After removing GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and Nokia from its platform, getting slapped with a class-action lawsuit, and flooded with 1-star reviews on the Google Play Store, Robinhood is starting to have a change of heart. The trading platform announced that, beginning Friday, it will allow "limited buys" on restricted stocks, like GameStop, AMC, and others. The Verge reports: "Starting tomorrow, we plan to allow limited buys of these securities," the company said in a blog post. "We'll continue to monitor the situation and may make adjustments as needed." In its statement, Robinhood emphasized that the decision to halt purchases was made because of internal risk to the company, not as a response to outside pressure from other financial actors. "As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements, including SEC net capital obligations and clearinghouse deposits. Some of these requirements fluctuate based on volatility in the markets and can be substantial in the current environment," the post argues. "To be clear, this was a risk-management decision, and was not made on the direction of the market makers we route to."

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Microsoft this morning disclosed investments in more climate-related companies as part of efforts to make good on its year-old pledge to become "carbon negative" by 2030. From a report: One company the tech behemoth is staking is Climeworks, a firm looking to scale up deployment of direct air capture technology that removes CO2 already in the atmosphere. The size of the investment was not disclosed. Microsoft also revealed that it's a customer of the Swiss firm. "Through Microsoft's purchase of negative emissions from Climeworks, we will permanently remove 1,400 metric tons of carbon," Lucas Joppa, Microsoft's top environmental official, said in a blog post. It's part of a growing move by deep-pocketed companies and investors to back the fledgling direct air capture sector -- and pay them for carbon removal. The volumes currently being removed are a tiny drop in the bucket, but DAC could be among the technologies that eventually join the list of meaningful tools against warming. Another firm, Carbon Engineering, counts backers including Bill Gates, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum. Climeworks' other investors and customers include e-commerce heavyweight Shopify.

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With Reddit's interest in sending some stocks soaring showing no sign of slowing down, the trading app Robinhood started restricting some transactions Thursday morning. Reddit wasn't happy -- and neither are some lawmakers. From a report:The incident apparently struck an unusual bipartisan chord, with Texas Republican Ted Cruz throwing his weight behind progressive Democrats who called out the company. Rep. Rashida Tlaib called Robinhood's decision "beyond absurd" and suggested that the House Financial Services Committee hold a hearing on what she deemed "market manipulation" from the personal finance startup. "They're blocking the ability to trade to protect Wall St. hedge funds, stealing millions of dollars from their users to protect people who've used the stock market as a casino for decades," Tlaib said. Her colleague Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- a member of that committee -- chimed in with support for a hearing on Robinhood, calling the situation an "unacceptable" step to prevent retail investors from trading. Seeing Cruz and Ocasio-Cortez line up on anything right now is unusual, to put it mildly. Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna also flagged Robinhoodâ(TM)s decision to stop some trades, slamming the startup for freezing out small investors while powerful hedge funds scramble to get control of the situation.

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Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook on Thursday criticized polarization and misinformation on social media, intensifying a conflict between the iPhone maker and Facebook. From a report: In remarks delivered at the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference, Cook critiqued apps that he argued collect too much personal information and prioritize "conspiracy theories and violent incitement simply because of their high rates of engagement." "At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement -- the longer the better -- and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible," Cook said. He did not name Facebook, but the two companies have been in a high-profile dispute. Apple is preparing to implement privacy notifications that many in the digital advertising industry believe will cause some users to decline to allow the use of ad-targeting tools. Facebook has accused Apple of anticompetitive conduct because Apple has a growing catalog of paid apps and its own digital advertising business. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday said Apple has "every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work." Cook on Thursday criticized social media practices that he said undermine public trust in vaccines and encourage users to join extremist groups.

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Spotify has been granted a patent with technology that aims to use recordings of users' speech and background noise to determine what kind of music to curate and recommend to them. The company filed for the patent in 2018; it was approved on January 12, 2021. From a report: The patent outlines potential uses of technology that involves the extraction of "intonation, stress, rhythm, and the likes of units of speech" from the user's voice. The tech could also use speech recognition to identify metadata points such as emotional state, gender, age, accent, and even environment -- i.e., whether someone is alone, or with other people -- based on audio recording.

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Tesla has unveiled refreshed versions of its Model X and Model S cars, revealing that both are equipped with gaming hardware supporting "up to 10 teraflops of processing power." This theoretically puts a car within the ballpark of a new generation console. From a report: The Tesla models, priced in excess of $80,000 and shipping in March, are fitted with hardware to power Tesla Arcade, an in-car gaming system that is already available in current Tesla models. The difference is that previous models are only able to run less demanding games such as Cuphead and Cat Quest, while the promotional materials for the new Tesla models show The Witcher 3 displayed on the 17" central console. This suggests a significant step up for the car's gaming potential. Specifics on how powerful the car's gaming rig is isn't easy to tell, as the quoted "up to 10 teraflops of processing power" can't be directly translated to the power of a PS5, which is capable of 10.28 teraflops. The accompanying components must also be taken into account, and Tesla has offered no details on the full specs of the hardware. It's unclear if Nvidia or AMD GPUs are being used, or if it all comes from Tesla's own system-on-a-chip. And while The Witcher 3 is an impressive game by... err... car standards, it's very much a last-gen experience now. Theoretically, though, the system in the new Teslas is capable of strong gaming performance.

