Technology

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Researchers on Wednesday reported critical vulnerabilities in a widely used networking appliance that leaves some of the world’s biggest networks open to intrusion.

The vulnerabilities reside in BIG-IP Next Central Manager, a component in the latest generation of the BIG-IP line of appliances, which organizations use to manage traffic going into and out of their networks. Seattle-based F5, which sells the product, says its gear is used in 48 of the top 50 corporations as tracked by Fortune. F5 describes the Next Central Manager as a “single, centralized point of control” for managing entire fleets of BIG-IP appliances.

As devices performing load balancing, DDoS mitigation, and inspection and encryption of data entering and exiting large networks, BIG-IP gear sits at their perimeter and acts as a major pipeline to some of the most security-critical resources housed inside. Those characteristics have made BIG-IP appliances ideal for hacking. In 2021 and 2022, hackers actively compromised BIG-IP appliances by exploiting vulnerabilities carrying severity ratings of 9.8 out of 10.

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After reversing its positioning on remote work, Dell is reportedly implementing new tracking techniques on May 13 to ensure its workers are following the company's return-to-office (RTO) policy, The Register reported today, citing anonymous sources.

Dell has allowed people to work remotely for over 10 years. But in February, it issued an RTO mandate, and come May 13, most workers will be classified as either totally remote or hybrid. Starting this month, hybrid workers have to go into a Dell office at least 39 days per quarter. Fully remote workers, meanwhile, are ineligible for promotion, Business Insider reported in March.

Now The Register reports that Dell will track employees' badge swipes and VPN connections to confirm that workers are in the office for a significant amount of time.

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Enlarge / In 1984, the year 2000 was so promising, students made entire games promising to take you there. (credit: Radio Student)

Software is almost impossibly easy to download, distribute, and access compared to 40 years ago. Everything is bigger, faster, and more flexible, but there's a certain charm to the ways of diskettes and cassettes that is hard to recapture. That doesn't mean we can't try.

By the time you read this, it's likely that Kontrabant 2 will have already hit the airwaves on Radio Študent in Slovenia. At 9:30 pm Slovenia time (UTC+2 in Daylight Savings Time), if you are tuned to 89.3 FM, hitting record on a cassette tape will capture a buzzing sound that will run until just over 50KB have been transmitted. If all went well, you can load the tape into your working ZX Spectrum or bring it to the Computer History Museum in Slovenia and use theirs to try it out.

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Enlarge / A still image of a robotic quadruped armed with a remote weapons system, captured from a video provided by Onyx Industries. (credit: Onyx Industries)

The United States Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) is currently evaluating a new generation of robotic "dogs" developed by Ghost Robotics, with the potential to be equipped with gun systems from defense tech company Onyx Industries, reports The War Zone.

While MARSOC is testing Ghost Robotics' quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicles (called "Q-UGVs" for short) for various applications, including reconnaissance and surveillance, it's the possibility of arming them with weapons for remote engagement that may draw the most attention. But it's not unprecedented: The US Marine Corps has also tested robotic dogs armed with rocket launchers in the past.

MARSOC is currently in possession of two armed Q-UGVs undergoing testing, as confirmed by Onyx Industries staff, and their gun systems are based on Onyx's SENTRY remote weapon system (RWS), which features an AI-enabled digital imaging system and can automatically detect and track people, drones, or vehicles, reporting potential targets to a remote human operator that could be located anywhere in the world. The system maintains a human-in-the-loop control for fire decisions, and it cannot decide to fire autonomously.

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Enlarge / Prediction of the structure of a coronavirus Spike protein from a virus that causes the common cold. (credit: Google DeepMind)

Most of the activities that go on inside cells—the activities that keep us living, breathing, thinking animals—are handled by proteins. They allow cells to communicate with each other, run a cell's basic metabolism, and help convert the information stored in DNA into even more proteins. And all of that depends on the ability of the protein's string of amino acids to fold up into a complicated yet specific three-dimensional shape that enables it to function.

