Dashlane, in a support page: Due to changes in business priorities, we've decided to discontinue the Dashlane Authenticator app as of May 13, 2024. You can still use the main Dashlane app as an authenticator to protect logins stored in Dashlane with 2-factor authentication.

Amazon plans to spend almost $150 billion in the coming 15 years on data centers, giving the cloud-computing giant the firepower to handle an expected explosion in demand for artificial intelligence applications and other digital services. From a report: The spending spree is a show of force as the company looks to maintain its grip on the cloud services market, where it holds about twice the share of No. 2 player Microsoft. Sales growth at Amazon Web Services slowed to a record low last year as business customers cut costs and delayed modernization projects. Now spending is starting to pick up again, and Amazon is keen to secure land and electricity for its power-hungry facilities.

"We're expanding capacity quite significantly," said Kevin Miller, an AWS vice president who oversees the company's data centers. "I think that just gives us the ability to get closer to customers." Over the past two years, according to a Bloomberg tally, Amazon has committed to spending $148 billion to build and operate data centers around the world. The company plans to expand existing server farm hubs in northern Virginia and Oregon as well as push into new precincts, including Mississippi, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started in December and took months to complete, TechCrunch has learned.

The EV startup was ultimately able to track down a majority of those payments or request new ones from customers whose payment methods had expired. But the disarray, which was described to TechCrunch by three people familiar with the internal payment crisis, took employees and resources away from Fisker's sales team at a time when the company was attempting to save itself by restructuring its business model.

Fisker struggled to keep tabs on these transactions, which included down payments and in some cases, the full price of the vehicles, because of lax internal procedures for keeping track of them, according to the people. In a few cases, it delivered vehicles without collecting any form of payment at all, they said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: Nigeria doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to respecting the speech rights of its own citizens, nor the rights of platforms that its citizens use. But I will admit that even with that reputation in place, I'm a bit at a loss as to why the country decided to arrest and charge a woman for violating those same laws because she wrote an unkind review of a can of tomato puree on Facebook: "A Nigerian woman who wrote an online review of a can of tomato puree is facing imprisonment after its manufacturer accused her of making a 'malicious allegation' that damaged its business. Chioma Okoli, a 39-year-old entrepreneur from Lagos, is being prosecuted and sued in civil court for allegedly breaching the country's cybercrime laws, in a case that has gripped the West African nation and sparked protests by locals who believe she is being persecuted for exercising her right to free speech."

By now you're wondering what actually happened here. Well, Okoli got on Facebook after having tried a can of Nagiko Tomato Mix, made by local Nigerian company Erisco Foods. Her initial post essentially complained about it being too sugary. So pretty standard fair for a review-type post on Facebook. When she started getting some mixed replies, some of them told her to stop trying to ruin the company and just buy something else, with one such message supposedly coming from a relative of the company's ownership. To that, she replied: "Okoli responded: 'Help me advise your brother to stop ki***ing people with his product, yesterday was my first time of using and it's pure sugar.'"

By the way, you can see all of this laid out by Erisco Foods itself on its own Facebook page. The company also claims that she exchanged messages with others talking about how she wanted to trash the product online so that nobody would buy it and that sort of thing. Whatever the truth about that situation is, this all stems from a poor review of a product posted online, which is the kind of speech countries with free speech laws typically protect. In Okoli's case, she was arrested shortly after those posts. [...] Okoli is pregnant and was placed in a cell during her arrest that had water leaking into it, by her account. She was also forced to apologize to Erisco Foods as part of her bond release, which she then publicly stated was done under duress and refused to apologize once out of holding. Okoli is also countersuing both Erisco Foods and the police, arguing for a violation of her speech rights.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Oregon Governor Tina Kotek today signed the state's Right to Repair Act, which will push manufacturers to provide more repair options for their products than any other state so far. The law, like those passed in New York, California, and Minnesota, will require many manufacturers to provide the same parts, tools, and documentation to individuals and repair shops that they provide to their own repair teams. But Oregon's bill goes further, preventing companies from implementing schemes that require parts to be verified through encrypted software checks before they will function. Known as parts pairing or serialization, Oregon's bill, SB 1596, is the first in the nation to target that practice. Oregon State Senator Janeen Sollman (D) and Representative Courtney Neron (D) sponsored and pushed the bill in the state senate and legislature.

