Several users on Reddit have noticed that Spotify has started hiding song lyrics behind a paywall. "This means you won't be able to sing along unless you know the lyrics already, or are willing to look them up in another app," reports Android Police. From the report: Still, you lose the convenience of real-time sync with the track and automatic scrolling. Like skips per hour, it appears Spotify will implement a limit system and accessing lyrics will count against the user's limit, which should ideally reset after a stipulated time.

Spotify usually requests lyrics from songwriters, publishers, and independent artists. However, in most other cases, the company has a working relationship with MusixMatch to provide lyrics, and perhaps Spotify isn't willing to absorb the costs of this partnership. That would explain why lyrics are now paywalled, but as a free-tier user, such changes are chipping away at the service's appeal.

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management have made a bid to acquire Paramount for $26 billion and take it private. Variety reports: Sony and private-equity giant Apollo submitted a letter with the non-binding offer Wednesday to Paramount Global, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The bid, which would include the assumption of debt and could be negotiated, would be a premium over the company's current $22 billion enterprise value. Shares of Paramount Global jumped 13% on news of the offer from Apollo and Sony Entertainment, closing at $13.86 per share Thursday.

It's not clear how Paramount's board will proceed on the Sony-Apollo proposal, having rejected previous overtures from the private-equity firm. The company has an exclusive negotiating window with Skydance that ends Friday (May 3), but discussions among the parties could extend beyond that. If it happens, the combination of Sony Pictures with Paramount Pictures would likely result in mass layoffs -- and knock the number of major Hollywood studios from five to four, after Disney took over 20th Century. Sony Corp., which acquired Columbia Pictures in 1990 for $3.5 billion, is the largest studio operator in the industry that does not have a broad-scale direct-to-consumer streaming play.

Under the proposed bid with Apollo, Sony would be the majority owner of the combined company. Sony Corp. would merge Sony Pictures Entertainment into a joint venture with Paramount Global. Sony and Apollo would both contribute cash to finance the deal. What's unclear is what would happen to the 28 local TV stations CBS owns; FCC rules bar foreign entities (i.e. Tokyo-based Sony) from having majority ownership control of broadcast TV stations, so Sony would need to carve out a separate U.S. ownership structure for the station group.

In the Skydance scenario, Redstone would sell her stake in National Amusements, which holds 77% of the voting shares in Paramount Global, to Skydance, whereupon Skydance would merge with Paramount Global in an all-stock deal that would value Skydance at roughly $5 billion. Paramount Global would remain a publicly traded company. Redstone would receive up to $2 billion from the Skydance-NAI transaction; in addition, Skydance would pay a premium for Paramount Global shares and pay $3 billion to the company to help pay down debt. Ellison would serve as CEO of the merged Paramount-Skydance, while Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal CEO who is chairman of sports and media at RedBird and works under founder and managing partner Gerry Cardinale, would take on a key management role.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission chair today made a final plea to Congress, asking for money to continue a broadband-affordability program that gave out its last round of $30 discounts to people with low incomes in April. The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has lowered monthly Internet bills for people who qualify for benefits, but Congress allowed funding to run out. People may receive up to $14 in May if their ISP opted into offering a partial discount during the program's final month. After that there will be no financial help for the 23 million households enrolled in the program.

"Additional funding from Congress is the only near-term solution for keeping the ACP going," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in a letter to members of Congress today. "If additional funding is not promptly appropriated, the one in six households nationwide that rely on this program will face rising bills and increasing disconnection. In fact, according to our survey of ACP beneficiaries, 77 percent of participating households report that losing this benefit would disrupt their service by making them change their plan or lead to them dropping Internet service entirely." The ACP started with $14.2 billion allocated by Congress in late 2021. The $30 monthly ACP benefit replaced the previous $50 monthly subsidy from the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program.

Roblox announced it'll be rolling out virtual billboards with video advertisements that will be displayed in its virtual worlds. Reuters reports: Users will now see billboards featuring content from brands such as e.l.f beauty, Walmart and Warner Bros Discovery, just as they would in real life. That would give advertisers access to Roblox's nearly 72 million daily active users -- half of whom are Gen-Z customers, a population group prized by marketers and businesses.