Up until this decade, understanding that 3D shape meant purifying the protein and subjecting it to a time- and labor-intensive process to determine its structure. But that changed with the work of DeepMind, one of Google's AI divisions, which released Alpha Fold in 2021, and a similar academic effort shortly afterward. The software wasn't perfect; it struggled with larger proteins and didn't offer high-confidence solutions for every protein. But many of its predictions turned out to be remarkably accurate.

Even so, these structures only told half of the story. To function, almost every protein has to interact with something else—other proteins, DNA, chemicals, membranes, and more. And, while the initial version of AlphaFold could handle some protein-protein interactions, the rest remained black boxes. Today, DeepMind is announcing the availability of version 3 of AlphaFold, which has seen parts of its underlying engine either heavily modified or replaced entirely. Thanks to these changes, the software now handles a variety of additional protein interactions and modifications.

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Enlarge / Huawei's Intel-powered Matebook X Pro has drawn criticism from US China hawks. (credit: Huawei)

The US crackdown on exports to Huawei now includes even stronger restrictions than the company has already faced. The Financial Times reports that Intel and Qualcomm have had their Huawei export licenses revoked, so Huawei will no longer be able to buy chips from either company.

The export ban has been around since 2020 and means that any company wishing to ship parts to Huawei must get approval from the government on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes these come with restrictions, like Qualcomm's license, which allowed it to ship smartphone chips to Huawei, but not "5G" chips. That led to Qualcomm creating special 4G-only versions of its 5G chips for Huawei, and the company ended up with 4G-only Snapdragon 888 phones in 2021.

Since then, Huawei has been working on its own Arm chips from its chip design division, HiSilicon. In April, the Huawei Pura 70 smartphone launched with an in-house HiSilicon Kirin 9010 SoC made at SMIC, a Chinese chip fab that is also facing export restrictions. With what is probably still a 7 nm manufacturing process, it's more of a 2020 chip than a 2024 chip, but that's still fast enough for many use cases.

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Enlarge / A C-V2X bicycle can alert a C-V2X-enabled car to its presence—note the large yellow icon on the screenshot of the Audi's digital instrument display. (credit: Audi)

There's a fundamental flaw in current car safety tech: It's limited to line of sight. Or, perhaps, line of "sensing" is more accurate, because the way cameras and lidar work is to inspect the perimeter of a vehicle and use predictive algorithms to understand the motion of an object in relation to the motion of the vehicle itself. Which is good, because as carmakers have added elements such as pedestrian and cyclist detection, they're trying to prevent drivers from hurting the most vulnerable road users. And unfortunately this is necessary, because even though 2023 saw a slight reduction in drivers striking cyclists and pedestrians, according to the most recent data from the Governor's Highway Safety Association, since 2019 pedestrian fatalities are still up 14 percent—and cyclist deaths are up 50 percent since 2010.

That doesn't mean lidar and cameras have "failed," but because they rely on what the sensors can pick up, they cannot necessarily ID hazards (and alert drivers) as quickly as we need them to, particularly if that's a cyclist in your lane 300 feet down the road, just over the next rise. Yes, current sensing works well now with figuring out the pace of a traffic jam, and automatic emergency braking can step in to stop your car if you fail to. But for non-automotive obstacles, they're still limited.

For that, we need better tech, which is emerging and is called Connected Vehicle to Everything (C-V2X). The idea isn't that complicated. Boiled down, it's a chipset that operates on a portion of the cellular bandwidth, and vehicles with this tech embedded (say in an e-bike or car) monitor anything with a C-V2X chip as well as broadcast their own location at a pulse of 10 times a second. This precision location system would then warn a driver of a cyclist on the road ahead, even beyond line of sight, and in an emergency—possibly because a cyclist was right in a car's path—could prevent a collision.

