IT

Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program in Rural Peru (nber.org) 38

The abstract of a paper on NBER: This paper examines a large-scale randomized evaluation of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in 531 Peruvian rural primary schools. We use administrative data on academic performance and grade progression over 10 years to estimate the long-run effects of increased computer access on (i) school performance over time and (ii) students' educational trajectories. Following schools over time, we find no significant effects on academic performance but some evidence of negative effects on grade progression. Following students over time, we find no significant effects on primary and secondary completion, academic performance in secondary school, or university enrollment. Survey data indicate that computer access significantly improved students' computer skills but not their cognitive skills; treated teachers received some training but did not improve their digital skills and showed limited use of technology in classrooms, suggesting the need for additional pedagogical support.
Google

NATO Taps Google For Air-Gapped Sovereign Cloud (theregister.com) 14

NATO has hired Google to provide "air-gapped" sovereign cloud services and AI in "completely disconnected, highly secure environments." From a report: The Chocolate Factory will support the military alliance's Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre (JATEC) in a move designed to improve its digital infrastructure and strengthen its data governance. NATO was formed in 1949 after Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the North Atlantic Treaty. Since then, 20 more European countries have joined, most recently Finland and Sweden. US President Donald Trump has criticized fellow members' financial contribution to the alliance and at times cast doubt over how likely the US is to defend its NATO allies.

In an announcement this week, Google Cloud said the "significant, multimillion-dollar contract" with the NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA) would offer highly secure, sovereign cloud capabilities. The agreement promises NATO "uncompromised data residency and operational controls, providing the highest degree of security and autonomy, regardless of scale or complexity," the statement said.

The Internet

How the Internet Rewired Work - and What That Tells Us About AI's Likely Impact (msn.com) 105

"The internet did transform work — but not the way 1998 thought..." argues the Wall Street Journal. "The internet slipped inside almost every job and rewired how work got done."

So while the number of single-task jobs like travel agent dropped, most jobs "are bundles of judgment, coordination and hands-on work," and instead the internet brought "the quiet transformation of nearly every job in the economy... Today, just 10% of workers make minimal use of the internet on the job — roles like butcher and carpet installer." [T]he bigger story has been additive. In 1998, few could conceive of social media — let alone 65,000 social-media managers — and 200,000 information-security analysts would have sounded absurd when data still lived on floppy disks... Marketing shifted from campaign bursts to always-on funnels and A/B testing. Clinics embedded e-prescribing and patient portals, reshaping front-office and clinical handoffs. The steps, owners and metrics shifted. Only then did the backbone scale: We went from server closets wedged next to the mop sink to data centers and cloud regions, from lone system administrators to fulfillment networks, cybersecurity and compliance.

That is where many unexpected jobs appeared. Networked machines and web-enabled software quietly transformed back offices as much as our on-screen lives. Similarly, as e-commerce took off, internet-enabled logistics rewired planning roles — logisticians, transportation and distribution managers — and unlocked a surge in last-mile work. The build-out didn't just hire coders; it hired coordinators, pickers, packers and drivers. It spawned hundreds of thousands of warehouse and delivery jobs — the largest pockets of internet-driven job growth, and yet few had them on their 1998 bingo card... Today, the share of workers in professional and managerial occupations has more than doubled since the dawn of the digital era.

So what does that tell us about AI? Our mental model often defaults to an industrial image — John Henry versus the steam drill — where jobs are one dominant task, and automation maps one-to-one: Automate the task, eliminate the job. The internet revealed a different reality: Modern roles are bundles. Technologies typically hit routine tasks first, then workflows, and only later reshape jobs, with second-order hiring around the backbone. That complexity is what made disruption slower and more subtle than anyone predicted. AI fits that pattern more than it breaks it... [LLMs] can draft briefs, summarize medical notes and answer queries. Those are tasks — important ones — but still parts of larger roles. They don't manage risk, hold accountability, reassure anxious clients or integrate messy context across teams. Expect a rebalanced division of labor: The technical layer gets faster and cheaper; the human layer shifts toward supervision, coordination, complex judgment, relationship work and exception handling.

What to expect from AI, then, is messy, uneven reshuffling in stages. Some roles will contract sharply — and those contractions will affect real people. But many occupations will be rewired in quieter ways. Productivity gains will unlock new demand and create work that didn't exist, alongside a build-out around data, safety, compliance and infrastructure.