The company in November began testing the video ads -- that will be served to users who are 13 years and older -- as part of its efforts to reduce reliance on revenue generated from its in-game currency "Robux", which players can use to buy outfits, vehicles and other features inside the company's digital worlds. It charges a fee on all purchases done on its platform, which hosts millions of videogames that are built by its users -- who get a share of any related revenue.

That practice will extend to the ads, with creators of the virtual worlds who opt to show the billboards getting a portion of the revenue Roblox makes from them. Roblox is hoping its large Gen-Z user base will give it an edge in the competitive ad market, where it would have to wrestle for marketing dollars with tech giants such as Google and Meta and smaller players such as Snap.

The massive volumes of debt piling up around the globe forced the president of the World Economic Forum to reach back more than 200 years for a comparable period. Fortune: In an interview Sunday with CNBC at a WEF conference in Saudi Arabia, Borge Brende warned overall debt is approaching the world's total economic output. "We haven't seen this kind of debt since the Napoleonic Wars," he said. "We're getting close to 100% of global GDP in debt."

According to the International Monetary Fund last year, global public debt hit $91 trillion, or 92% of GDP, by the end of 2022. That was actually a dip from pandemic-era debt levels but remained in line with a decades-long trend higher. Data on global debt during the Napoleonic Wars, which took place in the early 1800s, is harder to come by. But for comparison, some estimates put British government debt at more than 200% of GDP by 1815.

Brende also told CNBC that governments need to take fiscal measures to reduce their debts without triggering a recession. For now, global growth is about 3.2% annually, which isn't bad, but it's also below the 4% trend growth the world had seen for decades, he said earlier in the interview. That risks a repeat of the 1970s, when growth was low for a decade, Brende added. But the world can avoid such an outcome if it continues to trade and doesn't engage in more trade wars. "Trade was the engine of growth for decades," he said.

Satellite operator SES plans to buy fellow satellite operator Intelsat, in a $3.1 billion deal that's expected to close next year. According to Space Magazine, the combined company could help it "compete with SpaceX's huge Starlink broadband network." From the report: SES and Intelsat both operate communications satellites in geostationary orbit, which lies 22,236 miles (35,785 kilometers) above Earth. SES also runs a constellation called O3b in medium Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 5,000 miles (8,000 km). As [SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh] noted, there is increasingly fierce competition for the services provided by these satellites -- for example, from SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. And other LEO megaconstellations are in the works as well. For instance, Amazon launched the first two prototypes for its planned 3,200-satellite Project Kuiper network this past October.

"By combining our financial strength and world-class team with that of SES, we create a more competitive, growth-oriented solutions provider in an industry going through disruptive change," Intelsat CEO David Wajsgras said in the same statement. "The combined company will be positioned to meet customers' needs around the world and exceed their expectations," he added.

Arcade giant Dave & Buster's said it will begin allowing customers to bet on arcade games. "Customers can soon make a friendly $5 wager on a Hot Shots basketball game, a bet on a Skee-Ball competition or on another arcade game," reports CNBC. "The betting function, expected to launch in the next few months, will work through the company's app." From the report: Dave & Buster's, started in 1982, now has more than 222 venues in North America, offering everything from bowling to laser tag, plus virtual reality. The company says it has five million loyalty members and 30 million unique visitors to its locations each year. The company's stock is up more than 50% over the past year. As a boom in betting increases engagement among sports fans, digital gamification could have a similar effect within Dave & Buster's customer base by allowing loyalty members to compete with one another and earn rewards. Ultimately, it could mean people spend more time and money at the venues.

