The first Trump administration tried this, and Congress passed a rule to block it.
On Friday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a sudden change to how it handles the indirect costs of research—the money that pays for things like support services and facilities maintenance. These costs help pay universities and research centers to provide the environment and resources all their researchers need to get research done. Previously, these had been set through negotiations with the university and audits of the spending. These averaged roughly 30 percent of the value of the grant itself and would frequently exceed 50 percent.
The NIH announcement set the rate at 15 percent for every campus. The new rate would start today and apply retroactively to existing grants, meaning most research universities are currently finding themselves facing catastrophic budget shortfalls.
Today, a coalition of 22 states filed a suit that seeks to block the new policy, alleging it violated both a long-standing law and a budget rider that Congress had passed in response to a 2017 attempt by Trump to drastically cut indirect costs. The suit seeks to prevent the new policy or its equivalent from being applied—something that Judge Angel Kelley of the District of Massachusetts granted later in the day. The injunction only applies to research centers located in the states that have joined the suit, however, essentially leaving red states to suffer the consequences of the funding cut.
Chatbot maker partners with TSMC to manufacture custom AI chip, with plans for future iterations.
OpenAI is entering the final stages of designing its long-rumored AI processor with the aim of decreasing the company's dependence on Nvidia hardware, according to a Reuters report released Monday. The ChatGPT creator plans to send its chip designs to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) for fabrication within the next few months, but the chip has not yet been formally announced.
The OpenAI chip's full capabilities, technical details, and exact timeline are still unknown, but the company reportedly intends to iterate on the design and improve it over time, giving it leverage in negotiations with chip suppliers—and potentially granting the company future independence with a chip design it controls outright.
In the past, we've seen other tech companies, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta, create their own AI acceleration chips for reasons that range from cost reduction to relieving shortages of AI chips supplied by Nvidia, which enjoys a near-market monopoly on high-powered GPUs (such as the Blackwell series) for data center use.
Major report was designed to answer the public’s biggest questions on nature.
The first-ever National Nature Assessment—which was based on significant public feedback and strove to reveal how nature loss influences climate change and impacts humanity—may still see the light of day after the Trump administration abruptly ended the ambitious project.
Researchers involved told The New York Times that the nature report was "too important to die" and that an "amazingly broad consensus" remains among its mostly volunteer authors, so the expansive report must be completed and released to the public.
The first draft of the report was due on Tuesday, so the bulk of the initial work appears mostly done. Although the webpage for the project has been deleted, an archived version shows that researchers had expected to spend the rest of 2025 seeking external review and edits before releasing the final report in late 2026.
BeIN, Miramax and MPA-affiliated anti-piracy group AVIA, have called out a Chinese company behind a device that disables anti-piracy codes embedded in video streams. Gotech was previously hit with a widely publicized $101m judgment following a Nagravision copyright lawsuit. Yet, not only was the amount never paid, the judgment was fully vacated. In what can only be described as a bizarre finale, GoTech now promotes Nagra as its partner.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Filed in the Southern District of Texas, Nagravision’s complaint alleged that Gotech International Technology Limited and Zhuhai Gotech Intelligent Technology Company Limited, were the operators of an illegal online network that facilitated TV piracy online.
Nagravision alleged that the network captured and then rebroadcast decryption keys, allowing users to circumvent the company’s anti-piracy technology and watch its clients’ TV shows, without paying them a penny. Nagravision alleged violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Federal Communications Act (FCA), which continue to feature in more recent IPTV piracy lawsuits filed alongside partner DISH.
The Same But Critical
The lawsuit against the Chinese companies claimed they had stolen/copied and then defeated Nagravision’s security technology, including watermarks used to track the original source of pirate broadcasts.
On paper, the case had everything; stolen anti-piracy tech deployed on servers in the United States, used to undermine both the owner of the tech and its customers, before pilfering their premium content and making it harder to track.
When the companies and a Hong Kong-based affiliate failed to defend, Nagravision was gifted a relatively easy win. A default judgment and damages award of $101,851,800, was widely reported alongside a permanent injunction, and a seizure order which included the defendants’ website.
The defendants’ belated appearance saw the judgment upheld on appeal to the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court.
In the wake of GoTech’s apparent defeat, mainstream interest in the case faded away. A notable case, of course, but the $101m ‘surprise’ had already been and gone. This was a copyright lawsuit after all, not unexpected competition for the last few minutes of The Usual Suspects.
So why are rightsholders still complaining about the same issues almost a decade later?
beIN and AVIA Bemoan GoTech’s Tech
In its recent submission for the USTR’s Special 301 Report, anti-piracy group AVIA outlines China’s lack of progress in tackling many aspects of online piracy. Issues that continue to affect the legitimate video market include hardware and software services allegedly operated by crime syndicates in China, AVIA notes.
