Ultrahuman is back with its most capable smart ring yet, the Ring Pro.

This third-generation smart ring can deliver up to 15 days of battery life alongside a new Pro Charging Case and an AI health platform – Jade.

The 15-day battery claim triples the four to six-day lifespan of the Ring Air, a gap that Ultrahuman frames as a category-defining shift.

The Ring Pro uses a titanium unibody construction and carries a redesigned internal architecture. A redesigned heart-rate sensing architecture improves signal quality during sleep and recovery, while an upgraded dual-core processor handles faster data processing and on-chip machine learning, both of which directly affect the accuracy of the health metrics the ring generates overnight.

ProRelease Technology allows the ring to be cut apart more easily in the event of finger swelling or injury, a safety feature that most competing smart rings have not addressed despite growing consumer concerns about wearables worn continuously for extended periods.

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The Charging Case carries its own 45-day battery reserve and stores up to one year of ring data, using a magnetic UltraSnap connection that Ultrahuman states generates less heat than conventional wireless charging during repeated daily use.

Jade and PowerPlugs

Jade, the company’s new biointelligence AI platform, pulls real-time data from across the Ultrahuman ecosystem, including the Ring Pro, Blood Vision biomarkers, M1 continuous glucose monitoring, and Ultrahuman Home environmental sensors to surface personalised health insights rather than retrospective summaries.

The system differs from standard AI health integrations by executing real-time actions such as triggering AFib detection or initiating breathwork sessions, a capability that Ultrahuman positions closer to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving model of continuous real-time processing than a conventional backward-looking data query tool.

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PowerPlugs, the company’s expanding micro-application platform, adds new capabilities including GLP-1 lifestyle tracking, respiratory health and snoring analysis through a Sleep Cycle integration, and migraine management tools built on Click Therapeutics’ FDA-authorised digital therapeutic technology.

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The Ring Pro is available to pre-order globally, excluding the United States, for $479, with shipments beginning in March, and trade-in discounts of up to $115 apply for existing Ring Air and other smart ring owners.

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AI solutions architect, senior automation engineer and machine learning engineer are just three of the exciting roles open to qualified professionals in Ireland at the moment.

February at SiliconRepublic.com is when we take a closer look at all things AI, robotics and automation. It is a rapidly evolving space that often requires a significant commitment to upskilling and training, but on the upside, it is also a fascinating ecosystem to be a part of. 

So, if you are a STEM professional looking for a new role or opportunity, then why not consider applying at one of these 14 organisations? Each has a range of positions in Ireland open to experts aiming to work in AI, robotics or automation, or a combination of the three. 

Analog Devices

US semiconductor manufacturing company Analog Devices has a presence in a number of countries, including Ireland. Currently, in Limerick, the organisation is looking to onboard a robotics and automation graduate, whose responsibilities will include assisting in the calibration and maintenance of robotic arms and automated handlers, supporting troubleshooting of robotic motion control systems and sensors, learning about robotic integration with high-vacuum and pneumatic systems, and participating in projects to optimise robotic throughput and reliability, among other tasks. 

BMS

US pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) is currently advertising a position for a senior manager in EHSS performance enablement. The role will require a professional with the skills to support the execution of EHSS performance monitoring, ensure that EHSS systems and processes deliver accurate, reliable data for decision-making, and lay the foundation for future predictive analytics capabilities.

BMS states that the position supports the maintenance and operational improvement of EHSS data and reporting systems, including performance measurement frameworks, maintaining data quality, and enabling analytics and visualisation through data science to track EHSS performance.

There is also a similar role for a senior manager in EHSS systems implementation.

Clio

In November of last year, Canadian AI legal-tech Clio officially opened a new office in Dublin’s Docklands, just a few days after the company announced a $500m raise. Over the next couple of months, Clio plans to expand its Dublin-based team from 60 to more than 100 employees, adding new roles.

At the moment, someone with AI or automation skills could be well-suited to a role as a software developer at the organisation. There is also a vacancy for a senior compliance analyst, EMEA. This job involves work in dealing with expansion and automation of compliance programs. The successful candidate will work with stakeholders across Clio’s operations to support compliance initiatives such as risk mitigation, support of innovation in AI and product development, customer inquiry support, control maintenance and instilling best practices.

