Texas's ban on TikTok at state institutions violates the First Amendment, claims a lawsuit filed Thursday by a group of academics and civil society researchers. CNN reports: The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, which works to study the impact of technology on society. The lawsuit specifically challenges Texas' TikTok ban in relation to public universities, saying it compromises academic freedom and impedes vital research. "The ban is not just ineffective but counterproductive. It's impeding researchers and scholars from studying the very things that Texas says it's concerned about -- like data-collection and disinformation," Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Institute, told CNN.

The lawsuit cites the example of a University of North Texas researcher who studies young people's use of social media, who has been forced to abandon research projects that rely on university computers and to remove material about TikTok from her courses. The Knight Institute lawsuit notes that Texas has not imposed a ban on other online platforms that collect similar user data, such as Meta and Google. It further argues that a ban doesn't "meaningfully" constrain China's ability to collect sensitive data about Americans, because this data is widely available from other data brokers.

"It's entirely legitimate for government officials to be concerned about social media platforms' data-collection practices, but Imposing broad bans on Americans' access to the platforms isn't a reasonable, effective, or constitutional response to those concerns," Jaffer told CNN. "Like it or not, TikTok is an immensely popular communications platform, and its policies and practices are influencing culture and politics around the world," said Dave Karpf, a Coalition for Independent Technology Research board member and associate professor in the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. "It's important that scholars and researchers be able to study the platform and illuminate the risks associated with it. Ironically, Texas's misguided ban is impeding our members from studying the very risks that Texas says it wants to address."

Twitter has started sending out the first payouts to creators on the platform who are part of the company's revenue sharing program. The largest payout reported thus far was to Billy Markus, the co-creator of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, which amounted to a whopping $37,050. TechCrunch reports: Users who subscribe to Twitter Blue and have earned more than 5 million tweet impressions each month for the last 3 months are eligible to join. According to owner Elon Musk, the first round of creator payouts will total $5 million, and will be cumulative from the month of February onward. These payouts will be delivered via Stripe. [...] Twitter's payouts are determined by tweet impressions. Babylon Bee writer Ashley St. Clair (710,000 followers) said that she earned $7,153, and according to her "napkin math," she had around 840 million impressions from February through July. That would make her rate about $0.0085 CPM (cost per mille), or $8.52 per million impressions. It's not clear whether or not individual CPMs change from user to user.

In mid-June, the European Parliament voted in favor of new legislation that would, among other things, require batteries in consumer devices like smartphones to be easily removable and replaceable. This week, the European Council officially agreed to the new regulation. Now, when the European Council and Parliament sign on the dotted line, the clock will start ticking for manufacturers to ensure their devices have replaceable batteries by 2027 -- that is, if they want to sell their devices in the EU. Android Authority reports: Now, the only step left is for the European Council and Parliament to sign on the dotted line. Once they do, the clock starts ticking: any manufacturer wanting to sell phones in the EU must ensure those phones have replaceable batteries by 2027. [...] The grace period from now until 2027 is to give OEMs enough time to redesign their products. This new law states, specifically, that users should be able to replace a battery in their phone without any special expertise or tools. Being that almost all smartphones today are designed like a "glass sandwich" that relies on extensive use of adhesives, the very fundamentals of how companies design phones will need to change. It's too early to say yet how this law will change iPhones, Galaxy S phones, Pixels, etc. However, they will change in response to this law, which is huge news.

Here are some other rules this new law covers related to phones with replaceable batteries:

- Collection of waste: OEMs will need to collect 63% of portable batteries that would normally go to a landfill by the end of 2027. By the end of 2030, that number should be at 73%.
- Recovery of waste: Lithium recovery from waste batteries will need to be at 50% by 2027. By the end of 2031, it should be at 80%, meaning 80% of the lithium inside a battery can be recovered and repurposed for new batteries.
- Recycling minimums: Industrial, SLI, and EV batteries will need to be made up of certain percentages of recycled content. Initially, this will be 16% for cobalt, 85% for lead, 6% for lithium, and 6% for nickel.
- Early recycling efficiency target: Nickel-cadmium batteries should have a recycling efficiency target of 80% by the end of 2025. All other batteries should be at a 50% efficiency target by 2025.

