Canada has banned the use of Huawei and fellow Chinese tech giant ZTE's equipment in its 5G networks, its government has announced. From a report: In a statement, it cited national security concerns for the move, saying that the suppliers could be forced to comply with "extrajudicial directions from foreign governments" in ways that could "conflict with Canadian laws or would be detrimental to Canadian interests." Telcos will be prevented from procuring new 4G or 5G equipment from the companies by September this year, and must remove all ZTE- and Huawei-branded 5G equipment from their networks by June 28th, 2024. Equipment must also be removed from 4G networks by the end of 2027. "The Government is committed to maximizing the social and economic benefits of 5G and access to telecommunications services writ large, but not at the expense of security," the Canadian government wrote in its statement.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An upgradeable laptop is only worthwhile if you can actually upgrade it [...], and Framework is making that possible starting today: The company is introducing a new iteration of the Framework Laptop's motherboard that uses 12th-gen Intel CPUs. A brand-new 12th-gen Framework Laptop starts at $1,049 for a Core i5-equipped base model, or $819 for a build-it-yourself kit with no memory or storage. These products will be available for preorder starting today, and shipping will start in July. The 12th-generation Core processors use Intel's latest Alder Lake CPU architecture, which combines high-performance P-cores and high-efficiency E-cores to maximize performance under heavy load and reduce power usage when your computer is mostly idle. The base Core i5-1240P CPU includes four P-cores and eight E-cores, a big boost in core count compared to the quad-core 11th-gen CPUs. The Core i7-1260P upgrade has the same CPU core count with boosted clock speeds and a small increase in integrated GPU performance, while the top-end Core i7-1280P option will get you six P-cores and eight E-cores. The rest of the Framework Laptop's hardware is staying mostly the same, though there are a few additional upgrades to be aware of. One is a 2.5Gbps Ethernet expansion card, the first wired LAN module to be available for the laptop. The card is based on Realtek's RTL8156 chipset and will be available "later this year." The company is also releasing a redesigned version of its top cover made with a new CNC manufacturing process that "substantially improv[es] rigidity." The new top cover will be the default option for all Framework Laptops going forward, though you can buy a new cover for your existing Framework Laptop for $89. You can view pricing and configuration info here.

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Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: Yury Borisov, the deputy prime minister in charge of military development, told Russian TV that a laser prototype called Zadira was being deployed in Ukraine and had burned up a Ukrainian drone within five seconds at a distance of 5km (three miles). [...] Little is known about the Zadira laser program, but in 2017 Russian media said state nuclear corporation Rosatom had helped develop it as part of a program to create weapons based on new physical principles, news agency Reuters reported. [...] However, an official with the US Department of Defense said he had not seen "anything to corroborate reports of lasers being used" in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mocked the Russian claim, comparing it to the so-called "wonder weapons" that Nazi Germany claimed to be developing during World War Two. "The clearer it became that they had no chance in the war, the more propaganda there was about an amazing weapon that would be so powerful as to ensure a turning point," said Zelensky in a video address. "And so we see that in the third month of a full-scale war, Russia is trying to find its 'wonder weapon'... this all clearly shows the complete failure of the mission." There is at least one country which has developed a laser weapon though, notes the BBC. Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett unveiled prototype laser-based interceptors that would use lasers to super-heat incoming drones or rockets. "Within a year already the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will bring into action a laser-based interception system, first experimentally, and later operationally, first in the south, then in other places," he said in a speech to Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies. "And this will enable us, as the years advance, to surround Israel with a wall of lasers which will protect us from missiles, rockets, UAVs and other threats." The U.S. Navy also deployed the world's first active laser weapon in the Persona Gulf in 2017. "It operates in an invisible part of the electromagnetic spectrum so you don't see the beam, it doesn't make any sound, it's completely silent and it's incredibly effective at what it does," said Lt. Cale Hughes, laser weapons system officer, at the time.

