Tesla protesters are planning their biggest day of action yet, aiming for 500 demonstrations at Tesla showrooms across the world on March 29th, organizers said during a mobilizing call Wednesday.The protests started at a handful of Tesla locations in early February, and has grown to hundreds of locations across the world, as more people have come out to demonstrate against CEO Elon Musks dismantling of the federal government. Waving signs and chanting slogans, the so-called Tesla Takedown protesters have become a flashpoint for opposition to Musks actions to eliminate federal aid programs and fire tens of thousands of government employees as the head of DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency.There have also been an uptick in incidents of arson, vandalism, and violence against Tesla showrooms that, while unrelated to the protests, have led to Musk and President Donald Trump labeling them domestic terrorism. Other members of the Trump administration have signaled the protesters could come under scrutiny as well. Attorney General Pam Bondi promised severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.People participate in a TeslaTakedown protest against Elon Musk outside of a Tesla dealership in New York, March 1, 2025. (Photo by Leonardo Munoz / AFP) (Photo by LEONARDO MUNOZ/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty ImagesThe hour-long call, which included actors, filmmakers, members of Congress, federal workers, academics, and journalists, tried to steer clear of Trumps talk of terrorism, keeping the focus on Musk and the effort to tank the companys stock price. Teslas stock has lost nearly 40 percent of its value since the beginning of the year, as poor sales and rising competition in the US and overseas have fueled growing pessimism about the companys future.There is no conspiracy, there is no well-funded cabal, said actor and filmmaker Alex Winter, who helped promote the protests early on on BlueSky. Its just Elon Musk who has taken Tesla down.Alice Hu, executive director of Planet Over Profit, said that protesters were aiming for 500 events across the world on March 29th, with demonstrations at all 277 Tesla showrooms in the US, as well as hundreds more overseas. Protesters should even feel free to demonstrate at Supercharger stations, she said.There is no conspiracy, there is no well-funded cabal.We need to show Elon that he can throw a tantrum online because his stocks are tainting, Hu said. He can get Trump to put on a humiliating used car show in front of the White House. These wannabe authoritarians can try to intimidate us from exercising our First Amendment rights, but they cant stop us from fighting back.Organizers were adamant that their movement was peaceful, often going out of their way to stress the nonviolent nature of the demonstrations.The things that were fighting for, we are fighting for our country, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.) said. Were fighting for democracy. Were fighting for our freedoms. And when I say fighting, Im saying that figuratively. Obviously, everything that I am promoting is nonviolent.With Trump promising domestic terrorism charges for violence against Tesla, organizers advised that protesters consult attorneys to better understand the laws in their states. Some states have statutes that could be used to intimidate protesters, so its worthwhile to know what youre up against, said Lauren Regan, executive director and senior staff attorney at the Civil Liberties Defense Center. She said in her experience, states are often hesitant to prosecute activists because theres a strong likelihood those statutes will be found unconstitutional.Their goal is to just pluck a few individuals out and scare the rest of us into submission and apathy, Regan said. There are going to be some areas of the country that are very conservative and are gonna be hard on dissidents or activists, no matter what the timing.The sharp decrease in Teslas stock in recent weeks has clearly invigorated the protests. Several speakers spoke of Teslas collapse as not only possible, but likely. Micah Lee, an investigative journalist who was among a group of Twitter users to have their accounts banned by Musk shortly after his acquisition of the social platform, said that going after Teslas value was a solid strategy.If we kill the Tesla brand, if we drive down the stock price low enough, we can force him to sell his stock to pay back the billions of dollars of debt that he took on to buy Twitter, Lee said. This will drive Teslas stock into a death spiral.Musks status as the richest man in the world is largely thanks to Teslas stock price. He owns 13 percent of the company, making him the single largest shareholder. As of today, the company is worth $739 billion down from 1.08 trillion earlier this year, meaning Musks stake is worth about $96 billion. And Teslas board of directors is composed of close friends and relatives, raising concerns about its independence from the controversial CEO. Several board members, including chair Robyn Denholm and James Murdoch, have sold over $100 million in Tesla stock in recent weeks.This will drive Teslas stock into a death spiral.But its not clear that hurting Tesla will actually matter