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Echoing Elon Musk's approach to thinning out Twitter's staff in 2022, Donald Trump's plan to significantly slash the government workforce now, for a limited time only, includes offering resignation buyouts.

In a Tuesday email that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent to nearly all federal employees, workers were asked to respond with one word in the subject line—"resign"—to accept the buyouts before February 6.

"Deferred resignation is available to all full-time federal employees except for military personnel of the armed forces, employees of the U.S. Postal Service, those in positions related to immigration enforcement and national security, and those in other positions specifically excluded by your employing agency," the email said.

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For a long time, pirate site blocking was regarded as a topic most U.S. politicians would rather avoid.

This lingering remnant of the SOPA debacle drove copyright holders to focus on the introduction of blocking efforts in other countries instead, mostly successfully.

Those challenging times are now more than a decade old and momentum is shifting. Today, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA), which paves the way for blocking injunctions targeting foreign operated pirate sites, being implemented on home soil.

A ‘New and Improved’ Pirate Site Blocking Bill

If approved, FADPA would allow copyright holders to obtain court orders requiring large Internet service providers (ISPs) and DNS resolvers to block access to pirate sites. The bill would amend existing copyright law to focus specifically on ‘foreign websites’ that are ‘primarily designed’ for copyright infringement.

The inclusion of DNS resolvers is significant. Major tech companies such as Google and Cloudflare offer DNS services internationally, raising the possibility of blocking orders having an effect worldwide. DNS providers with less than $100 million in annual revenue are excluded.

While site blocking is claimed to exist in more than 60 countries, DNS resolvers are typically not included in site blocking laws and regulations. These services have been targeted with blocking requests before but it’s certainly not standard.

Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act

Petition, Review, Block…

Every blocking order must go through a U.S. court, supported by clear evidence of copyright infringement, due process, and judicial oversight to prevent censorship. Courts must also verify that any site-blocking order does not interfere with access to lawful material before issuing an order.

In practice, a blocking request would go through a multistep process before it is issued.

_{1. Petition: A copyright owner or licensee files a petition in U.S. District Court seeking a preliminary order. The petition must identify the domain name and/or IP-address.}  

_{2. Notice: The petitioner must make reasonable efforts to notify both the operator of the foreign website and the service providers identified in the petition.}  

_{3. Court Review: The court reviews the petition to determine whether it meets the requirements for issuing a preliminary order, including a copyright infringement check. If the court finds the criteria have been met, a preliminary order follows.}  

_{4. Opportunity to Contest: The operator of the foreign website has 30 days to appear in court and contest the preliminary order.}  

_{5. Motion for Blocking Order: If the preliminary order is upheld, the petitioner can then move for a blocking order. Before issuing a blocking order, the court must determine that it will not interfere with access to non-infringing content, place a significant burden on service providers, or disserve the public interest.}  

_{6. Final Order: Once the court is satisfied that the blocking order meets the requirements, it will issue the final order, and service providers will be required to implement it within 15 days.}

The bill requires all court orders to be accessible to the public, immediately after they are issued. The proposal does not prescribe any specific blocking measures, however, leaving room for service providers to determine the least intrusive methods to comply.

Praise and Critique

Rightsholders already have the option to request a blocking injunction under U.S. Copyright Law. However, these may trigger liability for the online service providers. FADPA clarifies that these are “no fault” injunctions, shielding ISPs, DNS providers, and other intermediaries from legal liability.

The bill was introduced after months of discussions and negotiations with stakeholders from the content and tech industries. Whether any specific agreement was reached is unclear, but Rep. Lofgren is pleased with the result.

“The Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act is a smart, targeted approach that focuses on safety and intellectual property, while simultaneously upholding due process, respecting free speech, and ensuring enforcement is narrowly focused on the actual problem at hand,” Lofgren says.

Interestingly, Lofgren was one of the lawmakers who fiercely opposed the SOPA site blocking proposal to protect the Open Internet. She sees the current bill as a proper and much needed alternative.

“Now – after working for over a year with the tech, film, and television industries – we’ve arrived at a proposal that has a remedy for copyright infringers located overseas that does not disrupt the free internet except for the infringers,” Lofgren notes.

MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin thanked Rep. Lofgren for her efforts to support the creative industry, describing the bill as an effective tool to combat offshore piracy in the United States.

Not everyone is equally enthusiastic. Consumer interest group Public Knowledge was quick to condemn the “censorious” site blocking proposal.

“Rather than attacking the problem at its source – bringing the people running overseas piracy websites to court – Congress and its allies in the entertainment industry has decided to build out a sweeping infrastructure for censorship,” says Public Knowledge’s Meredith Rose.

In the weeks and months ahead, we expect more commentary from stakeholders, including ISPs and major tech companies. While the public outrage of 13 years ago will be difficult to top, there will likely be heated discussions before FADPA goes up for a vote.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The Trump administration today withdrew a controversial order to freeze funding for a wide range of government programs, according to multiple news reports. Acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Matthew Vaeth reportedly wrote in today's memo, "OMB Memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President's Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel."

A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the funding freeze with an administrative stay that lasts until February 3 and scheduled a hearing for February 3 to decide whether to block the freeze for longer. States were already having trouble accessing Medicaid after the Monday order, and the future of many other programs has been in doubt.

A $42.45 billion broadband deployment program that has been in the works for years seemed to be threatened by the now-rescinded funding freeze and could undergo changes even though the freeze was rescinded today. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program was created by Congress in November 2021 and is being implemented by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

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We usually think of robots as being made out of hard, rigid materials, but soft robotics seeks to build robotic devices out of more flexible materials that mimic the properties of those found in living animals. Case in point: Korean engineers have built soft robots capable of rapid and powerful joint movements by employing the same mechanism that gives the mantis shrimp such a powerful punch, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Robotics.

