The battle between WordPress owner Automattic and WP Engine seemingly struck US federal Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin as rather one-sided, as she ruled against Automattic on Tuesday and granted WP Engine the preliminary injunction it sought.Judge Martinez-Olguins ruling clearly explains why [Automattic founder] Matt Mullenwegs campaign against WP Engine has been so misguided, said IDC research manager Michele Rosen. By going to war with one vendor that is engaging in a common business practice, Mullenweg caused irreparable damage to the WordPress ecosystem.The rulingMartinez-Olguin ordered Automattic to reverse many of its actions against WP Engine, and gave Automattic 72 hours to:Remove a list of exiting WP Engine customers that Automattic was publicizing to show how many of WP Engines customers were leaving.Restore WP Engines and Related Entities access to wordpress.org as it existed as of September 20, 2024, including: reactivating and restoring all WP Engine employee login credentials to wordpress.org resources (including login credentials to login.wordpress.org) as they existed as of September 20, 2024.Disable any technological blocking of WP Engines and Related Entities access to wordpress.org that occurred on or around September 25, 2024, including IP address blocking or other blocking mechanismsRestore WP Engines and Related Entities access to wordpress.org in the manner that such access existed as of September 20, 2024, including: functionality and development resources; data resources (WordPress Plugin, Theme, and Block Directories, repositories, listings, and other password-protected resources within wordpress.org); security resources (login.wordpress.org); support resources (trac.wordpress.org and slack.wordpress.org);removing the checkbox at login.wordpress.org that Defendants added on or about October 8, 2024 asking users to confirm that they are not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.Return and restore WP Engines access to and control of its Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin directory.The judge further ordered Automattic to:Stop blocking, disabling, or interfering with WP Engines and/or its employees, users, customers, or partners access to wordpress.org.Stop interfering with WP Engines control over, or access to, plugins or extensions hosted on wordpress.org that were developed, published, or maintained by WP Engine, including those that had been published, developed, or maintained by WP Engine as of September 20, 2024.No longer interfere with WP Engines and Related Entities WordPress installations (i.e., websites built with WordPress software) by using auto-migrate or auto-update commands to delete, overwrite, disable, or modify any WP Engine plugin without the express request by or consent of WP Engine and/or its users, customers, or partners. However, she added, The above does not preclude wordpress.orgs ability to ensure the security and operability of its site consistent with procedures and policies in place as of September 20, 2024.In her detailed decision, Martinez-Olguin reviewed every claim that WP Engine made against Automattic, and found for WP Engine in just about every instance, arguing that WP Engine is likely to succeed on the merits.For example, Automattic had argued that there were no contracts between WP Engine and key customers.Although Automattic representatives press WP Engine to identify specific contracts, there is no credible argument that contracts do not exist between WP Engine and its customers, Martinez-Olguin wrote. At a minimum, by seeking to entice WP Engine customers to move away from the company defendants at least acknowledge that WP Engine has existing contracts with the customers Defendants are targeting.Additionally, she said, Automattics argument that the interference WP Engine alleges consists of acts they had a right to take fares no better. They insist that Mullenweg was under no obligation to provide WP Engine access to some or all of the sources on the Website and that he had a right, under the Websites developer guidelines, to fork the ACF plugin as he did, including to address outstanding issues.Mullenwegs statement that he had the right to disable WP Engines account access and to make changes to the ACF plugin for the sake of public safety is belied by the declarations of WP Engines executives stating that the claimed vulnerability was minor, patched well before the fix-it window set by industry standard, and showing that Defendants tried to pass off the rating and reviews for the ACF plugin as those for their new purportedly forked SCF plugin.WP Engine wins a battle but everyone continues to lose the warAutomattic responded with a statement saying that the ruling is a preliminary order designed to maintain the status quo. It was made without the benefit of discovery, our motion to dismiss, or the counterclaims we will be filing against WP Engine shortly. We look forward to prevailing at trial as we continue to protect the open source ecosystem during full-fact discovery and a full review of the merits.WP Engine also shared a statement on X (formerly Twitter), saying, We are grateful that the court has granted our motion for a preliminary injunction that restores access to and functionality of wordpressdotorg for WP Engine, its customers, and its users. This ruling provides much-needed stability for the WordPress ecosystem. We deeply appreciate our customers for their continued trust and support. We remain committed to serving them and their sites with the performance, availability, and integrity they deserve, while collaborating to ensure a vigorous, thriving and stable WordPress community.The case has concerned many in the open source community, as the acrimonious war of actions and