much to Musk. He remains in Trumps good graces, and is wielding vast amounts of control within the federal government. Even if these protests can seriously affect Tesla, Musk has consolidated so much political power that, after a certain point, its not clear whether market forces still apply as strongly.Musks love of memes he recently quipped I am become meme at CPAC is a sign that the worlds richest man is living in a different reality than most people, which could be an advantage, said Joan Donovan, an assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University who studies media manipulation, disinformation, and online political movements.He thinks of himself as this black hat hacker thats broken into the government and socially engineered his way into the Treasury and hes gonna abscond with all the data, its an obvious data heist, Donovan said. But he believes hes living in a meme, and so we need to be very clear about what our demands are, about what our bright lines are, and that were not gonna stop until Tesla is done with Musk.See More:

A legal permanent resident claims he was tortured by customs agents after returning home from a trip to Europe. A doctor with a work visa was denied entry into the country then flown out of the US in spite of a court order halting her deportation. Two German tourists were hassled at a port of entry, then transferred to immigrant detention centers, where they were held for weeks.President Donald Trump promised mass deportations, vowing to rid the country of so-called criminal aliens. But as Trump expands the Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) mandate, legal immigrants, too, are finding themselves in the governments crosshairs. Their arrests are facilitated by DHSs vast surveillance capabilities, which are largely invisible to the public by design and where the details of a persons life, from years-old criminal charges to seemingly innocuous social media posts, are weaponized.Shocking as they are, these recent events people with valid travel documents being detained and interrogated, sometimes violently arent entirely unusual. Any noncitizen, including legal immigrants, can end up in deportation proceedings. But Customs and Border Protections (CBP) apparent crackdown at airports and other ports of entry highlights the latitude individual officers and agents have to enforce immigration law and in the process, determine a noncitizens treatment and fate. How a trove of databases can turn a dismissed marijuana charge into a crime of moral turpitudeTwo of the recent incidents happened within days of each other at Boston Logan International Airport in Massachusetts. The first involved Fabian Schmidt, a green card holder flying back from Luxembourg who was violently interrogated by customs agents, as reported by the local radio station WGBH. Schmidts partner had driven to the airport to pick him up and ended up calling the authorities after waiting four hours for him to emerge. The only thing they were told was that his green card was flagged, Astrid Senior, his mother, told WGBH.Its likely that CBPs databases indicated Schmidt had a prior arrest on his record. The agency has access to state, local, and federal law enforcement databases; for noncitizens, this means even minor infractions can turn an otherwise routine airport encounter into a bureaucratic nightmare.Schmidts mother told WGBH that Schmidt had a misdemeanor on his record from 2015, when he was charged in California for having marijuana in his car. Schmidt was also charged with a DUI about a decade ago, according to his mother. The marijuana charge, however, was dismissed after the states laws changed in 2016. Customs agents reportedly made Schmidt strip naked, put him in a cold shower, and then forced him onto a chair. Schmidts mother said he was held in a bright room with little food or water, where he was denied access to his medication and suffered sleep deprivation. Amid all this, she claims, immigration officers pressured him to give up his green card.Schmidt, a lawful permanent resident since 2008, is now being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Rhode Island. CBP did not respond to The Verges request for comment. Hilton Beckham, the agencys assistant commissioner for public affairs, told WGBH that Schmidts allegations were blatantly false with respect to CBP but did not dispute any specific claims, pointing instead to Schmidts criminal record as justification for his detention.When an individual is found with drug related charges and tries to reenter the country, officers will take proper action, Beckham said.CBP officers may have seen Schmidts record when he reentered the US or even beforehand. Officers have access to a trove of databases that reveal travelers information, Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Verge.Air travel provides officers extra time to peruse these records. Where a driver crossing the border can provide a visa or green card on the spot, commercial airlines collect this documentation early and transmit it to CBP via the agencys Advance Passenger Information System. In either case, CBP will then cross-reference it with what Hussain calls an alphabet soup of databases. Officers at any point of entry can use the