Finland has passed legislation to restrict the use of phones and other mobile devices during the school day amid fears over their impact on student wellbeing and learning. From a report: Under the changes, which were approved by the Finnish parliament on Tuesday and will come into effect on 1 August, mobile devices will be heavily restricted during lesson times. Pupils will be allowed to use them only with the teacher's permission for healthcare or learning purposes. Finland is the latest European country to impose legal restrictions on the use of phones and other mobile devices in schools amid growing evidence of their impact on children and young people, including attention and self-esteem. Earlier this year, Denmark said it would ban mobile phones from all schools. The chair of the country's wellbeing commission, Rasmus Meyer, told the Guardian the measure was necessary to stop schools from being "colonised by digital platforms" and urged the rest of Europe to follow suit.

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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told a judge who found that Google illegally monopolizes online search that a Justice Department proposal to share search data with rivals would be a "de facto" divestiture of the company's search engine. From a report: If Google were required to share both its search data and the information on how it ranks results, rivals could reverse engineer "every aspect of our technology," Pichai testified on Wednesday. "The proposal on data sharing is so far reaching, so extraordinary," Pichai said. It "feels like de facto divestiture of search" and its entire intellectual property and technology over 25 years of research, he said. During testimony in federal court in Washington, Pichai asserted that a package of antitrust remedies proposed by the government is too extreme and will undermine Google's ability to compete in the market.

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Wikipedia will employ AI to enhance the work of its editors and volunteers, it said Wednesday, also asserting that it has no plans to replace those human roles. The Wikimedia Foundation plans to implement AI specifically for automating tedious tasks, improving information discovery, facilitating translations, and supporting new volunteer onboarding, it said.

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Electronic Arts is laying off hundreds of workers and canceling a Titanfall game that was in development at its Respawn Entertainment subsidiary. From a report: Between 300 and 400 positions were eliminated, including around 100 at Respawn, according to a person familiar with the cuts. The company had about 13,700 employees at the end of March 2024. "As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we've made select changes within our organization that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth," Justin Higgs, a spokesman for the Redwood City, California-based company, said in a statement. The canceled project, code-named R7, was an extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe, according to people familiar with its development. It was not close to being released.

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Microsoft has pledged to take the US government to court if necessary [alternative source] to protect European customers' access to its cloud services, as concerns mount over potential technology disruptions under President Donald Trump. Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and vice-chair, announced five "digital commitments" to Europe on Wednesday, responding to regional anxieties following Trump's temporary suspension of military support to Ukraine. "We as a company need to be a source of digital stability during a period of geopolitical volatility," Smith said. The commitments include contesting any government order to cease European cloud services through legal channels and establishing European oversight of its continental operations. Microsoft will increase its European data center capacity by 40% over the next two years, expanding in 16 countries with investments of "tens of billions of dollars" annually. The Seattle-based company, which derives more than a quarter of its business from Europe, becomes the first major American tech firm to proactively address European concerns amid escalating trade tensions.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Daily exposure to certain chemicals used to manufacture household plastics may be connected to more than 356,000 cardiovascular-related deaths in 2018 alone, a new analysis has found. These chemicals, called phthalates, are present in products around the world but have particular popularity in the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific -- regions that collectively bore about 75 percent of the global death total, according to the research, published on Tuesday in the Lancet eBioMedicine. Phthalates, often used in personal care products, children's toys and food packaging and processing materials, are known to disrupt hormone function and have been linked to birth defects, infertility, learning disabilities and neurological disorders. The NYU Langone Health team focused in the analysis on a kind of phthalate called di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), which is used to make items like food containers and medical equipment softer and more flexible. Scientists have already shown that exposure to DEHP can trigger an overactive immune response in the heart's arteries, which over time can be linked to increased risk of heart attack or stroke. In the new analysis, the researchers estimated that DEHP exposure played a role in 356,238 global deaths in 2018, or nearly 13.5 percent of heart disease mortality among men and women ages 55 through 64. [...] These findings are in line with the team's previous research, which in 2021 determined that phthalates were connected to more than 50,000 premature deaths each year among older Americans -- most of whom succumbed to heart conditions. But this latest analysis is likely the first global estimate of cardiovascular mortality resulting from exposure to these environmental contaminants [...]. In a separate report from the New York Times, author Nina Agrawal highlights some of the caveats with the data. First of all, the study relies heavily on statistical modeling and assumptions, drawing from prior research that may include biases and confounding factors like diet or socioeconomic status. It also uses U.S.-based risk estimates that may not generalize globally and focuses only on one type of phthalate (DEHP). Additionally, as Agrawal points out, this is an observational study, showing correlation rather than causation. As such, more direct, long-term research is needed to clarify the true health impact of phthalate exposure.

