E-commerce giant eBay agreed to pay a $3 million penalty for the harassment and stalking of a Massachusetts couple by several of its employees. "The couple, Ina and David Steiner, had been subjected to threats and bizarre deliveries, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig mask in August 2019," reports CBS News. From the report: Thursday's fine comes after several eBay employees ran a harassment and intimidation campaign against the Steiners, who publish a news website focusing on players in the e-commerce industry. "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct. The company's employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand," Levy said. "We left no stone unturned in our mission to hold accountable every individual who turned the victims' world upside-down through a never-ending nightmare of menacing and criminal acts."

The Justice Department criminally charged eBay with two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through electronic communications services, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstruction of justice. The company agreed to pay $3 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement. Under the agreement, eBay will be required to retain an independent corporate compliance monitor for three years, officials said, to "ensure that eBay's senior leadership sets a tone that makes compliance with the law paramount, implements safeguards to prevent future criminal activity, and makes clear to every eBay employee that the idea of terrorizing innocent people and obstructing investigations will not be tolerated," Levy said.

Former U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said the plan to target the Steiners, which he described as a "campaign of terror," was hatched in April 2019 at eBay. Devin Wenig, eBay's CEO at the time, shared a link to a post Ina Steiner had written about his annual pay. The company's chief communications officer, Steve Wymer, responded: "We are going to crush this lady." About a month later, Wenig texted: "Take her down." Prosecutors said Wymer later texted eBay security director Jim Baugh. "I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes," Wymer wrote. Investigators said Baugh set up a meeting with security staff and dispatched a team to Boston, about 20 miles from where the Steiners live. "Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content, and with the comments posted beneath the newsletter's articles," the Department of Justice wrote in its Thursday announcement. Two former eBay security executives were sentenced to prison over the incident.

On Thursday, six spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds are expected to start trading on stock exchanges from Cboe Global Markets, according to a notice posted on CBOE's website. However, the listings still need to be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. CoinDesk reports: The Ark 21 (ARKB), Fidelity (FBTC), Franklin Templeton (EZBC), Invesco (BTCO), VanEck (HODL) and WisdomTree (BTCW) bitcoin ETFs appeared on the exchange operator's "New Listings" page on Wednesday. The listing doesn't mean that the ETFs will be approved by SEC. The commission still needs to approve the applicants' 19b-4 and S1 filings.

"We are still awaiting SEC approval of our spot bitcoin ETFs," a Cboe spokesperson said. "The notices posted to our website are standard procedure in preparation of an ETF launch." The notice comes a day after the SEC's X account was "compromised," posting an unauthorized tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs.

UPDATE: The SEC has approved the listing and trading of 11 spot bitcoin exchange-trading product (ETP) shares, including those of Grayscale, Bitwise and Hashdex. SEC Chair Gary Gensler writes: Today, the Commission approved the listing and trading of a number of spot bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) shares. I have often said that the Commission acts within the law and how the courts interpret the law. Beginning under Chair Jay Clayton in 2018 and through March 2023, the Commission disapproved more than 20 exchange rule filings for spot bitcoin ETPs. One of those filings, made by Grayscale, contemplated the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into an ETP.

We are now faced with a new set of filings similar to those we have disapproved in the past. Circumstances, however, have changed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the Commission failed to adequately explain its reasoning in disapproving the listing and trading of Grayscale's proposed ETP (the Grayscale Order).[1] The court therefore vacated the Grayscale Order and remanded the matter to the Commission. Based on these circumstances and those discussed more fully in the approval order, I feel the most sustainable path forward is to approve the listing and trading of these spot bitcoin ETP shares. [...] "While we approved the listing and trading of certain spot bitcoin ETP shares today, we did not approve or endorse bitcoin," concludes Gensler. "Investors should remain cautious about the myriad risks associated with bitcoin and products whose value is tied to crypto." The full statement can be read here.

With the approval of new rule change applications, the SEC is now allowing bitcoin ETFs to be traded in the United States.



UPDATE: The SEC said that the announcement about bitcoin ETFs on social media was incorrect, and that its X account was compromised. "The SEC's @SECGov X/Twitter account has been compromised. The unauthorized tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs was not made by the SEC or its staff," an SEC spokesperson told CNBC.

