Tag: technology

Government’s latest attempt to censor online discourse is grave threat to free speech

The government’s latest censorship Bill C-34 is framed as legislation necessary to protect children. However, it incorporates some of the worst elements of Bill C-63 – the government’s previous “Online Harms Act” that failed to pass – and adds new censorship powers.

The bill proposes regulating social media, online services, and AI chatbots through the creation of a Digital Safety Commission. The Commission will have broad discretionary power to force compliance from online services and compel the removal of any harmful or “hateful” material.

Controversially, the bill weakens the legal definition of hatred presently used by the courts, reducing the requirement from both vilification and detestation to only one of either vilification OR detestation. The result will be increased censorship and a substantial chill on controversial speech.

Importantly, existing laws capture almost all of the conduct outlined in the bill. This includes cyberbullying and non-consensual distribution of intimate images, terroristic or violent threats, hate speech under the Criminal Code, counselling self-harm (Criminal Code s.241), and possession and distribution of CSAM material.

The bill requires online service providers to create an age verification system. Though the bill doesn’t specify age verification methods, it will undoubtedly require service providers to collect biometric and/or behavioural information from both adults and children, engaging privacy rights and raising fears of security breaches. The effect will be to create a database of personal identifying information and to destroy online anonymity 

Digital services that fail to comply with directives of the Digital Safety Commission will face substantial fines based on a percentage of global revenue.

“Laws protecting children from online harm and abuse are vital. However, for the most part, they already exist. All digital services like YouTube, X, Facebook, and TikTok have reporting and takedown policies and mechanisms for illegal or egregiously harmful material. Criminal charges for hateful or threatening posts are already commonplace. Of course, laws should be enacted to address any gaps, but online age verification for children will require age verification for everyone. So while the government frames the bill as a law to protect children, its effect will be to control digital access, comprehensively surveil and punish adults for online dissent. Together with Bill C-22, it establishes an online surveillance architecture that will negatively impact every Canadian’s right to free expression. Parliament should pursue targeted child-protection measures without undermining privacy, anonymity, and freedom of expression.”

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“Unlike Anything I’ve Seen In 40 Years”: Explosion In Data-Centers And Memory Costs Fueling Third Inflation Wave

We’re finally starting to see hints of relief when it comes to inflation. Prices at the pump are starting to come down, monthly core CPI momentum has slowed, used cars were down around 2% YoY, and food inflation is starting to moderate. On the other hand, there’s America’s massive explosion in artificial-intelligence infrastructure – which is beginning to push prices up on everything from electricity to smartphones.

On Thursday Apple announced a 15-25% price hike on Mac computers and iPads, after CEO Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that the jump in costs was “unlike anything he had seen in any area in over 40 years.” An Apple spokesperson placed the blame on the “rapid expansion of AI data centers, which has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage,” causing component prices to surge.

As the Wall Street Journal notes; 

The money pouring into the AI arms race is unprecedented. Analysts peg capital spending at five of the so-called hyperscalers—Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Oracle—at $741 billion this year, according to FactSet, up nearly 75% from last year.

Where is all that money going? While much of the conversation is focused on what AI can do, the build-out itself is strikingly physical, said Columbia University economist Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. -WSJ

AI data centers require specific, sophisticated equipment to ensure cool, stable operation – as well as electric and fiber-optic cables and backup generators in order to keep them running 24-7. According to the report, Van Nieuwerburgh estimates that the AI buildout could cost somewhere in the range of $8 trillion over the next six years. As such, the demand for components shared throughout the economy (memory, for example), the effects are now trickling down to consumer electronics – like iPads. Other companies such as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have all raised prices on devices.

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Ford Hires Back Former Engineers to Fix Errors Caused by AI

Ford is acknowledging the challenges it faced with AI production and design systems after the automaker recently claimed the top spot in JD Power’s initial quality ranking for mainstream brands for the first time in 16 years. According to Ford, attempting to replace highly-skilled employees with AI-powered systems was a mistake.

The Verge reports that Ford has revealed that its reliance on artificial intelligence and automated systems in vehicle production and design created significant quality problems, forcing the company to bring back experienced engineers and technicians to correct mistakes made by its robots.

Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, explained during a briefing with reporters this week that the automaker believed simply introducing AI and adjusting existing design requirements would automatically yield high-quality vehicles. “Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” Poon said.