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Google Play's app marketplace has seen a dramatic 47% drop in available apps -- from 3.4 million to 1.8 million -- since the start of 2024. An analysis by app intelligence provider Appfigures attributes the decline to stricter quality standards, expanded human reviews, and increased enforcement against low-quality and deceptive apps. TechCrunch reports: In July 2024, Google announced it would raise the minimum quality requirements for apps, which may have impacted the number of available Play Store app listings. Instead of only banning broken apps that crashed, wouldn't install, or run properly, the company said it would begin banning apps that demonstrated "limited functionality and content." That included static apps without app-specific features, such as text-only apps or PDF file apps. It also included apps that provided little content, like those that only offered a single wallpaper. Additionally, Google banned apps that were designed to do nothing or have no function, which may have been tests or other abandoned developer efforts. Reached for comment, Google confirmed that its new policies were factors here, which also included an expanded set of verification requirements, required app testing for new personal developer accounts, and expanded human reviews to check for apps that try to deceive or defraud users. In addition, the company pointed to other 2024 investments in AI for threat detection, stronger privacy policies, improved developer tools, and more. As a result, Google prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on its Play Store and banned more than 158,000 developer accounts that had attempted to publish harmful apps, it said. TechCrunch also notes that a new trader status rule, which went into effect in the EU this February, could be another contributing factor. It requires developers to display their names and addresses in their app listings, and failure to comply would see their apps removed from EU app stores.

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Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham reports: Intel's oddball Core Ultra 200V laptop chips -- codenamed Lunar Lake -- will apparently be a one-off experiment, not to be replicated in future Intel laptop chips. They're Intel's only processors with memory integrated onto the CPU package; the only ones with a neural processing unit that meets Microsoft's Copilot+ performance requirements; and the only ones with Intel's best-performing integrated GPUs, the Intel Arc 130V and 140V. Today, Intel announced some updates to its graphics driver that specifically benefit those integrated GPUs, welcome news for anyone who bought one and is trying to get by with it as an entry-level gaming system. Intel says that version 32.0.101.6734 of its graphics driver can speed up average frame rates in some games by around 10 percent, and can speed up "1 percent low FPS" (that is, for any given frames per second measurement, whatever your frame rate is the slowest 1 percent of the time) by as much as 25 percent. This should, in theory, make games run better in general and ease some of the stuttering you notice when your game's performance dips down to that 1 percent level.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says a $254 billion state budget deal has been reached, including a "bell-to-bell" school cellphone ban. [...] The distraction-free policy would take effect next school year, making New York the largest state in the country with a "bell-to-bell" cellphone ban. Hochul says the plan will help protect children from addictive technology and improve their mental health. The New York State United Teachers union also came out in support of the ban, saying "we are at a crisis point." The governor previously outlined the proposal back in January, saying it would ban the use of smartphones and other internet-enabled devices on school grounds during the school day. That includes classroom time, lunch and study hall periods. "A bell-to-bell ban, morning until the day is over, is not going to hurt your kids. It's going to help them emerge with stronger mental health and resiliency," she told CBS News New York at the time. Hochul said the ban would include smartphones and other personal "smart" devices, like smartwatches. Exemptions could be made if a student requires a device to manage a medical condition or for translation purposes. Cellphones that don't have internet capability and devices that are provided by the school for lesson plans would still be allowed. The proposal would let individual schools come up with their own ways to implement the ban and store the devices, and schools would be able to decide whether to have students leave them in things like pouches, lockers or cubbies. It would also require schools to make sure parents have a way to contact their children during the day, if needed. "Protecting our communities requires more than streets where people feel safe. We need classrooms where young minds can flourish, and that means eliminating once and for all the digital distractions that steal our kids' attention," the governor said, adding, "We protected our kids before from cigarettes, alcohol and drunk driving, and now, we're protecting them from addictive technology designed to hijack their attention."