"The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a post on X. From the original CNBC article: The decision will likely lead to the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which holds about $29 billion of the cryptocurrency, into an ETF, as well as the launch of competing funds from mainstream issuers like BlackRock's iShares. The approval could prove to be a landmark event in the adoption of cryptocurrency by mainstream finance, as the ETF structure gives institutions and financial advisors a familiar and regulated way to buy exposure to bitcoin.

The SEC has for years opposed a so-called spot bitcoin fund, with several firms filing and then withdrawing applications for ETFs in the past. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has been an outspoken critic of crypto during his tenure. However, the regulator appeared to change course on the ETF question in 2023, possibly due in part to an August loss to Grayscale in court which criticized the SEC for blocking bitcoin ETFs while allowing funds that track bitcoin futures.

HP has used its "Dynamic Security" firmware updates to "create a monopoly" of replacement printer ink cartridges, a lawsuit filed against the company on January 5 claims. From a report: The lawsuit, which is seeking class-action certification, represents yet another form of litigation against HP for bricking printers when they try to use ink that doesn't bear an HP logo. The lawsuit (PDF), which was filed in US District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, names 11 plaintiffs and seeks an injunction against HP requiring the company to disable its printer firmware updates from preventing the use of non-HP branded ink. The lawsuit also seeks monetary damages greater than $5,000,000 and a trial by jury. [...] HP was wrong to issue a firmware update affecting printer functionality, and users were not notified that accepting firmware updates "could damage any features of the printer," the lawsuit says.

Press2ToContinue writes: England's 1,000-year-old legal system -- still steeped in traditions that include wearing wigs and robes -- has taken a cautious step into the future by giving judges permission to use artificial intelligence to help produce rulings . The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary last month said AI could help write opinions but stressed it shouldn't be used for research or legal analyses because the technology can fabricate information and provide misleading, inaccurate and biased information.

"Judges do not need to shun the careful use of AI," said Master of the Rolls Geoffrey Vos, the second-highest ranking judge in England and Wales. "But they must ensure that they protect confidence and take full personal responsibility for everything they produce." At a time when scholars and legal experts are pondering a future when AI could replace lawyers, help select jurors or even decide cases, the approach spelled out Dec. 11 by the judiciary is restrained. But for a profession slow to embrace technological change, it's a proactive step as government and industry -- and society in general -- react to a rapidly advancing technology alternately portrayed as a panacea and a menace.

Alphabet's Google is set to go before a federal jury in Boston on Tuesday in a trial over accusations that processors it uses to power AI technology in key products infringe a computer scientist's patents. From a report: Singular Computing, founded by Massachusetts-based computer scientist Joseph Bates, claims Google copied his technology and used it to support AI features in Google Search, Gmail, Google Translate and other Google services. A Google court filing said that Singular has requested up to $7 billion in monetary damages, which would be more than double the largest-ever patent infringement award in U.S. history.

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda called Singular's patents "dubious" and said that Google developed its processors "independently over many years." "We look forward to setting the record straight in court," Castaneda said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden will release a final rule as soon as this week that will make it more difficult for companies to treat workers as independent contractors rather than employees that typically cost a company more, an administration official said. The U.S. Department of Labor rule, which was first proposed in 2022 and is likely to face legal challenges, will require that workers be considered employees entitled to more benefits and legal protections than contractors when they are "economically dependent" on a company.

A range of industries will likely be affected by the rule, which will take effect later this year, but its potential impact on app-based services that rely heavily on contract workers has garnered the most attention. Shares of Uber, Lyft and DoorDash all tumbled at least 10% when the draft rule was proposed in October 2022. The rule is among regulations with the most far-reaching impacts issued by the Labor Department office that enforces U.S. wage laws, according to Marc Freedman, vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest U.S. business lobby. But he said the draft version of the rule provides little guidance to companies on where to draw the line between employees and contractors. "Economic dependence is an elusive concept that in some cases may end up being defined by the eyes of the beholder," Freedman said.

The Labor Department in the proposed rule said it would consider factors such as a worker's "opportunity for profit or loss, investment, permanency, the degree of control by the employer over the worker, (and) whether the work is an integral part of the employer's business." The rule replaces a Trump administration regulation that said workers who own their own businesses or have the ability to work for competing companies, such as a driver who works for Uber and Lyft, can be treated as contractors. [...] The Biden administration has said the Trump-era rule violated U.S. wage laws and was out of step with decades of federal court decisions, and worker advocates have said a more strict standard was necessary to combat the rampant misclassification of workers in some industries.