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Two satellites recently exchanged more than 200 gigabits of data over a distance of about 60 miles (100 kilometers) using laser communication in space. Gizmodo reports: Satellites generally don't communicate directly with each other. Instead, they use radio signals to transfer data down to a ground station on Earth, which then relays this data to another satellite. Optical terminals between satellites are considered to be faster and more secure. CACI International -- the company that developed the optical terminals for the space lasers -- announced the achievement on Tuesday in a press release. The two satellites, named Able and Baker, were launched last summer by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of its Blackjack project. DARPA is seeking to build a constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit for the purpose of supporting military operations. The two satellites successfully pulled off the 40-minute laser communications experiment on April 14, during which time Able and Baker used CACI's CrossBeam free-space optical terminals. Infrared lasers transmit data by encoding the message into an optical signal, which is then carried to a receiver. The experiment, known as Mandrake 2, was funded by the Space Development Agency (SDA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory. Mandrake 2 launched on June 30, 2021 as an early risk-reduction flight for DARPA's Blackjack constellation project. The Blackjack constellation aims to deploy an initial batch of 20 small satellites in low Earth orbit, which will connect with each other to form a mesh network in space. The idea is not to rival commercial satellite constellations such as SpaceX's Starlink, but rather to have a government-owned constellation that the military can use to connect to its bases, sensors, and weapons across the world. The SDA is planning to launch the 20 satellites this fall and then launch an additional 126 satellites by 2024, according to SpaceNews. The agency is seeking to create a full constellation that would include somewhere between 300 and 500 satellites in low Earth orbit. The satellites are being developed by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and York Space.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: In 1958, a combine carrying a full load of freshly harvested crops might weigh 8,800 pounds (4000 kg). Today, a fully loaded combine can clock in at 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg). The story of increasingly large farm vehicles isn't necessarily bad. The invention of these huge machines -- along with advances like new fertilizers and genetically modified crops -- mean that today's farmers can grow far more food than ever before. But there's reason to worry that equipment manufacturers have begun pushing the envelope too far. In a paper published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS, researchers show that farm equipment has grown so large that its heft can damage the soil that lies more than 20 inches (0.5 m) below the surface. It's been obvious for a long time that the weight of farm vehicles driving over fields causes the upper layers of soil to compact. Engineers have mitigated this by putting progressively bigger tires on heavier farm vehicles. They've also used more flexible materials that make it possible to inflate the tires to lower pressure. Those changes increase the amount of surface area contact between the vehicle and the ground. These measures have enabled engineers to build larger and larger vehicles without increasing the amount of contact stress on the upper layers of soil. It's not just the upper layers of soil that farmers need to worry about. In their analysis, the researchers found that "subsoil stresses under farm vehicles have affected progressively deeper soil layers over the past six decades." In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, farm vehicles weren't heavy enough to compress soil below the level that's tilled each year. But that's no longer the case. Pressure from tractors, combines, and other pieces of equipment "has now penetrated deeper into the subsoil, thus potentially affecting untilled crop root zones," the authors write. Those layers of subsoil may be hidden from view, but they play an important role in what happens at the surface. The researchers say the consequences can combine to result in "a persistent decline in crop yields." This isn't a niche problem either. According to the researchers, "The fraction of arable land that is presently at high risk of subsoil compaction is about 20% of global cropland area, concentrated in mechanized regions in Europe, North America, South America, and Australia." They say the issue could be addressed if "future agricultural vehicles [are] designed with intrinsic soil mechanical limits in mind to avoid chronic soil compaction."

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On Thursday, Twitter announced a new policy for dealing with misinformation during a period of crisis, establishing new standards for gating or blocking the promotion of certain tweets if they are seen as spreading misinformation. The Verge reports: "Content moderation is more than just leaving up or taking down content," explained Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of safety and integrity, in a blog post detailing the new policy, "and we've expanded the range of actions we may take to ensure they're proportionate to the severity of the potential harm." The new policy puts particular scrutiny on false reporting of events, false allegations involving weapons or use of force, or broader misinformation regarding atrocities or international response. Hoax tweets and other misinformation regularly go viral during emergencies, as users rush to share unverified information. The sheer speed of events makes it difficult to implement normal verification or fact-checking systems, creating a significant challenge for moderators. Under the new policy, tweets classified as misinformation will not necessarily be deleted or banned; instead, Twitter will add a warning label requiring users to click a button before the tweet can be displayed (similar to the existing labels for explicit imagery). The tweets will also be blocked from algorithmic promotion. The stronger standards are meant to be limited to specific events. Twitter will initially apply the policy to content concerning the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the company expects to apply the rules to all emerging crises going forward. For the purposes of the policy, crisis is defined as "situations in which there is a widespread threat to life, physical safety, health, or basic subsistence."