Oregon's bill isn't stronger in every regard. For one, there is no set number of years for a manufacturer to support a device with repair support. Parts pairing is prohibited only on devices sold in 2025 and later. And there are carve-outs for certain kinds of electronics and devices, including video game consoles, medical devices, HVAC systems, motor vehicles, and -- as with other states -- "electric toothbrushes." "By eliminating manufacturer restrictions, the Right to Repair will make it easier for Oregonians to keep their personal electronics running," said Charlie Fisher, director of Oregon's chapter of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), in a statement. "That will conserve precious natural resources and prevent waste. It's a refreshing alternative to a 'throwaway' system that treats everything as disposable."

Neil Irwin reports via Axios: The dearth of productivity growth over the last couple of decades has held back incomes in the U.S. and other rich countries, according to a report out Wednesday from the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the global consultancy. Productivity growth has been weak in the U.S. and Western Europe since the 2008 global financial crisis, but things looked better among many emerging markets. The McKinsey report finds that global labor productivity growth was 2.3% a year from 1997 to 2022, a rapid rate that has increased incomes and quality of life in large parts of the world. China and India account for the largest portion of that surge -- half of overall global productivity improvement, with other emerging markets accounting for another 25%, led by Central and Eastern Europe and emerging Asian economies.

In the U.S., the report finds that the decline in capital investment following the 2008 financial crisis has resulted in a $4,500 lower per-capita GDP in 2022 than it would have if pre-crisis trends had continued. Rapid advances in manufacturing technology, especially for electronics, petered out in the same time period, subtracting another $5,000 from per-capita GDP. "Digitization was much discussed as the main candidate to rev up productivity again, but its impact failed to spread beyond" the tech sector, the authors write. The authors are optimistic that a confluence of factors will make the years ahead different.

The rise in global interest rates and inflation are evidence of stronger global demand. Many countries are experiencing labor shortages that may incentivize more productivity-enhancing investment. And artificial intelligence and related technologies create big opportunities. "Inflationary pressure and rising interest rates could be signs that we are leaving behind secular stagnation and entering an era of higher demand and investment," the report finds. "In corporate boardrooms around the world right now, there's a tremendous amount of conversation associated with [generative] AI, and I think there's a broad acknowledgment that this could very much transform productivity at the company level," Olivia White, a McKinsey senior partner and co-author of the report, tells Axios. "Another thing that's happening right now is the conversation about labor. Labor markets in all advanced economies, and the U.S. is really sort of top of the heap, are very, very tight right now. So there's a lot of conversation around what do we do to make the people that we have as productive as they can be?"

Poland has fined Amazon close to $8 million for misleading consumers about the conclusion of sales contracts on its online marketplace. The sanction "also calls out the e-commerce giant for deceptive design elements which may inject a false sense of urgency into the purchasing process and mislead shoppers about elements like product availability and delivery dates," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The country's consumer and competition watchdog, the UOKiK, has been looking into complaints about Amazon's sales practices since September 2021, following complaints from shoppers, including some who did not receive their purchases. The authority opened a formal investigation into Amazon's practices in February 2023. Wednesday's sanction is the conclusion of that probe. The UOKiK found consumers who ordered products on Amazon could have their purchases subsequently cancelled by the tech giant as it does not treat the moment of purchase as the conclusion of a sales contract, despite sending consumers confirmation of their order -- even after consumers have paid for the product. For Amazon, the conclusion of a sales contract only occurs once it has sent information about the actual shipment. [...]