Equinix

AI infrastructure provider Equinix recently announced plans to create 200 jobs in Dundalk, Co Louth via an investment of up to $700m in a new facility that will be built by local company Hanley Energy. The new roles are expected to be in a range of technical areas, such as precision engineering, quality assurance and lean manufacturing. While more jobs are likely to be announced down the line, one of the roles currently open to prospective employees is that of senior director, controls engineering and service management.

EXL

Data and artificial intelligence company EXL is headquartered in New York; however, the organisation has a presence in multiple countries, including Ireland, where there are two opportunities open to professionals with AI and automation skills: senior engineer in applied AI and digital AI solution architect. Both roles are advertised as hybrid and full-time. EXL is also offering Dublin-based full-stack engineering positions for people with varying degrees of seniority. 

EY

UK-based professional services firm EY has a number of AI-specific job opportunities for qualified professionals. Anyone interested in applying could consider jobs in agentic AI engineering, AI-lab full-stack engineering, agentic and generative intelligence, AI analytics, and data architecture, among others. The Dublin office is also recruiting for an intelligent automation assistant manager and an intelligent automation manager. 

Fidelity Investments 

For professionals looking for a new role in which AI and automation skills are a plus, Fidelity Investments has opportunities at its Dublin and Galway-based facilities. In the capital, there is a vacancy for a principal site reliability engineer, and out west there are roles for principal full-stack engineer, senior software engineer, principal software engineer and senior full-stack engineer.

Fixify

US software company Fixify has a position in senior data science for an Ireland-based professional looking to work remotely. Fixify states that the successful candidate will be at the forefront of transformation by wielding machine learning, AI and “data wizardry”. 

Liberty IT

Liberty IT, the technology arm of the insurance company Liberty Mutual Insurance, has offices in Belfast, Dublin and Galway. The team is looking for a professional skilled in ML automated workflows, software engineering, cloud architecture and AI, for a role as a senior AI solutions architect. The role is open to professionals located in any of the three Irish premises. Also on offer to an expert with automation skills is a role as a senior data engineer. 

MSD

Pharmaceutical multinational MSD has a vacancy for a senior specialist in manufacturing automation. The successful candidate will join the team at the multiproduct facility in Dunboyne, Co Meath and will work closely with colleagues across engineering, operations, quality, validation and global technology, among other teams.

PwC

Professional services company PwC is adding to its AI and automation capabilities with a number of key hires. In Dublin, open roles include AI Azure architect in data and AI, senior associate engineer for agentic AI, AI technology consultant manager in data and AI, and senior manager and AI architect in Azure.  

TCS

IT services, consulting and business solutions platform TCS has an opportunity open to a Cork-based professional in its IT department. Its Little Island facility is hiring for a senior automation engineer, and desired skills for the role include experience in a manufacturing environment, high volume automated assembly experience and medical device manufacturing experience.

Version1

Dublin-headquartered IT services and consulting company Version1 is looking to expand its teams. Currently, the organisation is recruiting professionals armed with a range of AI and automation skills. Vacant roles include AI engineer, cloud/AI solution architect, power apps architect, full-stack developer and Azure cloud consultant, among others. 

Yahoo

Technology company Yahoo is looking to recruit professionals with AI and automation skills to a number of its Ireland-based teams. The Yahoo Mail division has a vacancy for multiple positions, including backend engineer II, principal software apps engineer, senior data engineer and machine learning engineer II. 

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

eBay acquired Depop from Etsy for $1.2bn earlier this month.

Online marketplace eBay is laying off around 800 jobs – or 6pc of its workforce spread globally. The job cuts are a response to operating model needs and future priorities, the company has explained.

As of 31 December last year, company filings show that eBay employed approximately 12,300 people globally, 5,100 of which are situated outside the US.

“We are taking steps to reinvest across our business and align our structure with our strategic priorities, which will affect certain roles across our workforce,” an eBay spokesperson told news publications.

“We are grateful for the contributions of the employees impacted and are committed to supporting them with care and respect.” eBay, however, will still continue to hire in key areas, it said.

The announcement comes after eBay posted a 2025 annual net revenue of $11.1bn, up 8pc from the year before, while gross merchandise volume (GMV) was up 7pc to $79.6bn. eBay noted that fashion alone represents more than $10bn in GMV annually.

