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T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T will pay a combined $10.2 million in a settlement with US states that alleged the carriers falsely advertised wireless plans as "unlimited" and phones as "free." The deal was announced yesterday by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
"A multistate investigation found that the companies made false claims in advertisements in New York and across the nation, including misrepresentations about 'unlimited' data plans that were in fact limited and had reduced quality and speed after a certain limit was reached by the user," the announcement said.
T-Mobile and Verizon agreed to pay $4.1 million each while AT&T agreed to pay a little over $2 million. The settlement includes AT&T subsidiary Cricket Wireless and Verizon subsidiary TracFone.
The settlement involves 49 of the 50 US states (Florida did not participate) and the District of Columbia. The states' investigation found that the three major carriers "made several misleading claims in their advertising, including misrepresenting 'unlimited' data plans that were actually limited, offering 'free' phones that came at a cost, and making false promises about switching to different wireless carrier plans.
Wew lad 
That's over $200k per state! It can even be used to cover lawyers fees and discovery costs in a case that took 9 years in court. Yuge government win here, folks!
The three carriers agreed that all advertisements to consumers must be "truthful, accurate and non-misleading." They also agreed to the following changes, the NY attorney general's office said:
"Unlimited" mobile data plans can only be marketed if there are no limits on the quantity of data allowed during a billing cycle.
Offers to pay for consumers to switch to a different wireless carrier must clearly disclose how much a consumer will be paid, how consumers will be paid, when consumers can expect payment, and any additional requirements consumers have to meet to get paid.
Offers of "free" wireless devices or services must clearly state everything a consumer must do to receive the "free" devices or services.
Offers to lease wireless devices must clearly state that the consumer will be entering into a lease agreement.
All "savings" claims must have a reasonable basis. If a wireless carrier claims that consumers will save using its services compared to another wireless carrier, the claim must be based on similar goods or services or differences must be clearly explained to the consumer.
I bet that will learn them!
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Major geomagnetic solar storm happening right now. Biggest in a long time. Starlink satellites are under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far. pic.twitter.com/TrEv5Acli2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2024
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TunnelVision, as the researchers have named their attack, largely negates the entire purpose and selling point of VPNs, which is to encapsulate incoming and outgoing Internet traffic in an encrypted tunnel and to cloak the user's IP address. The researchers believe it affects all VPN applications when they're connected to a hostile network and that there are no ways to prevent such attacks except when the user's VPN runs on Linux or Android. They also said their attack technique may have been possible since 2002 and may already have been discovered and used in the wild since then.
( . . . . )
Interestingly, Android is the only operating system that fully immunizes VPN apps from the attack because it doesn't implement option 121. For all other OSes, there are no complete fixes. When apps run on Linux there's a setting that minimizes the effects, but even then TunnelVision can be used to exploit a side channel that can be used to de-anonymize destination traffic and perform targeted denial-of-service attacks. Network firewalls can also be configured to deny inbound and outbound traffic to and from the physical interface. This remedy is problematic for two reasons: (1) a VPN user connecting to an untrusted network has no ability to control the firewall and (2) it opens the same side channel present with the Linux mitigation.
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Lots of great comment threads under it too, pure 
Diversity Is Our Strength 
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Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is no longer on the board of Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform he helped start. In two posts today, Bluesky thanked Dorsey while confirming his departure and adding that it's searching for a new board member “who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience.”
The posts come a day after an X user asked Dorsey if he was still on the company's board, and Dorsey responded, without further elaboration, “no.” As TechCrunch points out, Dorsey was on a tear yesterday, unfollowing all but three accounts on X while referring to Elon Musk's platform as “freedom technology.”
Neither Bluesky nor Dorsey himself seem to have said how or why he left the board. For now, two board members remain: CEO, Jay Graeber, and Jabber / XMPP inventor Jeremie Miller. Dorsey originally backed Bluesky in 2019 as a project to develop an open-source social media standard that he wanted Twitter to move to. He later joined its board of directors when it split from Twitter in 2022.
But Dorsey hadn't seemingly been a particularly active participant at the company. In March, when The Verge's Nilay Patel asked Graeber for Decoder about his level of involvement with Bluesky, she said she gets “some feedback occasionally,” but implied he's otherwise “being Jack Dorsey on a cloud,” as Nilay put it. Months before that interview, Dorsey had closed his Bluesky account.
Bluesky did not immediately respond to The Verge's request for comment.
Update May 5th, 2024, 4:37PM ET: Updated with Bluesky's confirmation of Dorsey's departure from its board.