Its enforcement also calls out Amazon for using deceptive design to encourage shoppers to click buy by presenting misleading information about product availability and delivery windows -- such as by listing how many items were in stock to be purchased and providing a countdown clock to order an item in order to get it on a particular delivery date. Its investigation found Amazon does not always meet these deadlines for orders, nor ship products immediately as they may be out of stock despite claims to the contrary shown to consumers. "Amazon treats the data it provides on availability and shipping date as indicative but the way it is presented does not indicate this," the UOKiK noted, adding: "Consumers can only find out about this in the terms of sale on the platform."

While Amazon does offer a delivery guarantee -- offering a refund if items do not ship within the stated time -- the authority found it failed to provide consumers with information about the rules of this service before placing an order. It only offers details at the order summary stage. And then only "if the consumer decides to read the subsequent links specifying delivery details." Shoppers who did not follow the link to read more may not have been aware of their right to apply for and receive a refund from Amazon if there is a delay in shipment. It also found the e-commerce giant failed to provide information about the "Delivery Guarantee" in the purchase confirmation sent to shoppers. Amazon said it will appeal the fine. The company also writes: "Fast and reliable delivery across a wide selection of products is a top priority for us, and Amazon.pl has millions of items available with fast and free Prime delivery. Since launching Amazon.pl in 2021, we have continuously invested and worked hard to provide customers with a clear, reliable delivery promise at check out, and while the vast majority of our deliveries arrive on time, customers can contact us in the rare event that they experience a delay or order cancellation, and we will make it right.

Over the last year, we have collaborated with the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), and proposed multiple voluntary amendments to continue to improve the customer experience on Amazon.pl. We strictly follow legal standards in all countries where we operate and we strongly disagree with the assessment and penalty issued by the UOKiK. We will appeal this decision."

TikTok is being investigated by the FTC over its data and security practices, "a probe that could lead to a settlement or a lawsuit against the company," reports the Associated Press. From the report: In its investigation, the FTC has been looking into whether TikTok violated a portion of federal law that prohibits "unfair and deceptive" business practices by denying that individuals in China had access to U.S. user data, said the person, who is not authorized to discuss the investigation. The agency also is scrutinizing the company over potential violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires kid-oriented apps and websites to get parents' consent before collecting personal information of children under 13.

The agency is nearing the conclusion of its investigation and could settle with TikTok in the coming weeks. But there's not a deadline for an agreement, the person said. If the FTC moves forward with a lawsuit instead, it would have to refer the case to the Justice Department, which would have 45 days to decide whether it wants to file a case on the FTC's behalf, make changes or send it back to the agency to pursue on its own.

Global bank messaging network SWIFT is planning a new platform in the next one to two years to connect the wave of central bank digital currencies now in development to the existing finance system, it has told Reuters. From the report: The move, which would be one of the most significant yet for the nascent CBDC ecosystem given SWIFT's key role in global banking, is likely to be fine-tuned to when the first major ones are launched. Around 90% of the world's central banks are now exploring digital versions of their currencies. Most don't want to be left behind by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but are grappling with technological complexities.

SWIFT's head of innovation, Nick Kerigan, said its latest trial, which took 6 months and involved a 38-member group of central banks, commercial banks and settlement platforms, had been one of the largest global collaborations on CBDCs and "tokenised" assets to date. It focused on ensuring different countries' CBDCs can all be used together even if built on different underlying technologies, or "protocols", thereby reducing payment system fragmentation risks.

The U.S. Air Force paid for a test version of an AI-powered chatbot to assist in intelligence and surveillance tasks as part of a $1.2 million deal, according to internal Air Force documents obtained by 404 Media. From the report: The news provides more insight into what military agencies are currently exploring using AI for, and comes as more AI companies eye the military space as a business opportunity. OpenAI, for instance, quietly removed language that expressly prohibited its technology for military purposes in January. "Edge Al Platform for Space and Unmanned Aerial Imagery Intelligence," a section of one of the documents reads. The contract is between the Air Force and a company called Misram LLC, which also operates under the name Spectronn.

