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VMware Price Hikes? Between 800 and 1,500% Since Acquisition By Broadcom, Claim Euro Customers

Broadcom has upped VMware licensing costs by between eight to 15 times since it took over the organization, and a lack of alternatives in the tech industry means trade and end customers have no choice but to play ball. From a report: This is the according to the European Cloud Competition Observatory (ECCO), an independent body formed by customer organizations, and CISPE -- a trade association of 37 cloud providers in the region -- to monitor the behavior of software vendors accused of abusing their monopoly position. The report also calls for regulatory intervention. The current subscription model "creates a material risk for the company and their shareholders should Regulators investigate and challenge the legality of such model," the report adds. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's 7-Year Tech Independence Push Yields Major Gains in AI, Robotics and Semiconductors

China has achieved substantial technological advances across robotics, AI, and semiconductor manufacturing as part of a seven-year self-reliance campaign that has tripled the country's research and development spending to $500 billion annually. Chinese robot manufacturers captured nearly half of their domestic market by 2023, up from a quarter of installations just years earlier, while AI startups now rival OpenAI and Google in capabilities. The progress extends to semiconductors, where Huawei released a high-end smartphone powered by what industry analysts believe was a locally-produced advanced processor, despite U.S. export controls targeting China's chip access. Morgan Stanley projects China's self-sufficiency in graphics processing units will jump from 11% in 2021 to 82% by 2027. Chinese companies have been purchasing as many industrial robots as the rest of the world combined, enabling highly automated factories that can operate in darkness. In space technology, Chinese firms

Apple Plans Glasses for 2026 as Part of AI Push, Nixes Watch With Camera

Apple is aiming to release smart glasses at the end of next year as part of a push into AI-enhanced gadgets, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, but it has shelved plans for a smartwatch that can analyze its surroundings with a built-in camera. From the report: Company engineers are ramping up work on the glasses -- a rival to Meta Platforms's popular Ray-Bans -- in a bid to meet the year-end 2026 target, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Apple will start producing large quantities of prototypes at the end of this year with overseas suppliers, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the products haven't been announced. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla Is Shutting Down Pocket

BrianFagioli writes: In a surprising move that will frustrate longtime fans, Mozilla has announced it will shut down Pocket on July 8, 2025. The once-popular read-it-later service, which helped users save and organize web content for later reading, will no longer function as normal after that date. While existing users can continue saving and reading articles until July, the service will switch to export-only mode afterward, with all user data permanently deleted on October 8. The Firefox-maker will also shut down Fakespot, a service that allows users to identify unreliable reviews, on July 1. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Treasury Unveils Plan To Kill the Penny

An anonymous reader writes: The US Treasury is phasing out production of the penny and will stop putting new one-cent coins into circulation. The US Treasury has made its final order of penny blanks this month, and the mint will continue to manufacture pennies as long as its supply of penny blanks exist. President Donald Trump stated that production of pennies are wasteful, as the coins cost more to produce than their one-cent value. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic Releases Claude 4 Models That Can Autonomously Work For Nearly a Full Corporate Workday

Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 today, positioning Opus 4 as the world's leading coding model with 72.5% performance on SWE-bench and 43.2% on Terminal-bench. Both models feature hybrid architecture supporting near-instant responses and extended thinking modes for complex reasoning tasks. The models introduce parallel tool execution and memory capabilities that allow Claude to extract and save key facts when given local file access. Claude Code, previously in research preview, is now generally available with new VS Code and JetBrains integrations that display edits directly in developers' files. GitHub integration enables Claude to respond to pull request feedback and fix CI errors through a new beta SDK. Pricing remains consistent with previous generations at $15/$75 per million tokens for Opus 4 and $3/$15 for Sonnet 4. Both models are available through Claude's web interface, the Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud's Vertex AI. Extended thinking

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