• The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat: The reason websites continue to load, bank transfers go through, and civilization persists is because of the thousand or so people living aboard 20-some ships stationed around the world, who race to fix each cable as soon as it breaks. [...] “The main issue for me in the industry has to do with hyperscalers coming in and saying we need to reduce costs every year,” said Wilkie, the chair of the ACMA, using the industry term for tech giants like Google and Meta. “We’d all like to have maintenance cheaper, but the cost of running a ship doesn’t actually change much from year to year. It goes up, actually. So there has been a severe lack of investment in new ships.”
• Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised by how much laying off 1,500 employees negatively affected the streaming giant's operations: In December, Spotify culled 1,500 jobs, equivalent to 17% of employees, as part of an aggressive efficiency drive as the group strived for profitability. ... the footprint left behind by those employees was bigger than Ek and his executives anticipated. ... Ek didn't elaborate on what aspects of operations were most affected by the layoffs.
• Tesla Cybertruck bricked after car wash, claims user %u2022 The Register: There's also the owner who took his Cybertruck off-roading, and broke it, leaving many wondering what Tesla's latest and greatest can actually do. Musk once touted the Cybertruck as "literally bulletproof" but whether it's even waterproof seems open to some debate.
• How beavers help prevent megafires, restore scorched wildlands: River segments hosting beaver-created dams fared far better during and after megafires than riverscapes without beaver activity, leaving pockets of intact habitat crucial for wildlife, and protecting waterways from runaway erosion, a study published in The Geological Society of America in January found.
• Raw Milk Enthusiasts Demand Milk Infected With H5N1. Not parody.
• I stumbled upon LLM Kryptonite and no one wants to fix it %u2022 The Register: Despite my best efforts to hand this flaming bag of Kryptonite on to someone who could do something about it, this is where matters remain as of this writing. No one wants to hear about it.
• British PM Rishi Sunak announces plan to bring back mandatory national service - ABC News. British politics being very normal.
• AEC warns it doesn't have power to deter AI-generated political misinformation at next election | Australian politics | The Guardian. They didn't have the power to deal with a purple sign, so they certainly can't deal with deepfake misinformation campaigns.
• A landmark multi-year global partnership with News Corp | OpenAI. Unless OpenAI is striking deals with a huge range of media companies, this is a really bad idea.
• Funny numbers mean success for the NRL: When the NRL’s “official attendance” came through in March, it showed: 40,746. [...] The Las Vegas Raiders recently released a Q1 report for the city’s stadium authority [which showed the NRL's opening round] was attended by 31,927 people.

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