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Paul Sawers writes via VentureBeat: It has been a frosty few years for Elastic and Amazon's AWS cloud computing arm, with the duo frequently locking horns over various issues relating to Elastic's ex-open-source database search engine -- Elasticsearch. To cut a War and Peace-esque story short, Amazon had introduced its own managed Elasticsearch service called Amazon Elasticsearch Service way back in 2015, and in the intervening years the "confusion" this (among other shenanigans) caused in the cloud sphere ultimately led Elastic to transition Elasticsearch from open source to "free and open" (i.e., a less permissive license), exerting more control over how the cloud giants of the world could use the product and Elasticsearch name. In response, Amazon launched an Elasticsearch "fork" called OpenSearch, and the two companies finally settled a long-standing trademark dispute, which effectively meant that Amazon would stop associating the Elasticsearch brand with Amazon's own products. This was an important final piece of the kiss-and-make-up puzzle, as it meant that customers searching for Elastic's fully-managed Elasticsearch service (Elastic Cloud) in the AWS Marketplace, wouldn't also stumble upon Amazon's incarnation and wonder which one they were actually looking for. Fast-forward to today, and you would hardly know that the two companies were once at loggerheads. Over the past year, Elastic and Amazon have partnered to bring all manner of technologies and integrations to market, and they've worked to ensure that their shared customers can more easily onboard to Elastic Cloud within Amazon's infrastructure. Building on a commitment last month to make AWS and Elastic work even better together, Elastic and AWS today announced an even deeper collaboration, to "build, market and deliver" frictionless access to Elastic Cloud on AWS. In essence, this means that the two companies will go full-throttle on their "go-to-market" sales and marketing strategies -- this includes a new free 7-day trial for customers wanting to test-drive Elastic Cloud directly from the AWS Marketplace. On top of that, AWS has committed to working with Elastic to generate new business across Amazon's various cloud-focused sales organizations -- this is a direct result of Elastic joining the AWS ISV Accelerate program. All of this has been made possible because of the clear and distinct products that now exist -- Amazon has OpenSearch, and Elastic has Elasticsearch, which makes collaboration that much easier. What does Amazon get for all of this? "Put simply, companies accessing Elastic's services on AWS infrastructure drive a lot of cloud consumption -- which translates into ka-ching for Amazon," adds Sawers.

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Canada is planning to ban Huawei from working on Canada's fifth-generation networks. CBC.ca reports: The move puts Canada in line with key intelligence allies like the United States which have expressed concerns about the national security implications of giving the Chinese tech giant access to key infrastructure. [...] Critics have warned that Huawei's participation in Canada's 5G networks could give the company an inside look at how, when and where Canadians use internet-connected devices -- and that the Chinese government could force the company to hand over that personal information. China's National Intelligence Law says Chinese organizations and citizens must support, assist and co-operate with state intelligence work. [...] Huawei insists it is a fiercely independent company that does not engage in espionage for anyone, including Beijing. Huawei already supplies some Canadian telecommunications firms with 4G equipment. As Global News has reported, telecommunication companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Huawei equipment while the federal government's review of 5G was ongoing -- although that number has waned over the years. It's not clear whether Ottawa's decision to bar Huawei from 5G will require those companies to rip out existing Huawei equipment, or whether compensation would be provided.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Seeking Alpha: Microsoft shares remained near their breakeven point in late trading, Thursday, amid a report that the company has started censoring Bing searches in the U.S. for certain Chinese names considered to be politically sensitive. According to the Wall Street Journal, the cybersecurity research organization Citizen Lab found that Microsoft's Bing search engine had been adjusted to not automatically fill in suggestions for the names of some prominent Chinese dissidents, and national political leaders. The autofill feature is common on Bing and other search engines and makes suggestions for terms after a few letters have been typed into a search query field. Citizens Lab said it first noticed the issue last fall when names such as that of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the late human rights activist Liu Xiaobo failed to automatically fill in in either English or Chinese in Bing searches. The Journal reported that Microsoft had corrected the issue, which it attributed to a "technical error."