The layoffs also come on the heels of eBay announcing a $1.2bn acquisition of the second-hand fashion marketplace Depop, from Etsy. With the acquisition, eBay wants to target the under-34 consumer base – which represents a majority of Depop’s user base.

Etsy purchased Depop for $1.6bn in 2021. The same year, it bought Brazilian online marketplace Elo7 for $217m. In 2019, it purchased music gear marketplace Reverb. All three have since been sold by Etsy, which has been suffering from slowed growth in recent years. Its year-over-year revenue grew by just 2.2pc in 2024, down from 7.1pc in 2023.

eBay laid off 9pc of its total workforce in 2024, or 1,000 jobs, citing macroeconomic conditions. In early 2023, it cut 500 jobs.

Company filings showed that eBay’s Irish arm, which handles its European operations, paid out more than €1.8m in redundancy costs after cutting 75 jobs in 2024.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

from the a-social-media-fumble dept

Full disclosure up front: I sit on the board of Bluesky. That said, I had absolutely no idea this lawsuit existed until recently. Which, honestly, tells you something about how much of a legal non-event it was. But the underlying story here—about the NFL treating social media the way it treats television broadcast rights—is worth digging into, because it reveals something deeply broken about how major sports leagues think about the internet.

The 2025-2026 NFL season just wrapped up, and along with it came a federal court ruling in a case called Brown v. NFL that most people missed entirely. Two football fans—one in Illinois, one in California—sued the NFL under the Sherman Act, claiming the league violated antitrust law by barring its teams from posting on Bluesky. The fans wanted to follow their teams—the Bears and the now-champion Seahawks—on the platform they actually use, rather than on Elon Musk’s X. The court dismissed the case for lack of standing, and honestly, that was probably the right legal outcome.

The fans couldn’t demonstrate a concrete injury—the information they wanted was still available, for free, on X. As the court put it, their grievance reduced to being “denied the ability to obtain real-time NFL team information on a private platform with which they are ideologically comfortable.” And “I don’t like Elon Musk” is not an antitrust injury. The Sherman Act targets conspiracies that restrain trade and harm competition—not content distribution preferences. You can’t force a private organization to distribute its content on the platform you like best, just as we’ve called out attempts to force social media platforms to carry content they don’t want to carry.

But the fact that the NFL is legally allowed to be this myopic doesn’t make it a smart business decision. You can be entirely within your rights and still be making a spectacularly bad call.

Since 2013, the NFL has had a “content partnership” with X (dating back to when it was the useful site known as Twitter). The deal lets X publish real-time highlights, and in return the league gets… money, presumably. As the court noted in its ruling:

Since 2013, the NFL and X (formerly Twitter, Inc.) have had a “content partnership.” It allows X to publish real-time highlights from football games, such as touchdowns. During the offseason, reporters post on X with news about team practices and other NFL-related topics, and fans on X discuss teams’ acquisitions of free agents and other roster changes. For example, during the NFL draft (the high-profile annual event in which teams select eligible players to join their rosters), X published more than one million posts concerning the NFL; these appeared on users’ screens more than 800 million times. The NFL has repeatedly renewed its partnership with X. Fans do not pay money to receive NFL news on X.

Fine. Lots of organizations have deals with social media platforms. But this just seems like self-sabotage: the NFL apparently used this partnership as justification to tell its own teams they couldn’t even exist on a competing platform. Multiple NFL teams—including the New England Patriots—had set up accounts on Bluesky, started posting, and were building audiences. And then the league office stepped in and told them to shut it all down.

From the ruling:

Initially, multiple NFL teams, including the New England Patriots, had accounts on Bluesky to communicate with fans….

As alleged, however, the NFL later instructed its member teams to delete their Bluesky accounts. But for this instruction, at least some NFL teams would use Bluesky. The Patriots’ vice president of content, Fred Kirsch, for example, has stated: “Whenever the league gives us the green light[,] we’ll get back on Bluesky.”

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Yes, the (Super Bowl-losing) Patriots’ VP of content is publicly saying his team wants to be on Bluesky and is just waiting for the league to let them. This wasn’t a case of teams being uninterested. Teams saw the audience there, set up shop, and were actively communicating with fans—and the NFL made them stop.

As Front Office Sports reported at the time, the league specifically told the Patriots to take down their Bluesky account. The league apparently hasn’t even approved Threads—Meta’s X competitor—for team real-time updates either.