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Your cable streaming bill may be getting more expensive once again. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is reportedly planning another price increase for Max. Bloomberg didn't reveal how much WBD is expected to jack up the subscription by. The cheapest ad-free plan is currently $16 per month after a $1 increase in early 2023. WBD is said to be aiming for $1 billion in earnings from Max and Discovery+ next year.

We could find out about any Max price increase as soon as Thursday. That's when WBD will report its earnings for the first three months of the year.

The price increase may be on the way as part of WBD's seemingly never-ending cost-cutting drive. As part of that, more layoffs may be in the pipeline. Over the last year, the company has fired more than 2,000 people and eliminated their positions.

Very soon after WBD formed in 2022 following a merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery, CEO David Zazlav went into extreme costcutting mode as the company was saddled with over $50 billion in debt. The company quickly axed the just-launched CNN+, laid off staff, canceled projects, moved shows and movies from Max to ad-supported streaming services and shelved completed or nearly finished movies in favor of tax breaks.

Zazlav has reduced WBD's debt load by around $10 billion so far, according to Bloomberg. However, his decisions have infuriated creatives and many fans, such as those who are clamoring for the company to release the highly regarded live-action Looney Tunes film Coyote vs. Acme instead of canning it for a tax rebate.

Coincidentally, Variety on Wednesday published a list of media and tech CEOs' pay packages for 2023. Zazlav's compensation is said to have shot up by 26.5 percent to $49.7 million. That's around 290 times what the median WBD employee makes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ugh-max-subscription-prices-might-be-going-up-again-181332420.html?src=rss

Enlarge / The new M4 iPad Pro. (credit: Apple)

When Apple announced the Apple M4 chip during its iPad Pro event yesterday, it mentioned that the chip came with "up to" four high-performance CPU cores.

Those short, easily missable words always mean that there's a lower-end version of the chip coming that doesn't include that many CPU cores, and the tech specs page for the new iPad Pro has the full details: iPad Pros with 256GB or 512GB of storage use a version of the M4 with three high-performance CPU cores and six smaller efficiency cores. Only the models with 1TB and 2TB of storage have an M4 with all four high-performance CPU cores enabled.

The 256GB and 512GB models also ship with 8GB of RAM, where the 1TB and 2TB models come with 16GB of memory installed. Though these changes are clearly spelled out on the Tech Specs page, the actual configuration page for the iPad Pros in Apple's online store doesn't give any indication that upgrading storage also upgrades your CPU and RAM.

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The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes.

While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn't release the final text of the order until yesterday. The final text has some changes compared to the draft version released a few weeks before the vote.

Both the draft and final rules ban paid prioritization, or fast lanes that application providers have to pay Internet service providers for. But some net neutrality proponents raised concerns about the draft text because it would have let ISPs speed up certain types of applications as long as the application providers don't have to pay for special treatment.

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The iPad Pro has always struck me as a baffling device. It's significantly more expensive than the (very capable!) iPad and iPad Air. iPadOS still isn’t a great environment for multitasking. And Apple hasn't yet justified why, exactly, you'd want a super-powerful tablet in the first place (simplified versions of Final Cut Pro and Audition aren't enough!). If you're trying to get serious work done, you're better off buying a slightly used last-gen MacBook Pro, instead of shelling out $1,000 or more on a souped-up tablet.

And yet, something about this year's iPad Pros compels me.

Apple

Taken individually, most of the tablet's new features seem inessential. It's the first device with Apple's M4 chip, which has vastly better AI performance than its earlier M-series hardware. It has a "tandem" OLED display, which stacks two OLED panels together for better performance. And both the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pros are incredibly thin and light (the latter model is the slimmest device Apple has ever made, measuring 5.1mm).

