An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Spotify and several major record labels, including UMG, Sony, and Warner, secured a $322 million default judgment against the unknown operators of Anna's Archive. The shadow library failed to appear in court and briefly released millions of tracks that were scraped from Spotify via BitTorrent. In addition to the monetary penalty, a permanent injunction required domain registrars and other parties to suspend the site's domain names. [...]

The music labels get the statutory maximum of $150,000 in damages for around 50 works. Spotify adds a DMCA circumvention claim of $2,500 for 120,000 music files, bringing the total to more than $322 million. The plaintiff previously described their damages request as "extremely conservative." The DMCA claim is based only on the 120,000 files, not the full 2.8 million that were released. Had they applied the $2,500 rate to all released files, the damages figure would exceed $7 billion. Anna's Archive did not show up in court, and the operators of the site remain unidentified. The judgment attempts to address this directly, by ordering Anna's Archive to file a compliance report within ten business days, under penalty of perjury, that includes valid contact information for the site and its managing agents.

Whether the site will comply with this order is highly uncertain. For now, the monetary judgment is mostly a victory on paper, as recouping money from an unknown entity is impossible. For this reason, the music companies also requested a permanent injunction. In addition to the damages award, [Judge Jed Rakoff] entered a permanent worldwide injunction covering ten Anna's Archive domains: annas-archive.org, .li, .se, .in, .pm, .gl, .ch, .pk, .gd, and .vg. Domain registries and registrars of record, along with hosting and internet service providers, are ordered to permanently disable access to those domains, disable authoritative nameservers, cease hosting services, and preserve evidence that could identify the site's operators.

The judgment names specific third parties bound by those obligations, including Public Interest Registry, Cloudflare, Switch Foundation, The Swedish Internet Foundation, Njalla SRL, IQWeb FZ-LLC, Immaterialism Ltd., Hosting Concepts B.V., Tucows Domains Inc., and OwnRegistrar, Inc. Anna's Archive is also ordered to destroy all copies of works scraped from Spotify and to file a compliance report within ten business days, under penalty of perjury, including valid contact information for the site and its managing agents. That last requirement could prove significant, given that the identity of the site's operators remains unknown.

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Snap is laying off about 1,000 employees, or 16% of its workforce, while closing 300 open roles as it tries to cut costs and push toward profitability with more AI-driven efficiency. "While these changes are necessary to realize Snap's long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers," CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in a memo, which was included in the company's 8-K filing (PDF). "We have already witnessed small squads leveraging AI tools to drive meaningful progress across several important initiatives." The Verge reports: The changes are expected to save Snap $500 million by the second half of 2026. Snap had about 5,261 full-time employees as of December 2025, and now joins the growing list of tech companies that have already announced significant layoffs this year, including Meta, Amazon, Oracle, GoPro, and Jack Dorsey's Block.

"Last fall, I described Snap as facing a crucible moment, requiring a new way of working that is faster and more efficient, while pivoting towards profitable growth," Spiegel wrote. "Over the past several months, we have carefully reviewed the work required to best serve our community and partners, and made tough choices to prioritize the investments we believe are most likely to create long-term value."

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Allbirds made a surprise announcement this morning: it's pivoting from sustainable shoes to AI compute infrastructure, rebranding as NewBird AI after selling its brand assets and closing its U.S. full-price stores. The move sent shares soaring more than 700%. CNBC reports: The move boosted shares of the miniscule market cap company -- it was valued at about $21 million at Tuesday's close -- by more than 700%. The shares, which were under $3 a day ago, jumped to above $17. [...] The new company, which expects to be called NewBird AI, announced a deal to raise up to $50 million in funding, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. Allbirds announced a deal with American Exchange Group to sell its intellectual property and other assets for $39 million last month. "The Company will initially seek to acquire high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and provide access under long-term lease arrangements, meeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service," the company said in the announcement.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Rivian is joining with Redwood Materials to reuse EV batteries for energy storage -- the largest repurposed-battery energy storage system for an automotive manufacturer in the U.S., executives told The Wall Street Journal. Redwood Materials is a battery-recycling firm started by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel. Once completed later this year, Rivian's plant in Normal, Ill., will draw electricity from more than 100 Rivian EV batteries in an area the size of a small parking lot. It will reduce Rivian's dependence on the power grid during peak demand hours. "It saves Rivian money on what it takes to run the plant. It reduces the demand on the grid, which is great," Rivian Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe said in an interview.