AI is unprecedented; so was the internet. The real risk is timing: overestimating job losses, underestimating the long, quiet rewiring already under way, and overlooking the jobs created in the backbone. That was the internet's lesson. It's likely to be AI's as well.

AI

Analyzing 47,000 ChatGPT Conversations Shows Echo Chambers, Sensitive Data - and Unpredictable Medical Advice (yahoo.com) 33

For nearly three years OpenAI has touted ChatGPT as a "revolutionary" (and work-transforming) productivity tool, reports the Washington Post.

But after analyzing 47,000 ChatGPT conversations, the Post found that users "are overwhelmingly turning to the chatbot for advice and companionship, not productivity tasks." The Post analyzed a collection of thousands of publicly shared ChatGPT conversations from June 2024 to August 2025. While ChatGPT conversations are private by default, the conversations analyzed were made public by users who created shareable links to their chats that were later preserved in the Internet Archive and downloaded by The Post. It is possible that some people didn't know their conversations would become publicly preserved online. This unique data gives us a glimpse into an otherwise black box...

Overall, about 10 percent of the chats appeared to show people talking about their emotions, role-playing, or seeking social interactions with the chatbot. Some users shared highly private and sensitive information with the chatbot, such as information about their family in the course of seeking legal advice. People also sent ChatGPT hundreds of unique email addresses and dozens of phone numbers in the conversations... Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University, said that it appears ChatGPT "is trained to further or deepen the relationship." In some of the conversations analyzed, the chatbot matched users' viewpoints and created a personalized echo chamber, sometimes endorsing falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

Four of ChatGPT's answers about health problems got a failing score from a chair of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, the Post points out. But four other answers earned a perfect score.
The Military

Ukraine Is Jamming Russia's 'Superweapon' With a Song (404media.co) 139

Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from 404 Media: The Ukrainian Army is knocking a once-hyped Russian superweapon out of the sky by jamming it with a song and tricking it into thinking it's in Lima, Peru. The Kremlin once called its Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missiles "invincible." Joe Biden said the missile was "almost impossible to stop." Now Ukrainian electronic warfare experts say they can counter the Kinzhal with some music and a re-direction order. [...] Kinzhals and other guided munitions navigate by communicating with Russian satellites that are part of the GLONASS system, a GPS-style navigation network. Night Watch uses a jamming system called Lima EW to generate a disruption field that prevents anything in the area from communicating with a satellite. Many traditional jamming systems work by blasting receivers on munitions and aircraft with radio noise. Lima does that, but also sends along a digital signal and spoofs navigation signals. It "hacks" the receiver it's communicating with to throw it off course.

Night Watch shared pictures of the downed Kinzhals with 404 Media that showed a missile with a controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA), an active antenna that's meant to resist jamming and spoofing. "We discovered that this missile had pretty old type of technology," Night Watch said. "They had the same type of receivers as old Soviet missiles used to have. So there is nothing special, there is nothing new in those types of missiles." Night Watch told 404 Media that it used this Lima to take down 19 Kinzhals in the past two weeks. First, it replaces the missile's satellite navigation signals with the Ukrainian song "Our Father Is Bandera."

Any digital noise or random signal would work to jam the navigation system, but Night Watch wanted to use the song because they think it's funny. "We just send a song... we just make it into binary code, you know, like 010101, and just send it to the Russian navigation system," Night Watch said. "It's just kind of a joke. [Bandera] is a Ukrainian nationalist and Russia tries to use this person in their propaganda to say all Ukrainians are Nazis. They always try to scare the Russian people that Ukrainians are, culturally, all the same as Bandera." Once the song hits, Night Watch uses Lima to spoof a navigation signal to the missiles and make them think they're in Lima, Peru. Once the missile's confused about its location, it attempts to change direction. These missiles are fast -- launched from a MiG-31 they can hit speeds of up to Mach 5.7 or more than 4,000 miles per hour -- and an object moving that fast doesn't fare well with sudden changes of direction.

Open Source

Microsoft Open-Sources Classic Text Adventure Zork Trilogy (microsoft.com) 33

Microsoft has released the source code for Zork I, II, and III under the MIT License through a collaboration with Team Xbox and Activision that involved submitting pull requests to historical source repositories maintained by digital archivist Jason Scott. Each repository now includes the original source code and accompanying documentation.

The games arrived on early home computers in the 1980s as text-based adventures built on the Z-Machine, a virtual machine that allowed the same story files to run across different platforms. Infocom created the Z-Machine after discovering the original mainframe version was too large for home computers. The team split the game into three titles that all ran on the same underlying system.