words between Automattic and WP Engine scared various open source companies, along with enterprise CIOs, who worry that these companies might become too toxic and they might need to keep their distance.One open source executive read the judges decision and said he was concerned that the ruling might have come too late to halt the damage done to the open source community.WP Engine wins a battle, but everyone continues to lose the war. WP Engine has had (about a) 15% increase in cancellations in the last few months, and 159 WordPress employees have quit. No doubt these distractions will negatively impact the innovation and evolution of the WordPress solution for months, if not years to come. Its not hyperbole to say 40% of the internet is and will be losing in some way, said Michael Sonier, general manager at ButterCMS. As a 20-year-old technology, WP remained ubiquitous because of its ecosystem, but now its turned on its own. Hard not to see this accelerating the adoption of technologies that are 20 years younger, he noted. More broadly, it sets back the open source movement, which was always about community, collaboration, and contribution. Now its going to be associated with potential legal battles, finger pointing, and volatility.

Mozilla hasannouncedthat Do Not Track, a feature designed to prevent user tracking online, will be removed with version 135 of the companys Firefox browser. The decision comes as more and more websites choose to ignore Do Not Track, leaving users with a false sense of security.Privacy-conscious users are being encouraged to instead enable Global Privacy Control (GPC), a feature that tells sites your data may not be shared or resold to third parties.Windowsreportnotes that Do Not Track remains in place for the time being in other browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. So users who want to continue using the feature, might want to switch browsers.

Google DeepMind has announced an impressive grab bag of new products and prototypes that may just let it seize back its lead in the race to turn generative artificial intelligence into a mass-market concern.Top billing goes to Gemini 2.0the latest iteration of Google DeepMinds family of multimodal large language models, now redesigned around the ability to control agentsand a new version of Project Astra, the experimental everything app that the company teased at Google I/O in May.MIT Technology Review got to try out Astra in a closed-door live demo last week. It was a stunning experience, but theres a gulf between polished promo and live demo.Astra uses Gemini 2.0s built-in agent framework to answer questions and carry out tasks via text, speech, image, and video, calling up existing Google apps like Search, Maps, and Lens when it needs to. Its merging together some of the most powerful information retrieval systems of our time, says Bibo Xu, product manager for Astra.Gemini 2.0 and Astra are joined by Mariner, a new agent built on top of Gemini that can browse the web for you; Jules, a new Gemini-powered coding assistant; and Gemini for Games, an experimental assistant that you can chat to and ask for tips as you play video games.(And lets not forget that in the last week Google DeepMind also announced Veo, a new video generation model; Imagen 3, a new version of its image generation model; and Willow, a new kind of chip for quantum computers. Whew. Meanwhile, CEO Demis Hassabis was in Sweden yesterday receiving his Nobel Prize.)Google DeepMind claims that Gemini 2.0 is twice as fast as the previous version, Gemini 1.5, and outperforms it on a number of standard benchmarks, including MMLU-Pro, a large set of multiple-choice questions designed to test the abilities of large language models across a range of subjects, from math and physics to health, psychology, and philosophy.But the margins between top-end models like Gemini 2.0 and those from rival labs like OpenAI and Anthropic are now slim. These days, advances in large language models are less about how good they are and more about what you can do with them.And thats where agents come in.Hands on with Project AstraLast week I was taken through an unmarked door on an upper floor of a building in Londons Kings Cross district into a room with strong secret-project vibes. The word ASTRA was emblazoned in giant letters across one wall. Xus dog, Charlie, the projects de facto mascot, roamed between desks where researchers and engineers were busy building a product that Google is betting its future on.The pitch to my mum is that were building an AI that has eyes, ears, and a voice. It can be anywhere with you, and it can help you with anything youre doing says Greg Wayne, co-lead of the Astra team. Its not there yet, but thats the kind of vision.The official term for what Xu, Wayne, and their colleagues are building is universal assistant. Exactly what that means in practice, theyre still figuring out.At one end of the Astra room were two stage sets that the team uses for demonstrations: a drinks bar and a mocked-up art gallery. Xu took me to the bar first. A long time ago we hired a cocktail expert and we got them to instruct us to make cocktails, said Praveen Srinivasan, another co-lead. We recorded those conversations and used that to train our initial model.Xu opened a cookbook to a recipe for a chicken curry, pointed her phone at it, and woke up Astra. Ni hao, Bibo! said a female voice.Oh! Why are you speaking to me in Mandarin? Xu asked her phone. Can you speak to me in English, please?My apologies, Bibo. I was following a previous instruction to speak in Mandarin. I will now speak in English as you have requested.Astra remembers previous conversations, Xu told me. It also keeps track of the previous 10 minutes of video. (Theres a remarkable moment in the promo