An Indonesian man with a student visa and an American wife thought he would soon get a green card. Now, he could get deported over a 2022 arrest.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Wizards of the Coast has released the System Reference Document, the heart of the three core rule books that constitute Dungeons & Dragons' 2024 gameplay, under a Creative Commons license. This means the company cannot alter the deal further, like it almost did in early 2023, leading to considerable pushback and, eventually, a retreat. It was a long quest, but the lawful good party has earned some long-term rewards, including a new, similarly licensed reference book. [...] Version 5.2 of the SRD, all 360-plus pages of it, has now been released under the same Creative Commons license. The major change is that it includes more 2024 5th edition (i.e., D&D One) rules and content, while version 5.1 focused on 2014 rules. Legally, you can now design and publish campaigns under the 2024 5th edition rule set. More importantly, more aspects of the newest D&D rule books are available under a free license: - "Rhythm of Play" and "Exploration" documentation - More character origins and backgrounds, including criminal, sage, soldier, and the goliath and orc species. - 16 feats, including archery, great weapon fighting, and seven boons - Five bits of equipment, 20 spells, 15 magic items, and 17 monsters, including the hippopotamus There are some aspects of D&D you still can't really touch without bumping up against copyrights. Certain monsters from the Monster Manual, like the Kraken, are in the public domain, but their specific stats in the D&D rulebook are copyrighted. Iconic creatures and species like the Beholder, Displacer Beast, Illithid, Githyanki, Yuan-Ti, and others remain the property of WotC (and thereby Hasbro). As a creator, you'll still need to do some History (or is it Arcana?) checks before you publish and sell.

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Victims and eyewitnesses described scenes of chaos and horror when militants killed 26 people in Kashmir as families, couples and friends took in a picturesque valley.

The president’s threats of tariffs have brought countries like Japan, South Korea and India rushing to negotiate, but they have sown chaos with bigger trading partners like China.

Also, major endorsements jolted the New York City mayoral race. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.

The F.A.A. allows many of these popular flights to operate under less stringent rules than other commercial aviation, opening the door to dangers like pilot fatigue.

Discord CEO and co-founder Jason Citron is stepping down from his leadership role at the company and being replaced by Humam Sakhnini, a former executive from Activision Blizzard. "Citron will remain on Discord's board of directors, and fellow co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy will continue acting as the company's chief technology officer," notes Engadget. From the report: There's an important financial context to Citron's move. The New York Times reported in March that Discord was meeting with investors to take the company public. Sakhnini has experience acting as a leader of a public company. He was also the President of King Digital -- the creator of Candy Crush and other popular mobile games -- after the company was acquired by Activision Blizzard. A veteran executive could be a natural fit to usher Discord to an IPO. Citron didn't deny the plan when VentureBeat asked if the company would go public: "As you can imagine, hiring someone like Humam is a step in that direction." "From the very beginning, our mission has been about bringing people together around games," Citron said in a statement. "It's a mission I've dedicated my career to, and I'm confident that passing the torch to Humam is the right evolution for Discord's future." While initially pitched as a way to talk to friend's before, during and after playing games, Discord has morphed into a much larger and more general social platform, serving "more than 200 million monthly active users worldwide," the company says.

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Meta has expanded both the feature set and availability of its Ray-Ban smart glasses. Notable updates include live translation with offline support through downloadable language packs, the ability to send messages and make calls via Instagram, and conversations with Meta AI based on real-time visual context. The Verge reports: Live translation was first teased at Meta Connect 2024 last October, and saw a limited rollout through Meta's Early Access Program in select countries last December. Starting today it's getting a wider rollout to all the markets where the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are available. You can hold a conversation with someone who speaks English, French, Italian, or Spanish, and hear a real-time translation through the smart glasses in your preferred language. If you download a language pack in advance, you can use the live translations feature without Wi-Fi or access to a cellular network, making it more convenient to use while traveling abroad. Meta also highlighted a few other features that are still enroute or getting an expanded release. Live AI, which allows the Meta AI smart assistant to continuously see what you do for more natural conversations is now "coming soon to general availability in the US and Canada." The ability to "send and receive direct messages, photos, audio calls, and video calls from Instagram on your glasses," similar to functionality already available through WhatsApp, Messenger, and iOS and Android's native messaging apps, is coming soon as well. Access to music apps like Spotify, Amazon Music, Shazam, and Apple Music is starting to expand beyond the US and Canada, Meta says. However, asking Meta AI to play music, or for more information about what you're listening to, will still only be available to those with their "default language is set to English."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, the State Bar of California revealed that it used AI to develop a portion of multiple-choice questions on its February 2025 bar exam, causing outrage among law school faculty and test takers. The admission comes after weeks of complaints about technical problems and irregularities during the exam administration, reports the Los Angeles Times. The State Bar disclosed that its psychometrician (a person skilled in administrating psychological tests), ACS Ventures, created 23 of the 171 scored multiple-choice questions with AI assistance. Another 48 questions came from a first-year law student exam, while Kaplan Exam Services developed the remaining 100 questions. The State Bar defended its practices, telling the LA Times that all questions underwent review by content validation panels and subject matter experts before the exam. "The ACS questions were developed with the assistance of AI and subsequently reviewed by content validation panels and a subject matter expert in advance of the exam," wrote State Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson in a press release. According to the LA Times, the revelation has drawn strong criticism from several legal education experts. "The debacle that was the February 2025 bar exam is worse than we imagined," said Mary Basick, assistant dean of academic skills at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. "I'm almost speechless. Having the questions drafted by non-lawyers using artificial intelligence is just unbelievable." Katie Moran, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who specializes in bar exam preparation, called it "a staggering admission." She pointed out that the same company that drafted AI-generated questions also evaluated and approved them for use on the exam. The report notes that the AI disclosure follows technical glitches with the February exam (like login issues, screen lag, and confusing questions), which led to a federal lawsuit against Meazure Learning and calls for a State Bar audit.

