Apple is now seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent OpenAI and Jony Ive's io startup from developing AI hardware allegedly based on stolen Apple trade secrets. "The iPhone maker also claims that more of its former employees may be involved with the trade secrets theft," reports TechCrunch. From the report: In a new filing, Apple is requesting expedited discovery from the accused OpenAI employees, senior systems engineer Chang Liu and Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan; OpenAI, and its foundation; and io, the device startup co-founded by Apple's former lead designer Jony Ive. Apple also notes that its continued investigation has so far revealed 11 other former Apple employees beyond Liu and Tan may have been witnesses or otherwise involved in the case, and others who were previously named in the original complaint, like OpenAI employee Yu-Ting Peng.

The filing marks an escalation in Apple's legal battle with OpenAI, as it suggests Apple has uncovered new evidence that the misconduct goes beyond the former employees named in the original complaint. "For example, another former Apple employee seems to have met with Mr. Liu and Ms. Peng in advance of Ms. Peng's interview at OpenAI and discussed with them during that meeting Apple proprietary information relating to unannounced products," the filing states. "Yet another former Apple employee took screenshots of confidential Apple documents relating to an unannounced Apple product before an interview at OpenAI."

"And, after Apple filed its complaint, multiple former Apple employees now working at OpenAI reached out to discuss returning Apple-issued work devices they kept when they left Apple," Apple claims, suggesting there were more who were possibly involved with the scheme. Apple is pushing the court to allow for expedited discovery because it believes it has good cause to suspect that there are others involved in the theft of its intellectual property. The company noted that its motion for a preliminary injunction is also pending. Apple's request for a preliminary injunction is "both based on false information and completely unnecessary because we do not have, nor want, any of their trade secrets," said OpenAI in a blog post.

"We're much more interested in building innovative products and technologies that push the frontier," OpenAI's statement reads.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: The Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the U.S. telecom industry, is working on the measure to bar imports of new Chinese optical transceivers, which allow data to travel over fiber-optic cables at the speed of light within data centers. Officials hope to publish it this year, when it would take effect. The move, not previously reported, aims to prevent Chinese firms from stealing data, installing malware or disrupting service at U.S. data centers, which house the chips to train and run AI models.

The FCC could still modify or shelve the restriction, the sources stressed, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. [...] A U.S. ban on new models of Chinese data center devices would likely hit China's Zhongji Innolight, one of the biggest global sellers of transceivers, which was added to the Pentagon's list of alleged Chinese military-backed companies in June. The list can be a harbinger of tougher action. A ban could also raise costs for American cloud firms such as Amazon Web Services, as it may force them to transition to other producers such as U.S.-based Coherent and Lumentum.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Apple has launched a new legal challenge against a UK government demand to access its customers' highly encrypted data, a year after the Home Office agreed to abandon its previous request. The US tech company launched the legal complaint last month at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), an independent court that has the power to investigate claims that the UK intelligence services have acted unlawfully. The UK government had made a second request to Apple to grant it a "back door" to encrypted iCloud data belonging to British users, according to an order issued by the court.

Britain backed down on its original demand for access to data from UK and US customers last year, after a heated transatlantic tussle over encryption between London and Washington. UK authorities subsequently issued a new "technical capability notice" (TCN) to Apple that did not apply to American users. Apple is seeking to challenge the British government's powers to issue TCNs under the UK Investigatory Powers Act, according to the details of the new legal case first reported by the Financial Times. [...] The original TCN issued last year asked Apple for the right to see users' encrypted data protected by its advanced data protection (ADP) program in the event of a national security risk.

Apple said the removal of the tool -- which not even it can access -- would make users more vulnerable to data breaches from bad actors and other threats to customer privacy. Creating a "back door" would also mean all data was accessible by Apple, which it could be forced to share with law enforcement possessing a warrant. As a result, Apple withdrew UK customers' access to its ADP program in January 2025. The Home Office has maintained that the Investigatory Powers Act, under which such orders are issued, contains robust safeguards and is used only when absolutely necessary.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've seen Dave Rupert do posts that only appear in the RSS feed. He called it the RSS Club. In his words,

It’s like a newsletter delivered to your feed reader to celebrate the medium of RSS and breakaway from social media.

I like that ethos and am choosing to do the same. What posts will qualify as part of the RSS Club remains to be seen. Maybe they'll be more personal. Maybe they'll cover topics that don't need to be directly linked from home pages and index pages. Maybe I'll get bored of the idea and we never hear of this again.