The problem was compounded when some of Ford’s most experienced personnel departed before their accumulated institutional knowledge could be fully captured by the company’s automated systems. This loss of expertise proved particularly damaging because the effectiveness of AI depends entirely on the quality of data used to train the models. Ford had underestimated the value of veteran engineers who had worked through multiple vehicle-development cycles and possessed deep understanding of potential problems that could emerge during production.

To address this gap, Ford hired, promoted, or brought back more than 350 experienced engineers to rebuild its technical expertise base. These seasoned professionals were tasked with retraining the automated systems and mentoring younger engineers who were struggling to maintain vehicle quality standards. “That’s where some of our most experienced engineers have had experience solving and identifying those problems before they creep into the system,” Poon said.

Ford’s quality challenges have been well documented in recent years. The automaker currently leads the industry in number of recalls, with quality ratings declining over several years. Difficulties intensified during launches of the Explorer and Aviator models, supply-chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a growing number of vehicle recalls that damaged consumer confidence.

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UNPRECEDENTED: EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola Pushing Controversial Scanning of Online Content, Ignoring That EMPs Have Already Rejected the Idea Multiple Times

Another EU tyrant on the move.

Leave it to the EU to have a dizzying number of ‘chiefs’, signaling a bloated bureaucracy that has become more of a problem than a solution for the issues that European nations face.

Fasten up for the list: the European Commissioner (currently Ursula von der Leyen/VDL): a ‘member of the European Commission’s College responsible for overseeing one specific policy area (portfolio), such as trade, climate, or digital affairs.’

The President of the European Council (currently Antonio Costa): ‘Chairs summits of EU heads of state and government, drives consensus on the EU’s overall political direction and priorities, and ensures the EU’s external representation at that level’.

High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (currently Kaja Kallas): ‘Leads and coordinates the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), chairs the Foreign Affairs Council, represents the EU on the world stage as its chief diplomat, and serves as a Vice-President of the European Commission’.

Hold on, that’s not all. President of the European Parliament (currently Roberta Metsola): ‘Chairs plenary sessions and key internal bodies, oversees the Parliament’s work and rules, signs adopted legislation, and represents the Parliament to other EU institutions and externally’.

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Maryland Protests Data Center Costs

A group of 80 Maryland state lawmakers are backing a complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over the PJM Interconnection’s cost allocation for transmission lines that support data centers.

Driven by the way PJM spreads transmission costs, Maryland ratepayers will pay $1.6 billion over the next decade for transmission projects that were approved in the grid operator’s last three regional transmission expansion plans that are designed to mainly serve out-of-state data centers, Maryland’s ratepayer advocate — the Office of People’s Counsel — said in its May 7 complaint.

“While PJM’s rules are unfair for many PJM states, they impact Maryland disproportionately simply because Maryland sits next to Data Center Alley in Virginia,” the Maryland lawmakers said in a Wednesday filing at FERC. “Given the projections of massive data center growth — more than 80,000 megawatts over the next 20 years — PJM is likely to bill Maryland customers billions more for future data center-driven transmission costs.”

The complaint at FERC comes amid an intense focus across the United States on how data centers can affect the electric bills of existing ratepayers through increased generation and transmission costs. The complaint centers on the transmission side of the equation. It contends that FERC is barred from approving transmission cost allocation methodologies that assign costs to ratepayers that won’t gain “roughly commensurate” benefits.

PJM’s cost allocation methodology assigns half of certain regional transmission projects based on a load-ratio share across its footprint, which assumes that all transmission built will benefit the entire grid, according to the ratepayer advocate’s complaint. The other half of transmission costs are assigned via a “solution-based distribution factor analysis,” which fails to capture certain reliability issues caused by data centers, the ratepayer advocate said.

Spreading data center-driven transmission costs across PJM’s footprint could lead to overbuilding, according to the complaint.

“By socializing data center-driven transmission costs to all ratepayers, it insulates states and utilities that attract speculative load growth from overbuilding and stranded asset risk while shifting those risks to neighboring states’ ratepayers,” the ratepayer advocate said.

Further, state-level large-load tariffs fail to address, and may make worse, the misallocation of transmission costs caused by PJM’s transmission cost allocation methodology, according to the complaint. 