Dave and Buster's is using technology by gamification software company Lucra. [...] Lucra and Dave & Buster's said there will be a limit placed on the size of bets it will allow, but that they're not publicly disclosing that threshold just yet. Lucra said across its history the average bet size has been $10. "We're creating a new form of kind of a digital experience for folks inside of these ecosystems," said Madding, Lucra's chief operating officer. "We're getting them to engage in a new way and spend more time and money," he added. Lucra says its skills-based games are not subject to the same licenses and regulations gambling operators face with games of chance. Lucra is careful not to use the term "bet" or "wager" to describe its games. "We use real-money contests or challenges," Madding said. Lucra's contests are only available to players age 18 and older. The contests are available in 44 states.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has been sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to enabling money laundering through his cryptocurrency exchange. CNBC reports: The sentence handed down to Zhao in Seattle federal court was significantly less than the three years that federal prosecutors had been seeking for him. The defense had asked for five months of probation. The sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of 12 to 18 months. In November, Zhao struck a deal with the U.S. government to resolve a multiyear investigation into Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. As part of the settlement, Zhao stepped down as the company's CEO.

Zhao, who wore a dark navy suit with a light blue tie to court, is accused of willfully failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program as required by the Bank Secrecy Act, and of allowing Binance to process transactions involving proceeds of unlawful activity, including between Americans and individuals in sanctions jurisdictions. The U.S. ordered Binance to pay $4.3 billion in fines and forfeiture. Zhao agreed to pay a $50 million fine.

After convincing the world to buy open source and give up the Morse Code test for ham radio licenses, Bruce Perens has a new gambit: develop a license that ensures software developers receive compensation from large corporations using their work. The new Post-Open Zero Cost License seeks to address the financial disparities in open source software use and includes provisions against using content to train AI models, aligning its enforcement with non-profit performing rights organizations like ASCAP. Here's an excerpt from an interview The Register conducted with Perens: The license is one component among several -- the paid license needs to be hammered out -- that he hopes will support his proposed Post-Open paradigm to help software developers get paid when their work gets used by large corporations. "There are two paradigms that you can use for this," he explains in an interview. "One is Spotify and the other is ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. The difference is that Spotify is a for-profit corporation. And they have to distribute profits to their stockholders before they pay the musicians. And as a result, the musicians complain that they're not getting very much at all."

"There are two paradigms that you can use for this," he explains in an interview. "One is Spotify and the other is ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. The difference is that Spotify is a for-profit corporation. And they have to distribute profits to their stockholders before they pay the musicians. And as a result, the musicians complain that they're not getting very much at all." Perens wants his new license -- intended to complement open source licensing rather than replace it -- to be administered by a 501(c)(6) non-profit. This entity would handle payments to developers. He points to the music performing rights organizations as a template, although among ASCAP, BMI, SECAC, and GMR, only ASCAP remains non-profit. [...]

The basic idea is companies making more than $5 million annually by using Post-Open software in a paid-for product would be required to pay 1 percent of their revenue back to this administrative organization, which would distribute the funds to the maintainers of the participating open source project(s). That would cover all Post-Open software used by the organization. "The license that I have written is long -- about as long as the Affero GPL 3, which is now 17 years old, and had to deal with a lot more problems than the early licenses," Perens explains. "So, at least my license isn't excessively long. It handles all of the abuses of developers that I'm conscious of, including things I was involved in directly like Open Source Security v. Perens, and Jacobsen v. Katzer."

"It also makes compliance easier for companies than it is today, and probably cheaper even if they do have to pay. It creates an entity that can sue infringers on behalf of any developer and gets the funding to do it, but I'm planning the infringement process to forgive companies that admit the problem and cure the infringement, so most won't ever go to court. It requires more infrastructure than open source developers are used to. There's a central organization for Post-Open (or it could be three organizations if we divided all of the purposes: apportioning money to developers, running licensing, and enforcing compliance), and an outside CPA firm, and all of that has to be structured so that developers can trust it." You can read the full interview here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The ransomware gang that hacked into U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare used a set of stolen credentials to remotely access the company's systems that weren't protected by multifactor authentication (MFA), according to the chief executive of its parent company, UnitedHealth Group (UHG). UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty provided the written testimony ahead of a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday into the February ransomware attack that caused months of disruption across the U.S. healthcare system. This is the first time the health insurance giant has given an assessment of how hackers broke into Change Healthcare's systems, during which massive amounts of health data were exfiltrated from its systems. UnitedHealth said last week that the hackers stole health data on a "substantial proportion of people in America."