So the NFL has essentially decided that when it comes to the kind of real-time updates that fans actually care about, X is the only approved outlet. Everything else is locked out.

This is “broadcast-brain” thinking applied to the internet, and it’s spectacularly dumb.

The NFL is treating social media platforms the way it treats regional sports networks or its Sunday Ticket package: as exclusive territories to be carved up and sold to the highest bidder. In the television world, that model makes a certain kind of sense—there’s a limited amount of spectrum, a limited number of cable channels, and that scarcity creates value. But social media doesn’t work that way. There’s no scarcity. Posting an injury report on Bluesky doesn’t remove it from X. Cross-posting is literally free. The entire point of social media for a brand is to be everywhere your audience is.

And the audience, increasingly, is on Bluesky. As Mashable noted last year heading into the season, the NFL community on Bluesky had already hit a kind of critical mass:

You need the presence and regular posting of big names to legitimize a platform. It certainly helped that folks like Kimes and a large portion of the NFL writers at popular sports sites like The Ringer made Bluesky home. And last season it felt like Bluesky hit terminal velocity, where enough people joined that you could fully exit to the site for football content. And with the migration of the professionals, the shitposters naturally came along, too. Because that’s where the discussion was happening. There is genuine, easy-to-find, fun NFL talk on Bluesky with minimal interruptions from, say, weird ads or angry reply guys you might find on X.

That’s a real community. A vibrant, engaged community of exactly the kind of hardcore football fans that the NFL should be desperate to cultivate. These are, as Mashable noted, the “ball knowers.” They’ve moved to Bluesky because, well, X kind of sucks now for following sports. As Mashable also noted:

Bluesky does have a leg-up in some areas — Elon Musk’s site recently has proven unreliable for NFL fans. The site crashed the morning free agency launched, which is one of the most important days for NFL social media. And the sports tab — which used to be an easy, fun way to follow games in the Twitter days — degraded into near uselessness years ago. And, in general, X has morphed with Musk’s image, which is focused more on AI and politics — not things like following football. Of course you can still follow the NFL on X, but it does involve wading through more junk than it used to. Bluesky offers an interesting alternative in that regard.

So the most engaged, most knowledgeable football community has moved to Bluesky. The teams themselves want to be on Bluesky. And the NFL’s response to all of this is… to ban its teams from showing up.

It’s the digital equivalent of a local blackout (something we’ve been calling out for well over a decade)—punishing your most dedicated fans because of some deal you cut with a middleman in an effort to create an artificial and unnecessary scarcity.

Meanwhile, the platform the NFL is propping up with this exclusivity arrangement is one where fans who tuned in for the Super Bowl halftime show got to watch a significant chunk of the X user base have a full-blown racist meltdown over Bad Bunny performing. The NFL specifically chose Bad Bunny to appeal to a broader, more global audience—and the audience that actually appreciated the choice? They were on Bluesky where there was an overwhelming wave of support for the performance. The league is betting its real-time presence on the platform where its expansion strategy gets shouted down, while blocking teams from the one where those new fans are actually showing up.

This kind of control-freakery from the NFL shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed the league’s behavior over the years. This is the same organization that has spent decades aggressively lying to bars, restaurants, and small businesses about the scope of its “Super Bowl” trademarks, sending threatening letters suggesting you can’t even say the words “Super Bowl” in an ad without a license—something that has never actually been true.

The NFL’s institutional DNA is “control equals value,” and they apply that logic to everything, from what a church can call its viewing party to which social media apps their teams are permitted to use.

The problem is that control-based thinking only works when you actually can control the ecosystem. You can (sort of) control which networks broadcast your games. You can control which streaming service gets Sunday Ticket. You cannot control where fans choose to talk about football on the internet. The conversation is going to happen whether the NFL’s official accounts are there or not. The only question is whether the league’s teams get to participate in it.

Any organization whose core business depends on fan engagement should be finding fans where they are, not herding them onto a single platform because you cut an exclusivity deal. Especially when that platform is increasingly known for being a hellscape of AI slop, political rage, and engagement-bait, while the platform you’re blocking your teams from is the one where people are actually talking about your product with genuine enthusiasm.

The NFL generates billions in revenue. And yet, when it comes to social media strategy, it’s stuck in a 2005 mindset. That’s not how any of this works anymore.