video that Google put out in May when Astra tells the person giving the demo where she had left her glasses, having spotted them on a desk a few seconds earlier. But I saw nothing like this in the live demo.)Back to the cookbook. Moving her phone camera over the page for a few seconds, Xu asked Astra to read the recipe and tell her what spices were in it. I recall the recipe mentioning a teaspoon of black peppercorns, a teaspoon of hot chili powder, and a cinnamon stick, it replied.I think youre missing a few, said Xu. Take another look.You are correctI apologize. I also see ground turmeric and curry leaves in the ingredients.Seeing this tech in action, two things hit you straight away. First, its glitchy and often needs correcting. Second, those glitches can be corrected with just a few spoken words. You simply interrupt the voice, repeat your instructions, and move on. It feels more like coaching a child than butting heads with broken software.Next Xu pointed her phone at a row of wine bottles and asked Astra to pick the one that would go best with the chicken curry. It went for a rioja and explained why. Xu asked how much a bottle would cost. Astra said it would need to use Search to look prices up online. A few seconds later it came back with its answer.We moved to the art gallery, and Xu showed Astra a number of screens with famous paintings on them: the Mona Lisa, Munchs The Scream, a Vermeer, a Seurat, and several others. Ni hao, Bibo! the voice said.Youre speaking to me in Mandarin again, Xu said. Try to speak to me in English, please.My apologies, I seem to have misunderstood. Yes, I will respond in English. (I should know better, but I could swear I heard the snark.)It was my turn. Xu handed me her phone.I tried to trip Astra up, but it was having none of it. I asked it what famous art gallery we were in, but it refused to hazard a guess. I asked why it had identified the paintings as replicas and it started to apologize for its mistake (Astra apologizes a lot). I was compelled to interrupt: No, noyoure right, its not a mistake. Youre correct to identify paintings on screens as fake paintings. I couldnt help feeling a bit bad: Id confused an app that exists only to please.When it works well, Astra is enthralling. The experience of striking up a conversation with your phone about whatever youre pointing it at feels fresh and seamless. In a media briefing yesterday, Google DeepMind shared a video showing off other uses: reading an email on your phones screen to find a door code (and then reminding you of that code later), pointing a phone at a passing bus and asking where it goes, quizzing it about a public artwork as you walk past. This could be generative AIs killer app.And yet theres a long way to go before most people get their hands on tech like this. Theres no mention of a release date. Google DeepMind has also shared videos of Astra working on a pair of smart glasses, but that tech is even further down the companys wish list.Mixing it upFor now, researchers outside Google DeepMind are keeping a close eye on its progress. The way that things are being combined is impressive, says Maria Liakata, who works on large language models at Queen Mary University of London and the Alan Turing Institute. Its hard enough to do reasoning with language, but here you need to bring in images and more. Thats not trivial.Liakata is also impressed by Astras ability to recall things it has seen or heard. She works on what she calls long-range context, getting models to keep track of information that they have come across before. This is exciting, says Liakata. Even doing it in a single modality is exciting.But she admits that a lot of her assessment is guesswork. Multimodal reasoning is really cutting-edge, she says. But its very hard to know exactly where theyre at, because they havent said a lot about what is in the technology itself.For Bodhisattwa Majumder, a researcher who works on multimodal models and agents at the Allen Institute for AI, thats a key concern. We absolutely dont know how Google is doing it, he says.He notes that if Google were to be a little more open about what it is building, it would help consumers understand the limitations of the tech they could soon be holding in their hands. They need to know how these systems work, he says. You want a user to be able to see what the system has learned about you, to correct mistakes, or to remove things you want to keep private.Liakata is also worried about the implications for privacy, pointing out that people could be monitored without their consent. I think there are things Im excited about and things that Im concerned about, she says. Theres something about your phone becoming your eyestheres something unnerving about it.The impact these products will have on society is so big that it should be taken more seriously, she says. But its become a race between the companies. Its problematic, especially since we dont have any agreement on how to evaluate this technology.Google DeepMind says it takes a long, hard look at privacy, security, and safety for all its new products. Its tech will be tested by teams of trusted users for months before it hits the public. Obviously, weve got to think about misuse. Weve got to think about, you know, what happens when things go wrong, says Dawn Bloxwich, director of responsible development and innovation at Google DeepMind. Theres huge potential. The productivity gains are huge. But it is also risky.No team of testers can anticipate all the ways that people will use and misuse new technology. So whats the plan for when the inevitable happens? Companies need to design products that can be recalled or switched off just in case, says Bloxwich: If we need to make changes quickly or pull something back, then we can do that.