CNN reports that some Verizon customers "might have found an unexpected surprise in the mail this week: An opportunity to receive a refund as part of a proposed $100 million settlement from a class-action lawsuit." Eligible customers are receiving postcards or emails alerting them to file a claim by April 15 to receive up to $100, which is the result of the lawsuit accusing Verizon of charging fees that were "unfair and not adequately disclosed."

At issue is Verizon's "administrative charge," which the plaintiffs said were "misleading" because that fee wasn't disclosed in their plan's advertised monthly price and were charged in a "deceptive and unfair manner." Verizon has denied the claims and said in a statement that it "clearly identifies and describes its wireless consumer admin charge multiple times during the sales transaction, as well as in its marketing, contracts and billing." A company spokesperson said that the charge "helps our company recover certain regulatory compliance and network related costs."
"The payout is at least $15," adds CNN, "and might be more depending on how long the customer used Verizon and the number of customers who file a claim."

Once a dominant force in music discovery, Spotify's famed playlists like RapCaviar, which significantly influenced mainstream music and artist visibility, are losing ground. As the music industry shifts towards algorithmic suggestions and TikTok emerges as a major music promoter, Spotify's strategy evolves with more automated music discovery and less emphasis on human-curated playlists, signaling a potential end to the era where a few key playlists could make a star overnight. Bloomberg reports: Enter TikTok. In the late 2010s, as the algorithmic controlled, short-form video app emerged as a growing force in music promotion, Spotify took notice. On an earnings call in 2020, Spotify Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek noted that users were increasingly opting for algorithmic suggestions and that Spotify would be leaning into the trend. "As we're getting better and better at personalization, we're serving better and better content and more and more of our users are choosing that," he said. From there, Spotify began implementing a number of changes that over time significantly altered the fundamental dynamics of how playlists get composed. Among other things, the company had already introduced a standardized pitching form that all artists and managers must use to submit tracks for playlist consideration. One former employee says the tool was created to foster a more merit-based system with a greater emphasis on data -- and less focus on the taste of individual curators. The goal, in part, was to give independent and smaller artists without the resources to personally court key playlist editors a better chance at placements. It was also a way to better protect the public-facing editors who in the early days were sometimes subjected to harassment from people disgruntled over their musical choices.

As the automated submission system took hold, the editors gradually grew more anonymous and less associated with particular playlists. In a handbook for the editorial team, Spotify instructed curators not to claim ownership of any one playlist. At the same time, Spotify began introducing multiple splashy features meant to encourage algorithm-driven listening, including an AI DJ and Daylist, two features that constantly change to fit listeners' habits and interests. (Spotify says "human expertise" guides the AI DJ.) Last year, Spotify laid off members of the teams involved in making playlists as part of its various cuts. And over time, the shift in emphasis has had consequences outside the company as well. These days, the same music industry sources who in the late 2010s learned to obsess over what was included and excluded from key Spotify playlists have started noticing something else -- it no longer seems to matter as much. Employees at different major labels say they've seen streams coming from RapCaviar drop anywhere from 30% to 50%.

The trend towards automated music discovery at Spotify shows no sign of slowing down. One internal presentation titled "Recapturing the Zeitgeist" encourages editorial curators to better utilize data. According to the people who have seen the plan, in addition to putting together a playlist, editorial curators would tag songs to help the algorithm accurately place them on relevant playlists that are automatically personalized for individual subscribers. The company has also shifted some human-curated playlists to personalized versions, including selections with seven-figure followings, like Housewerk and Indie Pop. These days, Spotify is also promoting something called Discovery Mode, wherein labels and artist teams can submit songs for additional algorithm pushes in exchange for a lower royalty rate. These tracks can only surface on personalized listening sessions, a former employee said, meaning Spotify would have a financial incentive to push people to them over editorially curated playlists. (For now, Discovery Mode songs only surface in radio or autoplay listening sessions.) The shift toward algorithmic distribution isn't necessarily a bad thing, says Dan Smith, US general manager at Armada, an independent dance label. "The way fans discovered new music was radio back in the day, then Spotify editorial playlists, then there were a few years where people only discovered new music through TikTok," Brad said. "All those things still work ... we're all just trying different ways to make sure songs get to the right people."