Also, recent FERC-approved utility “transmission security agreements” between utilities and data centers are “often confidential, highly variable, and fail to protect existing customers,” the ratepayer advocate said.

The agreements leave ratepayers exposed to transmission costs caused by data centers, according to the ratepayer advocate. “Moreover, they carry potential legal consequences that may prove difficult to unravel,” the ratepayer advocate said. The ratepayer advocate said FERC should order PJM to revise its cost allocation methodology so that data centers pay for the transmission projects that they cause.

As a start, PJM should be required to assign the costs of transmission projects that are designed to serve data centers and other large loads to the grid operator’s zones where the data centers are located, according to the complaint. That would allow state-level large load tariffs to address those transmission costs, the ratepayer advocate said.

“The upstream leakage of a substantial portion of data center driven costs at the regional level to other zones through the current operation of the PJM tariff creates an unjust subsidy for that data center load,” the ratepayer advocate said.

The complaint calls on FERC to order PJM to re-study the baseline reliability projects approved in its last three regional transmission expansion plans to determine the costs caused by forecast load growth from data centers. 

FERC has extended the comment deadline on the complaint to July 27.

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AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs

According to a report by Ars Technica, AMD has quietly stripped a critical security feature from its lower-end CPUs, leaving unaware users potentially vulnerable to physical attacks. Following a months-long investigation tracked on GitHub, Ben Kilpatrick confirmed that the Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) feature — which protects CPUs against physical exploits that siphon data from connected memory chips — was suddenly no longer available on AMD CPUs outside the company’s Pro lineup.

As the exhaustive inquiry, which involved conversations with AMD engineers, board vendors, and other CPU users, was coming to a head, an AMD engineer abruptly cut discussions short, stating, “My apologies, but I don’t have any more information to share on this topic.” As of this report, AMD has neither officially acknowledged nor explained the disappearance of the security feature.

TSME is a protection feature that encrypts the data stored in memory, making it unusable to physical attackers. AMD initially added this feature to its high-end CPUs, then later extended it to lower-end CPUs. Eventually, the feature became a given, leaving lower-end chip users assured in its availability as part of the chip package. However, without prior notice, AMD appears to have scrapped the security feature in these processors.

According to the Ars report, the company’s only official reaction to the matter — not counting the GitHub discussions — is an email response stating that TSME “is a security feature only applied to PRO CPUs as part of AMD PRO Technologies,” notably the first time the company has publicly stated such a restriction, despite the feature having worked on consumer chips for years. However, it remains unclear whether the disappearance is an intentional policy decision by AMD to reserve TSME for Pro chips or an unintentional regression that was introduced in AGESA 1.2.7.0, a newer firmware release.

Another concerning aspect of the removal is that the feature’s disappearance is completely undetectable on Windows machines and requires significant technical work to identify on Linux. That means the security feature was removed, leaving users unaware that anything had changed.

Kilpatrick, a self-described “privacy-conscious Linux hobbyist” who first reported the change, was installing a new operating system on his machine running a Ryzen 7 9700X from the Zen 5 architecture. To confirm that all his security protections were enabled, he ran Host Security ID (HSI), an auditing feature that evaluates a system’s firmware and hardware security configurations. To his surprise, HSI reported that TSME was no longer supported — even though he had enabled it in his BIOS settings all along. The contradiction sent him searching for answers.

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CEO of eCommerce Giant Warns Robots Will Replace Humans in Food Delivery, Other Gig Economy Jobs

The founder of one of China’s largest ecommerce companies has issued a stark warning that its entire delivery workforce of 700,000 people will ultimately be displaced by robotic automation. This replacement of the gig economy with robots, if successful, will spread around the world.

The Financial Times reports that Richard Liu, founder and chairman of JD.com, delivered the warning at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO forum in Shenzhen on Sunday, saying that gig economy jobs will eventually become obsolete as robot delivery systems mature. His comments highlight mounting anxiety among Chinese policymakers about how swiftly advancing automation technologies could destabilize employment for the country’s most economically vulnerable workers.

Liu disclosed that JD.com has already established training partnerships with approximately 120 educational institutions to prepare its army of 700,000 delivery workers for alternative careers, particularly in robot repair and maintenance. He emphasized that mechanical systems inevitably develop faults, creating ongoing demand for technicians capable of servicing automated equipment.