Interagency Border Inspection System (IBIS) to decide which travelers should be flagged for secondary inspection. According to CBP, IBIS also gives officers access to the FBIs National Crime Information Center and lets them interface with all 50 states. Theres a lot of information thats at the fingertips of customs officials when somebody is coming into the country, and when theyre looking up information about that individual, Hussain said.Some of these databases were used for the no-fly list, Hussain said, while others were used for the FBIs terrorist screening database. CBPs rationale for interrogating Schmidt who has been a permanent resident for six years has little to do with national security, showing just how entangled the war on terror and the war on immigrants have become in the two decades since DHSs founding. These types of arrests predate the merging of immigration enforcement and national security. When noncitizens enter the US, theyre screened for inadmissibility: reasons they may be excluded from the country. Permanent residents returning to the US arent regarded as seeking admission, meaning they arent subject to the grounds of inadmissibility. But permanent residents with certain offenses on their record including so-called crimes of moral turpitude, which have been grounds for inadmissibility since 1891 despite never having been defined by Congress are screened for inadmissibility. In other words, Schmidts old marijuana charge may have made him inadmissible despite his permanent residency.Part of the issue is that state laws around marijuana possession have changed since Schmidts 2015 arrest, but federal law hasnt. Matt Cameron, a Boston-based immigration and criminal defense lawyer, said its possible that Schmidts state-level charge may have been dismissed in a way that still counts as a federal conviction for immigration purposes. Still, Cameron said, the potential for inadmissibility alone doesnt explain CBPs aggressive interrogation of Schmidt. Cameron said hes had several clients who have been declared inadmissible due to old marijuana charges. But rather than transferring them to ICE, CBP has typically offered Camerons clients whats called a deferred inspection, asking them to return on a certain date with more documentation. Someone like Schmidt could still be deported if charges were upheld or the conviction involved more than 30 grams of marijuana. But if his record showed dismissed charges for a small quantity, he may well have gone home without incident.I dont know why they put him through all of this, Cameron told The Verge. Unless theres something else thats not being reported, it is extremely unusual to not just give him a return date.Schmidts detainment looks far less surprising against Trumps promises of mass immigrant arrests and deportations. Just days into his second term, ICE implemented aggressive enforcement quotas. Schmidt may be little more than collateral damage a potentially removable alien whose record was on full display thanks to DHSs surveillance powers.Deported after a phone search CBP isnt just looking for people with criminal records. Border agents regularly search peoples personal devices looking for evidence that can be used to justify their exclusion or removal from the country.Rasha Alawieh, a physician and Brown University professor on an H-1B visa, was pulled aside for secondary inspection after flying to Boston from Lebanon. Alawieh originally entered the US in 2018 on a J-1 visa. The New York Times reports that she had recently been issued an H-1B visa by the US consulate in Lebanon. CBP detained her at the airport for 36 hours, according to a complaint Alawiehs cousin filed in a Massachusetts federal court. A judge promptly issued an order barring her removal, but CBP said it was too late in a sworn declaration obtained by Politico, CBP official John Wallace claimed that by the time agents received official notice, they had already put Alawieh on a flight to Paris.Amid public outcry, CBP justified its actions by pointing to photos officers had found while searching Alawiehs phone. A government filing claimed that CBP denied entry after finding sympathetic photos and videos of prominent Hezbollah leaders including Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israeli forces in 2024 on her phone.If you refuse a search of your phone or your laptop, customs officers can use that to potentially revoke your visaWhen asked about the photos, Alawieh said Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders are considered religious figures in her community, according to court filings obtained by Politico. So I have a lot of Whatsapp groups with families and friends who send them. So I am a Shia Muslim and he is a religious figure. He has a lot of teachings and he is highly regarded in the Shia community, Alawieh said, according to a transcript of her interrogation. The photos were in her phones recently deleted folder. But under WhatsApps default settings, any photos or videos users receive via the app are automatically downloaded, making them viewable by CBP. CBP officials told Alawieh that they were denying her entry into the US and that her visa had been canceled. She is now barred from entering the US for five years.Its