Alexander Martin reports via The Record: The owner of an apartment in Veliky Novgorod in Russia has been arrested for discrediting the country's armed forces after a neighbor alerted the police to the message 'Slava Ukraini' scrolling across their LED curtains. When police went to the scene, they saw the garland which the owner had hung in celebration of the New Year and a "slogan glorifying the Armed Forces of Ukraine," as a spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Affairs told state-owned news agency TASS. The apartment owner said the garland was supposed to display a "Happy New Year" greeting, TASS reported.

Several other people in Russia described a similar experience on the AlexGyver web forum, linked to a DIY blog popular in the country. They said at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, their LED curtains also began to show the "Glory to Ukraine" message in Ukrainian. It is not clear whether any of these other posters were also arrested. The man in Veliky Novgorod will have to defend his case in court, according to TASS. Police have seized the curtain itself.

An independent investigation into the cause of the message by the AlexGyver forum users found that affected curtains all used the same open-source firmware code. The original code appears to have originated in Ukraine before someone created a fork translated into Russian. According to the Telegram channel for AlexGyver, the code had been added to the original project on October 18, and then in December the people or person running the fork copied and pasted that update into their own version. "Everyone who downloaded and updated the firmware in December received a gift," the Telegram channel wrote. The message was "really encrypted, hidden from the 'reader' of the code, and is displayed on the first day of the year exclusively for residents of Russia by [geographic region]."

In a letter (PDF) citing "strong public interest in a prompt resolution," U.S. prosecutors said they do not plan to proceed with a second trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). The Register reports: The prosecutors reasoned that much of the evidence that would be submitted had already been considered in his October trial -- an event which yielded a guilty verdict after just four hours of jury deliberation. Although forgoing an additional trial means not holding SBF accountable for conspiracy to make unlawful campaign contributions, additional court dates would most certainly delay a scheduled March 2024 sentencing, as it would require negotiating with The Bahamas regarding terms of extradition.

SBF was extradited to the US from The Bahamas, where his crypto exchange FTX was headquartered, in December 2022. While the island nation agreed to extradition on seven out of eight charges, local authorities did not consent to extradition on a charge of conspiracy to make unlawful campaign contributions. US courts were therefore unable to pursue the eighth charge.

SBF's first trial yielded seven guilty verdicts. Those included two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Together they carry a combined maximum sentence of 110 years. However, even though the campaign finance charge was not pursued, it could be considered relevant in sentencing matters, wrote the attorneys in their filing. The prosecutors' letter detailed that the sentencing judgment will also "likely include orders of forfeiture and restitution for the victims of the defendant's crimes."

An anonymous reader shares a report: A court in Washington, D.C., has been stuck with a tough, maybe impossible question: What does full moon face emoji mean? Let me explain: In the summer of 2022, Ryan Cohen, a major investor in Bed Bath & Beyond, responded to a tweet about the beleaguered retailer with this side-eyed-moon emoji. Later that month, Cohen -- hailed as a "meme king" for his starring role in the GameStop craze -- disclosed that his stake in the company had grown to nearly 12 percent; the stock price subsequently shot up. That week, he sold all of his shares and walked away with a reported $60 million windfall.

Now shareholders are suing him for securities fraud, claiming that Cohen misled investors by using the emoji the way meme-stock types sometimes do -- to suggest that the stock was going "to the moon." A class-action lawsuit with big money on the line has come to legal arguments such as this: "There is no way to establish objectively the truth or falsity of a tiny lunar cartoon," as Cohen's lawyers wrote in an attempt to get the emoji claim dismissed. That argument was denied, and the court held that "emojis may be actionable."

The humble emoji -- and its older cousin, the emoticon -- has infiltrated the corporate world, especially in tech. Last month, when OpenAI briefly ousted Sam Altman and replaced him with an interim CEO, the company's employees reportedly responded with a vulgar emoji on Slack. That FTX, the failed cryptocurrency exchange once run by Sam Bankman-Fried, apparently used these little icons to approve million-dollar expense reports was held up during bankruptcy proceedings as a damning example of its poor corporate controls. And in February, a judge allowed a lawsuit to move forward alleging that an NFT company called Dapper Labs was illegally promoting unregistered securities on Twitter, because "the 'rocket ship' emoji, 'stock chart' emoji, and 'money bags' emoji objectively mean one thing: a financial return on investment."