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Robinhood is already facing a class action lawsuit after the microtrading platform deliberately blocked users from trading GameStop stock as the stock catapulted in value. From a report: The news shows some nearly immediate impact to Robinhood after the snap decision. "Robinhood purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock 'GME' from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock thereby deprived retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market and manipulating the open-market," the class action complaint reads. Fox Business journalist Lydia Moynihan tweeted news of the class action earlier on Wednesday.

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Four European apps which secure user data via end-to-end encryption, ProtonMail, Threema, Tresorit and Tutanota, have issued a joint-statement warning over recent moves by EU institutions that they say are setting lawmakers on a dangerous path to backdooring encryption. From a report: Last month the EU Council passed a resolution on encryption that's riven with contradiction -- calling for "security through encryption and security despite encryption" -- which the four e2e app makers believe is a thinly veiled call to backdoor encryption. The European Commission has also talked about seeking "improved access" to encrypted information, writing in a wide-ranging counter-terrorism agenda also published in December that it will "work with Member States to identify possible legal, operational, and technical solutions for lawful access." Simultaneously, the Commission has said it will "promote an approach which both maintains the effectiveness of encryption in protecting privacy and security of communications, while providing an effective response to crime and terrorism." And it has made it clear there will be no 'one silver bullet' as regards the e2e encryption security 'challenge.' But such caveats are doing nothing to alleviate the concerns of e2e encrypted app makers -- who are convinced proposals from the Council of the EU, which is involved in adopting the bloc's laws (though the Commission usually drafts legislation), sums to an push toward backdoors. "While it's not explicitly stated in the resolution, it's widely understood that the proposal seeks to allow law enforcement access to encrypted platforms via backdoors," the four app makers write, going on to warn that such a move would fatally underline the security EU institutions also claim to want to maintain. "The resolution makes a fundamental misunderstanding: Encryption is an absolute, data is either encrypted or it isn't, users have privacy or they don't," they go on. "The desire to give law enforcement more tools to fight crime is obviously understandable. But the proposals are the digital equivalent of giving law enforcement a key to every citizen's home and might begin a slippery slope towards greater violations of personal privacy."

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Next time you feel compelled to RT a fascist, remember what Banksy said.

Here's a picture of a plate of sushi waiting to be eaten. The best sushi I have ever had. If you have this sushi in front of you waiting to be eaten, you are the richest you can possibly be. It does not matter how much money you have in the bank. Or how long you will live. Or who likes you. You are about to eat the best meal possible. You can't be richer than that.

A lovely plate of sushi.

I'd like to say it's not a big deal, but nothing ever is not a big deal.

John Lennon was the cool Beatle when I was a kid, the poet. A person with deep thoughts. Moody songs. Norweigian Wood, In My Life, Strawberry Fields. He's had an actor's face, a poet too. A prankster. Paul McCartney was just the commercial guy. Penny Lane, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, Rocky Racoon, Mother Nature's Son, The Fool on the Hill. All the ones you love to sing along with. Let It Be and Hey Jude. As I've gotten older, I still listen to the Beatles, it's been a life-long constant, and I've come to appreciate McCartney more and more. As he sings, there's nothing at all wrong with silly love songs.

Today's song: Good Day Sunshine.

Ryan Smith, writing at AnandTech: Following plans first unveiled last year during the launch of their DG1 GPU, Intel sends word this morning that the first Iris Xe video cards have finally begun shipping to OEMs. Based on the DG1 discrete GPU that's already being used in Intel's Iris Xe MAX laptop accelerators, the Iris Xe family of video cards are their desktop counterpart, implementing the GPU on a traditional video card. Overall, with specifications almost identical to Xe MAX, Intel is similarly positioning these cards for the entry-level market, where they are being released as an OEM-only part. As a quick refresher, the DG1 GPU is based on the same Xe-LP graphics architecture as Tiger Lake's integrated GPU. In fact, in broad terms the DG1 can be thought of as a nearly 1-to-1 discrete version of that iGPU, containing the same 96 EUs and 128-bit LPDDR4X memory interface as Tiger Lake itself. Consequently, while DG1 is a big first step for Intel -- marking the launch of their first discrete GPU of the modern era -- the company is planning very modestly for this generation of parts. The first DG1 GPUs were shipped in the fall as part of Intel's Iris Xe MAX graphics solution for laptops. At the time, Intel also indicated that a desktop card for OEMs would also be coming in 2021, and now, right on schedule, those desktop cards have begun shipping out. Further reading: Intel's Iris Xe DG1 Graphics Cards Not Compatible with AMD, Older Systems.

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Razer's Viper 8K is a refresh of the 2019 true ambidextrous Viper. For the most part, it's identical and is now available at the same $79 asking price, but it has some key upgrades for competitive gamers who are hoping that tech might help them get the edge over their opponents. From a report: First off, Razer now includes the Focus Plus 20,000DPI sensor used in many of its other 2020 mice, along with the latest generation of optical switches that have a more tactile click feel, according to the company (although it didn't stand out as noticeable to me when I tested the mouse). The biggest news is that, according to Razer, the newly revised Viper can achieve the fastest polling rate of any mouse currently available: up to 8,000Hz -- far higher than the industry standard of 1,000Hz. The polling rate measures how often per second the mouse tells your computer where it's located on-screen. The more frequent the polling is, the smoother your mouse tracking can be. In the case of Razer's new Viper 8K, an 8,000Hz polling rate can deliver a whopping 8,000 pings to your PC per second, while reducing the response time of those pings from one millisecond to just an eighth of one millisecond. On paper, it seems really impressive.

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