Examples include “internet key sharing” (IKS) infrastructure targeting conditional access satellite broadcasts, and consumer use of pirate set-top boxes making use of shared keys to avoid paying for a legitimate subscription. AVIA highlights a familiar company as a significant player in the IKS market.
“One such enterprise, Zhuhai GoTech Intelligent Technology Company Ltd., was unmasked in a 2016 civil suit in Texas and a significant monetary penalty awarded; however the Chinese piracy syndicate that owns GoTech has been undeterred by that judgment – it continues to quite publicly offer – from its base in China – IKS piracy services on its international social media pages, under various brand names,” AVIA informs the USTR.
Another troublesome GoTech product may also sound familiar. Capable of identifying hidden security markers present in legal video streams, MKTech-branded GoTech encoders can render such codes useless. In the wrong hands, the source of subsequent pirate broadcasts or streams can become harder or even impossible to identify and shut down.
AVIA doesn’t mention a specific model number but does mention MKTech-branding. Since they’re not exactly top secret, images of a likely candidate and its sales pitch (but not the model number) are shown above.
“As watermarking is a technology implemented by content owners to aid in detection and termination of pirate video streams, it is patently clear that a watermark removal function is aimed at undermining the interests of legitimate content suppliers and content owners alike,” AVIA continues.
“There is no legitimate reason to remove watermarking from video; in marketing these capabilities, the Chinese manufacturers are providing essential technical capabilities for pirates around the world.” A submission by beIN and Miramax continues on similar lines.
How the devices are able to detect the otherwise invisible watermarks is explained in basic terms on the seller’s website; it compares signals from two set-top boxes and detects differences in the output. It sounds almost too easy but if the rightsholders say it’s a problem, it probably is.
That said, marketing for the encoder does reveal similar functionality that doesn’t involve removing watermarks. For those who happen to have a logo baked into ‘their’ legal streams but for some reason need to switch to a different one, the MKTech encoder can handle that on the fly.
Isn’t a $101m Judgment Supposed to Act as a Deterrent?
As the screenshot from a company marketing video reveals, GoTech’s innovation in this field has been acknowledged with almost “100 independent intellectual property and patents.[sic]”
Yet in light of comments made by AVIA, beIN and Miramax, recognition of valuable IP rights seems to meet challenges. Did the $101m judgment carry no weight? Was the loss of a critical domain name simply brushed off as meaningless, even as part of a deliberately punishing injunction?
Having conceded that answers may only exist in Chinese, finding out what happened was surprisingly easy. Zhuhai Gotech Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd produces highly detailed reports on the company’s activities. The lawsuit in the U.S. appears in several reports; as far as we can tell, the main aim was to keep those with an interest or potential interest in the company up to date on developments.
Declarations in the reports appear to be no more biased than one would typically expect from a party in a lawsuit; the core issues are mostly stated matter-of-fact. The dispute goes far deeper than coverage here suggests, but suffice to say the sudden appearance of a threat to the whole world, meant that 2020 was no ordinary year.
Esteemed business partners
A Zhuhai Gotech report notes that the coronovirus pandemic disrupted hearings in the case; regardless of who was to blame, mention of a hearing led to apparent acceptance things had gone in the wrong direction. At this point the company went into significant detail explaining why a foreign case had almost no chance of being enforced in China, but wasn’t ruling it out.
“The company cannot reliably estimate whether the above litigation case may result in losses and the amount of likely losses, so it has not recognized estimated liabilities and possible losses.”
The $101m Judgment That Never Was
In an order handed down in January 2022, a district court judge in Texas vacated the final default judgment handed down by his own court in 2016. After also vacating a contempt order and all monetary fines, the judge dismissed the case against Zhuhai Gotech with prejudice, meaning it could never see the light of day again.
Confirmation of a settlement appears in a GoTech report, available in even greater detail here (pdf).
Whether COVID-19 played a small or significant part in the decision to settle is unclear. Yet against the odds, while most of the rest of the world descended into chaos, sometimes verging on madness, pirates and pirate chasers were able to see past industrial scale piracy allegations and appreciate the finer things in life.
Not just $4 million in hard cash but also something much more precious.
The full terms of settlement are unknown to us, but the video below indicates that GoTech now views Nagra as a valuable partner. Despite having dozens of other companies it could’ve chosen to put first in its glossy promo video, it didn’t.
The details of the case in the context of complaints made to the USTR may need some dramatic license to rival the big reveal at the end of The Usual Suspects.
That said, making a $101m judgment disappear wasn’t just the greatest trick, it was remarkable for its ability to definitely exist while at once never actually existing at all. A shout-out to Nagra, meanwhile, absolutely exists around five minutes into the video below.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Details on beta registration, prices, compatible phones, and technical limits.
T-Mobile yesterday announced more details of its new service powered by Starlink and said Verizon and AT&T customers can use the satellite offering, too. The standard price will be $15 a month as an add-on for T-Mobile customers, and $20 a month for people who don't have T-Mobile as their primary carrier.