AI represents a mixed blessing for the legal field, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in a year-end report published on Sunday, urging "caution and humility" as the evolving technology transforms how judges and lawyers go about their work. From a report: Roberts struck an ambivalent tone in his 13-page report. He said AI had potential to increase access to justice for indigent litigants, revolutionize legal research and assist courts in resolving cases more quickly and cheaply while also pointing to privacy concerns and the current technology's inability to replicate human discretion.

"I predict that human judges will be around for a while," Roberts wrote. "But with equal confidence I predict that judicial work - particularly at the trial level - will be significantly affected by AI." The chief justice's commentary is his most significant discussion to date of the influence of AI on the law, and coincides with a number of lower courts contending with how best to adapt to a new technology capable of passing the bar exam but also prone to generating fictitious content, known as "hallucinations." Roberts emphasized that "any use of AI requires caution and humility." He mentioned an instance where AI hallucinations had led lawyers to cite non-existent cases in court papers, which the chief justice said is "always a bad idea." Roberts did not elaborate beyond saying the phenomenon "made headlines this year."

One of the country's most influential courts has asked the nation's top securities regulator for its views on an uncomfortable subject: whether audit reports by outside accounting firms actually matter. From a report: The court already ruled that, at least in one case, they didn't. That case, where an insurer overstated profits and an auditor signed off on its books, led to an investor lawsuit against the auditor that was dismissed. In its ruling, the court said the audit report was so general an investor wouldn't have relied on it. The decision could have broad ramifications for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees corporate financial disclosures, and for the auditing industry, which charged about $17 billion last year for blessing the books of publicly listed companies in the U.S.

The ruling, by a three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, prompted three former SEC officials to tell the court it got the answer wrong. They asked the court to reconsider its decision, noting that the SEC in a previous enforcement case had said that "few matters could be more important to investors" than whether a company's financial statements had been subjected to a properly conducted annual audit. The court responded by inviting the SEC to file a brief expressing its views on the former officials' arguments. The SEC in a court filing said that "the commission has an interest in ensuring its views on this issue are considered by the court." Its brief is due Feb. 16. The court ruling involved a lawsuit by investors over an audit gone wrong. AmTrust Financial Services, an insurance company, had overstated its profit, and BDO USA, its outside accounting firm, had blessed the numbers.

"The events of 2023 showed that A.I. doesn't need to be that good in order to do damage," argues novelist Lincoln Michel in the New Republic: This March, news broke that the latest artificial intelligence models could pass the LSAT, SAT, and AP exams. It sparked another round of A.I. panic. The machines, it seemed, were already at peak human ability. Around that time, I conducted my own, more modest test. I asked a couple of A.I. programs to "write a six-word story about baby shoes," riffing on the famous (if apocryphal) Hemingway story. They failed but not in the way I expected. Bard gave me five words, and ChatGPT produced eight. I tried again, specifying "exactly six words," and received eight and then four words. What did it mean that A.I. could best top-tier lawyers yet fail preschool math?

A year since the launch of ChatGPT, I wonder if the answer isn't just what it seems: A.I. is simultaneously impressive and pretty dumb. Maybe not as dumb as the NFT apes or Zuckerberg's Metaverse cubicle simulator, which Silicon Valley also promised would revolutionize all aspects of life. But at least half-dumb. One day A.I. passes the bar exam, and the next, lawyers are being fined for citing A.I.-invented laws. One second it's "the end of writing," the next it's recommending recipes for "mosquito-repellant roast potatoes." At best, A.I. is a mixed bag. (Since "artificial intelligence" is an intentionally vague term, I should specify I'm discussing "generative A.I." programs like ChatGPT and MidJourney that create text, images, and audio. Credit where credit is due: Branding unthinking, error-prone algorithms as "artificial intelligence" was a brilliant marketing coup)....