IMPORTANT - 44
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We have heard from several sources who told us that the reason for these firings is because Rebecca Tinucci, former head of Tesla's EV Charging division, resisted Musk's demand to fire large portions of her team.
While this is hearsay, it's plausible considering the language in Musk's letter announcing the firings – which claimed that some executives are not taking headcount reduction seriously, and made a point to say that executives who retain the wrong employees may see themselves and their whole teams cut. It isn't a stretch to think that Musk included those demands since they were related to his firing of Tinucci and her team.
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.... nootice.... please 
"Data Scientist" (Kareem Carr) thinks that "Python is a massive pain in the butt to install" 
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For the uninitiatied: This is the absolute r-slur who spent weeks arguing that "2 + 2 ≠ 4"
https://www.westernjournal.com/wokeness-comes-mathematics-academics-saying-225/
He's also famous for making sophomoric ggplot charts in R to show off his "data science" chops 
and going viral for bullshit like this:
I'm like a dog chasing waterfalls
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They want you to print that shit on a piece of paper or login to your Microsoft account in case you forget it 
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40209382
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214619
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40211027
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40222501
Elon Musk fires Tesla's entire supercharger team
Electric-car maker's public policy unit also being disbanded as chief announces in memo hundreds more jobs to be cut
Elon Musk has shut down the division that runs Tesla's Supercharger business, dismissed two senior executives and fired hundreds more staff as the electric-car maker continues its restructuring amid a sharp downturn in the EV market.
Musk announced internally on Monday that the head of the superchargers group, Rebecca Tinucci, and Daniel Ho, head of new products, would be leaving along with their entire teams. About 500 people were in the supercharger group, the memo said.
Tesla's supercharger system is among the largest charging networks in the world, and was one the reasons the company enjoyed such a commanding lead over rival carmakers for so long. While the supercharger operations will continue, the move raises questions over the future of the charging business.
The entire public policy unit will also be disbanded following the departure of its leader, Rohan Patel, in the middle of April.
“Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction,” Musk wrote in the memo, which was first reported by The Information. “While some execstaff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”
Any manager “who retains more than three people who don't obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test” should resign, he added.
Tesla shares, which fell 5.5 per cent on Tuesday, were down another 2.6 per cent in pre-market trading at $178.53 on Wednesday.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
[article continued]
The latest dismissals at the company come after Musk announced last month that the carmaker would cut “more than 10 per cent” of its total workforce, more than 14,000 jobs, in order to be “lean, innovative and hungry”.
The urgency of the shift was underlined by Tesla reporting a decline of almost 10 per cent in revenues in the first quarter of this year, its first year-on-year quarterly drop since the start of 2020. The share price has more than halved from its November 2021 peak of just under $410 a share.
The decision took staff by surprise. Will Jameson, who worked in the Tesla supercharger team, wrote on X that Musk “has let our entire charging org go”. Another employee of that division, George Bahadue, posted on LinkedIn confirming he had been let go.
He added: “What this means for the charging network, [North American Charging Standard] NACS, and all the exciting work we were doing across the industry, I don't yet know. What a wild ride it has been.”
When Jameson was asked by a reader on X why the entire division had been let go, he replied “your guess is as good as mine”.
Musk said in the memo that superchargers sites under construction would be finished and “some” new locations would be constructed.
The surprise move comes despite Tesla having built the dominant EV charging network with 50,000 sites globally and 15,000 in North America. Recently it has signed contracts with several rivals, including Ford, General Motors and Rivian, to use its NACS charging standard.
Models from other carmakers will be able to use its branded charging stations, potentially bringing Tesla a significant revenue stream, as well as establishing it as the de facto industry standard.
Tinucci, Ho and Patel are not the only long-standing Musk lieutenants to leave this year. Drew Baglino, senior vice-president leading Tesla's engineering and technology development for batteries, motors and energy products, resigned in April and Martin Viecha, its head of investor relations, said he would step down on the company's first-quarter earnings call last week.
In a post on X, Musk said the carmaker would continue to grow its supercharger network “at a slower pace for new locations”.
“More focus on 100 per cent uptime and expansion of existing locations,” he wrote.
Unique Badge! 
to solve this Cipher! First 
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Here is the cipher. The question 
has been scrambled from its original form.
Here is the key:
The first 
to give me the answer to the question 
will get 10k MB and a unique badge. The only hint I will give is that I started with the Caesar 
cypher method. Badge 
should 
be ready 
in the next few days or so. The next 4 will get 10k mb.
!ghosts would 
someone in badgemaxxers mind pinging them please?
A day of the life of a DEI program manager - Blind - 40
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