unclear how CBP agents got into Alawiehs recently deleted folder, which usually requires a password to unlock. Hussain, the Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney, said people with visas have fewer protections than US citizens and permanent residents with regard to having their devices searched at ports of entry. If you refuse a search of your phone or your laptop, customs officers can use that to potentially revoke your visa, Hussain said.Alawiehs case also illustrates that consenting to a search can lead to a visa revocation. Even when a phone search doesnt lead to a deportation, it often will trigger subsequent searches. Hussain called it a feedback loop.If youve been stopped previously and put into secondary screening which is when the phone searches happen, which is where additional questioning happens you are more likely to be flagged again for secondary, she said. If your phone was previously searched, the contents of that search, as well as notes of that search, will be on various databases that CBP and ICE have access to.If Alawieh had never been pulled aside for a secondary screening before, there may have been other reasons she was flagged this time. It could have been something such as the country that she was traveling from that could have led to heightened scrutiny, Hussain said. Alawiehs visa to return to the United States was reportedly delayed in February, while she was in Lebanon. Our understanding is that this delay was due to increased vetting of Lebanese nationals in case of any security risk, under administrative processing, her attorneys said in court filings obtained by CNN.A digital dragnet tightening around immigrantsAlawieh and Schmidts cases have led to mass public outcry, but theyre not isolated incidents. DHSs broad mandate which merges civil immigration processing, the enforcement of transnational crimes, and national security investigations means that all noncitizens can potentially be caught up in a web of monitoring and surveillance.There is an algorithmic element to this enforcement: people are flagged for old criminal convictions, for being nationals of countries subject to extreme vetting, or simply because theyve been flagged before. DHSs access to troves of data means that any noncitizen even a legal immigrant who has had a brush with law enforcement could end up interrogated, detained, and potentially deported. And DHS is collecting information on people without criminal records, too. Reports suggest that more travelers are being screened at ports of entry. Most recently, CBP denied entry to a French scientist who traveled to Houston, Texas, for a conference. According to the French paper Le Monde, CBP agents searched the scientists phone and computer and found messages criticizing the Trump administrations research cuts, which CBP claims conveyed hatred of Trump and could be qualified as terrorism. The scientists computer was reportedly confiscated.Since 2019, the State Department has required all visa applicants to disclose five years worth of social media history. Though this policy was implemented under the Trump administration, it had been in the works for years. It started in late 2015, with a pilot program to examine the feasibility of using social media screening with an unnamed automatic tool, according to a report by the DHS inspector general. Despite pushback from civil rights groups, the program grew until it was applied to the 15 million people who apply for US visas each year.The Trump administration wants to further expand its social media surveillance of noncitizens. DHS recently proposed similar rules that would apply to people applying for immigration benefits, including citizenship and green cards. Meanwhile, DHS is building out its surveillance capabilities even further. The department is currently developing its Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART), a vast database that will be shared across law enforcement agencies and include not only biometrics like face recognition, fingerprints, and DNA but also details on peoples non-obvious relationships as well.Immigration officers already have access to a lot of that information, but HART promises to bring it all together. In the middle of Trumps renewed war on immigrants, that makes it all the easier to use.See More:

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 20.

Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI attempted to purchase hundreds of millions of arrest records including social security numbers, mugshots, and even email addresses to incorporate into its product, 404 Media has learned.For years, Clearview AI has collected billions of photos from social media websites including Facebook, LinkedIn and others and sold access to its facial recognition tool to law enforcement. The collection and sale of user-generated photos by a private surveillance company to police without that persons knowledge or consent sparked international outcry when it was first revealed by the New York Times in 2020.New documents obtained by 404 Media reveal that Clearview AI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase 690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos from all 50 states from an intelligence firm. The contract