Included in a "milestone schedule" explaining the specifics of the deal are the items "ISR chatbot design" and "ISR chatbot software." ISR refers to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, a common military term. Other items in the schedule include "data ingestion tool" and "data visualization tool." 404 Media obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Air Force. On its website, Spectronn advertises an "AI Digital Assistant for Analytics." It says the bot can take data such as images and videos, and then answer plain English questions about that information. "Current analytics dashboard solutions are complex and not human-friendly. It leads to severe latency (from hours to days), cognitive load on the data analyst, false alarms, and frustrated decision makers or end-users," it reads.

Tech companies are serving up million-dollar-a-year compensation packages, accelerated stock-vesting schedules and offers to poach entire engineering teams to draw people with expertise and experience in the kind of generative AI that is powering ChatGPT and other humanlike bots. They are competing against each other and against startups vying to be the next big thing to unseat the giants. From a report: The offers stand out even by the industry's relatively lavish past standards of outsize pay and perks. And the current AI talent shortage stands out for another reason: It is happening as layoffs are continuing in other areas of tech and as companies have been reallocating resources to invest more in covering the enormous cost of developing AI technology.

"There is a secular shift in what talents we're going after," says Naveen Rao, head of Generative AI at Databricks. "We have a glut of people on one side and a shortage on the other." Databricks, a data storage and management startup, doesn't have a problem finding software engineers. But when it comes to candidates who have trained large language models, or LLMs, from scratch or can help solve vexing problems in AI, such as hallucinations, Rao says there might be only a couple of hundred people out there who are qualified.

Some of these hard-to-find, tier-one candidates can easily get total compensation packages of $1 million a year or more. Salespeople in AI are also in demand and hard to find. Selling at the beginning of a technology transition when things are changing rapidly requires a different skill set and depth of knowledge. Candidates with those skills are making around double what an enterprise software salesperson would. But that isn't the norm for most people working in AI, Rao says. For managerial roles in AI and machine learning, base-pay increases ranged from 5% to 11% from April 2022 to April 2023, according to a WTW survey of more than 1,500 employers. The base-pay increases of nonmanagerial roles ranged from 13% to 19% during the same period.

Two of the world's largest credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, as well as the banks that issue cards with them, have agreed to settle a decadeslong antitrust case brought upon by merchants. From a report: The settlement is set to lower swipe fees merchants pay when customers make purchases using their Visa or Mastercard by $30 billion over five years, according to a press release announcing the settlement Tuesday morning. The settlement, which only applies to US merchants, is the result of a lawsuit filed in 2005. However, nothing is considered finalized until it receives approval from the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Even then, the case can also be appealed in what could be a lengthy battle.

Typically, swipe fees cost merchants 2% of the total transaction a customer makes -- but can be as much as 4% for some premium rewards cards, according to the National Retail Federation. The settlement would lower those fees by at least 0.04 percentage point for a minimum of three years. Additionally, the settlement would require Visa and Mastercard to maintain the swipe fee rates that existed as of December 31, 2023 for five years.

Georg Szalai reports via the Hollywood Reporter: The World Poker Tour (WPT) is betting on AI-powered dubbing tools under a partnership with Papercup, a London-based AI dubbing company, that will replace WPT's traditional localization methods in Latin America. Papercup will work with the World Poker Tour to translate 184 of the franchise's 44-minute-long episodes into Brazilian Portuguese, the companies said.

"This will amount to nearly 140 hours of content and enable viewers across South America to access WPT's latest shows and tournaments in their native language quicker than ever before," they explained. "Forced to deal with lead times of up to six months, the company experienced ongoing challenges with timely content delivery and adaptation." The Papercup deal will cut those lead times in half, the partners said. "Now the premier poker content produced by WPT will be able to reach international fans watching on OTT platforms, as well as its own FAST channel, faster than ever before," they touted. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

Papercup uses a combination of machine-learning tools and expert human translators to "deliver maximal linguistic and tonal accuracy." Its AI voices are built using data from real voice actors to ensure they "have all the warmth and expressivity of human speech," it says. "The quality of Papercup dubbing has been second to none. A big part of that is down to their AI voices and expert translators who go through every sentence to make sure the moment is truly captured in the new AI dubs," said Marc Dion, director of distribution & ad sales at WPT. "The major streaming platforms have very stringent criteria when it comes to dubbed content and if it's going to connect with our shared viewers."

