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Jony Ive's OpenAI Device Gets the Laurene Powell Jobs Nod of Approval

3 months 1 week ago
Laurene Powell Jobs has publicly endorsed the secretive AI hardware device being developed by Jony Ive and OpenAI, expressing admiration for his design process and investing in his ventures. Ive says the project is an attempt to address the unintended harms of past tech like the iPhone, and Powell Jobs stands to benefit financially if the device succeeds. The Verge reports: In a new interview published by The Financial Times, the two reminisce about Jony Ive's time working at Apple alongside Powell Jobs' late husband, Steve, and trying to make up for the "unintentional" harms associated with those efforts. [...] Powell Jobs, who has remained close friends with Ive since Steve Jobs passed in 2011, echoes his concerns, saying that "there are dark uses for certain types of technology," even if it "wasn't designed to have that result." Powell Jobs has invested in both Ive's LoveFrom design and io hardware startups following his departure from Apple. Ive notes that "there wouldn't be LoveFrom" if not for her involvement. Ive's io company is being purchased by OpenAI for almost $6.5 billion, and with her investment, Powell Jobs stands to gain if the secretive gadget proves anywhere near as successful as the iPhone. The pair gives away no extra details about the device that Ive is building with OpenAI, but Powell Jobs is expecting big things. She says she has watched "in real time how ideas go from a thought to some words, to some drawings, to some stories, and then to prototypes, and then a different type of prototype," Powell Jobs said. "And then something that you think: I can't imagine that getting any better. Then seeing the next version, which is even better. Just watching something brand new be manifested, it's a wondrous thing to behold."

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Linux User Share Hits a Multi-Year High On Steam For May 2025

3 months 1 week ago
Linux user share on Steam rose to 2.69% in May 2025 -- the highest level recorded since at least 2018. GamingOnLinux reports: Overall user share for May 2025: - Windows 95.45% -0.65% - Linux 2.69% +0.42% - macOS 1.85% +0.23% Even with SteamOS 3 now being a little more widely available, the rise was not from SteamOS directly. Filtering to just the Linux numbers gives us these most popular distributions: - SteamOS Holo 64 bit 30.95% -2.83% - Arch Linux 64 bit 10.09% +0.64% - Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit 7.76% +1.56% - Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit 7.42% +1.01% - Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit 4.63% +0.01% - Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS 64 bit 4.30% -0.14% - CachyOS 64 bit 2.54% +2.54% - EndeavourOS Linux 64 bit 2.44% -0.02% - Manjaro Linux 64 bit 2.43% -0.18% - Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS 64 bit 2.17% -0.06% - Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) 64 bit 1.99% -0.28% - Other 23.27% -2.27%

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Google Settles Shareholder Lawsuit, Sill Spend $500 Million On Being Less Evil

3 months 1 week ago
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It has become a common refrain during Google's antitrust saga: What happened to "don't be evil?" Google's unofficial motto has haunted it as it has grown ever larger, but a shareholder lawsuit sought to rein in some of the company's excesses. And it might be working. The plaintiffs in the case have reached a settlement with Google parent company Alphabet, which will spend a boatload of cash on "comprehensive" reforms. The goal is to steer Google away from the kind of anticompetitive practices that got it in hot water. Under the terms of the settlement, obtained by Bloomberg Law, Alphabet will spend $500 million over the next 10 years on systematic reforms. The company will have to form a board-level committee devoted to overseeing the company's regulatory compliance and antitrust risk, a rarity for US firms. This group will report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai. There will also be reforms at other levels of the company that allow employees to identify potential legal pitfalls before they affect the company. Google has also agreed to preserve communications. Google's propensity to use auto-deleting chats drew condemnation from several judges overseeing its antitrust cases. The agreement still needs approval from US District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco, but that's mainly a formality at this point. Naturally, Alphabet does not admit to any wrongdoing under the terms of the settlement, but it may have to pay tens of millions in legal fees on top of the promised $500 million investment.

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