And it's not like they'll be sooper-dooper secret because there will still be a web page that will be generated. You could still share and link the page, if you wanted. At least, for now. It's just that they won't be linked to from any of the index pages. Perhaps one day I'll look into creating content purely for the RSS feed that doesn't have a permalink generated for it. That'll require some tweaks to the RSS feed since it relies on the URL for things like the ID.

Consider this an invitation to subscribe to the RSS feed—if you haven't already—and perhaps some interesting content will find it's way to you.

Technical Bits

This site is built with 11ty. Every file—okay, not every file; I'm simplifying here—gets added to a collection. Files can be added to a specific collection using tags. When I first built this site, every blog post was tagged as a post. Then, I told the home page to grab the most recent posts. And the index view to grab all of the posts. And then the RSS feed should grab the ten most recent posts.

What I've done is added a new collection called rss and I changed the RSS feed to only grab items from the rss collection.

tags:
  - post
  - rss

This allows me to create content that only appears in the RSS feed or only appears on the site or appears in both. This system will be used for any new thing that I add. For example, if I add photography, I can create a photo tag and add the photos to the RSS feed or choose not to. I can add the photos to the Everything and Nothing index or I can create a separate photo feed altogether that just pulls anything tagged photo.

---

Have something to say? Tell me about it.

Tom McCullough is set to leave the Silverstone-based squad at the end of the current Formula 1 season.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Asielminister Bart van den Brink laat burgemeesters en wethouders van nog eens veertien gemeenten zich melden op het ministerie omdat ze niet genoeg asielopvangplekken regelen. Dit zijn onder meer de gemeenten Bunschoten, Vlaardingen en Vught. Eerder ontbood hij al tien andere gemeenten om dezelfde reden.

De nieuw toegevoegde gemeenten zijn verder Aalsmeer, Bronckhorst, Brunssum, De Ronde Venen, Dinkelland, Hardinxveld-Giessendam, Hellendoorn, Lopik, Montfoort, Oldebroek en Oldenzaal. De volledige lijst met gemeenten die zich nu op bestuurlijk niveau moeten verantwoorden bij het Rijk, bestaat nu dus uit 24 gemeenten.

De gesprekken die Van den Brink nu gaat voeren met burgemeesters en wethouders van de gemeenten moeten ertoe leiden dat de gemeenten alsnog opvanglocaties gaan regelen. In het uiterste geval kan de minister in plaats van de gemeente een vergunning voor een opvanglocatie verlenen.

De eerder opgeroepen gemeenten zijn Aalten, Achtkarspelen, Bergen (Limburg), Beverwijk, Gemert-Bakel, Overbetuwe, Sluis, Valkenswaard, Voerendaal en Westland. Die lieten veelal in een reactie op deze stap weten dat ze werken aan opvangplekken. Van den Brink liet vorige maand weten dat er in totaal 107 gemeenten zijn die momenteel niet aan hun wettelijke taak op het gebied van asielopvang voldoen.

De koelkast en de airco werken al bijna twee eeuwen volgens hetzelfde recept: pers een gas samen, laat het weer uitzetten, klaar. Nu komen er drie Duitse alternatieven aan die helemaal geen koudemiddel meer nodig hebben. Ze zijn zuiniger, ze zijn onbrandbaar en ze staan al in de supermarkt.

In een Duitse supermarkt staat sinds dit voorjaar een koelmeubel dat er volstrekt gewoon uitziet. Geen propaan, geen butaan, geen F-gassen. De koeling komt van magneten. Wie de kast openmaakt, merkt niets, en dat is precies het punt: de eerste echte omwenteling in de koeltechniek sinds 1834 gebeurt onzichtbaar, tussen de zuivel en de vleeswaren.

Waarom uitgerekend nu

Koelen is de snelst groeiende energiepost in gebouwen wereldwijd. Airco’s en ventilatoren slokten al zo’n tiende van alle opgewekte elektriciteit op, en de vraag stijgt bij elke hittegolf verder. Europa is daarbij extra kwetsbaar: het continent warmt ongeveer twee keer zo snel op als het wereldgemiddelde. Daarbovenop komt de honger van datacenters die voor AI-toepassingen uit de grond worden gestampt.