Someone at NFL HQ needs to understand that when your most passionate fans have moved to a new platform and your own teams are begging for permission to follow them there, the smart play is to let them go.

Filed Under: blackouts, exclusivity, fans, football, social media

Companies: bluesky, nfl, twitter, x

The PlayStation 5 Pro is getting a notable graphics upgrade, and it comes straight from Sony’s long-running partnership with AMD. As shared by Sony in an official blog post, the console’s image-upscaling technology is about to receive a major refresh.

At the center of the news is an upgraded version of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution), Sony’s AI-driven upscaling technology. The new version has been co-developed with AMD and is derived from the company’s latest FSR 4 upscaling technology. Sony says the improved PSSR will roll out soon, with Resident Evil Requiem confirmed as the first game to support it. The update is said to bring sharper image quality, reduced ghosting, and better detail reconstruction compared to the original version.

A glimpse at the future of console graphics

The new PSSR update is not just a small tweak. Sony describes it as the result of months of additional refinement built on top of AMD’s FSR 4 technology. That matters because upscaling has become one of the most important tools in modern gaming, allowing consoles to deliver higher resolutions and smoother frame rates without requiring dramatically more powerful hardware. Instead of brute-force rendering every pixel, AI-assisted upscaling reconstructs high-resolution images from lower-resolution frames. The result is better performance while still delivering near-native visual quality.

For PS5 Pro owners, this upgrade could mean clearer visuals, better performance, and more future-proof graphics as new games begin adopting the updated PSSR technology. And because the upgrade is system-level, it has the potential to benefit multiple upcoming titles rather than being limited to a single release. As Sony and AMD continue to work together, the PS5 Pro may end up feeling more like a living platform that improves over time. With the PS6 reportedly pushed further down the road, it’s reassuring to see the PS5 Pro getting a meaningful performance boost in the meantime.

AI agents now carry more access and more connections to enterprise systems than any other software in the environment. That makes them a bigger attack surface than anything security teams have had to govern before, and the industry doesn’t yet have a framework for it. “If that attack vector gets utilized, it can result in a data breach, or even worse,” said Spiros Xanthos, founder and CEO of Resolve AI, speaking at a recent VentureBeat AI Impact Series event.

Traditional security frameworks are built around human interactions. There’s not yet an agreed-upon construct for AI agents that have personas and can work autonomously, noted Jon Aniano, SVP of product and CRM applications at Zendesk, at the same event. Agentic AI is moving faster than enterprises can build guardrails — and Model Context Protocol (MCP), while decreasing integration complexity, is making the problem worse.

“Right now it’s an unsolved problem because it’s the wild, wild West,” Aniano said. “We don’t even have a defined technical agent-to-agent protocol that all companies agree on. How do you balance user expectations versus what keeps your platform safe?”

MCP still “extremely permissive”

Enterprises are increasingly hooking into MCP servers because they simplify integration between agents, tools and data. However, MCP servers tend to be “extremely permissive,” he said.

They are “actually probably worse than an API,” he contended, because APIs at least have more controls in place to impose upon agents.

Today’s agents are acting on behalf of humans based on explicit permissions, thus establishing human accountability. “But you might have tens, hundreds of agents in the future with their own identity, their own access,” said Xanthos. “It becomes a very complex matrix.”

Even as his startup is developing autonomous AI agents for site reliability engineering (SRE) and system management, he acknowledged that the industry “completely lacks the framework” for autonomous agents.

“It’s completely on us and to anybody who builds agents to figure out what restrictions to give them,” he said. And customers must be able to trust those decisions.

Some existing security tools do offer fine-grained access — Splunk, for instance, developed a method to provide access to certain indexes in underlying data stores, he noted — but most are broader and human-oriented.

“We’re trying to figure this out with existing tools,” he said. “But I don’t think they’re sufficient for the era of agents.”

Who’s accountable when an AI mis-authenticates a user?

At Zendesk and other customer relationship management (CRM) platform providers, AI is involved in a number of user interactions, Aniano noted — in fact, now it’s at a “volume and a scale that we haven’t contemplated as businesses and as a society.”

It can get tricky when AI is helping out human agents; the audit trail can become a labyrinth.

“So now you’ve got a human talking to a human that’s talking to an AI,” Aniano noted. “The human tells the AI to take action. Who’s at fault if it’s the wrong action?” This becomes even more complicated when there are “multiple pieces of AI and multiple humans” in the mix.