further describes the records as including current and former home addresses, dates of birth, arrest photos, social security and cell phone numbers, and email addresses. Clearview attempted to purchase this data from Investigative Consultant, Inc. (ICI) which billed itself as an intelligence company with access to tens of thousands of databases and the ability to create unique data streams for its clients. The contract was signed in mid-2019, at a time when Clearview AI was quietly collecting billions of photos off the internet and was relatively unknown at the time.Ultimately, the entire deal fell apart after Clearview and ICI clashed about the utility of the data with each company filing breach of contract claims. The dispute ultimately went into arbitration where it is common for disputes to be settled privately. The arbiter ultimately sided with Clearview AI in 2024 and ordered ICI to return the contract money. To date, ICI has not paid Clearview, with the company now seeking a court order to enforce the arbiters ruling. The president of ICI, Donald Berlin, has been previously accused in a lawsuit of fabricating intelligence reports and libel. Clearview currently advertises to customers that its technology includes the largest known database of 50+ billion facial images sourced from public-only web sources, including news media, mugshot websites, public social media, and many other open sources, and Clearview has previously told customers that it was working to acquire all U.S. mugshots nationally from the last 15 years.ICI and Clearview did not return to multiple requests for comment.These court records show that while Clearview AI was building a database of images it was simultaneously attempting to purchase sensitive information such as social security numbers, email addresses or other data. Both in the US and internationally, Clearview AI has faced scrutiny for collecting images from social media websites with the company claiming it hoped to collect enough images to ensure 'almost everyone in the world will be identifiableWashington Post. The same investor report describes Clearview AI spending millions of dollars on data purchases but the court records reviewed by 404 MediaPurchasing booking photos for a facial recognition system raises serious privacy risks according to Jeramie Scott, Senior Counsel & Director of EPICs Project on Surveillance Oversight. He points to both the algorithmic biases built into facial recognition systems and the potential for human bias by the police who would review the images. Numerous innocent people have been arrested based on facial recognition technology that misidentified them. This has happened almost exclusively to Black people, in part because the technology is less accurate on Black and brown faces. If Clearview AIs search results not only return the data from its web scraping but also connect individuals to their supposed mugshots and related data then that will bias the human reviewers, Scott told 404 Media. When looking at Clearview AI search results and seeing multiple hits, the reviewer will likely be biased toward the person with the mugshot, which will disproportionately impact Black and brown people who are over represented in our criminal justice system.The purchase of highly personal data such as SSNs and location data has drawn the attention of regulators and Congress. As weve previously reported, access to highly personal data can be easily found online with authorities charging some sellers of the data with crimes. The Department of Justice has previously seized websites linked to the purchase of social security numbers and other personal data online and convicted a Ukrainian national of operating the sites.Ultimately, Clearview AI is facing an uncertain future after a barrage of lawsuits against the company and fines from regulators across the globe. It has stated that it expects its business to grow under the second Trump administration, especially with a new CEO at its helm. At the same time, Clearview may be forced to turn over nearly a quarter of its ownership to settle at least one complex class-action biometrics lawsuit. Internationally, regulators have fined it multi-millions of dollars for privacy violations, and Clearview AI has also won cases on appeal. Clearview AI may also never recover the over one million dollars from ICI or its president: instead of wiring the money to an escrow service, Clearview instead deposited it directly into Berlins personal checking account.Freddy Martinez is the co-executive director of Lucy Parsons Labs where he writes about policing, its harms, public records and abolition.Freddy is the co-executive director of Lucy Parsons Labs where he writes about policing, its harms, public records and abolition.More from Freddy Martinez