In the Rivian project, the batteries will come from either its test vehicles or from vehicles that have viable batteries but can no longer drive. Those batteries get sent off to Redwood, which integrates them into power storage units. Both companies declined to specify the cost of this project. The setup is expected to initially provide 10 megawatt-hours of energy, equivalent to about 1,000 home-energy battery storage units linked together, Redwood's Straubel said. "These batteries are already built," he said. "We need to integrate them and connect them together, but that can happen quite fast. They don't have to get imported from some other place." [...] Scaringe said that while branching into battery energy storage systems is "not a focus for us as a business right now," Rivian hopes to do more at its sites with Redwood. "There's hopefully a lot more, and there's going to be a lot of batteries we'll have access to," he said.

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Safety Car driver Bernd Maylander is Tom Clarkson’s guest on this week’s Beyond The Grid podcast.

The McLaren star has already shown potential for Grand Prix wins despite only starting one race this season.

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We kennen het voorval waar Zelensky naar verwijst, zeer waarschijnlijk namelijk deze video waarin Russische soldaten zich overgeven aan een Oekraïense grondrobot met een Browning M2 .50 cal erop geschroefd. En weer laten zagen we deze drone-video waarin een Russische soldaat daadwerkelijk gedood wordt door het genoemde wapenplatform. Maar goed, met Poetins driedaagse speciale militaire operatie van 1.446 dagen heeft hij dus een vijandelijk epicentrum van militaire vernieuwing aan z'n grens gecreëerd. En nu willen ze internationaal: "As early as this week, we will have talks with the Europeans — negotiations on creating a joint air defense system," he said. "I am confident: either Ukraine will become an integral part of the European security system, or some in Europe risk becoming part of the 'Russian world.'" Dat laatste is natuurlijk helemaal niet waar, maar goed, veel beeld onderstaand.

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Door de aanhoudende inflatie wordt een krat bier steeds duurder. Voor bekende A-merken betaal je al snel zo’n 20 euro per krat, terwijl het schap daarnaast vol staat met goedkopere alternatieven. Wie het etiket beter bekijkt, ontdekt dat die budgetpilsjes vaak verrassend veel op hun duurdere tegenhangers lijken en soms zelfs uit dezelfde brouwerij komen.

Grote bierproducenten benutten hun capaciteit namelijk niet alleen voor hun eigen merken, maar brouwen ook voor supermarkten. Zo heeft het huismerkbier van Albert Heijn, Brouwers, een opvallende geschiedenis. Ooit kwam het uit de ketels van Bavaria (de familie Swinkels), maar inmiddels wordt het geproduceerd door Grolsch. Ook het Jumbo-huismerk Dors vindt zijn oorsprong in Lieshout, bij Bavaria. Het resultaat: een goedkoper biertje dat uit dezelfde fabriek komt als bekende namen.

Dat principe geldt ook voor discountklassiekers zoals Schultenbräu. Ondanks het imago van ‘budgetbier’ wordt het gebrouwen door Brouwerij Martens, een moderne speler met geavanceerde installaties. De kwaliteit van het productieproces is daardoor vergelijkbaar met die van duurdere merken.

Toch betekent dat niet dat elk blikje exact hetzelfde smaakt. Brouwerijen passen hun receptuur aan per opdrachtgever. Er wordt gevarieerd in de verhouding tussen hop en mout, soms worden goedkopere ingrediënten gebruikt en ook de rusttijd is bij budgetbier vaak korter. Dat zorgt meestal voor een iets neutralere smaak dan bij premium pils.

Niemand proeft het verschil

Wat overeind blijft, is de technische standaard. Grote brouwerijen kunnen zich geen fouten permitteren; hun processen moeten consistent en schoon blijven. Daardoor wordt ook het goedkoopste bier onder strikte kwaliteitscontrole geproduceerd.

Opvallend is dat veel drinkers het verschil helemaal niet kunnen proeven. In blinde tests blijken de verschillen tussen een voordelige krat en een duur A-merk vaak kleiner dan gedacht. Marketing speelt dus een grotere rol dan menigeen wil toegeven.

Wie zich daarvan bewust is, kijkt misschien anders naar het bierschap. Want als je weet dat je budgetbier door dezelfde vakmensen en met dezelfde apparatuur is gemaakt, smaakt dat volgende glas ineens een stuk aantrekkelijker, zeker voor de portemonnee.

Bron: Panorama