To prevent agents from going off the rails, Zendesk tends to be “very strict” about access and scope; however, customers can define their own guardrails based on their needs. In most cases, AI can access knowledge sources, but they’re not writing code or running commands on servers, Aniano said. If an AI does call an API, it is “declaratively designed” and sanctioned, and actions are specifically called out.

However, customer demand is flooding these scenarios and “we’re kind of holding the gates right now,” he said.

The industry must develop concrete standards for agent interactions. “We’re entering a world where, with things like MCP that can auto-discover tools, we’re going to have to create new methods of safety for deciding what tools these bots can interact with,” said Aniano.

When it comes to security, enterprises are rightly concerned when AI takes over authentication tasks, such as sending out and processing one-time passwords (OTP), SMS codes, or other two-step verification methods, he said. What happens if an AI mis-authenticates or misidentifies someone? This can lead to sensitive data leakage or open the door for attackers.

“There’s a spectrum now, and the end of that spectrum today is a human,” Aniano said. However, “the end of that spectrum tomorrow might be a specialized agent designed to do the same kind of gut feeling or human-level interaction.”

Customers themselves are on a spectrum of adoption and comfort. In certain companies — particularly financial services or other highly-regulated environments — humans still must be involved in authentication, Aniano noted. In other cases, legacy companies or old guards only trust humans to authenticate other humans.

He noted that Zendesk is experimenting with new AI agents that are “a little more connected to systems,” and working with a select group of customers around guardrailing.

Standing authorization is coming

In some future, agents may actually be more trusted than humans to do some tasks, and granted permissions “way beyond” what humans have today, Xanthos said. But we’re a long way from that, and, for the most part, the fear of something going wrong is what’s holding enterprises back.

“Which is a good fear, right? I’m not saying that it is a bad thing,” he said. Many enterprises simply aren’t yet comfortable with an agent doing all steps of a workflow or fully closing the loop by itself. They still want human review.

Resolve AI is on the cusp of giving agents standing authorization in a few cases that are “generally safe,” such as in coding; from there they’ll move to more open-ended scenarios that are not all that risky, Xanthos explained. But he acknowledged that there will always be very risky situations where AI mistakes could “mutate the state of the production system,” as he put it.

Ultimately, though: “There’s no going back, obviously; this is moving faster than maybe even mobile did. So the question is what do we do about it?”

What security teams can do now

Both speakers pointed to interim measures available within existing tooling. Xanthos noted that some tools — Splunk among them — already offer fine-grained index-level access controls that can be applied to agents. Aniano described Zendesk’s approach as a practical starting point: declaratively designed API calls with explicitly sanctioned actions, strict access and scope limits, and human review before expanding agent permissions.

The underlying principle, as Aniano put it: “We’re always checking those gates and seeing how we can widen the aperture” — meaning don’t grant standing authorization until you’ve validated each expansion.

United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the Pentagon to designate Anthropic as a “supply-chain risk” on Friday, sending shockwaves through Silicon Valley and leaving many companies scrambling to understand whether they can keep using one of the industry’s most popular AI models.

“Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic,” Hegseth wrote in a social media post.

The designation comes after weeks of tense negotiations between the Pentagon and Anthropic over how the US military could use the startup’s AI models. In a blog post this week, Anthropic argued its contracts with the Pentagon should not allow for its technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon asked that Anthropic agree to let the US military apply its AI to “all lawful uses” with no specific exceptions.

A supply chain risk designation allows the Pentagon to restrict or exclude certain vendors from defense contracts if they are deemed to pose security vulnerabilities, such as risks related to foreign ownership, control, or influence. It is intended to protect sensitive military systems and data from potential compromise.

Anthropic responded in another blog post on Friday evening, saying it would “challenge any supply chain risk designation in court,” and that such a designation would “set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government.”

Anthropic added that it hadn’t received any direct communication from the Department of Defense or the White House regarding negotiations over the use of its AI models.

“Secretary Hegseth has implied this designation would restrict anyone who does business with the military from doing business with Anthropic. The Secretary does not have the statutory authority to back up this statement,” the company wrote.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

“This is the most shocking, damaging, and over-reaching thing I have ever seen the United States government do,” says Dean Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and the former senior policy advisor for AI at the White House. “We have essentially just sanctioned an American company. If you are an American, you should be thinking about whether or not you should live here 10 years from now.”