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LG will permanently shut down its Android smartphone update servers on June 30, 2025, ending all software, app, and security updates for its devices. If you're still using an smartphone, you'll want to install any remaining updates before that date, as no future updates will be available afterward. 9to5Google reports: When LG called it quits for Android smartphones, the company also committed to a few more updates. That included an Android 12 update for select devices, the last major update the company would put out, as well as security updates for at least three years after each device had been released. That three-year cutoff has long since passed for all LG devices, but any devices still floating around out there will soon no longer be able to pull updates. LG's notice can be read here.

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In a blog post yesterday, Master I-ranked human GeoGuessr player Sam Patterson said that OpenAI's o3 model outscored him in a head-to-head match, "correctly identifying all five countries and twice landing within a few hundred meters." Geoguessing is a game -- most popularly known through the platform GeoGuessr -- where players are dropped into a random location in Google Street View and must figure out where in the world they are using only visual clues from the environment. With the release of its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, OpenAI now does a surprisingly good job of analyzing uploaded images to determine their locations using nothing but subtle visual clues. "Even when I embedded fake GPS coordinates in the image EXIF, the model ignored the spoof and still pinpointed the real locations, showing its performance comes from visual reasoning and on-the-fly web sleuthing -- not hidden metadata," says Patterson. From the post: I notice that it often does a lot of unnecessary and repetitive cropping, and will sometimes spend way too much time on something unimportant. A human is very good at knowing what matters, and o3 is less knowledgeable about what things it should focus on. It got distracted by advertising multiple times. However, most of what it says about things like signs and road lines appears to be accurate, or at least close enough to truth that they meaningfully add up. Given the end result of these excellent guesses, it seems to arrive at the guesses from that information. If it's using other information to arrive at the guess, then it's not metadata from the files, but instead web search. It seems likely that in the Austria round, the web search was meaningful, since it mentioned the website named the town itself. It appeared less meaningful in the Ireland round. It was still very capable in the rounds without search. So to put a bow on this: - The o3 model isn't smoke and mirrors, tricking us by only using EXIF data. It's at a comparable Geoguessr skill level to Master I or better players now (at least according to my own ~20 or so rounds of testing). - Humans still hold a big edge in decision time -- most of my guesses were 4 min. - Spoofing EXIF data doesn't throw off the model. Whether you view this as dystopian or as a technological marvel -- or both -- you can't claim it's a parlor trick.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Today, open-source software powers the world. It didn't have to be that way. The Open Invention Network's (OIN) origins are rooted in a turbulent era for open source. In the mid-2000s, Linux faced existential threats from copyright and patent litigation. Besides, the infamous SCO lawsuit and Microsoft's claims that Linux infringed on hundreds of its patents cast a shadow over the ecosystem. Business leaders became worried. While SCO's attacks petered out, patent trolls -- formally known as Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) -- were increasing their attacks. So, open-source friendly industry giants, including IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony, formed the Open Invention Network (OIN) to create a bulwark against patent threats targeting Linux and open-source technologies. Founded in 2005, the Open Invention Network (OIN) has evolved into a global community comprising over 4,000 participants, ranging from startups to multinational corporations, collectively holding more than three million patents and patent applications. At the heart of OIN's legal strategy is a royalty-free cross-license agreement. Members agree not to assert their patents against the Linux System, creating a powerful network effect that shields open-source projects from litigation. As OIN CEO Keith Bergelt explained, this model enables "broad-based participation by ensuring patent risk mitigation in key open-source technologies, thereby facilitating open-source adoption." This approach worked then, and it continues to work today. [...] Over the years, OIN's mission has expanded beyond Linux to cover a range of open-source technologies. Its Linux System Definition, which determines the scope of patent cross-licensing, has grown from a few core packages to over 4,500 software components and platforms, including Android, Apache, Kubernetes, and ChromeOS. This expansion has been critical, as open source has become foundational across industries such as finance, automotive, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence.

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Mastercard is working with Microsoft and other leading AI companies to give AI agents the ability to shop online and make payments on behalf of consumers. From a report: Under the new program, a shopper could prompt an AI agent -- Microsoft's Copilot, for example -- to search for a pair of yellow running shoes in a particular size. The agent would then search and offer the customer options, and then be able to make the purchase while also recommending the best way to pay, Mastercard said in a statement Tuesday.