The legal questions will be settled in court, and the discourse tends to get bogged down in semantic debates about "plagiarism" and "originality," but the essential truth of A.I. is clear: The largest corporations on earth ripped off generations of artists without permission or compensation to produce programs meant to rip us off even more. I believe A.I. defenders know this is unethical, which is why they distract us with fan fiction about the future. If A.I. is the key to a gleaming utopia or else robot-induced extinction, what does it matter if a few poets and painters got bilked along the way? It's possible a souped-up Microsoft Clippy will morph into SkyNet in a couple of years. It's also possible the technology plateaus, like how self-driving cars are perpetually a few years away from taking over our roads. Even if the technology advances, A.I. costs lots of money, and once investors stop subsidizing its use, A.I. — or at least quality A.I. — may prove cost-prohibitive for most tasks....

A year into ChatGPT, I'm less concerned A.I. will replace human artists anytime soon. Some enjoy using A.I. themselves, but I'm not sure many want to consume (much less pay for) A.I. "art" generated by others. The much-hyped A.I.-authored books have been flops, and few readers are flocking to websites that pivoted to A.I. Last month, Sports Illustrated was so embarrassed by a report they published A.I. articles that they apologized and promised to investigate. Say what you want about NFTs, but at least people were willing to pay for them.
"A.I. can write book reviews no one reads of A.I. novels no one buys, generate playlists no one listens to of A.I. songs no one hears, and create A.I. images no one looks at for websites no one visits.

"This seems to be the future A.I. promises. Endless content generated by robots, enjoyed by no one, clogging up everything, and wasting everyone's time."

NBC News reports that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. in February "used an American internet service provider to communicate, according to two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the assessment."

it used the American ISP connection "to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation." Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.

The Biden administration sought a highly secretive court order from the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect intelligence about it while it was over the U.S., according to multiple current and former U.S. officials. How the court ruled has not been disclosed. Such a court order would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance on the balloon as it flew over the U.S. and as it sent and received messages to and from China, the officials said, including communications sent via the American internet service provider...

The previously unreported U.S. effort to monitor the balloon's communications could be one reason Biden administration officials have insisted that they got more intelligence out of the device than it got as it flew over the U.S. Senior administration officials have said the U.S. was able to protect sensitive sites on the ground because they closely tracked the balloon's projected flight path. The U.S. military moved or obscured sensitive equipment so the balloon could not collect images or video while it was overhead.
NBC News is not naming the internet service provider, but says it denied that the Chinese balloon had used its network, "a determination it said was based on its own investigation and discussions it had with U.S. officials." The balloon contained "multiple antennas, including an array most likely able to collect and geolocate communications," according to reports from a U.S. State Depratment official cited by NBC News in February. "It was also powered by enormous solar panels that generated enough power to operate intelligence collection sensors, the official said.

Reached for comment this week, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told NBC News that the balloon was just a weather balloon that had accidentally drifted into American airspace.

Michael D. Cohen, the onetime fixer for former President Donald J. Trump, said in newly unsealed court papers that he had mistakenly given his lawyer bogus legal citations after the AI program Google Bard cooked them up for him. From a report: The fictitious citations were then used in a motion provided to a Manhattan federal judge. Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and served time in prison, had asked for an early end to court supervision of his case now that he was out of prison and had complied with the conditions of his release. In a sworn declaration made public on Friday, Mr. Cohen explained that he had not kept up with "emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not."

He also said he did not realize that the lawyer filing the motion on his behalf, David M. Schwartz, "would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed." The revelation could have serious implications for the Manhattan criminal case against Mr. Trump, in which Mr. Cohen is expected to serve as the star witness. The former president's lawyers have long attacked Mr. Cohen as a serial fabulist; now, they will have a brand-new example.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A group of clowns is suing their former employer Clowns.com for multiple labor law violations, according to recently filed court records. Four people -- Brayan Angulo, Cameron Pille, Janina Salorio, and Xander Black -- filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday alleging Adolph Rodriguez and Erica Barbuto, owners of Clowns.com and their former bosses, misclassified them as independent workers for years, and failed to pay them for their time. The Long Island-based company, which provides entertainers for events, violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York Labor Law, the lawsuit claims.