The code release covers only the source files and does not include commercial packaging or trademark rights. The games remain available commercially through The Zork Anthology on Good Old Games and can be compiled locally using ZILF, a modern Z-Machine interpreter.
Businesses

Adobe Bolsters AI Marketing Tools With $1.9 Billion Semrush Buy (reuters.com) 4

Adobe is buying Semrush for $1.9 billion in a move to supercharge its AI-driven marketing stack. Reuters reports: Semrush designs and develops AI software that helps companies with search engine optimization, social media and digital advertising. The acquisition, expected to close in the first half of next year, would allow Adobe to help marketers better understand how their brands are viewed by online consumers through searches on websites and generative AI bots such as ChatGPT and Gemini. "The price is steep as Semrush isn't a massive revenue engine on its own, so Adobe is likely paying for strategic value. The payoff could be high too if Adobe can quickly turn Semrush's data into monetizable AI products," said Emarketer analyst Grace Harmon.

"While we are positive on Adobe restarting its M&A engine given the success that it has seen with this motion over the years... this deal likely does little to answer the questions revolving around the company's creative cloud business," added William Blair analysts.
Transportation

Can Chinese-Made Buses Be Hacked? Norway Drove One Down a Mine To Find Out (msn.com) 52

An anonymous reader shares a report: This summer, Oslo's public-transport authority drove a Chinese electric bus deep into a decommissioned mine inside a nearby mountain to answer a question: Could it be hacked? Isolated by rock from digital interference, cybersecurity experts came back with a qualified yes: The bus could in theory be remotely disabled using the control system for the battery.

The revelation, presented at a recent public-transport conference, has spurred officials in Denmark and the U.K. to start their own investigations into Chinese vehicles. It has also fed into broader security concerns across Europe about the growing prevalence of Chinese-made equipment in the region's energy and telecommunications infrastructure.

The worry is the same for autos, solar panels and other connected devices: that mechanisms used for wirelessly delivering system updates could also be exploited by a hostile government or third-party hacker to compromise critical networks. [...] The Oslo transport authority, Ruter, said the bus's mobile-network connection via a Romanian SIM card gave manufacturer Yutong access to the control system for battery and power supply. Ruter said it is addressing the vulnerability by developing firewalls and delaying the signals sent to the vehicles, among other solutions.

The Internet

Europe's Cookie Nightmare is Crumbling (theverge.com) 126

The EU's cookie consent policies have been an annoying and unavoidable part of browsing the web in Europe since their introduction in 2018. But the cookie nightmare is about to crumble thanks to some big proposed changes announced by the European Commission today. From a report: Instead of having to click accept or reject on a cookie pop-up for every website you visit in Europe, the EU is preparing to enforce rules that will allow users to set their preferences for cookies at the browser level. "People can set their privacy preferences centrally -- for example via the browser -- and websites must respect them," says the EU. "This will drastically simplify users' online experience."

This key change is part of a new Digital Package of proposals to simplify the EU's digital rules, and will initially see cookie prompts change to be a simplified yes or no single-click prompt ahead of the "technological solutions" eventually coming to browsers. Websites will be required to respect cookie choices for at least six months, and the EU also wants website owners to not use cookie banners for "harmless uses" like counting website visits, to lessen the amount of pop-ups.

The Internet

Mexico Partially Lifts Longstanding Website Ban On Tor Network (cyberinsider.com) 3

Mexico has finally lifted its long-running Tor ban for the main government portal, allowing privacy-focused users, journalists, and activists to access gob.mx again after more than a decade of blocking. That said, the open data portal and the former Tor-compatible whistleblower system remain inaccessible. CyberInsider reports: The development follows a long period of digital censorship that spanned two full six-year presidential terms, those of Enrique Pena Nieto and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and continued into the early months of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo's current administration. Research conducted by Jacobo Najera and Miguel Trujillo, published in October 2023, documented that 21 federal government agencies were blocking traffic from the Tor network, effectively excluding privacy-conscious users from vital public resources and services.
Cloud

Tech Giants' Cloud Power Probed As EU Weighs Inclusion In DMA (bloomberg.com) 13

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft's Azure, and Alphabet's Google Cloud risk being dragged into the scope of the European Union's crackdown on Big Tech as antitrust watchdogs prepare to study the platforms' market power. The European Commission wants to decide if any of the trio should face a raft of new restrictions under the bloc's Digital Markets Act (source paywalled; alternative source), according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The plan for a market probe follows several major outages in the cloud industry that wrought havoc across global services, highlighting the risks of relying on a mere handful of players.