But when you wrap all of those advancements together and pair them up with a redesigned, MacBook-like Magic Keyboard, the iPad Pro M4 is starting to look more and more like the ultra-light computer of my dreams. A super-powerful machine that's easy to take anywhere, with a gorgeous screen for binging TV shows and a capable keyboard for writing on the go. Maybe I'm just charmed by the side profile of the iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard, which looks like it could have been designed by Syd Mead in the '90s, imagining how laptops could be transformed in a few decades.

I'll admit, the new iPad Pro looks very similar to the 2022 model. But, as the kids say, it just hits differently now. This year’s iPad Pro is thinner than I ever thought possible, and the revamped Magic Keyboard solves most of the problems I've had with earlier versions, thanks to its aluminum top cover, function keys and larger touchpad.

Part of the appeal, for me at least, is that Apple has also taken the idea of a tablet PC a step further than Microsoft's Surface tablets. While those devices can function as genuine PCs and run full Windows apps, Microsoft hasn't improved its keyboard covers or overall design in years. If you want to hold a Surface on your lap, you'll still have a kickstand digging into your legs and a pretty flimsy typing experience. The iPad Pro M4, on the other hand, now more closely resembles an actual laptop.

Now I realize part of this gadget lust comes from covering Apple's recent launch event. I've been thinking far too much about iPads over the past few days, and it's taken a toll. You could potentially get a laptop-like PC experience from either the entry-level iPad or iPad Air when paired together with a keyboard case. But, then again, I’ve already bought a 10th-gen iPad with Logitech’s Slim Folio keyboard and I don’t actually use it much for typing. It’s fine for jotting down something short like emails, but the unsatisfying keys makes it tough to get into a writing flow.

I'd also feel better about jumping on the iPad Pro bandwagon once iPadOS becomes an even better platform for multi-tasking. Stage Manager is a start, but it's a bit clunky and hard to navigate. Sure, Apple is constrained by what's possible on smaller displays, but I could imagine iPads (along with iPhones and Macs) becoming far more functional once the company starts rolling out its rumored local AI models.

What if Siri could accurately note down your shopping list, pull in prices from local stores and share it with your friends. What if it could automatically edit your vacation videos to post on Instagram? Now imagine you could do those things without losing focus from the email on your screen, or your company’s Slack channel. Multitasking doesn't necessarily need to involve jumping between several apps. With AI enhancements down the line, we could potentially complete complex tasks with natural language, and our devices could better anticipate what we actually need.

Apple The iPad Pro M4’s price problem

Price is another obvious problem facing the iPad Pro. It has always been expensive, but Apple is really pushing the boundaries of acceptability with these new models. Both the 11-inch and 13-inch tablets are $200 more than before, starting at $999 and $1,299 respectively. While it's nice to see them come with 256GB of storage by default (up from 128GB), creative professionals will probably want to spend another $200 to get 512GB.

If you want the full 10-core CPU power of the M4 chip, though, you'd have to shell out for at least 1TB of storage, which makes the 11-inch iPad Pro $1,599. Want nano-textured glass for additional glare reduction? That's another $100. Oh, and don't forget the Magic Keyboard! That's $299 or $349 more, depending on the size. If you actually wanted to spec out the iPad Pro like a laptop, it's easy to hit a price near $2,000.

Alternatively, you could just get a $1,299 MacBook Air, or $1,599 14-inch MacBook Pro. Maybe add another $200 to get 16GB of RAM. At least with those machines, you've got larger screens, excellent keyboards, the full desktop power of macOS and more than a single port for connectivity. If you really want an iPad Pro experience, you could always keep an eye out for used or refurbished 2022 models, which come with the very capable M2 chip.

Given just how expensive it is, I likely won't be buying a new iPad Pro anytime soon. But the desire is certainly there, sitting somewhere deep within me, ready to take over my cognitive functions the minute these tablets get cheaper.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/oh-no-i-think-i-want-an-ipad-pro-now-170041331.html?src=rss

Speedrunning video games is a time-honored tradition, and this is especially true when it comes to retro titles. Nintendo is getting in on the trend with a fairly bizarre forthcoming Switch game called Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, which drops on July 18. It’s all about speedrunning through the classics, like Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Super Mario Bros., among others.