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"The developer of the open source email client FairEmail pulled all of his applications from Google Play and announced that he would stop development," reports gHacks. The announcement comes shortly after the developer received an email from Google stating that they believed the app was spyware. From the report: FairEmail was a popular email client for Google's Android operating system that was free to use. It was privacy-friendly, had no limitations in regards to email accounts that users could set up in the app, supported unified inbox, conversation threading, two-way synchronizing, support for OpenPGP, and a lot more. Marcel Bokhorst, the developer of the application, announced major changes to the project yesterday on XDA Developers. Earlier that week, Bokhorst received a policy violation email from Google stating that Google believed that the FairEmail application was spyware. The full statement has not been published, but Bokhorst believes that Google might have misinterpreted the use of favicons in the app. He resubmitted a new version of the application that had the use of favicons removed. The appeal he received as a response "resulted in a standard answer". While the content of the answer is unclear, it appears to have been a generic answer that Google Play Store developers have been frustrated with for a long time. Bokhorst decided to pull the application and all of his other applications from the Google Play Store. The apps won't be maintained and supported anymore according to the info. Other factors played a role in Bokhorst's decision, including the discrepancy between answering thousands of support questions per month and the application's revenue, and the inability to do something against unfair reviews in the Google Play Store. He considered keeping the applications on GitHub, but this would result in an 98% loss of audience. Google also recently forced Total Commander's developer to remove the ability to install APKs from the File Manager. If you're looking for an alternative email client, gHacks recommends the open-source app K-9 Mail.

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Vangelis, the Greek composer and musician whose synth-driven work brought huge drama to film soundtracks including Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, has died aged 79. The Guardian reports: Born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou in 1943, Vangelis won an Oscar for his 1981 Chariots of Fire soundtrack. Its uplifting piano motif became world-renowned, and reached No 1 in the US charts, as did the accompanying soundtrack album. [...] Chariots of Fire became inextricable from Vangelis's timeless theme, and the music became synonymous with slow-motion sporting montages. "My music does not try to evoke emotions like joy, love, or pain from the audience. It just goes with the image, because I work in the moment," he later explained. His score to Blade Runner is equally celebrated for its evocation of a sinister future version of Los Angeles, where robots and humans live awkwardly alongside one another, through the use of long, malevolent synth notes; saxophones and lush ambient passages enhance the film's romantic and poignant moments. "It has turned out to be a very prophetic film -- we're living in a kind of Blade Runner world now," he said in 2005. Later in the decade he scored the Palme d'Or-winning Costa-Gavras political drama Missing, starring Jack Lemmon; the Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins drama The Bounty; and the Mickey Rourke-starring Francesco. He worked again with the Blade Runner director, Ridley Scott, on 1992 film 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and elsewhere during the 1990s, soundtracked Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon and documentaries by Jacques Cousteau. [...] A fascination with outer space found voice in 2016's Rosetta, dedicated to the space probe of the same name, and Nasa appointed his 1993 piece Mythodea (which he claimed to have written in an hour) as the official music of the Mars Odyssey mission of 2001. His final album, 2021's Juno to Jupiter, was inspired by the Nasa probe Juno and featured recordings of its launch and the workings of the probe itself in outer space.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: WhatsApp is continuing its push into the business market with today's news it's launching the WhatsApp Cloud API to all businesses worldwide. Introduced into beta testing last November, the new developer tool is a cloud-based version of the WhatsApp Business API -- WhatsApp's first revenue-generating enterprise product -- but hosted on parent company Meta's infrastructure. The company had been building out its Business API platform over the past several years as one of the key ways the otherwise free messaging app would make money. Businesses pay WhatsApp on a per-message basis, with rates that vary based on the region and number of messages sent. As of late last year, tens of thousands of businesses were set up on the non-cloud-based version of the Business API including brands like Vodafone, Coppel, Sears Mexico, BMW, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Itau Brazil, iFood, Bank Mandiri and others. This on-premise version of the API is free to use. The cloud-based version, however, aims to attract a market of smaller businesses and reduces the integration time from weeks to only minutes, the company had said. It is also free. Businesses integrate the API with their back-end systems, where WhatsApp communication is usually just one part of their messaging and communication strategy. They may also want to direct their communications to SMS, other messaging apps, emails and more. Typically, businesses would work with a solutions provider like Zendeks or Twilio to help facilitate these integrations. Providers during the cloud API beta tests had included Zendesk in the U.S., Take in Brazil and MessageBird in the E.U. "The best business experiences meet people where they are," said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, during its "Conversations" live event today. "Already more than 1 billion users connect with a business account across our messaging services every week. They're reaching out for help, to find products and services, and to buy anything from big-ticket items to everyday goods. And today, I am excited to announce that we're opening WhatsApp to any business of any size around the world with WhatsApp Cloud API." Meta also claims the Cloud API "will help partners to eliminate costly server expenses and help them provide customers with quick access to new features as they arrive," adds TechCrunch.