To date, the world's largest cloud providers have avoided the DMA because a large part of their business comes via enterprise contracts, making it difficult to count the number of individual users, one of the EU's main benchmarks for earmarking Silicon Valley services for extra oversight. Under the investigation's remit, regulators will asses whether the top cloud operators -- regardless of the challenge of counting user numbers -- should be forced to contend with a raft of fresh obligations including increased interoperability with rival software and better data portability for users, as well as restrictions on tying and bundling.

Bitcoin

Harvard Has Almost Half a Billion Dollars in Crypto (wsj.com) 26

An anonymous reader shares a report: Harvard is ramping up its holdings in cryptocurrency. The nation's oldest university reported a $443 million investment in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust in the third quarter. The school now holds 6.8 million shares of the exchange-traded fund, up from 1.9 million in the second quarter.

The digital currency amounts to a little less than 1% of the school's $57 billion endowment. Other schools are bullish on crypto as well. Brown University reported holding $13 million of the BlackRock bitcoin ETF in the second quarter and Emory University reported holding $20 million of Grayscale's Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF as of March.

The Internet

Global Web Freedoms Tumble (semafor.com) 12

Global internet freedom declined for a 15th consecutive year, according to Freedom House's annual report. Semafor: "Always grim reading," this year's is particularly sobering, Tech Policy Press noted, with the lowest-ever portion of users living in countries categorized as "free." Conditions declined in 27 of the 72 countries assessed, with those in Kenya -- where anti-corruption protests were quelled, in part, by a seven-hour internet shutdown -- deteriorating the most. China and Myanmar tied for least-free, and the US' ranking dropped, while Iceland retained its top spot for the freest digital environment. Bangladesh improved the most. The most consistent trend observed over 15 years, Freedom House noted, is the growing digital influence of state actors: "Online spaces are more manipulated than ever."
AI

Bezos Returns To CEO Role With AI Startup Project Prometheus (nytimes.com) 24

Jeff Bezos has founded an AI startup called Project Prometheus and will serve as its co-chief executive. This is his first formal operational role since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July 2021. The company has raised $6.2 billion in funding, The New York Times reports, partly from Bezos. The funding makes Project Prometheus one of the most well-financed early-stage startups in the world.

Bezos's co-founder and co-chief executive is Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist who worked closely with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at Google X. Dr. Bajaj was among the founders of Verily in 2015 and co-founded Foresite Labs in 2018. He recently left that position to focus on Project Prometheus. The company is focusing on AI for engineering and manufacturing in computers, aerospace, and automobiles. The startup has already hired nearly 100 employees, the report said. Researchers from OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta are among the hires. Project Prometheus is building AI systems that learn from physical experiments rather than just analyzing digital text.
Bitcoin

Bitcoin Erases Year's Gain as Crypto Bear Market Deepens (msn.com) 50

"Just a little more than a month after reaching an all-time high, Bitcoin has erased the more than 30% gain registered since the start of the year..." reports Bloomberg: The dominant cryptocurrency fell below US$93,714 on Sunday, pushing the price beneath the closing level reached at the end of last year, when financial markets were rallying following President Donald Trump's election victory. Bitcoin soared to a record US$126,251 on Oct 6, only to begin tumbling four days later after unexpected comments on tariffs by Trump sent markets into a tailspin worldwide. "The general market is risk-off," said Matthew Hougan, the San Francisco-based chief investment officer for Bitwise Asset Management. "Crypto was the canary in the coal mine for that, it was the first to flinch."

Over the past month, many of the biggest buyers — from exchange-traded fund allocators to corporate treasuries — have quietly stepped back, depriving the market of the flow-driven support that helped propel the token to records earlier this year. For much of the year, institutions were the backbone of Bitcoin's legitimacy and its price. ETFs as a cohort took in more than US$25 billion, according to Bloomberg data, pushing assets as high as roughly US$169 billion. Their steady allocation flows helped reframe the asset as a portfolio diversifier — a hedge against inflation, monetary debasement and political disarray. But that narrative — always tenuous — is fraying afresh, leaving the market exposed to something quieter but no less destabilising: disengagement. "The selloff is a confluence of profit-taking by LTHs, institutional outflows, macro uncertainty, and leveraged longs getting wiped out," said Jake Kennis, senior research analyst at Nansen. "What is clear is that the market has temporarily chosen a downward direction after a long period of consolidation/ranging..."