This comes in the form of 150 speedrunning challenges pulled from 13 NES games, which seems mightily familiar to those cool NES Remix releases from the Wii U era. There will be global online leaderboards, to give it a tournament feel, and local 8 player co-op. The game will also include an automatic rewind feature, letting people try and try until they get it right.

If the name Nintendo World Championships sounds familiar, that’s because it's taken from the company’s semi-regular esports tournament. This has been the company’s branding for in-person competitions since 1990, when Nintendo visited 29 cities throughout the country. That first national tournament also spawned an ultra-rare NES cartridge with minigames based on Super Mario Bros., Tetris and Rad Racer. Only a few hundred were made and they currently sell on eBay for, no joke, $175,000. The last time we covered this cartridge, it was selling for $5,000 to $10,000. Retro-flation is real, ya’ll.

Pre-orders for the digital version are available right now on the eShop, but there is a physical edition coming. This version will include 13 art cards, five pins and a physical game cart. It’ll also include a gold commemorative NES cartridge, though it's sadly nonfunctional. Come on Nintendo! Make that thing functional so I can sell it for $175,000 in 30 years. The digital version of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition costs $30 and the deluxe physical pack costs $60.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/nintendo-just-revealed-a-nes-speedrunning-collection-inspired-by-an-ultra-rare-1990-cartridge-164607841.html?src=rss

Amazon has the Google Pixel Watch 2 on sale for $70 off. The Wear OS 4-powered smartwatch arrived last fall with a new stress-tracking feature, slightly longer battery life and a better heart sensor, as Google’s flagship wearable inches closer to rivals Apple and Samsung. Its current $330 sale price is a record low.

The Pixel Watch 2 works with Android phones, so you’ll want to sit this deal out if you use an iPhone and don’t plan on switching. But those with the right setup get a sleek device with a round (1.2-inch) screen. The watch’s 41mm case (one size only) is lighter than its predecessor, thanks to its recycled aluminum material. It also has an IP68 water and dust resistance, meaning it has dust protection and can withstand half an hour of submersion in 1.5 meters of water.

This latest model includes a stress-tracking feature that uses the watch’s continuous electrodermal activity (cEDA) sensor to track changes in your skin’s electrical activity. “This new sensor can point to possible signs of stress using a machine learning algorithm that incorporates heart rate, heart rate variability and skin temperature,” Google explains. “When the algorithm picks up on physical indicators of positive and negative stress, including excitement, the Body Response feature will send you a notification.”

Fitness tracking is likely one of the main reasons to buy a wearable like this, and Engadget’s Cherlynn Low found the watch’s Fitbit integration performed very well in our full review. “I’ve been wearing the Pixel Watch 2 alongside the Apple Watch Series 9 to all my workouts this week, and they generally showed similar results,” she wrote when the smartwatch arrived last fall. It includes automatic workout start and stop prompts in case you forget to set up or end a session.

The Pixel Watch 2’s $330 sale price is for the LTE version of the Pixel Watch 2, so once you set it up with your wireless carrier, it can stay connected without needing you to keep your phone nearby. If you prefer the Wi-Fi-only version, it’s available for $300, which is $50 off its usual price.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-google-pixel-watch-2-has-never-been-cheaper-162729942.html?src=rss

Paramount+ with Showtime annual subscriptions are half off right now, bringing the yearly cost down to $60 down from $120. You have to pay for the year up front, which is never fun, but the offer is available to both new and returning subscribers. That’s not a bad deal, considering you get content from two streaming services that have joined in a blessed union to become one.