According to Witty's testimony, the criminal hackers "used compromised credentials to remotely access a Change Healthcare Citrix portal." Organizations like Change use Citrix software to let employees access their work computers remotely on their internal networks. Witty did not elaborate on how the credentials were stolen. However, Witty did say the portal "did not have multifactor authentication," which is a basic security feature that prevents the misuse of stolen passwords by requiring a second code sent to an employee's trusted device, such as their phone. It's not known why Change did not set up multifactor authentication on this system, but this will likely become a focus for investigators trying to understand potential deficiencies in the insurer's systems. "Once the threat actor gained access, they moved laterally within the systems in more sophisticated ways and exfiltrated data," said Witty. Witty said the hackers deployed ransomware nine days later on February 21, prompting the health giant to shut down its network to contain the breach. Last week, the medical firm admitted that it paid the ransomware hackers roughly $22 million via bitcoin.

Meanwhile, UnitedHealth said the total costs associated with the ransomware attack amounted to $872 million. "The remediation efforts spent on the attack are ongoing, so the total costs related to business disruption and repairs are likely to exceed $1 billion over time, potentially including the reported $22 million payment made [to the hackers]," notes The Register.

Walmart isn't making enough money off its new health centers, so it decided to close up shop. From a report: The retail giant announced today that it'll shutter all 51 health centers it opened up across five states since 2019. Walmart is also getting rid of its virtual care program after acquiring telehealth provider MeMD in 2021. "We determined there is not a sustainable business model for us to continue," Walmart said in an announcement today.

"This is a difficult decision, and like others, the challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs create a lack of profitability that make the care business unsustainable for us at this time," Walmart said today. It's an about-face from last year when Walmart said it planned to double its number of health clinics and expand into two new states in 2024.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: WeWork has a new plan to get out of bankruptcy -- and it doesn't involve Adam Neumann, who wants to acquire the flexible office provider he created. WeWork announced Monday that it has raised $450 million in equity funding, which it could use to emerge from Chapter 11. The company also said it has a plan in place to "eliminate all of its $4 billion of outstanding, prepetition debt obligations." A vote on the plan -- which has support from the owners of most of WeWork's debt -- is scheduled for May 30, according to Bloomberg.

The majority of the funding -- $337 million, to be exact -- would come from Cupar Grimmond, and SoftBank would still own a stake in the company, according to the outlet. But Neumann, who has recently expressed interest in purchasing WeWork for more than $500 million, doesn't plan to go down without a fight. "After misleading the court for weeks, WeWork finally admitted it is trying to sell the company to a group led by Yardi for far less than we are continuing to propose," Susheel Kirpalani, an attorney for Neumann's new real estate startup Flow Global, told Business Insider in a statement, adding, "so we anticipate there will be robust objections to confirming this plan."

If 2023 was the tech industry's year of the A.I. chatbot, 2024 is turning out to be the year of A.I. plumbing. From a report: It may not sound as exciting, but tens of billions of dollars are quickly being spent on behind-the-scenes technology for the industry's A.I. boom. Companies from Amazon to Meta are revamping their data centers to support artificial intelligence. They are investing in huge new facilities, while even places like Saudi Arabia are racing to build supercomputers to handle A.I. Nearly everyone with a foot in tech or giant piles of money, it seems, is jumping into a spending frenzy that some believe could last for years.

Microsoft, Meta, and Google's parent company, Alphabet, disclosed this week that they had spent more than $32 billion combined on data centers and other capital expenses in just the first three months of the year. The companies all said in calls with investors that they had no plans to slow down their A.I. spending. In the clearest sign of how A.I. has become a story about building a massive technology infrastructure, Meta said on Wednesday that it needed to spend billions more on the chips and data centers for A.I. than it had previously signaled. "I think it makes sense to go for it, and we're going to," Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, said in a call with investors.