De grootste groei zit echter niet hier, maar in hete, dichtbevolkte landen als India en Indonesië. Van de bijna 2,8 miljard mensen in de heetste delen van de wereld heeft ongeveer één op de tien toegang tot koeling thuis. In de Verenigde Staten en Japan is dat ruim negentig procent. Als die kloof zich sluit met de techniek van vandaag, loopt het stroomnet vast.

“Noem me één technologie die de afgelopen honderd jaar niet fundamenteel is veranderd.”

Drie manieren om koude te maken uit een vaste stof

Het klassieke systeem gebruikt de faseovergang van een gas: samenpersen, warmte afstaan, druk weghalen, verdampen, koude. De nieuwe generatie doet hetzelfde kunstje met een vaste stof, die van de ene kristaltoestand in de andere springt. Er zijn drie smaken.

• Magnetocalorisch — een magnetische legering wordt in een magneetveld gebracht en er weer uit gehaald. Bij het demagnetiseren koelt het materiaal af. De Darmstadtse legering van lanthaan, ijzer en silicium schakelt precies rond kamertemperatuur.
• Elastocalorisch — bundels haardunne nikkel-titaandraden worden razendsnel uitgerekt en weer ontspannen. Het materiaal heeft een vormgeheugen: het keert steeds terug in zijn oude vorm en onttrekt daarbij warmte aan de lucht.
• Elektrocalorisch — hier doet een elektrisch veld het werk. Aan- en uitzetten van de spanning verandert de ordening in het materiaal, en dus de temperatuur. Geen magneten, geen bewegende delen, dus het simpelste apparaat van de drie.

Wat ze delen: geen koudemiddel. En dat is meer dan een technisch detail. F-gassen koelen uitstekend maar zijn extreem sterke broeikasgassen. Propaan en butaan zijn brandbaar, ammoniak is giftig en CO₂ werkt alleen onder zeer hoge druk. Brussel heeft de uitfasering van F-gassen inmiddels vastgelegd: vanaf 2050 mogen er geen nieuwe HFK’s meer op de Europese markt komen, met tussenstops in 2032 en 2035 voor airco’s en warmtepompen.

Van vitrine naar woonkamer

De magnetische koelkast is het verst. De Darmstadtse spin-off Magnotherm liet een omgebouwd koelmeubel elf weken lang meedraaien in een supermarkt en mat een energieverbruik dat vijftien procent lager lag dan bij het propaansysteem dat er eerst stond, bij dezelfde temperatuur van 4 tot 5 graden. Op termijn wordt dertig procent winst realistisch geacht. Nadelen zijn er ook: de kast is groter, zwaarder en duurder.

In Saarbrücken mikt een onderzoeksgroep met de elastocalorische draadbundels op iets anders: de ventilatiesystemen van energiezuinige woningen. Binnenkomende buitenlucht wordt dan onderweg gekoeld, kamer voor kamer, zonder centrale installatie. Een praktijkrijp systeem is er nog niet, wel prototypes die temperatuurverschillen van rond de twintig graden halen.

En in Freiburg is dit jaar Qurie opgericht, een afsplitsing van het Fraunhofer-instituut voor fysische meettechniek, met 2,2 miljoen euro startkapitaal en zes medewerkers. De eerste markten zijn niet de woonkamer maar de schakelkast en de laserkoeling — kleine niches waar de techniek zich kan bewijzen voordat de consument aan de beurt is.

“Elk van de nieuwe technologieën zal zijn eigen niche zoeken.”

En Nederland?

Hier is de airco al lang geen luxe meer. In 2023 had 12,3 procent van de huishoudens een vaste airco en 5,7 procent een mobiel apparaat; in 2025 telde het land bijna 2,2 miljoen vaste installaties in woningen, kantoren en bedrijfspanden. Limburg is koploper met bijna dertig procent, Noord-Holland blijft steken op 7,5 procent. Opvallend: het overgrote deel van de bezitters gebruikt de airco óók om te stoken in de winter.

Voor de Nederlandse consument verandert er voorlopig niets. De vaste-stofkoeling zit in de fase van pilots, niches en subsidies. Maar de Duitse onderzoekers waarschuwen zelf voor het scenario dat iedereen kent van de zonnepanelen: uitgevonden in Europa, gemaakt in China. Wie de eerste betaalbare magneetairco op de markt zet, bepaalt straks wat u ervoor betaalt.