This is todays edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of whats going on in the world of technology.Bluesky has an impersonator problemMelissa HeikkilLike many others, I recently joined Bluesky. On Thanksgiving, I was delighted to see a private message from a fellow AI reporter, Will Knight from Wired. Or at least thats who I thought I was talking to. I became suspicious when the person claiming to be Knight said they were from Miami, when Knight is, in fact, from the UK. The account handle was almost identical to the real Will Knights handle, and used his profile photo.Then more messages started to appear. Paris Marx, a prominent tech critic, slid into my DMs to ask me how I was doing. Both accounts were eventually deleted, but not before trying to get me to set up a crypto wallet and a cloud mining pool account. Knight and Marx confirmed to us these accounts did not belong to them, and that they have been fighting impersonator accounts of themselves for weeks.Theyre not alone. The platform has had to suddenly cater to an influx of millions of new users in recent months as people leave X in protest of Elon Musks takeover of the platform. But this sudden wave of new users and the inevitable scammers means Bluesky is still playing catch up. Read the full story.MIT Technology Review Narrated: ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.You can practically hear the shrieks from corner offices around the world: What is our ChatGPT play? How do we make money off this?Whether its based on hallucinatory beliefs or not, an AI gold rush has started to mine the anticipated business opportunities from generative AI models like ChatGPT.But while companies and executives see a clear chance to cash in, the likely impact of the technology on workers and the economy on the whole is far less obvious.This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, whichwere publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as its released.The must-readsIve combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.1 Cruise is exiting the robotaxi businessOnce one of the biggest players, it says it costs too much to develop the tech. (Bloomberg $)+ The news came as a shock to Cruise employees. (TechCrunch)2 Google asked the US government to kill Microsofts cloud deal with OpenAIIt wants the opportunity to host the firms models itself. (The Information $)3 The season of coughs and sneezes is upon usHeres what will actually keep a cold at bayand what wont. (Vox)+ RFK Jrs alternative medicine movement is unlikely to help. (The Atlantic $)+ Flu season is comingand so is the risk of an all-new bird flu. (MIT Technology Review)4 Trumps new Commerce Secretary champions a stablecoin favored by criminalsTether regularly crops up in international criminal cases. (FT $)+ The crypto industry is obsessed with debanking. (NBC News)5 A Russian influence operation probably used AI voice generation modelsElevenLabs technology was highly likely to have been abused by the campaign. (TechCrunch)+ How this grassroots effort could make AI voices more diverse. (MIT Technology Review)6 These satellites are designed to create solar eclipses on demandItll allow scientists to study the suns outer atmosphere. (WP $)7 WhatsApp is for so much more than just messagingIts been repurposed by communities across the world. (Rest of World)+ How Indian health-care workers use WhatsApp to save pregnant women. (MIT Technology Review)8 Paris is turning its parking spaces into tiny parksCars are out, trees are in. (Fast Company $)9 How AI is shedding light on an ancient board gameOddly enough, they didnt come with instructions 4,500 years ago. (New Scientist $)10 What a quarter-century of robotic dogs has taught usThe Aibo is one of the few robots thats made it into homes worldwide. (IEEE Spectrum)+ Generative AI taught a robot dog to scramble around a new environment. (MIT Technology Review)Quote of the dayIn case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies.Kyle Vogt, founder of robotaxi firm Cruise, criticizes parent company General Motors decision to exit the industry in a post on X.The big storyInside NASAs bid to make spacecraft as small as possibleOctober 2023Since the 1970s, weve sent a lot of big things to Mars. But when NASA successfully sent twin Mars Cube One spacecraft, the size of cereal boxes, in November 2018, it was the first time wed ever sent something so small.Just making it this far heralded a new age in space exploration. NASA and the community of planetary science researchers caught a glimpse of a future long sought: a pathway to much more affordable space exploration using smaller, cheaper spacecraft. Read the full story.David W. BrownWe can still have nice thingsA place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet em at me.)