nvidia's H200 chips, as well as less advanced processors. Chinese customers must also show "sufficient security procedures" and cannot use the chips for military uses. Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told the BBC on Wednesday that Beijing has consistently opposed the "politicization and weaponization of tech and trade issues." "We oppose blocking and restricting China, which disrupts the stability of industrial and supply chains," he said. "This approach does not serve the common interests of both sides."

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GRUB 2.14 Released with EROFS, Argon2 KDF, and Shim Loader Protocol Support  9to5Linux

Bandcamp has announced a ban on music made wholly or substantially by generative AI, aiming to protect human creativity and prohibit AI impersonation of artists. Here's what the music platform had to say: ... Something that always strikes us as we put together a roundup like this is the sheer quantity of human creativity and passion that artists express on Bandcamp every single day. The fact that Bandcamp is home to such a vibrant community of real people making incredible music is something we want to protect and maintain. Today, in line with that goal, we're articulating our policy on generative AI. We want musicians to keep making music, and for fans to have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans. Our guidelines for generative AI in music and audio are as follows: - Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp. - Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement. If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI generated. We will be sure to communicate any updates to the policy as the rapidly changing generative AI space develops. Given the response around this to our previous posts, we hope this news is welcomed. We wish you all an amazing 2026. [...]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to the government's version of events, 43-year-old Christopher Southerland was working in 2023 as a sysadmin for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. In his role, Southerland had the authority to order cell phones for committee staffers, of which there are around 80. But during the early months of 2023, Southerland is said to have ordered 240 brand-new phones -- far more than even the total number of staffers -- and to have shipped them all to his home address in Maryland. The government claims that Southerland then sold over 200 of these cell phones to a local pawn shop, which was told to resell the devices only "in parts" as a way to get around the House's mobile device management software, which could control the devices remotely. It's hard to find good help these days, though, even at pawn shops. At some point, at least one of the phones ended up, intact, on eBay, where it was sold to a member of the public. This member of the public promptly booted the phone, which did not display the expected device operating system screen but instead "a phone number for the House of Representatives Technology Service Desk." The phone buyer called this number, which alerted House IT staff that government phones were being sold on eBay. According to the government, this sparked a broader investigation to figure out what was going on, which revealed that "several phones purchased by Southerland were unaccounted for." The full scheme is said to have cost the government over $150,000. Southerland was indicted in early December 2025 and arrested on January 8, 2026. He pled not guilty and has a court date scheduled for later this month.

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7 deprecated Linux commands you need to stop using - and what to use instead  ZDNET

The UK government has abandoned its controversial plan to require workers to sign up for a mandatory digital ID system to prove their eligibility to work in the country, opting instead to move existing document-based checks -- such as biometric passports -- fully online by 2029. The reversal follows a dramatic collapse in public support; polling showed approval falling from just over half the population in June to less than a third after Prime Minister Keir Starmer's announcement. Nearly 3 million people signed a parliamentary petition opposing the scheme. The government says it remains committed to mandatory digital right-to-work checks but will no longer require enrollment in a new ID system.

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Dell's chief operating officer Jeff Clarke has informed employees that the company is preparing for what he calls the "biggest transformation in company history," a sweeping systems overhaul scheduled to launch on May 3 that will standardize processes across nearly every major division. The initiative, dubbed One Dell Way, will replace Dell's existing sprawl of applications, servers and databases with a single enterprise platform designed to unify the 42-year-old company's operations. Clarke's memo, sent to staff on Tuesday and obtained by Business Insider, said Dell has spent the past two years building toward this transition. The May 3 launch will affect the company's PC business, finance, supply chain, marketing, sales, revenue operations, services, and HR. The ISG division, which handles cloud and AI infrastructure, will follow in August. "We need one way -- simplified, standardized and automated -- so we can be more competitive and serve our customers better," Clarke wrote. Mandatory training begins February 3.

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New Linux malware targets the cloud, steals creds, and then vanishes  theregister.com

Why Linus Torvald's using AI code for fun does not mean Linux is changing  TechRadar

An Early Run With Ubuntu 26.04 On AMD EPYC Turin - The Current Performance Gains Over Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Review  Phoronix

An anonymous reader shares a report: Global temperatures soared in 2025, but a NASA statement published Wednesday alongside its latest benchmark annual report makes no reference to climate change, in line with President Donald Trump's push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities. That marks a sharp break from last year's communications, issued under the administration of Democrat Joe Biden, which stated plainly: "This global warming has been caused by human activities" and has led to intensifying "heat waves, wildfires, intense rainfall and coastal flooding." Last year's materials also featured lengthy quotes from the then-NASA chief and a senior scientist and included graphics and a video. By contrast, this year's release only runs through a few key figures, and amounts to a handful of paragraphs. According to the US space agency, Earth's global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than in 2023 -- albeit within a margin of error -- making it effectively tied as the second-hottest year on record after 2024.

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Verizon said on Wednesday that its wireless service was suffering an outage impacting cellular data and voice services. From a report: The nation's largest wireless carrier said that its "engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly." Verizon's statement came after a swath of social media comments directed at Verizon, with users saying that their mobile devices were showing no bars of service or "SOS," indicating a lack of connection. Verizon, which has more than 146 million customers, appears to have started experiencing services issues around 12:00 p.m. ET, according to comments on social media site X. Users also reported problems with Verizon competitor T-Mobile. But the company said that it was not having any service issues. "T-Mobile's network is keeping our customers connected, and we've confirmed that our network is operating optimally," a spokesperson told NBC News. "However, due to Verizon's reported outage, our customers may not be able to reach someone with Verizon service at this time."

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This distro makes it easy to switch from Windows to Linux - here's how  ZDNET

Linux Mint 22.3 "Zena" is out now and supported until 2029  GamingOnLinux

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by roughly a dozen firms from the U.S. and Israel due to national security concerns, two people briefed on the matter said. As trade and diplomatic tensions flare between China and the U.S. and both sides vie for tech supremacy, Beijing has been keen to replace Western-made technology with domestic alternatives. The U.S. companies whose cybersecurity software has been banned include Broadcom-owned VMware, Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet, while the Israeli companies include Check Point Software Technologies, the sources said.

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Google and YouTube are celebrating America's 250th anniversary.

Google and YouTube are celebrating America's 250th anniversary.

New China Linked VoidLink Linux Malware Targets Major Cloud Providers  Hackread

Linux Demonstrates That Bugs Can Hide For 20 years!  i-programmer.info

Coal power generation fell in China and India for the first time since the 1970s last year, in a "historic" moment that could bring a decline in global emissions, according to analysis. From a report: The simultaneous fall in coal-powered electricity in the world's biggest coal-consuming countries had not happened since 1973, according to analysts at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, and was driven by a record roll-out of clean energy projects. The research, commissioned by the climate news website Carbon Brief, found that electricity generated by coal plants fell by 1.6% in China and by 3% in India last year, after the boom in clean energy across both countries was more than enough to meet their rising demand for energy. China added more than 300GW of solar power and 100GW of wind power last year -- together, more than five times the UK's total existing power generation capacity -- which are both "clear new records for China and, therefore, for any country ever," the report said. India added 35GW of solar, 6GW of wind and 3.5GW of hydropower last year, according to the analysis.

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