New Switch Online icons also available.Xenoblade Chronicles fans have been lucky enough to be able to relive the entire series during the Switch generation, and this week marks the completion of this with the release of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition. The former Wii U exclusive is now available with new story elements and much more.To mark this very special occasion, Nintendo's official social media accounts have shared some new illustrations - showing off the many characters of this particular entry. Here's a round up of all the artwork shared so far. Enjoy!Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Debt collection in emerging markets often feels outdated and can be costly damaging borrower trust. As consumer lending surges and regulators push for fairer practices, legacy collection outfits are struggling to maintain pace.ClearGrid aims to help modernize debt collection and recovery with AI. The Dubai-based startup, which is emerging from stealth with $10 million in funding ($3.5 million pre-seed and $6.5 million seed), helps banks, fintechs, and lenders recover more debt without resorting to customer harassment.For a startup founded just in May 2023, the backing is significant. Co-founder and CEO Mohammed Al Zaben called it a crucial advantage for a very ambitious company with a big mission in a very big market.Building AI-driven debt collectionAl Zaben stumbled into the debt collection space after selling his previous startup, Munch:On, to Careem in 2022. While taking time off following the exit, Al Zaben says he reflected on one of Munch:Ons biggest challenges: collecting payments from corporate customers.That led Al Zaben down a rabbit hole into receivables management and unpaid invoices. Upon further reflection, Al Zaben realized consumer collections posed an even bigger problem.When we spoke with collectors, it was clear the industry was stuck in the past some agencies still used pen and paper, and the most advanced relied on basic CRMs, Al Zaben told TechCrunch. Debt collection was a people-driven business where collectors relied on scare tactics and harassment. Borrowers had a terrible experience, and Saudi and UAE regulators were beginning to prioritize consumer protection.Simultaneously, consumer lending was booming. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) unicorns like Tabby and Tamara were handling billions in sales, and unsecured lending totals were skyrocketing in the Middle East.Al Zaben and his co-founders, Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud and Mohammed Khalili, sensed an opportunity. Despite having no experience in the collections market, they launched ClearGrid, creating software and AI to streamline recovery and collaborate with the existing vendors in the space.At a time when lending is booming, regulations are tightening, and AI is reshaping industries, we see this as an opportunity to help lenders recover debt while building trust with borrowers. the CEO said. This is just the first step in building the infrastructure for the future of debt resolution, Bader Al Saud added. Automated collection componentsClearGrid sits between lenders and borrowers, using AI to automate the collections process. Lenders integrate via ClearGrids platform or API, sending borrower accounts for processing. ClearGrid says its AI models score things like repayment likelihood, help predict customer behavior, and personalize outreach across communication channels.According to Al Zaben, 95% of ClearGrids operations are fully automated, including AI voice agents that handle hundreds of thousands of calls daily. For borrowers preferring human interaction, the platform facilitates direct conversations and feeds the insights into the startups many models.The ClearGrid teamImage Credits:ClearGridClearGrids platform categorizes borrowers based on their ability and willingness to pay, then structures repayments into smaller, manageable chunks, nudging them toward repayment without coercion. The company claims its platform can cut collection costs by 50%.Were building purpose-built tools and finding ways to make lenders better at what they do while also creating an opportunity for consumers to get out of debt, said Al Zaben.Since launching in 2024, ClearGrid says it has managed hundreds of millions in debt portfolios and signed ten of the major fintechs and banks in the UAE. An unnamed major bank increased recovery rates by 30% and cut collection costs in half, ClearGrid claims, while a leading BNPL provider doubled recoveries by automating early-stage debt resolution.Across the board, Al Zaben says ClearGrid resolves debts twice as fast as traditional collection agencies, achieving between 38% to 50% resolution rates, while borrowers interact with the platform 60% more than they do with these agencies.ClearGrid makes money by charging a percentage fee on recovered amounts. The startups revenues are growing 30% month-on-month in the UAE, where ClearGrid is already profitable, and the company is looking to enter Saudi Arabia this year, per Al Zaben.Al Zaben said with the funding raised, ClearGrid aims to 10x revenue and accounts managed in 2024 (it engages with over 130,000 borrower accounts monthly.) The company also plans to double its engineering team in the next fiscal quarter to build what Al Zaben calls the definitive credit orchestration infrastructure for the region.ClearGrids investors include Middle East and North Africa-focused VCs Beco Capital, Nuwa Capital, and Raed Ventures and prominent angel investors such as Anu Hariharan (ex-YC, Avra founder), Amjad Masad (Replit CEO), Jason Gardner (Marqeta CEO), Justin Kan (Twitch co-founder), and Kenneth Lin (ex-CEO at Credit Karma).