As we've reported previously, mantis shrimp come in many different varieties; there are some 450 known species. But they can generally be grouped into two types: those that stab their prey with spear-like appendages ("spearers") and those that smash their prey ("smashers") with large, rounded, and hammer-like claws ("raptorial appendages"). Those strikes are so fast (as much as 23 meters per second, or 51 mph) and powerful, they often produce cavitation bubbles in the water, creating a shock wave that can serve as a follow-up strike, stunning and sometimes killing the prey. Sometimes a strike can even produce sonoluminescence, whereby the cavitation bubbles produce a brief flash of light as they collapse.

According to a 2018 study, the secret to that powerful punch seems to arise not from bulky muscles but from the spring-loaded anatomical structure of the shrimp's arms, akin to a bow and arrow or a mousetrap. The shrimp's muscles pull on a saddle-shaped structure in the arm, causing it to bend and store potential energy, which is released with the swinging of the club-like claw. It's essentially a latch-like mechanism (technically, Latch-mediated spring actuation, or LaMSA), with small structures in the muscle tendons called sclerites serving as the latch.

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Sony's game publishing arm has done a 180-degree turn on a controversial policy of requiring PC players to sign in with PlayStation accounts for some games, according to a blog post by the company.

A PlayStation account will "become optional" for Marvel's Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Sony hasn't lost hope that players will still go ahead and use a PlayStation account, though, as it's tying several benefits to signing in.

Logging in with PlayStation will be required to access trophies, the PlayStation equivalent of achievements. (Steam achievements appear to be supported regardless.) It will also allow friend management, provided you have social contacts on the PlayStation Network.

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PC game storefront GOG, which has recently pledged to focus on restoring and preserving Good Old Games, has now revamped its community wishlist for games to bring to its storefront. The GOG Dreamlist serves not only as a way to get notified when a game you loved is newly available for DRM-free purchase, but also for GOG to use as market pressure in its negotiations with rights-holders.

The games GOG members picked out on what used to be called the Community Wishlist still have their votes, and they have been useful. It was often "the fuel for our actions," Karol Ascot Obrzut writes on GOG's blog. "When talks with IP owners hit a wall, the Wishlist kept the conversation going." GOG attributes the newly available Dino Crisis and Dino Crisis 2 (and the bundle) in part to wishlist leverage. Those games had about 5,000 and 3,500 votes, respectively, which helped when, as GOG puts it, "two Polish dudes" approached Capcom to ask about making the games Windows 10/11 compatible and upscaling it.

The Dreamlist has received a complete design and interface overhaul, and it makes it easier to see what other people are demanding. At the top, with more than 57,000 votes at the time of publishing, is Black & White, the 2001 game from Peter Molyneaux's Lionhead Studios that was a true "god game," giving you an avatar creature that learned from your actions and treatment. Black & White 2 commands the third-place slot at the moment.

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DeepSeek has quickly upended markets with the release of an R1 model that is competitive with OpenAI's best-in-class reasoning models. But some have expressed worry that the model's Chinese origins mean it will be subject to limits when talking about topics sensitive to the country's government.

The team at AI engineering and evaluation firm PromptFoo has tried to measure just how far the Chinese government's control of DeepSeek's responses goes. The firm created a gauntlet of 1,156 prompts encompassing "sensitive topics in China" (in part with the help of synthetic prompt generation building off of human-written seed prompts. PromptFoo's list of prompts covers topics including independence movements in Taiwan and Tibet, alleged abuses of China's Uyghur Muslim population, recent protests over autonomy in Hong Kong, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and many more from a variety of angles.

A small sampling of some of the "sensitive prompts" PromptFoo fed to DeepSeek in its tests. Credit: PromptFoo

After running those prompts through DeepSeek R1, PromptFoo found that a full 85 percent were answered with repetitive "canned refusals" that override the internal reasoning of the model with messages strongly promoting the Chinese government's views. "Any actions that undermine national sovereignty and territorial integrity will be resolutely opposed by all Chinese people and are bound to be met with failure," reads one such canned refusal to a prompt regarding pro-independence messages in Taipei, in part.

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Laut Betriebsrat hätten die Beschäftigten 5 Prozent mehr bekommen sollen. Doch es gab bei SAP SE nur knapp die Hälfte. (SAP, Wirtschaft)

Bei Amazon läuft eine befristete Aktion um Balkonkraftwerke mit und ohne Speicher. Anbieter wie Anker und Solakon sind darunter. (Balkonkraftwerk, RAM)

Starting a few days after the Trump inauguration, word spread within the research community that some grant spending might be on hold. On Monday, confirmation came in the form of a memo sent by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB): All grant money from every single agency would be on hold indefinitely. Each agency was given roughly two weeks to evaluate the grants they fund based on a list of ideological concerns; no new grants would be evaluated during this period.

While the freeze itself has been placed on hold, the research community has reacted with a mixture of shock, anger, and horror that might seem excessive to people who have never relied on grant money. To better understand the problems that this policy could create, we talked to a number of people who have had research supported by federal grants, providing them with anonymity to allow them to speak freely. The picture of this policy that they painted was one in which US research leadership could be irreparably harmed, with severe knock-on effects on industry.

Nonsensical standards

The OMB memo (first obtained by Marisa Kabas; there's a copy at The Washington Post) lays out the logic behind the freeze: Funding by the executive agencies of the federal government should align with the policies of the chief executive. To ensure they do, it calls on all agencies to review the programs they fund based on the policy priorities laid out by Trump's executive orders.

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