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Remarks by President Trump and his Treasury secretary fueled a rebound in markets, highlighting how Wall Street is influenced by news about the White House’s policy intentions.

A single image captures the subtle changes in how the Roman Catholic Church buries a pope.

America needs to figure out how to dominate the industries of the future. Call me a “Waymo Democrat.”

An anonymous reader shares a report: For two years, ChatGPT has been OpenAI's cash cow. But by the end of the decade, the company has told some potential and current investors it expects combined sales from agents and other new products to exceed its popular chatbot, lifting total sales to $125 billion in 2029 and $174 billion the next year, according to documents seen by The Information. The projections, which would propel the 10-year-old startup's sales toward the level of Nvidia or Meta Platforms today, reflect rapid revenue gains from agents, or AI software that can take actions on behalf of customers, as well as other new products. These include those tied to "free user monetization," likely meaning money made from OpenAI's nonpaying users.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued in a speech that the multilateral economic institutions have veered away from their missions.

Nintendo has filed a request for subpoena in California's Northern District Court to compel Discord to reveal the identity of user "GameFreakOUT," the alleged source of last year's extensive Pokemon leak. The company is demanding the name, address, phone number, and email of the individual behind the "Teraleak," which contained claimed source code for upcoming title Pokemon Legends: Z-A, next-generation Pokemon games, builds of older titles, and numerous concept art and lore documents. Court documents obtained by Polygon show Nintendo included a partially redacted Discord screenshot as evidence, where GameFreakOUT shared files in a server named "FreakLeak." The breach occurred around October 12, 2024, two days after Game Freak publicly acknowledged a hack affecting employee information without confirming game data theft.

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Apple was fined 500 million euros ($570 million) on Wednesday and Meta 200 million euros, as European Union antitrust regulators handed out the first sanctions under landmark legislation aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech. From a report: The EU fines could stoke tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump who has threatened to levy tariffs against countries that penalise U.S. companies. WSJ adds more details: The commission also issued cease-and-desist orders that could have a bigger impact than the fines. One order targets Apple's App Store and the other takes aim at Meta's use of personalized ads -- important revenue streams for each company. [...] The EU's action against Meta focuses on the company's effort to get users to agree to seeing personalized ads on Instagram and Facebook -- its main source of revenue. The commission ordered Meta to stop requiring users to either agree to those ads or pay for a subscription. It said it was still evaluating whether a "less-personalized ads" option that Meta introduced last fall complies with that order, raising the specter of further changes. The Apple case deals with the company's App Store rules. The commission said Apple had failed to comply with an obligation to allow app developers to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative ways to purchase digital products.

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The world's coral reefs have been pushed into "uncharted territory" by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet's reefs, scientists have warned. From a report: Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023, the latest data from the US government's Coral Reef Watch shows. Coral reefs are known as the rainforests of the sea because of their high concentration of biodiversity that supports about a third of all marine species and a billion people. But record high ocean temperatures have spread like an underwater wildfire over corals across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, damaging and killing countless corals.

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Amazon's internet-from-space venture is struggling to ramp up production, jeopardizing its ability to meet a government deadline to have more than 1,600 satellites in orbit by next summer. From a report: Project Kuiper has completed just a few dozen satellites so far, more than a year into its manufacturing program, according to three people familiar with the situation. The slow pace, combined with rocket launch delays, means the company will probably have to seek an extension from the Federal Communications Commission, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters. The agency, which has oversight of transmissions from space, expects the company to have half its planned constellation of 3,236 satellites operating by the end of July 2026. To meet that requirement, Amazon would have to at least quadruple the current rate of production, which has yet to consistently reach one satellite a day, two of the people said.

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He brought farm-grown produce to the city’s streets, creating the largest network of farmers’ markets in the country and helping to revive neighborhoods.

This level of violence has to stop.