At the forum, Liu stated: “In the future, when robots are delivering parcels, sooner or later, there will be a day when couriers are basically no longer needed.” He added: “It will definitely be robots delivering parcels. But I really do not want our 700,000 brothers to go without meals, without jobs.”

The JD.com founder declined to specify when widespread robot delivery might become reality in China. Nevertheless, various experimental initiatives are already progressing across the country and around the world.

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Tesla Auto-Pilot VP Says Driver Who Crashed into Home at 73 MPH Killing Elderly Woman Overrode Self-Driving Mode – Elon Musk Says Driver’s Claim “Makes No Sense”

Tesla has responded to the high-speed crash at a Texas family’s home, which killed an elderly woman, while the car was in self-driving mode, the driver claims. 

Tesla leadership, including CEO Elon Musk, has denied that the car was driving itself.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported on the incident, where the driver claimed the Tesla Model 3 was in self-driving mode before flying through the front yard and plowing into the home.

76-year-old Martha Avila Mantilla, a grandmother, was killed in the crash.

Additional video from another residence shows the Tesla flying through the neighborhood before the collision.

Initial reporting suggested that law enforcement was investigating the driver’s claim that he was in autopilot mode at the time of the crash. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, did not initially face charges.

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Automakers Race Into Humanoid Robots As Timeline For Blue-Collar Job Disruption Emerges

Bernstein analyst Eunice Lee is out with a fascinating note explaining why automakers are making a mad dash into the world of humanoid robotics, arguing that their manufacturing scale, supply-chain depth, and years of investment in autonomous driving give them a structural lead in the emerging physical-AI market.

Lee writes that automakers are also seeking new revenue streams beyond the core vehicle business, with humanoids poised to move from factory floors into the physical world across retail, security, public service, and eventually homes.

From Tesla and Hyundai to XPeng, Xiaomi, BYD, Geely, and Chery, automakers are quickly moving beyond EVs and into humanoids through in-house development, acquisitions, minority stakes, and strategic partnerships. Lee said this trend became visible in China, where multiple OEM-linked robots were showcased at the 2026 Beijing Auto Show.

“OEMs are entering humanoid robotics to boost productivity and unlock new revenue streams,” Lee wrote in the note.

She noted, “Automakers have several advantages across hardware, software, and scale. There is significant overlap between vehicle and humanoid components—motors, reducers, sensors —as well as manufacturing.”

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California Residents Sue Gas Stations Alleging AI Price Fixing

Three California residents are suing a fuel pricing company and several gas station operators, alleging that they use artificial intelligence-based pricing systems to raise gasoline prices in an uncompetitive manner.

“Californians are being forced to pay surcharges that cannot be explained by crude oil costs, refining costs, environmental regulation, or taxes,” said the June 22 class action lawsuit, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division.

“Part of the cause of California’s astronomical fuel prices is an illegal algorithmic price-fixing scheme orchestrated by the algorithmic pricing company Kalibrate and some of the state’s largest fuel retailers.”

The company’s Kalibrate Fuel Pricing software, an algorithmic, AI-based pricing system, “connects directly to gas stations’ pumps and signs. Instead of lowering prices to attract drivers, Kalibrate Fuel Pricing relies on the data of competing gas stations to coordinate high prices and wring more money from the pockets of consumers throughout the state,” the lawsuit states.

This is contradictory to historical trends where gas stations have competed to secure customers by “aggressively undercutting” retail prices, the lawsuit said.

The “artificial surcharge” from the algorithmic pricing scheme inflicts a “severe, daily financial toll” on millions of Californians, the lawsuit said. For people whose livelihoods are tied to road transport, such as truck drivers, the higher gas prices eat into their incomes.

According to data from the American Automobile Association, a gallon of regular gasoline costs $5.56 on average in California as of June 23, the highest in the country.

A month ago, prices were at $6.11 per gallon amid US-Iran war tensions. A year ago, prices were still close to $5 at $4.66 per gallon.

California’s current gasoline price of $5.56 per gallon is more than $1.6 higher than the $3.92 national average.

In their lawsuit, the defendants said that Kalibrate Fuel Pricing even has a feature that enables almost all gas stations in a market to raise gasoline prices simultaneously.

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