Boom and bust cycles have been a constant since Bitcoin burst into the mainstream consciousness with a more than 13,000% surge in 2017, only to be followed by a plunge of almost 75% the following year... Bitcoin has whipsawed investors through the year, dropping to as low as US$74,400 in April as Trump unveiled his tariffs, before rebounding to record highs ahead of the latest retreat... The market downturn has been even tougher on smaller, less liquid tokens that traders often gravitate toward because of their higher volatility and typical outperformance during rallies. A MarketVector index tracking the bottom half of the largest 100 digital assets is down around 60% this year.

The Almighty Buck

Some Americans Are Trying to Heat Their Homes With Bitcoin Mining (cnbc.com) 90

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: [T]he computing power of crypto mining generates a lot of heat, most which just ends up vented into the air. According to digital assets brokerage, K33, the bitcoin mining industry generates about 100 TWh of heat annually — enough to heat all of Finland.This energy waste within a very energy-intense industry is leading entrepreneurs to look for ways to repurpose the heat for homes, offices, or other locations, especially in colder weather months.

During a frigid snap earlier this year, The New York Times reviewed HeatTrio, a $900 space heater that also doubles as a bitcoin mining rig. Others use the heat from their own in-home cryptocurrency mining to spread warmth throughout their house. "I've seen bitcoin rigs running quietly in attics, with the heat they generate rerouted through the home's ventilation system to offset heating costs. It's a clever use of what would otherwise be wasted energy," said Jill Ford, CEO of Bitford Digital, a sustainable bitcoin mining company based in Dallas... "Same price as heating the house, but the perk is that you are mining bitcoin," Ford said...

The crypto-heated future may be unfolding in the town of Challis, Idaho, where Cade Peterson's company, Softwarm, is repurposing bitcoin heat to ward off the winter. Several shops and businesses in town are experimenting with Softwarm's rigs to mine and heat. At TC Car, Truck and RV Wash, Peterson says, the owner was spending $25 a day to heat his wash bays to melt snow and warm up the water. "Traditional heaters would consume energy with no returns. They installed bitcoin miners and it produces more money in bitcoin than it costs to run," Peterson said. Meanwhile, an industrial concrete company is offsetting its $1,000 a month bill to heat its 2,500-gallon water tank by heating it with bitcoin. Peterson has heated his own home for two-and-a-half years using bitcoin mining equipment and believes that heat will power almost everything in the future. "You will go to Home Depot in a few years and buy a water heater with a data port on it and your water will be heated with bitcoin," Peterson said.

Derek Mohr, clinical associate professor at the University of Rochester Simon School of Business, remains skeptical. Bitcoin mining is so specialized now that a home computer, or even network of home computers, would have almost zero chance of being helpful in mining a block of bitcoin, according to Mohr, with mining farms use of specialized chips that are created to mine bitcoin much faster than a home computer... "The bitcoin heat devices I have seen appear to be simple space heaters that use your own electricity to heat the room..."
CNBC also spoke to Andrew Sobko, founder of Argentum AI (which is building a marketplace for sharing computing power), who says the idea makes the most sense in larger settings. "We're working with partners who are already redirecting compute heat into building heating systems and even agricultural greenhouse warming. That's where the economics and environmental benefits make real sense. Instead of trying to move the heat physically, you move the compute closer to where that heat provides value."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Sony Killed This Game in 2024. Three Developers Reverse-Engineered It Back to Life (aftermath.site) 19

An anonymous reader shared this post from the gaming news site Aftermath: Concord, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Firewalk Studios' Overwatch-like shooter, was live for just two weeks before it was pulled offline. Though Concord certainly had some dedicated players, it didn't have many — which is why it may be surprising to hear that a group of players are reverse-engineering the game and its servers to bring it back to life.

Publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and, later, shut down Firewalk Studios. Two hundred or so people were laid off, and any hopes of Concord's return were dashed. Poor sales — estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold — and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios' game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game "resonated with players," but "other aspects of the game and [Concord's] initial launch didn't land the way [Firewalk Studios] intended."

Concord wasn't a bad game, but it just didn't generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again... "Sometimes there's enough of the server left in the game, that we can 'activate' that code and make the game believe it's a server," Red said. "We do pretty much always need to fill in the gaps though..." Concord used an anti-tamper software to keep people from cheating, which also creates a problem for people reverse engineering. It's "nearly impossible" to crack, Red said, so the group didn't — they found an exploit to "forcefully decrypt the game's code" to "restore the game and start working on servers...."