While we've written numerous articles about the Starlink/T-Mobile collaboration over the past two and a half years, the service's beta test and a Super Bowl commercial are raising awareness that it exists. In this article we'll answer some questions you might have about T-Mobile Starlink (yes, T-Mobile Starlink is the official name of the service).
What is this thing anyway?
Over the past 13 months, SpaceX's Starlink division has launched about 450 Direct to Cell satellites that can provide service to mobile phones in areas where there are no cell towers. Starlink is partnering with cellular carriers in multiple countries, and T-Mobile is its primary commercial partner in the US.
At this point, it’s unclear whether the issues are one-offs or systemic.
Here we (maybe) go again: Reports from a handful of early adopters of Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card are reporting that their power cables are melting (so far, there's at least one report on YouTube and one on Reddit, as reported by The Verge). This recalls a similar situation from early in the RTX 4090's life cycle, when power connectors were melting and even catching fire, damaging the GPUs and power supplies.
After much investigation and many guesses from Nvidia and other testers, the 4090's power connector issues ended up being blamed on what was essentially user error; the 12VHPWR connectors were not being inserted all the way into the socket on the GPU or were being bent in a way that created stress on the connection, which caused the connectors to run hot and eventually burst into flames.
The PCI-SIG, the standards body responsible for the design of the new connector, claimed that the design of the 12VHPWR connector itself was sound and that any problems with it should be attributed to the manufacturers implementing the standard. Partly in response to the 4090 issues, the 12VHPWR connector was replaced by an updated standard called 12V-2x6, which uses the same cables and is pin-compatible with 12VHPWR, but which tweaked the connector to ensure that power is only actually delivered if the connectors are firmly seated. The RTX 50-series cards use the 12V-2x6 connector.
Deutsche Glasfaser braucht für den ländlichen FTTH-Ausbau schon wieder viel Geld. Ein Minderheitsanteil soll verkauft werden. (Deutsche Glasfaser, Glasfaser)
Deutsche Glasfaser braucht für den ländlichen FTTH-Ausbau schon wieder viel Geld. Ein Minderheitsanteil soll verkauft werden. (Deutsche Glasfaser, Glasfaser)
The state is much more permissive than California for driverless vehicles.
If you live or drive in Austin, Texas, you might start seeing some new-looking Teslas on your roads later this summer. Tesla says it wants to start offering rides for money in the two-seater "Cybercab" that the company revealed last year at a Hollywood backlot. California might be the place with enough glitz to unleash that particular stock-bumping news to the world, but the Golden State is evidently far too restrictive for a company like Tesla to truck with. Instead, the easygoing authorities in Texas provide a far more attractive environment when it comes to putting driverless rubber on the road.
During the early days of its autonomous vehicle (AV) ambitions, Tesla did its testing in California, like most of the rest of the industry. California was early to lay down laws and regulations for the nascent AV industry, a move that some criticized as premature and unnecessarily restrictive. Among the requirements has been the need to report test mileage and disengagements, reports that revealed that Tesla's testing has in fact been extremely limited within that state's borders since 2016.
Other states, mostly ones blessed with good weather, have become a refuge for AV testing away from California's strictures, especially car-centric cities like Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas. Texas amended its transportation code in 2017 to allow autonomous vehicles to operate on its roads, and it took away any ability for local governments to restrict testing or deployment. By contrast, companies like Waymo and the now-shuttered Cruise were given much more narrow permission to deploy only in limited parts of California.
Doppelt reduziert sind bei Amazon LED-Handschuhe für Bastler und Angler. Da der Valentinstag naht, sollte man sich mit dem Bestellen beeilen. (LED, Technik/Hardware)
Doppelt reduziert sind bei Amazon LED-Handschuhe für Bastler und Angler. Da der Valentinstag naht, sollte man sich mit dem Bestellen beeilen. (LED, Technik/Hardware)
Almost all these variants messed a little too much with the careful balance of simplicity, readability, reasoning, and luck that made the original Minesweeper so addictive. None of them became games I return to day after day.
But then I stumbled onto Dragonsweeper, a free browser-based game that indie developer Daniel Benmergui released unceremoniously on itch.io last month. In the weeks since I discovered it, the game has become my latest puzzle obsession, filling in a worrying proportion of my spare moments with its addictive, simple RPG-tinged take on the Minesweeper formula.
Filed in the Southern District of Texas, Nagravision’s complaint alleged that Gotech International Technology Limited and Zhuhai Gotech Intelligent Technology Company Limited, were the operators of an illegal online network that facilitated TV piracy online.
Deutsche Glasfaser braucht für den ländlichen FTTH-Ausbau schon wieder viel Geld. Ein Minderheitsanteil soll verkauft werden. (
Doppelt reduziert sind bei Amazon LED-Handschuhe für Bastler und Angler. Da der Valentinstag naht, sollte man sich mit dem Bestellen beeilen. (
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