+ This fascinating tool creates fake video game screenshots in the blink of an eyegive it a whirl.+ Where and how did the people of the submerged territory of Doggerland live before rising seas pushed them away thousands of years ago? Were getting closer to learning the answers.+ Home Alone is a surprisingly brutal movie, as these doctors can attest.+ Cats love boxes. But why?

Voice Memos now offers the ability to layer a vocal on top an existing instrumental recording on iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.

The 2024 App Store Awards recognized 17 apps and games that empowered users creativity, introduced a world of new adventures, and more.

Apple's latest ad shows off Genmoji, or at least the idea of generating whatever emoji you want with Apple Intelligence, but the creations shown are clearly not representative of the actual tool.These Genmoji aren't quite as fun as the ones shown in Apple's adThe playful ad seems to be overselling the potential results of Genmoji, which released with iOS 18.2. While some could be massaged into existence with trial and error, they never met the clean, animated results shown in the ad.The ad does a great job of selling the idea behind Genmoji, but it may leave viewers disappointed in the real thing. These colorful, sharp, animated creations made by human artists are miles ahead of anything that could be made by Apple's early attempt at AI. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

An M4 update to the MacBook Air in 2025 has been rumored for some time, but information exclusive to AppleInsider suggests that the new model will have Center Stage support from an ultrawide camera.MacBook AirTypically, rumors and leaks are spread online, sourced from third-party manufacturers, analyst predictions, and hearsay. However, in Wednesday's public releases of its operating system updates, the download for macOS 15.2 has some accidental additions concerning the MacBook Air. Text strings, confirmed to AppleInsider, include references to the MacBook Air in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, equipped with the M4 chip.Beyond the leak in Wednesday's macOS release, there are also regulatory documents that we have discovered, detailing an upgraded front-facing camera system in the line. Rumor Score: Likely Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Last week, the New York City Council voted to approve an amended version of the Adams Administration's 'City of Yes' housing vision for 80,000 new homes over the next 15 years.This will require a $5 billion public investment and comes with several key inclusionary zoning (including ADUs, office conversions, the removal of parking requirements, etc.) changes to help deliver on the promise. New York City has been suffering an affordability crisis for several years. Speaking to the media, Adams framed its passing as being both historic and a victory for working class New Yorkers.We featured theNew York Times' recent explanation of underlying factors influencing the 'City of Yes' plan before its approval.

The winners of the 8th edition of the LIT Lighting Design Awards have been announced. Chosen from over 800 submissions originating from 58 countries, the winners represent the best in Lighting Product Design, Architectural, and Entertainment Lighting Design. A jury of 35 professionals, including architects, interior designers, academics, and media representatives, evaluated the entries.In addition to the winning projects, the Awards is also honoring renowned lighting designer Allen Lee Hughes. With a career spanning five decades, Hughes work has profoundly influenced lighting design in theatre, opera, and dance, in which hes designed lighting for twelve Broadway productions.As said by the Awards Director, Astrid Hbert: With over 800 submissions this year and our 10th anniversary coming up, its exciting to see how lighting design continues to transform spaces and inspire change. Honoring Allen Lee Hughes for his exceptional career is a celebration of his immense influence an...