An Ohio plastic surgeon lost her medical license after the state medical board investigated her for livestreaming operations on TikTok and surgical complications reported by patients. From a report: The State Medical Board of Ohio voted at a hearing on Wednesday to permanently revoke Dr. Katharine Roxanne Grawe's medical license and to fine her $4,500 "based on her failure to meet standard of care." At the hearing, doctors on the board said that Dr. Grawe, known online as "Dr. Roxy," had previously been cautioned about protecting patient privacy on social media. They also spoke about her treatment of three unnamed patients who had reported complications from procedures, including one whose surgery Dr. Grawe had broadcast a part of on social media.

Dr. Jonathan B. Feibel, vice president of the medical board, recommended that Dr. Grawe's license be revoked because of the "life altering, reckless treatment" provided to those patients. "These outcomes were not normal complications like those that exist in the routine practice of medicine, but were rather caused by recklessness and disregard for the rules governing the practice of medicine in Ohio," he said.

Google is launching its AI-backed note-taking tool to "a small group of users in the US," the company said in a blog post. Formerly referred to as Project Tailwind at Google I/O earlier this year, the new app is now known as NotebookLM (the LM stands for Language Model). The Verge reports: The core of NotebookLM seems to actually start in Google Docs. ("We'll be adding additional formats soon," the blog post says.) Once you get access to the app, you'll be able to select a bunch of docs and then use NotebookLM to ask questions about them and even create new stuff with them. Google offers a few ideas for things you might do in NotebookLM, such as automatically summarizing a long document or turning a video outline into a script. Google's examples, even back at I/O, seemed primarily geared toward students: you might ask for a summary of your class notes for the week or for NotebookLM to tell you everything you've learned about the Peloponnesian War this semester.

These are the kinds of features you'll hear about in practically any AI product, but Google is hoping that by limiting the underlying model only to the information you've added yourself, it can both improve the model's responses and help mitigate its tendency to confidently lie about everything. (Google's not unique in this idea, either: Dropbox, Mem, Notion, and many others are pursuing similar hyper-specific AI tools of their own.) NotebookLM also has citations built in, which should make it easier to quickly fact-check the automatically generated responses. But Google does warn that NotebookLM might still hallucinate and that the model won't always get it right. It also, of course, depends on the information you provide -- if you wrote down the wrong dates for the Peloponnesian War in class, it can't help you.

Google says that the NotebookLM model only has access to the documents you choose to upload and that your data is neither available to others nor is it used to train new AI models. This is one of the trickiest parts of a product like this: Google is asking users to give their private information to an AI model in exchange for some convenient and useful features, and that tradeoff gets more complicated the more sensitive the information becomes.

Chipotle has developed a robot that can cut the 50-minute process of making guacamole in half. "The fast-casual chain developed the collaborative robot, or cobot, in partnership with Vebu Labs, a California-based robotics startup," reports CNBC. "Chipotle also announced Wednesday that its $50 million venture arm, Cultivate Next, is investing in Vebu. Financial terms weren't disclosed." From the report: To prepare avocados using the Autocado, Chipotle employees load up the device with a full case of the ripe fruit. The Autocado can hold up to 25 pounds at one time. Then, the machine vertically orients the avocados, slices them in half and removes their cores and skin. A bowl at the bottom collects the fruit, which employees can then hand mash and mix with the rest of the guacamole ingredients.

Chipotle still wants employees to have a hand in making their guacamole. "There's no plan to test automated guac made in our restaurant," Curt Garner, Chipotle's chief technology officer, told CNBC. Employees don't have to monitor the Autocado while it prepares the avocados and can even use the top of the device as more counter space to prepare other ingredients. The prototype is "very close" to design for manufacture, according to Garner. Chipotle expects to test the Autocado in restaurants later this year.