SoftBank Group announced on Wednesday that it will acquire Ampere Computing, a chip designer founded by former Intel executive Renee James, through a $6.5 billion all-cash deal as a strategic move to broaden its investment in AI infrastructure.Ampere will be operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftBank after the deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2025.Carlyle and Oracle, Amperes lead investors, will sell their shares in the Santa Clara, California startup. According to SoftBanks statement, Carlyle holds a 59.65% stake while Oracle holds 32.27%. The startup employs 1,000 semiconductor engineers.In 2021, SoftBank considered acquiring a minority stake in Ampere, which was then valued at $8 billion, per Bloomberg.SoftBank is the largest shareholder of Arm Holdings, and Ampere has developed a server chip based on the ARM compute platform, positioning the two companies are strong partners. (Softbank acquired a British chip designer Arm for $32 billion in 2016, and it became publicly traded in 2023.) Amperes customers include Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, and Tencent, as well as companies like HPE and Supermicro.SoftBank stated the Ampere acquisition will bolster its capabilities in key areas like AI and compute and expedite its growth initiatives. The most recent acquisition announcement follows a string of deals made by the Japanese tech mogul over the past few months, including its partnership with OpenAI to develop Advanced Enterprise AI called Cristal intelligence. SoftBank has also invested in the AI infrastructure project Stargate, which is building data centers for OpenAI across the U.S., and purchased an old Sharp factory in Japan.The future of Artificial Super Intelligence requires breakthrough computing power, said Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. Amperes expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision and deepens our commitment to AI innovation in the United States.Ampere was founded in 2017 by James, who previously worked at Intel and private equity firm Carlyle and served on the board of Oracle. The company initially specialized in cloud-native computing but has since expanded its scope to include sustainable AI compute.With a shared vision for advancing AI, we are excited to join SoftBank Group and partner with its portfolio of leading technology companies, said James. This is a fantastic outcome for our team, and we are excited to drive forward our AmpereOne roadmap for high-performance Arm processors and AI.SoftBank could soon buy Renee James Ampere chip company for about $6.5BAmpere teams up with Qualcomm to launch an Arm-based AI server

Mini CrosswordNYTIn case you missed Wednesdays NYT Mini, you can find the answers here:The NYT Mini is a quick and dirty version of the newspaper's larger and long-running crossword. Most days, there are between three and five clues in each direction on a five by five grid, but the puzzles are sometimes larger, especially on Saturdays.Unlike its larger sibling, the NYT Mini crossword is free to play on the New York Times website or NYT Games app. However, youll need an NYT Games subscription to access previous puzzles in the archives.The NYT Mini is a fun daily distraction that usually takes no time at all. I try to beat the standard weekday grid in less than a minute. But sometimes I can't quite figure out one or two clues and need to reveal the answer.To help you avoid doing that, here are the NYT Mini Crossword answers (spoilers lie ahead, of course):Play Puzzles & Games on ForbesNYT Mini Crossword Clues And AnswersACROSS1) Chowder morsel - CLAM 5) Emblem on a glass of Guinness - HARP 6) ___ Madness (annual event that hints at 1-Down) - MARCH 7) Strong desire - URGE 8) Contacted privately on social media, for short - DMEDDOWN1) Anagram of 6-Across - CHARM 2) L, as in Lands End - LARGE 3) Moved with a curving trajectory ARCED 4) Speedometer abbr. - MPH 6) What hiking boots might track in the house - MUDNYTMiniI was puzzling what they meant by L, as in Lands End for a while, as I do not think that was clear at all, but I now realize they were talking about the size L at the clothes store. I mean, I knew it was a store, but still a weird way to phrase that. The rest? Figuring out charm from March wasnt too bad, and a recent pint of Guinness made that one easy. Did you struggle with any of these?Follow me , and .Pick up my sci-fi novels the and

Table of ContentsTable of ContentsIt doesnt require internet to workWhat can you do with HuggingSnap?Machine learning platform, Hugging Face, has released an iOS app that will make sense of the world around you as seen by your iPhones camera. Just point it at a scene, or click a picture, and it will deploy an AI to describe it, identify objects, perform translation, or pull text-based details. Named HuggingSnap, the app takes a multi-model approach to understanding the scene around you as an input, and its now available for free on the App Store. It is powered by SmolVLM2, an open AI model that can handle text, image, and video as input formats. Recommended VideosThe overarching goal of the app is to let people learn about the objects and scenery around them, including plant and animal recognition. The idea is not too different from Visual Intelligence on iPhones, but HuggingSnap has a crucial leg-up over its Apple rival. Please enable Javascript to view this contentAll it needs