The owners of Clowns.com didn't give employees detailed pay statements as required by New York law, the lawsuit alleges. "As a result, Plaintiffs did not know how precisely their weekly pay was being calculated, and were thus deprived of information that could be used to challenge and prevent the theft of their wages," it says. The clowns weren't paid for time "spent at the warehouse gathering and loading equipment and supplies into vehicles," or for travel time between parties, or when parties went on for longer than expected, they claim. Pille said she's "proud to join with my clown colleagues" to stand up to wage theft and misclassification. "For years, Clowns.com has treated clowns, who are largely young actors with no prior training in clowning who sign up for this job to make ends meet, as independent contractors."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Times is targeting various companies under the OpenAI umbrella, as well as Microsoft, an OpenAI partner that both uses it to power its Copilot service and helped provide the infrastructure for training the GPT Large Language Model. But the suit goes well beyond the use of copyrighted material in training, alleging that OpenAI-powered software will happily circumvent the Times' paywall and ascribe hallucinated misinformation to the Times.

The suit notes that The Times maintains a large staff that allows it to do things like dedicate reporters to a huge range of beats and engage in important investigative journalism, among other things. Because of those investments, the newspaper is often considered an authoritative source on many matters. All of that costs money, and The Times earns that by limiting access to its reporting through a robust paywall. In addition, each print edition has a copyright notification, the Times' terms of service limit the copying and use of any published material, and it can be selective about how it licenses its stories.

In addition to driving revenue, these restrictions also help it to maintain its reputation as an authoritative voice by controlling how its works appear. The suit alleges that OpenAI-developed tools undermine all of that. [...] The suit seeks nothing less than the erasure of both any GPT instances that the parties have trained using material from the Times, as well as the destruction of the datasets that were used for the training. It also asks for a permanent injunction to prevent similar conduct in the future. The Times also wants money, lots and lots of money: "statutory damages, compensatory damages, restitution, disgorgement, and any other relief that may be permitted by law or equity."

In October, Apple issued notifications warning over a half dozen India lawmakers of their iPhones being targets of state-sponsored attacks. According to a new report from the Washington Post, the Modi government responded by criticizing Apple's security and demanding explanations to mitigate political impact (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). From the report: Officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) publicly questioned whether the Silicon Valley company's internal threat algorithms were faulty and announced an investigation into the security of Apple devices. In private, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, senior Modi administration officials called Apple's India representatives to demand that the company help soften the political impact of the warnings. They also summoned an Apple security expert from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi, where government representatives pressed the Apple official to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings to users, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. "They were really angry," one of those people said.

The visiting Apple official stood by the company's warnings. But the intensity of the Indian government effort to discredit and strong-arm Apple disturbed executives at the company's headquarters, in Cupertino, Calif., and illustrated how even Silicon Valley's most powerful tech companies can face pressure from the increasingly assertive leadership of the world's most populous country -- and one of the most critical technology markets of the coming decade. The recent episode also exemplified the dangers facing government critics in India and the lengths to which the Modi administration will go to deflect suspicions that it has engaged in hacking against its perceived enemies, according to digital rights groups, industry workers and Indian journalists. Many of the more than 20 people who received Apple's warnings at the end of October have been publicly critical of Modi or his longtime ally, Gautam Adani, an Indian energy and infrastructure tycoon. They included a firebrand politician from West Bengal state, a Communist leader from southern India and a New Delhi-based spokesman for the nation's largest opposition party. [...] Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a national spokesman for the BJP, said any evidence of hacking should be presented to the Indian government for investigation.

The Modi government has never confirmed or denied using spyware, and it has refused to cooperate with a committee appointed by India's Supreme Court to investigate whether it had. But two years ago, the Forbidden Stories journalism consortium, which included The Post, found that phones belonging to Indian journalists and political figures were infected with Pegasus, which grants attackers access to a device's encrypted messages, camera and microphone. In recent weeks, The Post, in collaboration with Amnesty, found fresh cases of infections among Indian journalists. Additional work by The Post and New York security firm iVerify found that opposition politicians had been targeted, adding to the evidence suggesting the Indian government's use of powerful surveillance tools. In addition, Amnesty showed The Post evidence it found in June that suggested a Pegasus customer was preparing to hack people in India. Amnesty asked that the evidence not be detailed to avoid teaching Pegasus users how to cover their tracks. "These findings show that spyware abuse continues unabated in India," said Donncha O Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty International's Security Lab. "Journalists, activists and opposition politicians in India can neither protect themselves against being targeted by highly invasive spyware nor expect meaningful accountability."