Feiten op een rij

Vaste-stofkoeling vervangt het samengeperste gas door een vast materiaal dat van kristalstructuur wisselt. Drie varianten: magnetisch, mechanisch en elektrisch aangedreven. Voordeel: geen brandbare of klimaatschadelijke koudemiddelen. Gemeten winst tot nu toe: vijftien procent minder stroom in een supermarktkoeling. Nadeel: groter, zwaarder en duurder dan wat er nu staat.

Meer weten?

• CBS: 1 op de 3 huishoudens krijgt woning niet koel op warme dagen
• Change Inc: Nederland aan de airco, wat betekent dat voor klimaat en energie
• Raad van de EU: nieuwe regels voor F-gassen

The Phone in Your Hand. “A layer-by-layer teardown of the most intricate object you’ve ever held.”

Hier lees je nou ook NOOIT iets over: Nederlandse vrouwen die niet weten of ze wel een kind willen. In dit geval 'koningshuisverslaggever' Anne Gordijn (28) van het AD, die niet twijfelt om logische redenen ('ik ben koningshuisverslaggever van het AD') maar vanwege het KLIMAAT. Niet het ondernemingsklimaat, het belastingklimaat of het culturele klimaat, neen, het warmweerklimaat. "Het is echt niet dat ik er hele nachten van wakker lig. Integendeel, door de hitte slaap ik als een baby. (Baby's, die bekend staan om hun uitstekende slaapritme, red.) En die zomeravonden op het strand in mijn stad Den Haag zijn op bloedhete dagen de mooiste van het jaar. Maar wanneer ik na zo’n avond nog even mijn nieuwsapps doorscroll, kom ik er al snel achter dat ik dat beter niet vlak voor het slapen kan doen." God meid, wat een inzichten. Het is bijna alsof de meeste media wegens het constante afwisselen van opvoedjournalistiek, clickbait en paniekzaaien niet te harden zijn, zelfs voor koningshuisverslaggevers die in de bloei van hun leven staan. Om de ramp compleet te maken neemt Anne Gordijn dan maar een verschrikkelijk besluit. "Ik besluit neuropsycholoog Erik Scherder te bellen, de man die alles weet over hersenen." Die zegt: kap met het AD lezen, ga lekker puzzelen en ommetjes maken en je krijgt vanzelf zin om je voort te planten. Of zo.

Vibe

Opposition parties say nationwide protests that forced resignation of education secretary are beginning to dent BJP support

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party has suffered a byelection defeat in a seat it had held for three decades following the Cockroach movement student protests that have shaken Narendra Modi’s government.

Prashant Kishor, a high profile electoral strategist turned politician, scored a breakthrough win for his fledgling Jan Suraaj (Good Governance) party in the Bankipur constituency in Patna, the capital of the eastern state of Bihar.

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Iran conflict windfall over three months reignites calls for companies ‘cashing in on human misery’ to pay for environmental damage

Eight of the biggest oil companies amassed profits of more than $90bn (£67bn) in just three months as the Iran conflict sent energy prices soaring and the emissions-fuelled climate crisis caused deadly heatwaves.

The windfall war profits have reignited calls for oil and gas supermajors such as Saudi Aramco and BP to pay for the environmental damage caused by “cashing in on human misery” and fund a rapid transition to renewable energy.

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Widely regarded as one of the finest defenders in football history, the former Italy and Milan player died last week aged 66. Baresi’s funeral took place at the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio where former teammates and huge crowds lined up to pay their respects

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Eruption of the Fuego volcano sends lava and ash nearly four miles into the sky as country declares second-highest alert

Hundreds of people living on the slopes of Guatemala’s Fuego volcano have evacuated their homes after a huge eruption spewed lava and plumes of ash.

Central America’s most active volcano erupted on Monday morning, with conditions intensifying by nightfall and prompting authorities to issue the country’s second-most severe alert warning.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Prince

Een zestal jongeren, allemaal met een leeftijd van 12 of 13 jaar, heeft een nachtje in de cel geslapen nadat ze werden gepakt na twee berovingen. Ze maakten onder andere een telefoon en pinpas buit. De politie wist ze kort na de berovingen op te pakken.

On Wednesday morning, Ted Cruz’s Senate Commerce Committee will convene on five bills aimed at age verification and “child safety.” The bills each have their own issues when it comes to privacy, data collection, parental rights, and free speech. But one bill, the partisan Republican SCREEN Act, is a Christian nationalist nightmare.