Paramount+ is home to all things Star Trek, yet that particular bonus seems to be shrinking all of the time. It’s also home to the surprisingly funny Sonic-adjacent Knuckles TV show, which has a crazy fight scene featuring the 80-year-old, yet still iconic, Stockard Channing. Other notable releases on the streamer include the dad-approved Tulsa King, Jeremy Renner’s Mayor of Kingstown and that Halo adaptation that people compare unfavorably to Fallout. It's one of our favorite streaming services, even if Halo isn't quite up to snuff. 

Showtime has been around for decades and has a diverse lineup of shows, like Yellowjackets, Billions, Dexter, House of Lies and the list goes on and on. It’s also home to Twin Peaks: The Return, my favorite show of the 2010s. The Chi just returned, which is a big deal to fans, and Ewan McGregor’s A Gentleman in Moscow looks decent. It’s Showtime. You know the deal.

This offer ends on July 14, so you have plenty of time to think about if you want to revisit Shameless or check out that Frasier reboot. Just remember to cancel once the year is up, as the subscription will auto-renew at the full price of the plan.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/paramount-with-showtime-annual-subscriptions-are-half-off-right-now-151032749.html?src=rss

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Tesla | Airplane!)

There's more bad news for Tesla. On Monday, we learned that CEO Elon Musk is continuing to slash his way through the company payroll as Tesla went through a fourth round of layoffs in four weeks. Yesterday, we discovered exactly what questions the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants answered about the safety of Tesla's Autopilot driver assist. And today, it emerged that the US Department of Justice is investigating whether or not Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by making misleading statements about Autopilot and its so-called "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) option.

Reuters reported that three people familiar with the matter told it about the investigation. One of the sources also told Reuters that the Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Tesla's claims about its driver assists.

Not the first time

This isn't the first time Tesla has been accused of securities fraud. In 2018, Musk agreed to a settlement with the SEC over his infamous "funding secured" tweet that sent the company's share price skyrocketing despite the fact that there was never actually a possibility that he would take the company private. As a result, Musk was required to step down as chairman, and both Musk and Tesla were ordered to pay $20 million in penalties, to be distributed to investors who lost money after being misled by Musk.

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Enlarge / Acceleration Bay says World of Warcraft's networking code infringes on a patent originally filed by Boeing. (credit: Activision Blizzard)

A jury has found Activision Blizzard liable for $23.4 million in damages in a patent infringement lawsuit first brought to court in 2015.

The case centers on patents first filed by Boeing in 2000, one that describes a "distributed game environment" across a host and multiple computers and another that describes a simple method for disconnecting from such a network. Those patents were acquired in 2015 by Acceleration Bay, which accused Activision Blizzard of using infringing technology to develop World of Warcraft and at least two Call of Duty titles.

Those accusations succeeded in court earlier this week, as a jury found a "preponderance of evidence" that the patents were infringed. The decision came following a one-week trial in which Activision Blizzard argued that its networking technology works differently from what is described in the patents, as reported by Reuters.

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FTX has filed a plan with a bankruptcy court to pay back creditors who held cryptocurrency at the embattled exchange. The vast majority of customers are set to get their money back with interest, though they (and the debtors) missed out on major gains in the crypto market since FTX’s dramatic collapse in November 2022 — the price of Bitcoin has more than tripled since then.

FTX aims to fully pay back non-governmental creditors based on the value of their claims as determined by the bankruptcy court. That means 98 percent of creditors (those who have up to $50,000 in claims) will get 118 percent of the amount of their allowed claims. Other creditors will get their money back, plus what FTX describes as billions of dollars in compensation “for the time value of their investments.”

Government creditors are in line for payouts with a nine percent interest rate. The Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice are among the stakeholders with which FTX has agreed settlements.

The company suggests that, if its plan of reorganization is rubber stamped, it would be able to resolve disputes with private and government stakeholders “without costly and protracted litigation.” All told, FTX says that it will be able to distribute between $14.5 billion and $16.3 billion in cash.

But, you may be wondering, where exactly is all this money coming from? After all, when FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 17 months ago, it held just 0.1 percent of the Bitcoin and 1.2 percent of the Ethereum that its customers thought it had.