People across Silicon Valley chimed in on social media expressing similar shock and dismay. “The people running this administration are impulsive and vindictive. I believe this is sufficient to explain their behavior,” Paul Graham, founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator said.

Boaz Barak, an OpenAI researcher, said in a post that “kneecapping one of our leading AI companies is right about the worst own goal we can do. I hope very much that cooler heads prevail and this announcement is reversed.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Friday night that the company reached an agreement with the Department of Defense to deploy its AI models in classified environments, seemingly with carveouts. “Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” said Altman. “The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”

Confused Customers

In its Friday blog post, Anthropic said a supply chain risk designation, under the authority 10 USC 3252, only applies to Department of Defense contracts directly with suppliers, and doesn’t cover how contractors use its Claude AI software to serve other customers.

Three experts in federal contracts say it’s impossible at this point to determine which Anthropic customers, if any, must now cut ties with the company. Hegseth’s announcement “is not mired in any law we can divine right now,” says Alex Major, a partner at the law firm McCarter & English, which works with tech companies.

from the hold-on,-i’m-settlin’ dept

One of the unfortunate knock on effects of being generally insufferable is that many people don’t want to be associated with you in any way. And when you’re both insufferable and happen to be the most divisive American political figure in modern history, all the more so. And that is certainly why, during both of the Donald Trump presidential campaigns, it became common practice for musical artists to complain about his “unauthorized” use of their music at his campaign events.

Now, as this site has posted out a zillion times in the past, many of the complaints from artists are unfounded. Often, the use of the music in question was authorized through blanket performance licenses held by the venues for the rallies. While it should be obvious that best practice would be for candidates like Trump to seek permission to use music just to avoid any public complaining and backlash for that use, there is no real copyright claim to be had in those instances. Lots of people get this wrong.

Where that gets thrown for a loop is when it comes to sound recordings from before 1972. Here’s how Mike described it all back in 2016.

Copyright law is so screwed up that there actually may be a case where the law does require permission. And it has to do with pre-1972 sound recordings. If you’ve been reading Techdirt for any length of time, you know that we’ve discussed this issue many times in the past. Historically, while compositions were covered by copyright, under the 1909 Copyright Act sound recordings were not. This resulted in a patchwork of state laws (and state commonlaw) that created special forms of copyright at the state level. Eventually, sound recordings were put under federal copyright law, but it only applied to works recorded after February 14, 1972. Works recorded before that are not under federal copyright law, but remain basically the only things under those state copyright laws (the 1976 Copyright Act basically wiped out state copyright laws for everything but that one tiny thing).

The issue is not that simple, because nothing around this particular issue is simple. However, based on at least some of the rulings in pre-1972 sound recording copyright cases, federal copyright law doesn’t apply at all to those songs (other court opinions have come out otherwise). And thus, there’s an argument that the requirements involving blanket licenses for pre-1972 sound recordings may not apply, because the use of the sound recording may require a special public performance license from the copyright holder

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And so now we have a decade or so of courts trying to figure this out. The outcomes of court cases are every bit as patchwork as the state laws that inform their outcomes. Add to all of this that even some of the blanket licenses from the likes of ASCAP include opt-outs for political campaigns and the like and it’s easy for all kinds of mistakes to be made.

Mistakes don’t really explain the rash of instances of artists complaining about Trump’s usage, however. He’s been through this so many times, in fact, that it seems obvious that he and his people simply don’t care to try to secure permission. I doubt they even looked into whether they needed to. And the onus to understand what licensing is needed is certainly on their shoulders and nobody else’s. That’s how you get Pharrell clapping back on Trump’s use of his music at an insane rally shortly after a nationalist murdered 11 people in Pittsburgh (the venue didn’t have a license from the artist’s rights management of choice). Or his campaign losing a copyright suit to Eddy Grant for the use of his music in a campaign video.

And, now, it’s also how you get the Trump campaign to settle a suit brought by the estate of Isaac Hayes over the song he co-wrote, Hold on, I’m Comin’, performed by Sam & Dave.

Hayes’ son and estate manager, music producer Isaac Hayes III, says in a Monday (Feb. 23) Instagram statement that the lawsuit “has been mutually resolved, and we are satisfied with the outcome.” Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

“This resolution represents more than the conclusion of a legal matter,” writes Hayes III in his statement. “It reaffirms the importance of protecting intellectual property rights and copyrights, especially as they relate to legacy, ownership and the responsible use of creative works.”