The eye-popping spending reflects an old parable in Silicon Valley: The people who made the biggest fortunes in California's gold rush weren't the miners -- they were the people selling the shovels. No doubt Nvidia, whose chip sales have more than tripled over the last year, is the most obvious A.I. winner. The money being thrown at technology to support artificial intelligence is also a reminder of spending patterns of the dot-com boom of the 1990s. For all of the excitement around web browsers and newfangled e-commerce websites, the companies making the real money were software giants like Microsoft and Oracle, the chipmaker Intel, and Cisco Systems, which made the gear that connected those new computer networks together. But cloud computing has added a new wrinkle: Since most start-ups and even big companies from other industries contract with cloud computing providers to host their networks, the tech industry's biggest companies are spending big now in hopes of luring customers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: I paid a lot of money for the privilege of getting an Apple Vision Pro brand-new in February. All-in, with optical inserts and taxes, I financed a little over $3,900 for the 256GB version of the headset. A day or so ago, I made a mistake that I'm sure many early adopters are familiar with: I looked up how much it's been selling for on eBay. On Wednesday, a 1TB Vision Pro, complete with all the included gear, Apple's fluffy $200 travel case, $500 AppleCare Plus, and claimed to have been "worn maybe about an hour" sold for $3,200 after 21 bids. The listed shipping estimate was $20.30. Brand new, that combination is $5,007.03 on Apple's site for me.

Another eBay listing, this one with my headset's configuration (but sans optical inserts) went for just $2,600 -- again with most, if not all, of the included accessories. Several other 256GB and 512GB models sold for around that amount this week. The story is no different over on Swappa, a popular reselling site among Apple users. Bloomberg News, over the weekend: In related news, employees at some Apple retail stores are now being asked to fill out surveys after giving Vision Pro demonstrations to potential buyers. Apple wants to know if they were able to close a sale and get any feedback from the would-be buyer. Apple also wants to ensure employees are following the 20-minute demo script.

As I wrote last week, Vision Pro demand has dropped considerably at many Apple stores. One retail employee says they haven't seen one Vision Pro purchase in weeks and that the number of returns equaled the device's sales in the first month that it was available.

America's Federal Trade Commission "is sending more than $5.6 million in refunds to consumers," reports the Associated Press, "as part of a settlement with Amazon-owned Ring, which was charged with failing to protect private video footage from outside access." In a 2023 complaint, the FTC accused the doorbell camera and home security provider of allowing its employees and contractors to access customers' private videos. Ring allegedly used such footage to train algorithms without consent, among other purposes. Ring was also charged with failing to implement key security protections, which enabled hackers to take control of customers' accounts, cameras and videos. This led to "egregious violations of users' privacy," the FTC noted.

The resulting settlement required Ring to delete content that was found to be unlawfully obtained, establish stronger security protections and pay a hefty fine. The FTC says that it's now using much of that money to refund eligible Ring customers.
According to their announcement Tuesday, the FTC is now sending 117,044 PayPal payments to affected consumers...

The FTC is issuing more than $5.6 million in refunds to Ring customers as part of a privacy settlement. The Associated Press reports: In a 2023 complaint, the FTC accused the doorbell camera and home security provider of allowing its employees and contractors to access customers' private videos. Ring allegedly used such footage to train algorithms without consent, among other purposes. Ring was also charged with failing to implement key security protections, which enabled hackers to take control of customers' accounts, cameras and videos. This led to "egregious violations of users' privacy," the FTC noted.

The resulting settlement required Ring to delete content that was found to be unlawfully obtained, establish stronger security protections and pay a hefty fine. The FTC says that it's now using much of that money to refund eligible Ring customers. According to a Tuesday notice, the FTC is sending 117,044 PayPal payments to impacted consumers who had certain types of Ring devices -- including indoor cameras -- during the timeframes that the regulators allege unauthorized access took place. Eligible customers will need to redeem these payments within 30 days, according to the FTC -- which added that consumers can contact this case's refund administrator, Rust Consulting, or visit the FTC's FAQ page on refunds for more information about the process.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned a prior district court decision, lifting the injunction that blocked New York's law mandating that ISPs offer $15 broadband plans to low-income families. Ars Technica reports: The ruling (PDF) is a loss for six trade groups that represent ISPs, although it isn't clear right now whether the law will be enforced. For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits, the state law requires ISPs to offer "broadband at no more than $15 per month for service of 25Mbps, or $20 per month for high-speed service of 200Mbps," the ruling noted. The law allows for price increases every few years and makes exemptions available to ISPs with fewer than 20,000 customers.