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Electronic Arts (EA) has laid off around 300 employees across multiple departments, including about 100 at Respawn Entertainment. IGN reports: IGN understands that these wider cuts largely impacted EA's Experiences team, which includes groups such as EA's Fan Care team and various others working on customer support and marketing, though other EA departments saw reductions as well. As with other cuts at EA, those impacted will be given the opportunity to apply for other roles internally prior to being let go. The roughly 100 jobs impacted at Respawn included individuals in development, publishing, and QA workers on Apex Legends, as well as smaller groups of individuals working on the Jedi team and two canceled incubation projects, one of which we reported on back in March, and the other of which was, per Bloomberg's reporting, a new Titanfall game. "As part of our continued focus on our long-term strategic priorities, we've made select changes within our organization that more effectively aligns teams and allocates resources in service of driving future growth," an EA spokesperson said in an official statement. "We are treating our people with care and respect throughout this process, working to minimize impacts by helping affected employees explore new opportunities within the company when possible and providing support during the transition."

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Firefox has launched its long-awaited tab groups feature, responding to the most upvoted request in Mozilla Connect's three-year history. The feature allows users to organize tabs by name or color through a drag-and-drop interface. Mozilla is now developing an AI-powered "smart tab groups" feature that automatically suggests organization based on open tabs. Unlike competitors, the company said, Firefox processes this data locally, keeping tab information on the user's device rather than sending it to cloud servers.

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A new study [PDF] reveals AI-generated code frequently references non-existent third-party libraries, creating opportunities for supply-chain attacks. Researchers analyzed 576,000 code samples from 16 popular large language models and found 19.7% of package dependencies -- 440,445 in total -- were "hallucinated." These non-existent dependencies exacerbate dependency confusion attacks, where malicious packages with identical names to legitimate ones can infiltrate software. Open source models hallucinated at nearly 22%, compared to 5% for commercial models. "Once the attacker publishes a package under the hallucinated name, containing some malicious code, they rely on the model suggesting that name to unsuspecting users," said lead researcher Joseph Spracklen. Alarmingly, 43% of hallucinations repeated across multiple queries, making them predictable targets.

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South Korean telecom network SK Telecom is providing free SIM card replacements to all 25 million mobile subscribers following an April 19 security breach where malware compromised Universal Subscriber Identity Module data. Despite the company's announcement, only 6 million replacement cards will be available through May 2025. The stolen data potentially includes IMSI numbers, authentication keys, and network usage information, though customer names, identification details, and financial information remain secure. The primary risk is unauthorized SIM swapping attacks, where threat actors could clone SIM cards.

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Carbon removal technologies, potentially a $250 billion market, are failing to gain traction as buyers remain scarce. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects a need for 10 billion metric tons of carbon removals annually by 2050, yet only 175 million tons have been sold to date -- less than 2% of requirements. Microsoft dominates the market, accounting for 35% of all purchases and 76% of engineered removal solutions specifically. The market suffers from significant barriers: unproven technologies, vast price disparities ($80 per ton for forest projects versus $1,000 for direct air capture), and lack of standardization. Industry experts at a recent London gathering concluded that without more buyers willing to accept early adoption risks, the market cannot meaningfully grow.

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The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday directed India's government to block Switzerland-based email service Proton Mail, citing national security concerns and law enforcement challenges. Justice M Nagaprasanna ordered authorities to initiate proceedings under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act to ban the service, while mandating immediate blocking of "offending URLs" until final decisions are made. The ruling followed a petition from M Moser Design Associates India, which claimed its female employees were targeted with obscene emails containing "AI-generated deepfake images" sent via Proton Mail. Petitioners argued Proton Mail operates servers outside India, making it inaccessible to law enforcement. The court noted several bomb threats to Indian schools were sent using the service, which has already been banned in Russia and Saudi Arabia. Additional Solicitor General Aravind Kamath, representing the government, said authorities would comply with the court's direction.

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Bitcoin mining has crossed a critical economic threshold, with costs now exceeding market value for most operators. According to data cited by CoinShares, large public mining companies spend over $82,000 to produce a single Bitcoin -- nearly double last quarter's figure -- while smaller operations face even steeper costs of approximately $137,000 per coin. With Bitcoin currently trading around $94,703, the math no longer works for most miners. The economics become particularly challenging in high-electricity-cost regions like Germany, where mining a single coin requires approximately $200,000. Industry analysts suggest larger mining operations are adapting by optimizing energy consumption and positioning their computational infrastructure for alternative uses. These companies can potentially lease their mining setups for other computational tasks during unprofitable mining periods, then resume mining when market conditions improve. For individual miners, however, the era of profitable home operations appears effectively over, as industrial-scale facilities with strategic positioning and optimized technology have fundamentally altered the mining landscape.

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