Web-based design platform Canva has acquired the Affinity creative software suite for an undisclosed sum, though Bloomberg reports that it's valued at "several hundred million [British] pounds." The Verge reports that the acquisition helps the company "[position] itself as a challenger to Adobe's grip over the digital design industry." From the report: Canva announced the deal on Tuesday, which gives the company ownership over Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher -- three popular creative applications for Windows, Mac, and iPad that provide similar features to Adobe's Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign software, respectively. [T]he acquisition makes sense as the Australian-based company tries to attract more creative professionals. As of January this year, Canva's design platform attracted around 170 million monthly global users. That's a lot of people who probably aren't using equivalent Adobe software like Express, but unlike Adobe, Canva doesn't have its own design applications that target creative professionals like illustrators, photographers, and video editors.

Affinity apps are used by over three million global users according to Canva -- that's a fraction of Adobe's user base, but Affinity shouldn't be underestimated here. The decision to make its Affinity applications a one-time-purchase with no ongoing subscription fees has earned it a loyal fanbase, especially with creatives who are actively looking for alternatives to Adobe's subscription-based design ecosystem. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Canva co-founder Cameron Adams said that Affinity applications will remain separate from Canva's platform, but that some small integrations should be expected over time. "Our product teams have already started chatting and we have some immediate plans for lightweight integration, but we think the products themselves will always be separate," said Adams.

Adam Neumann has submitted a $500 million bid to acquire WeWork out of bankruptcy. According to CNBC, it "could go up to $900 million pending due diligence." From the report: Neumann's financing was not immediately clear, although people familiar with the matter told CNBC that Dan Loeb's Third Point was not involved in the offer. Neumann's counsel had previously said that Loeb's investment firm was backing the WeWork founder's offer, but Third Point disputed that assertion in a prior statement. The uncertainty over Neumann's financing, coupled with his track record at the company, could dampen WeWork's receptiveness to his offer. Neumann, his family office Nazare, and his Andreessen Horowitz-backed real estate venture Flow filed a notice of appearance in WeWork's bankruptcy docket on Monday.

"Two weeks ago, a coalition of half a dozen financing partners -- whose identities are known to WeWork and its advisors -- submitted a potential bid for substantially more" than the initially reported $500 million, a Flow spokesperson said in a statement. The offer comes weeks after it emerged Neumann had renewed interest in taking back the company he was ousted from five years ago. WeWork filed for bankruptcy in 2023 after years of struggles, and has been working with bankruptcy advisors to restructure and streamline the business. "As we've said previously, WeWork is an extraordinary company and it's no surprise we receive expressions of interest from third parties on a regular basis. Our Board and our advisors review those approaches in the ordinary course, to ensure we always act in the best long-term interests of the company," a WeWork spokesperson said Monday in a statement.

Dell reduced its workforcereduced its workforce as part of a broader initiative to cut costs that included limiting external hiring and employee reorganizations, it said in a filing on Monday. From a report: As of Feb. 2, 2024, it had nearly 120,000 employees, down from about 126,000 a year earlier. The layoffs come after sluggish demand for its personal computers for nearly two years partly contributed to a 11% drop in revenue in fourth-quarter earnings posted last month. Dell expects net revenue in its client solutions group (CSG) - home to PCs - to grow for the entire year, it said on Monday. The segment's revenue had fallen 12% in the fourth quarter.