It's not open to the public, but people can sign up for future tests. Even former Firewalk Studios employees have joined the server. They're excited to see Concord come back to life, too, the developers said.

"Friday morning, a video of the playtest was posted to the Concord Reddit page," according to the article. (Though ironically by Friday night YouTube had had removed the video "due to a copyright claim by MarkScan Enforcement."
The Internet

Russia Imposes 24-Hour Mobile Internet Blackout For Travelers Returning Home (therecord.media) 70

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: Russian telecom operators have begun cutting mobile internet access for 24 hours for citizens returning to the country from abroad, in what officials say is an effort to prevent Ukrainian drones from using domestic SIM cards for navigation. "When a SIM card enters Russia from abroad, the user has to confirm that it's being used by a person -- not installed in a drone," the Digital Development Ministry said in a statement earlier this week.

Users can restore access sooner by solving a captcha or calling their operator for identification. Authorities said the temporary blackout is meant to "ensure the safety of Russian citizens" and prevent SIM cards from being embedded in "enemy drones." The new rule has led to unexpected outages for residents in border regions, whose phones can automatically connect to foreign carriers. Officials advised users to switch to manual network selection to avoid being cut off.

Businesses

Retail Traders Left Exposed in High-Stakes Crypto Treasury Deals (bloomberg.com) 37

An anonymous reader shares a report: Executives are turning to a novel structure to fund crypto accumulation vehicles as investor appetite thins. They're called in-kind contributions, and they now account for a growing share of digital-asset treasury, or DAT, deals. Instead of raising cash to buy tokens in the open market, DAT sponsors contribute large slugs of their own crypto, often unlisted and hard to value.

Digital-asset treasuries are a new breed of public company built to hold concentrated crypto positions. The structure surged in 2025 as small-cap firms, especially in biotech and mining, reinvented themselves as digital-asset proxies. Sponsors provide tokens or raise money to buy them, and the stock then trades as a kind of listed bet on crypto. For insiders, it's a shortcut to liquidity. For investors, a wager on upside. But not all DATs carry the same level of risk. Earlier deals raised money to buy tokens through regular markets, which offered at least some independent price check. In-kind contributions skip that step -- letting insiders decide what their tokens are worth, sometimes before the token even trades publicly. That shift means pricing and trading risks land more squarely on shareholders, many of them retail investors.

Investor faith is already wobbling. Many DATs that once traded above the value of their holdings now trade below it. As insiders supply the tokens and set their price, it's becoming harder for investors to tell what these deals are really worth, or when to get out. The in-kind structure was on full display in a recent $545 million private placement by Tharimmune Inc., a biotech firm-turned-crypto proxy, to set up a buyer of Canton Coins. About 80% of the raise came in the form of unlisted Canton tokens, priced at 20 cents each, according to an investor presentation seen by Bloomberg News. The token began trading on exchanges Nov. 10 and is now around 11 cents, CoinGecko data show.

More deals are following the same template. In these placements, insiders contribute tokens -- sometimes illiquid or unlisted -- to form a treasury, lock in valuations and seed the perception of market demand. But when tokens list below deal price, public shareholders absorb the difference. [...] Then there's Flora Growth Corp., a Nasdaq-listed company that announced a $401 million deal to start acquiring Zero Gravity tokens in September. On closer inspection, the firm had raised just $35 million in cash to pair with a $366 million in-kind contribution of then-unlisted 0G tokens. Those tokens were priced at around $3 a piece; they subsequently listed, and are now trading at about $1.20.

Communications

Germany To Ban Huawei From Future 6G Network in Sovereignty Push (bloomberg.com) 25

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Chinese suppliers such as Huawei will be excluded from the country's future telecommunication networks on security grounds as he pushes for more digital sovereignty. From a report: "We have decided within the government that everywhere it's possible we'll replace components, for example in the 5G network, with components we have produced ourselves," Merz told a business conference in Berlin on Thursday. "And we won't allow any components from China in the 6G network."

Europe is increasingly concerned about its reliance on foreign technology, ranging from Asian semiconductors to US artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure, as trade and geopolitical tensions threaten critical supply chains. Germany last year ordered telecom operators to remove Huawei equipment from their core networks, citing risks to national security. Berlin is now considering using public funds to pay Deutsche Telekom AG and others to strip out Chinese gear, Bloomberg News reported last month.

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