Eventually, Vebu plans to add machine learning capabilities and sensors to the Autocado that will help it evaluate the quality of avocados. Preparing avocados for guacamole routinely ranks as one of employees' least favorite tasks, Garner said. It's also one of the most dangerous duties in Chipotle kitchens, sometimes resulting in knife injuries. On top of saving time and labor costs, the robot could also cut food waste. If the chain deploys the Autocado across its footprint of more than 3,200 locations, it could help save millions of dollars on avocados annually, the company said. Despite those savings, guacamole will probably still cost customers extra. "It's worth it," Garner said.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, the parent company of Redbox, has partnered with TikTok to stream the platform's short-form videos on screens atop approximately 3,000 Redbox kiosks across the United States. Deadline reports: Third-party brands will also have their ads run alongside the TikTok videos via Chicken Soup's ad platform Crackle Connex. The agreement covers roughly 10% of the total network of Redbox kiosks, which are generally located outside of grocery, convenience and big box retail stores. The out-of-home ad deal is part of a growing effort across the industry to identify alternatives to linear TV and place brand messages in venues like gas stations, elevators and other locations. "TikTok is the go-to destination for short-form video consumption by over a billion people globally," said Philippe Guelton, chief revenue officer of Crackle Connex. "This new partnership provides advertisers a unique opportunity to reach new audiences and drive engagement. Our Redbox kiosks are in high-traffic locations where millions of people frequently shop, such as grocery stores or value retailers. We look forward to working with TikTok on expanding this partnership as our DOOH network expands."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: One recent study found that the U.S. was currently ranked somewhere around 32nd globally, behind countries like Russia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria [on broadband affordability] (you can find the full breakdown here): "The United States and Canada both have one of the highest internet costs," Alex Tofts, the Broadband Expert for Broadband Genie, said in a summary. "It's driven by a lack of competition and bigger distances to connect, with lower population density than other developed countries. However, both have average wages in the top fifteen in the world, compensating for the high cost of internet."

For decades, people (mostly the industry) tried to suggest the problem was because America was just so gosh darn big. But you'll notice that China and Russia, (ranked 25th and 17th, respectively) still perform better. Data routinely shows that affordability is the key obstacle to access, yet it's only been in the last few years that you've started to see this reality reflected in U.S. policymaking. [...] But again, the cause of this problem is very clear: monopolization and consolidation, protected by corruption. Few U.S. markets have the choice of more than one broadband provider at next-generation speeds. And that's because federal and state lawmakers are so comically corrupt, they routinely let AT&T, Comcast, Charter, or Verizon lobbyists endlessly merge, crush all competition, then literally write state or federal legislation and policy over several decades.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Decades of federal policy corruption and dysfunction have created an extremely strong, local, bipartisan grassroots movement for better broadband access. In countless towns and cities, municipalities, cooperatives, city-owned utilities, and creative new partnerships are building new, open access fiber networks with an eye on competition and cost. [...] Still, it's comical and grotesque that it's 2023 and a country that fancies itself a technology giant still can't meaningfully tackle equitable broadband access and affordability. And that telecom and media policy has basically become a boring afterthought in the era of "Big Tech." Ensuring equitable access to an essential utility is just too boring for most 2023 policy circles, much less the modern attention economy.

U.S. regulators will soon decide on a petition filed by General Motors' Cruise self-driving technology unit seeking permission to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles annually without human controls, a top auto safety official said on Wednesday. From a report: The petition, filed in February 2022, seeks government approval to deploy vehicles annually without steering wheels, mirrors, turn signals or windshield wipers. National Highway Traffic Safety acting Administrator Ann Carlson said Wednesday the agency "will issue a decision "in the coming weeks."

"The central issue is deciding whether vehicles that are driven not by humans but by computers need to comply with safety standards that are fundamentally about human drivers: requirements for mirrors, sun visors, windshield wipers and so forth," Carlson said. Cruise currently offers a limited service in San Francisco with a small fleet of Chevrolet Bolt vehicles fitted with driverless technology. Cruise wants to deploy its Origin vehicle, which has subway-like doors and no steering wheels.

Google Play announced a major shift in policy today, allowing developers to incorporate digital assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into their apps and games in the store. From a report: Companies that decide to offer the ability to buy, sell or earn tokenized assets will be required to make it clear in the Play Console that there are blockchain-based elements in the app. In a blog post shared with CoinDesk, Joseph Mills, Google Play's Group Product Manager, wrote that this will allow partners to reimagine "traditional games with user-owned content" and boost "user loyalty through unique NFT rewards."