Utah Senator Mike Lee introduced the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act in February 2025, alongside exclusively Republican cosponsors and supporters Senators John Curtis, Jim Banks, and Representative Mary Miller. 

The SCREEN Act would require every website that includes even one piece of what the legislation describes as “harmful to minors” to verify visitors’ ages. It defines “harmful to minors” as content that “depicts, describes, or represents, in a patently offensive way with respect to what is suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or lewd exhibition of the genitals;” is “obscene” or “child pornography;” or “appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion.”

Unlike the many laws now in place around the U.S. that apply to sites made up of at least one third adult content, like porn sites and some social media platforms, SCREEN would place the burden and risk of verifying users’ ages to every website on the internet that falls under the law, which would be most sites with user-generated content and also mainstream entertainment platforms like Netflix. It also attacks virtual private networks (VPNs) by requiring sites to verify based on IP addresses; many people in states that have age verification laws in place use VPNs to get around submitting sensitive personal data like ID and biometrics to a smattering of third-party websites in use today. Critics say the SCREEN Act would be a privacy and free speech disaster.

And the agenda of its sponsors is clear: “Internet pornography has infected our culture and corroded the vulnerable minds of America’s kids, with the average age of initial exposure being 12 years old. That’s appalling,” Banks said in Lee’s press release.

A number of religious, conservative, Christian nationalist, and anti-pornography groups are in support of the bill, according to the press release from Lee’s office. They include the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (which recently represented a Kansas mother who sued multiple porn sites because her son found her old laptop and used it to watch Chaturbate), the National Decency Coalition, the Ethics and Public Policy Center (which is “working to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics,” according to its website), the Family Policy Alliance (whose stated mission is to “advance biblical values through civic engagement”), the Family Research Council (whose “mission is to serve in the kingdom of God by championing faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview”), and many more.

Heritage Action, a conservative lobbying group and one of the organizations Lee lists in support of the SCREEN Act, is a sister organization to the Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025. Heritage Action “works with lawmakers to implement Heritage Foundation solutions,” according to the Heritage Foundation website. This is important because of how Project 2025, the playbook for right-wing and extremist conservative leadership, has influenced policies and lawmaking in America in the last few years of the Trump Administration. That stretches from attacks on programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, to attacks on trans and queer people, to turning the FBI into a political entity.

Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn

Missouri’s age verification law, enacted on November 30, is the halfway mark for the sweep of age verification laws across the country.

One of Project 2025’s stated goals is to redefine and eradicate pornography: “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection,” the playbook says, calling for imprisonment of pornographers but also educators and librarians. “And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” 

The Senate Commerce Committee will also debate and mark up the text of the Youth AI Privacy Act which would require chatbots to disclose they’re not human among other features like limiting data retention; the CHATBOT Act which would require AI companies to build “family account” systems where parents can monitor kids’ activity; the Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act which would create a federal study into toys that include AI components; and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). 

KOSA would impose a legal “duty of care” on social media platforms to prevent and mitigate promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and advertisements for products like tobacco. KOSA has been introduced, and failed, multiple times since its first introduction in 2022; it has bipartisan lawmaker support but is extremely unpopular across all sides of the political spectrum among groups that care about freedom of speech because of its potential to increase censorship.

New Bill Would Make All Pornography a Federal Crime in the U.S.

Republican Senator Mike Lee introduced Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (again) last week, which would criminalize porn at the federal level.

“Whatever disclaimers and exceptions the bill includes, the practical effect is unchanged,” the Electronic Freedom Foundation recently wrote about KOSA. “When platforms face liability for content that someone later claims contributed to harms like anxiety, eating disorders, or substance use, the safest response is to remove lawful speech or shut down forums discussing those topics altogether.” 

Unlike KOSA and many of the other age verification laws that have spread across the country, the SCREEN Act does not have bipartisan support. It’s the latest in Lee’s repeated attempts to criminalize content he and his co-sponsors personally consider immoral. Last year, Lee introduced the now-stalled Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA) for the third time. IODA would change the 1973 “Miller Test” for determining what qualifies as obscene, and seeks to make all pornography illegal at the federal level. “Obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children,” Lee said in a press release. “Our bill updates the legal definition of obscenity for the internet age so this content can be taken down and its peddlers prosecuted.”