FTX said it was able to monetize “an extraordinarily diverse collection of assets, most of which were proprietary investments held by the Alamedaor FTX Ventures businesses, or litigation claims.” As TechCrunch reports, the assets that FTX CEO John J. Ray III and his team tracked down included around $8 billion in real estate, political donations and venture capital investments.

The company filed the updated plan of reorganization just a few weeks after co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (aka SBF) was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was found guilty in November of charges including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ftx-plans-to-refund-defrauded-customers-with-interest-143555536.html?src=rss

Enlarge / The Environmental Working Group published a new analysis on Wednesday outlining its efforts to push the USDA for more transparency, including asking for specific rationale in allowing brands to label beef as “climate friendly.” (credit: Carolyn Van Houten/Washington Post via Getty)

About five miles south of Broken Bow, in the heart of central Nebraska, thousands of cattle stand in feedlots at Adams Land & Cattle Co., a supplier of beef to the meat giant Tyson Foods.

From the air, the feedlots look dusty brown and packed with cows—not a vision of happy animals grazing on open pastureland, enriching the soil with carbon. But when the animals are slaughtered, processed, and sent onward to consumers, labels on the final product can claim that they were raised in a “climate friendly” way.

In late 2022, Tyson—one of the country’s “big four” meat packers—applied to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), seeking a “climate friendly” label for its Brazen Beef brand. The production of Brazen Beef, the label claims, achieves a “10 percent greenhouse gas reduction.” Soon after, the USDA approved the label.

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Apple has lots of new products on the way and is officially discontinuing its ninth-generation iPad. But, before the curtain falls on this reliable device, you can pick it up for a steal. Our favorite budget iPad for comes with two years of AppleCare+ and is down to $298 from $398 — a 25 percent discount. This deal is for the 64GB model with Wi-Fi in either Silver or Space Gray. 

If you're looking for a more affordable entry point into the world of iPads or want to grab one as a gift then the ninth-gen model gives you a solid balance of quality and cost. We gave it an 86 in our review when it first debuted in 2021 thanks to updates like True Tone technology and color changing based on ambient light. It also has a 12-MP front camera, Apple's A13 Bionic chip and up to 10 hours of battery life while in use. 

If you're looking for a more advanced iPad then check out everything we know about the new iPad Pro and iPad Air that Apple just announced. They will be available on May 15, but you can pre-order them now. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/pick-up-the-9th-gen-ipad-with-two-years-of-applecare-for-only-298-140951353.html?src=rss

The United States has taken further action to limit China's technological advancement, revoking licenses that allowed Intel and Qualcomm to buy and sell chips to Huawei Technologies, the Financial Times reports. The decision will impact chips Huawei uses for computers and mobile phones and is effective immediately.

Huawei has been on US trade restrictions lists since 2019 but has recently made progress that worries the US government, such as last month's AI-enabled laptop. "We continuously assess how our controls can best protect our national security and foreign policy interests, taking into consideration a constantly changing threat environment and technological landscape. As part of this process, as we have done in the past, we sometimes revoke export licenses," a spokesperson for the Department of Commerce stated. The spokesperson declined to say if companies other than Huawei were impacted. "But we can confirm that we have revoked certain licenses for exports to Huawei."

National security experts have accused Huawei of helping China to conduct cyber espionage. "China resolutely opposes the United States overstretching the concept of national security and abusing export controls to suppress Chinese companies without justification," the Chinese foreign ministry decreed in a statement. Huawei also denies the espionage claims.

"China resolutely opposes the United States overstretching the concept of national security and abusing export controls to suppress Chinese companies without justification," the Chinese foreign ministry decreed in a statement. National security experts have accused Huawei of helping China to conduct cyber espionage, which Huawei has denied. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-revokes-intel-and-qualcomms-licenses-for-chip-sales-to-huawei-125304886.html?src=rss