Reddit, which has seen enormous success with its Avatar NFTs, was one of the partners working with Google on the new policy. Matt Williamson, Reddit's senior engineering manager, was quoted in the post as saying that the updated guidelines are "aimed at creating a level playing field that promotes user trust, and responsible usage of blockchain technology." The post by Mills stressed the importance of user trust, noting "while tokenized assets are meant to build more enriched, immersive experiences, as an added user protection, developers may not promote or glamorize any potential earning from playing or trading activities."

Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek is not currently looking to invest in crypto companies amid regulatory uncertainty in the sector, its Chief Investment Officer Rohit Sipahimalani said. From a report: "There's a lot of regulatory uncertainty in this environment. And I do think that be very difficult for us to make another investment and exchange in the middle of all this regulatory uncertainty," Sipahimalani told CNBC in a Tuesday interview. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged top U.S. crypto exchange Ripple for breaching local securities laws by selling its native token XRP without first registering it with the regulator.

Mark Zuckerberg has used Meta's might to push Threads to a fast start -- but that may only work up to a point. Mike Isaac, writing at The New York Times: A big tech company with billions of users introduces a new social network. Leveraging the popularity and scale of its existing products, the company intends to make the new social platform a success. In doing so, it also plans to squash a leading competitor's app. If this sounds like Instagram's new Threads app and its push against its rival Twitter, think again. The year was 2011 and Google had just rolled out a social network called Google+, which was aimed as its "Facebook killer." Google thrust the new site in front of many of its users who relied on its search and other products, expanding Google+ to more than 90 million users within the first year.

But by 2018, Google+ was relegated to the ash heap of history. Despite the internet search giant's enormous audience, its social network failed to catch on as people continued flocking to Facebook -- and later to Instagram and other social apps. In the history of Silicon Valley, big tech companies have often become even bigger tech companies by using their scale as a built-in advantage. But as Google+ shows, bigness alone is no guarantee of winning the fickle and faddish social media market.

This is the challenge that Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, now faces as he tries to dislodge Twitter and make Threads the prime app for real-time, public conversations. If tech history is any guide, size and scale are solid footholds -- but ultimately can only go so far. What comes next is much harder. Mr. Zuckerberg needs people to be able to find friends and influencers on Threads in the serendipitous and sometimes weird ways that Twitter managed to accomplish. He needs to make sure Threads isn't filled with spam and grifters. He needs people to be patient about app updates that are in the works.

"CNN reports on a wide-ranging class action lawsuit claiming Google scraped and misused data to train its AI systems," writes long-time Slashdot reader david.emery. "This goes to the heart of what can be done with information that is available over the internet." From the report: The complaint alleges that Google "has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans" and using this data to train its AI products, such as its chatbot Bard. The complaint also claims Google has taken "virtually the entirety of our digital footprint," including "creative and copywritten works" to build its AI products. The complaint points to a recent update to Google's privacy policy that explicitly states the company may use publicly accessible information to train its AI models and tools such as Bard.

In response to an earlier Verge report on the update, the company said its policy "has long been transparent that Google uses publicly available information from the open web to train language models for services like Google Translate. This latest update simply clarifies that newer services like Bard are also included." [...] The suit is seeking injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on commercial access to and commercial development of Google's generative AI tools like Bard. It is also seeking unspecified damages and payments as financial compensation to people whose data was allegedly misappropriated by Google. The firm says it has lined up eight plaintiffs, including a minor. "Google needs to understand that 'publicly available' has never meant free to use for any purpose," Tim Giordano, one of the attorneys at Clarkson bringing the suit against Google, told CNN in an interview. "Our personal information and our data is our property, and it's valuable, and nobody has the right to just take it and use it for any purpose."

The plaintiffs, the Clarkson Law Firm, previously filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI last month.