"First, the ABA is not field-preempted by the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996), because the Act does not establish a framework of rate regulation that is sufficiently comprehensive to imply that Congress intended to exclude the states from entering the field," a panel of appeals court judges stated in a 2-1 opinion. Trade groups claimed the state law is preempted by former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's repeal of net neutrality rules. Pai's repeal placed ISPs under the more forgiving Title I regulatory framework instead of the common-carrier framework in Title II of the Communications Act.

2nd Circuit judges did not find this argument convincing: "Second, the ABA is not conflict-preempted by the Federal Communications Commission's 2018 order classifying broadband as an information service. That order stripped the agency of its authority to regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet, and a federal agency cannot exclude states from regulating in an area where the agency itself lacks regulatory authority. Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and VACATE the permanent injunction."

The free tax filing pilot from the IRS that rolled out in 12 states last month saved filers an estimated $5.6 million in tax preparation fees for federal returns, said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. CNBC reports: This season, more than 140,000 taxpayers successfully filed returns using IRS Direct File, a free tax filing pilot from the IRS, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the IRS. Direct File surveyed more than 15,000 users, around 90% of whom rated their experience as "excellent," the agencies reported.

"We have not made a decision about the future of Direct File," Werfel said, noting the agency still needs to analyze data and get feedback from a "wide variety of stakeholders." The IRS plans to release a more detailed report about the Direct File pilot "in the coming days," he added. If Direct File were expanded for the next season, the program could add additional states and tax situations, according to a senior IRS official. The agency expects to decide the future of Direct File later this spring, Werfel said.

The GNOME Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting the GNOME desktop environment, has been operating at a deficit for several years, depleting its financial reserves. Robert McQueen, the foundation's president, has announced plans to increase fundraising efforts in a new blog post.

McQueen adds: As you may be aware, the GNOME Foundation has operated at a deficit (nonprofit speak for a loss -- ie spending more than we've been raising each year) for over three years, essentially running the Foundation on reserves from some substantial donations received 4-5 years ago. The Foundation has a reserves policy which specifies a minimum amount of money we have to keep in our accounts. This is so that if there is a significant interruption to our usual income, we can preserve our core operations while we work on new funding sources. We've now "hit the buffers" of this reserves policy, meaning the Board can't approve any more deficit budgets -- to keep spending at the same level we must increase our income.

Fintech giant Stripe announced on Thursday that it would let customers accept cryptocurrency payments, starting with USDC stablecoins, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon. TechCrunch reports: This will be the first time that Stripe has taken crypto payments since 2018, when it dropped support for Bitcoin due to it being too unstable. Stripe in 2022 tried its first reentry into the crypto market when it announced payouts (but not payments) in USDC, with Twitter as its marquee customer for the service. Thursday's news has no customer names attached to it.

On Wednesday the company unveiled a long list of other launches, the most significant update being that Stripe, for the very first time, would let customers integrate competing payment providers with Stripe's other financial services tooling. Thursday's nod to expanding crypto support is also part of that bigger strategy to open up its walled garden. A brief timeline of Stripe's dance with crypto underscores the tricky line that Stripe has walked over the years when it comes to cryptocurrency. True to its disruptive roots as a fintech, the company has wanted to be in the middle of the conversation around how blockchain-based technologies will affect financial services. But it runs the risk of subverting its bigger business and positioning as a stable and sensible financial powerhouse if it dabbles too deeply or for too long in periods of instability. The company processed $1 trillion in transactions last year, and it's still growing; it is currently worth $65 billion on paper.