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Malicious hackers, some believed to be state-backed, are actively exploiting two unrelated vulnerabilities -- both with severity ratings of 9.8 out of a possible 10 -- in hopes of infecting sensitive enterprise networks with backdoors, botnet software, and other forms of malware. ArsTechnica: The ongoing attacks target unpatched versions of multiple product lines from VMware and of BIG-IP software from F5, security researchers said. Both vulnerabilities give attackers the ability to remotely execute malicious code or commands that run with unfettered root system privileges. The largely uncoordinated exploits appear to be malicious, as opposed to benign scans that attempt to identify vulnerable servers and quantify their number.

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Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley kingmaker, is advising its portfolio founders to "plan for the worst" as startups across the globe scramble to navigate a sharp reversal after a 13-year bull run. From a report: The investment firm -- whose early backings include investments in Dropbox, Coinbase, Airbnb and Reddit -- this week suggested startups to cut their expenses and focus on extending their runways within the next 30 days. Those who don't have the runway to "reach default alive," the firm said in the letter, titled "Economic Downturn," YC is strongly suggesting that they consider raising money. "If your plan is to raise money in the next 6-12 months, you might be raising at the peak of the downturn. Remember that your chances of success are extremely low even if your company is doing well. We recommend you change your plan," it said. The note from YC, which backs hundreds of young startups a year, is a signal that the market teardown that has significantly slashed the value of a large number of tech companies including giants such as Shopify and Netflix in recent weeks is trickling down to the early-stage startups universe.

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Tether, the operator of the world's most used cryptocurrency, said it had reduced the amount of commercial paper in the reserve backing its $74 billion stablecoin, revealing information about its holdings while dollar-pegged assets face tougher scrutiny from regulators. From a report: Tether Holdings had assets totaling at least $82.4 billion as of March 31, along with $82.2 billion in liabilities relating to the digital tokens it issues, according to an assurance from Cayman Islands-based MHA Cayman. Tether is the issuer of USDT, a stablecoin which relies on a reserve of US dollar and dollar-equivalent assets to maintain a one-to-one peg with the currency. The quality of those reserves have previously been called into question for an over-reliance on assets with limited liquidity, with criticism levied at Tether over its lack of transparency on the matter. The crypto company was brought under an intense spotlight over the last week following the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin Terra, which briefly knocked USDT off its peg with the dollar during a period of mass market instability. In a statement on Thursday, Tether noted a 17% decrease in its commercial paper holdings to $20.1 billion compared to the previous quarter, and added that it had completed a further 20% reduction on that amount since April 1, which will be included in its upcoming report for the second quarter. Conversely, Tether said it had increased its investments in money market funds and US Treasury bills, rising more than 13% to a total of $39.2 billion. The average rating of its commercial paper and certificates of deposit has increased from A-2 to A-1, it added, while secured loans have decreased by $1 billion.