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It will surprise nobody that I would love to debate most of what appears in that quote from Hayes III, but that is a separate matter entirely. Instead, my focus is on two undeniable realities. First, the chaos that has been created with these older, pre-1972 song recordings is insane, complicated, and needlessly convoluted. Whoever thought this setup was a good idea should be placed in a facility under constant care.

Second, Trump almost certainly committed copyright infringement, the above complaint notwithstanding. And he’s been through enough of these that he could very easily tell his people to just go get the proper permissions for any music that is played at his little fascism pep rallies. While the settlement terms go undisclosed, which is always annoying, I’ve seen enough of these to be able to read between the lines. The Hayes estate got its pint of blood, at a bare minimum.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to get artists that like you to let you play their music at your events, Donald? There were at least a few artists at that emotional support half time show that nobody watched that you could choose from.

Filed Under: copyright, donald trump, isaac hayes, licensing, pre-1972 sound recordings, sam & dave, settlement

Supabase, a popular developer database platform, is facing disruptions in India — one of its key markets — has been blocked in India, TechCrunch has learned. New Delhi ordered internet providers to block its website, resulting in patchy access across networks.

The blocking order was issued on February 24 under Section 69A of India’s Information Technology Act, according to a source familiar with the matter. The provision empowers the government to restrict public access to online content.

The Indian government did not publicly cite a reason for the move, and it was not immediately clear whether the action was linked to a cybersecurity concern, copyright complaint, or another issue. It was also unclear how long the restrictions would remain in place.

Access to Supabase has been inconsistent in India over the past several days, with the San Francisco-based company acknowledging the issue in posts on social media starting Wednesday. While the restrictions were first reported by Supabase on Reliance Industries’ JioFiber network, users have since flagged similar problems across multiple internet providers and telecom networks. In one post on Friday, Supabase tagged India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, asking him to intervene and restore access, though the company later removed the message and said in a subsequent update that the site remained blocked for many users in the country.

An Indian founder, who asked not to be named to avoid potential repercussions, told TechCrunch they had stopped seeing new user sign-ups from India over the past two to three days. A technology consultant working with local startups, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were unable to reliably access Supabase for both development and production purposes.

While Supabase suggested workarounds such as switching DNS settings or using a VPN (which reroute internet traffic to bypass local restrictions), the founder said such steps were not practical for most end users.

At the time of publication, TechCrunch was able to verify that supabase.co remained inaccessible on ACT Fibernet, JioFiber and Airtel connections in New Delhi. However, two users on ACT Fibernet in Bengaluru said they were still able to access the service, suggesting the restrictions may be unevenly implemented.

Notably, Supabase’s main website remained accessible in India — but its underlying developer infrastructure did not.

India is Supabase’s fourth-largest source of traffic, accounting for about 9% of global visits, according to data from Similarweb, highlighting the potential fallout for the country’s developer ecosystem. The platform’s global traffic jumped more than 111% year over year to about 4.2 million visits in January. In India, visits rose roughly 179% to about 365,000, compared with a 168.5% increase in the U.S. to about 627,000.

The incident highlights broader concerns about India’s website blocking regime, said Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific policy director at Access Now.

“This is a simple fact that has grave consequences for developers and others,” he told TechCrunch. “You don’t know where you can safely run projects without the danger that something might happen where it gets blocked, and suddenly you’re scrambling to find a way.”

India has previously faced criticism over broad website blocking measures. In 2014, authorities briefly restricted access to developer platform GitHub, along with services such as Vimeo, Pastebin and Weebly, during a security probe. Users on some Indian networks in 2023 also reported that a key GitHub content domain had been blocked by certain ISPs, according to earlier reports.

Founded in 2020 by CEO Paul Copplestone and CTO Ant Wilson, Supabase positions itself as an open-source alternative to Firebase built on PostgreSQL. The startup has gained traction amid rising interest in so-called “vibe coding” tools and AI-driven app development, and has raised about $380 million across three funding rounds since September 2024, lifting its valuation to $5 billion.

India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT, as well as telecom providers including ACT Fibernet, Bharti Airtel, and Reliance Jio, did not respond to requests for comment. Copplestone and Wilson also did not respond.