Telegram is offering a new way to earn a premium subscription free of charge: all you have to do is volunteer your phone number to relay one-time passwords (OTP) to other users. This, in fact, sounds like an awful idea -- particularly for a messaging service based around privacy. From a report: X user @AssembleDebug spotted details about the new program on the English-language version of a popular Russian-language Telegram information channel. Sure enough, there's a section in Telegram's terms of service outlining the new "Peer-to-Peer Login" or P2PL program, which is currently only offered on Android and in certain (unspecified) locations. By opting in to the program, you agree to let Telegram use your phone number to send up to 150 texts with OTPs to other users logging in to their accounts. Every month your number is used to send a minimum number of OTPs, you'll get a gift code for a one-month premium subscription. Boy does this sound like a bad idea, starting with the main issue: your phone number is seen by the recipient every time it's used to send an OTP.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Reddit will need to spend heavily on content moderation as it may face greater scrutiny as a public company, analysts said, threatening its longstanding policy of relying on an army of volunteers to maintain order on its platform. The newly listed company warned in its initial public offering (IPO) paperwork that its unique approach to content moderation can sometimes subject it to disruptions like in 2023, when several moderators protested against its decision to charge third-party app developers for access to its data.

Depending on volunteers is not sustainable, given the regulatory scrutiny that the company will now face, said Julian Klymochko, CEO of alternative investment solutions firm Accelerate Financial Technologies. "It's like relying on unpaid labor when the company has nearly a billion dollars in revenue," he added. Reddit reported revenue of $804 million in 2023, according to an earlier filing. Reddit will need to make substantial investments in trust and safety, which could lead to a "dramatic" rise in expenses, Klymochko said. Josh White, former economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission and assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University, also said that banking on free volunteers is Reddit's biggest risk. The company would need to ramp up spending on anti-misinformation efforts especially as the U.S. prepares for the presidential election later this year, White said. "We believe our approach is the most sustainable and scalable moderation model that exists online today. We are continually investing in and iterating on new tools and policies to improve our internal capabilities," the Reddit spokesperson said.

The FTX bankruptcy estate has raised $884 million by selling the majority of its Anthropic shares to two dozen institutional investors. "The sale of the Anthropic shares is a big win for the FTX estate, which pledged in January to pay back the defunct exchange's customers 100% of the value of their holdings at the time of the exchange's collapse," reports CoinDesk. "FTX's FTT token climbed 10% on the news." From the report: According to Friday court filings, the top buyer is ATIC Third International Investment Company, a tech investment company wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala. ATIC has agreed to purchase 16,664,167 shares of Anthropic from FTX for $500 million. Other buyers include Jane Street Global Trading -- an affiliate of the erstwhile employer of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried -- "certain funds" tied to Fidelity Investments and The Ford Foundation.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The number of landline users has plummeted with the rise of cellphones, and the 19th-century technology's days appear to be numbered. Providers like AT&T are looking to exit the business by transitioning customers to cellphones or home telephone service over broadband connections. But for many of the millions of people still clinging to their copper-based landline telephones, newer alternatives are either unavailable, too expensive, or are unreliable when it matters most: in an emergency.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, only a quarter of adults in the United States still have landlines and only around 5 percent say they mostly or only rely on them. The largest group of people holding onto their landlines are 65 and older. Meanwhile, more than 70 percent of adults are using wireless phones only. The copper lines used for traditional landlines carry electricity over the wires, so as long as a phone is corded or charged it will work during a power outage. Landlines are separate from cellular and broadband networks and are not affected by their outages, making them a necessary backstop in rural areas. Many of those same areas have inadequate cellular or internet coverage.

"In three, four, maybe five years a lot of states are going to say 'Okay, it's permissible to discontinue service if you, the phone company, can demonstrate there's functional alternative service,'" says Rob Frieden, an Academy and Emeritus Professor of Telecommunications and Law at Pennsylvania State University. AT&T recently asked the California Public Utilities Commission to end its obligation to provide landline service in parts of the state. The Federal Communications Commission, which has to approve a request to end service, said it hasn't received one from AT&T.