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Microsoft is relaxing business terms for its cloud computing service in an attempt to appease complaints from rivals and avoid a full antitrust probe in Brussels. Financial Times: The move follows concerns from rival cloud providers that Microsoft is using anti-competitive practices to draw customers to its Azure cloud computing platform and away from competitors. On Wednesday, Microsoft president Brad Smith said the tech giant was taking steps that were "very broad but not exhaustive" as he sought to address concerns from regulators and competitors. Smith said the changes being introduced were "grounded in feedback" he had received from multiple cloud providers across Europe. In a blog post, he wrote: "Some of the most compelling feedback for me personally came from a CEO who said that he felt that he 'was a victim of friendly fire in Microsoft's competition with Amazon.' It was hard to hear this -- but he was right." [...] Under the new terms, customers will not be forced to buy an additional licence if they have already purchased Microsoft's cloud services. These new rules only apply if the services are moved to a European cloud provider and not to US rivals such as AWS and Google's cloud services. Smith said that in its fight against AWS, which dominates the cloud market, Microsoft had overlooked the effects some of its business terms were having on its cloud provider clients.

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Apple executives previewed its upcoming mixed-reality headset to the company's board last week, indicating that development of the device has reached an advanced stage, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The company's board, made up of eight independent directors and Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, convenes at least four times a year. A version of the device was demonstrated to the directors during the latest gathering, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was private. In recent weeks, Apple has also ramped up development of rOS -- short for reality operating system -- the software that will run on the headset, according to other people familiar with the work. That progress, coupled with the board presentation, suggests that the product's debut could potentially come within the next several months. The headset, which combines elements of virtual and augmented reality, is Apple's next big bet.

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The Department of Justice announced today a policy shift in that it will no longer prosecute good-faith security research that would have violated the country's federal hacking law the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Motherboard: The move is significant in that the CFAA has often posed a threat to security researchers who may probe or hack systems in an effort to identify vulnerabilities so they can be fixed. The revision of the policy means that such research should not face charges. "Computer security research is a key driver of improved cybersecurity," Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a statement published with the announcement. "The department has never been interested in prosecuting good-faith computer security research as a crime, and today's announcement promotes cybersecurity by providing clarity for good-faith security researchers who root out vulnerabilities for the common good." The policy itself reads that "the Department's goals for CFAA enforcement are to promote privacy and cybersecurity by upholding the legal right of individuals, network owners, operators, and other persons to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information stored in their information systems."

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TikTok has been conducting tests so users can play games on its video-sharing app in Vietnam, part of plans for a major push into gaming, Reuters reported Thursday, citing four people familiar with the matter. From the report: Featuring games on its platform would boost advertising revenue as well as the amount of time users spend on the app -- one of the world's most popular with more than 1 billion monthly active users. TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, also plans to roll out gaming more widely in Southeast Asia, the people said. That move could come as early as the third quarter, said two of them. A TikTok representative said the company has tested bringing HTML5 games, a common form of minigame, to its app through tie-ups with third-party game developers and studios such as Zynga.

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Melvin Capital, the hedge fund run by Gabe Plotkin that struggled with heavy losses last year as it reeled from wrong-way bets on GameStop, is shutting down, according to a letter sent to investors on Wednesday that was reviewed by The New York Times. From the report: Mr. Plotkin wrote to his investors that he had decided that the "appropriate next step" was to liquidate the fund's assets and return cash to all investors. Mr. Plotkin, who founded Melvin in 2014, also wrote that he recognized he needed to "step away from managing external capital." Mr. Plotkin, a protege of the hedge fund billionaire and New York Mets owner Steven A. Cohen, had wagered that shares GameStop, AMC Entertainment and other mall mainstays from the 1990s would fall as their businesses shrank. Instead, the stocks skyrocketed when amateur investors, coordinating via Reddit, Twitter and other social media sites and determined to outsmart big Wall Street funds, kept buying up shares and propping up their price. That caused Melvin, which started 2021 with more than $12 billion, to lose 53 percent in January, forcing it to scramble to cover its so-called short positions. It was propped up by a $2.75 billion bailout from the hedge funds Point72, run by Mr. Cohen, and Citadel, as well as fresh capital from new investors.

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