is an iPhone running iOS 18 and youre good to go. The UI of HuggingSnap is not too different from what you get with Visual Intelligence. But theres a fundamental difference here. Apple relies on ChatGPT for Visual Intelligence to work. Thats because Siri is currently not capable of acting like a generative AI tool, such as ChatGPT or Googles Gemini, both of which have their own knowledge bank. Instead, it offloads all such user requests and queries to ChatGPT. That requires an internet connection since ChatGPT cant work in offline mode. HuggingSnap, on the other hand, works just fine. Moreover, an offline approach means no user data ever leaves your phone, which is always a welcome change from a privacy perspective.Nadeem Sarwar / DigitalTrendsHuggingSnap is powered by the SmolVLM2 model developed by Hugging Face. So, what can this model running the show behind this app accomplish? Well, a lot. Aside from answering questions based on what it sees through an iPhones camera, it can also process images picked from your phones gallery.For example, show it a picture of any historical monument, and ask it to give you travel suggestions. It can understand the stuff appearing on a graph, or make sense of an electricity bills picture and answer queries based on the details it has picked up from the document. It has a lightweight architecture and is particularly well-suited for on-device applications of AI. On benchmarks, it performs better than Googles competing open PaliGemma (3B) model and rubs shoulders with Alibabas rival Qwen AI model with vision capabilities.Nadeem Sarwar / DigitalTrendsThe biggest advantage is that it requires less system resources to run, which is particularly important in the context of smartphones. Interestingly, the popular VLC media player is also using the same SmolVLM2 model to provide video descriptions, letting users search through a video using natural language prompts. It can also intelligently extract the most important highlight moments from a video. Designed for efficiency, SmolVLM can answer questions about images, describe visual content, create stories grounded on multiple images, or function as a pure language model without visual inputs, says the apps GitHub repository. Editors Recommendations

The Pixel 9a has been officially revealed, and while its an eye candy, there are some visible cutbacks over the more premium Pixel 9 and 9 Pro series phones. The other cutbacks we dont see include lower RAM than the Pixel 9 phones, which can limit the new mid-rangers ability to run AI applications, despite running the same Tensor G4 chipset.Googles decision to limit the RAM to 8GB, compared to the 12GB on the more premium Pixel 9 phones, sacrifices its ability to run certain AI tasks locally. ArsTechnica has reported that as a result of the cost-cutting, Pixel 9a runs an extra extra small or XXS variant instead of the extra small variant on Pixel 9 of the Gemini Nano 1.0 model that drives on-device AI functions.Recommended VideosFundamentally, this is the same Gemini Nano XXS model that Google released for the Pixel 8 last year after initially limiting it to the 8 Pro. Like the Pixel 9a, the Pixel 8 also shipped with 8GB of RAM, which resulted in Google initially deciding to limit certain on-device AI routines to the Pro model.Please enable Javascript to view this contentThe larger RAM on the Pixel 9 phones, as well as the older Pixel 8 Pro, allow the Gemini Nano model to occupy a part of the RAM. This allows it to run persistently and spring into action immediately when needed. On phones with limited memory, such as the Pixel 9a, the model is required to load and unload so it doesnt continuously hog the RAM, and this leads to some delay in responses.Gemini Live on Pixel 9a. GoogleAnother limitation, as ArsTechnica cites, is that the XXS model is not multi-modal, which means it can only process text. Now, that means while the Pixel 9a will be able to run certain Gemini Nano tasks, such as Smart replies in apps that use Gboard for typing, it most likely wont be able to work with others that use voice or other forms of media.The report already confirms Pixel 9a doesnt support one of Pixel 9s best AI features Pixel Screenshots, which let you search look up specific information from screenshots in response to a simple text or voice-based query. At the moment, AI summarization supposedly also works in the Recorder app, but that is primarily because voice element are first transcribed into text before processing, which gives the XXS model data to process.While (lack of) applications and their implications may be limited, it would amount to serious performance issues for the Pixel 9a in the future, when AI dominates even the most basic activities on our phones. The decision to limit RAM on Google Pixel 9a, therefore, seems ill-thought.Another way Google is ensuring the Pixel 9a is seen a tier inferior to the Pixel 9 phones is in terms of the freebies on offer when it comes to access to Googles more advanced chatbot that works online. The Pixel 9 series comes with an entire years worth of Gemini Advanced subscription, with cumulative benefits of $240. Meanwhile, the Pixel 9a is only getting one free month.Whats a little demotivating about the Pixel 9as one free month of access is that the trial period applies to anyone who wants, irrespective of their devices. So, in reality, Google rids the Pixel 9a of any special treatment.Editors Recommendations