An artificial intelligence researcher who co-authored one of Google's most influential papers in the field is leaving the company to launch a startup. From a report: Llion Jones, who helped write the pioneering AI paper "Attention Is All You Need," confirmed to Bloomberg that he will depart Google Japan later this month. He said he plans to start a company after taking time off. "It was not an easy decision leaving Google, it's been a fantastic decade with them but it's time to try something different," Jones wrote in a message to Bloomberg. "It also feels like good timing to build something new given the momentum and progress in AI."

Mark Lucovsky, the former head of operating systems on Google's augmented reality team, has left the company. From a report: In a tweet on Monday, Lucovsky says "changes in AR leadership and Google's unstable commitment and vision" contributed to his decision. Lucovsky's departure adds to the numerous challenges Google's AR team has faced in recent months, including a round of layoffs and the resignation of Google's former head of VR, Clay Bavor. In June, a report from Insider indicated that Google has given up on its plans to build AR glasses, codenamed Project Iris. It's also discontinued the enterprise edition of Google Glass.

Intel has decided to stop making its Next Unit of Computing (NUC), but the company will encourage partners to keep making the small form-factor (SFF) PCs, the company said Tuesday. From a report: Intel's NUC championed compact PCs, while leaving larger chassis options to partners like Dell and HP. But Intel's decision seems like a natural one, given that Intel has refocused on its core businesses during a period in which it also invested heavily in its own manufacturing operations and foundry business.

An Intel spokesman confirmed an initial report by Serve The Home, saying that Intel will continue to support the existing NUCs it has already shipped into the market. "We have decided to stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) Business and pivot our strategy to enable our ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth," the Intel spokesman said in an email.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is testing its Med-PaLM 2 AI chat technology at the Mayo Clinic and other hospitals. It's based on the company's PaLM 2 large language model (LLM) that underpins Bard, Google's ChatGPT rival. Engadget reports: Unlike the base model, Med-PaLM-2 has been trained on questions and answer from medical licensing exams, along with a curated set of medical expert demonstrations. That gives it expertise in answering health-related questions, and it can also do labor-intensive tasks like summarizing documents and organizing research data, according to the report. During I/O, Google released (PDF) a paper detailing its work on Med-PaLM2. On the positive side, it demonstrated features like "alignment with medical consensus," reasoning ability, and even the ability to generate answers that were preferred by respondents over physician-generated responses. More negatively, it showed the same accuracy problems we've seen on other Chat AI models.

In an internal email seen by the WSJ, Google said it believes the updated model could "be of tremendous value in countries that have more limited access to doctors." Still, Google has admitted that the technology is still in its early stages. "I don't feel that this kind of technology is yet at a place where I would want it in my family's healthcare journey," said Google senior research director Greg Corrado. However, he added that the tech "takes the places in healthcare where AI can be beneficial and expands them by 10-fold."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: If you're printing something on actual paper, there's a good chance it's important, like a tax form or a job contract. But popular printing products and services won't promise not to read it. In fact, they won't even promise not to share it with outside marketing firms. The spread of digital file-sharing -- along with obnoxious business practices by printing manufacturers -- has pushed many U.S. households to give up at-home printers and rely on nearby printing services instead. At the same time, major printer manufacturers have adopted mobile apps and cloud-based storage, creating new opportunities to collect personal data from customers. Whether you're walking to the corner store or sending your files to the cloud, it's tough to figure out whether you're printing in private.

Ideally, printing services should avoid storing the content of your files, or at least delete daily. Print services should also communicate clearly upfront what information they're collecting and why. Some services, like the New York Public Library and PrintWithMe, do both. Others dodged our questions about what data they collect, how long they store it and whom they share it with. Some -- including Canon, FedEx and Staples -- declined to answer basic questions about their privacy practices. Wondering whether your printer app or printing service stores the content of your documents? Here's The Washington Post Help Desk's at-a-glance guide to printer privacy. Here's a summary of each company's privacy policy as it pertains to storing the content of your files:

HP: HP's privacy policy states that it does not store the content of files when using their printers or HP Smart app, providing reassurance that they do not invade privacy by snooping into print jobs.
Canon: Canon's privacy policy indicates that it can collect personal data, including files and content, which may be used for marketing purposes. However, Canon did not disclose whether they store, use, or share the content of printed documents.
FedEx: FedEx's privacy policy states that it collects user-uploaded information, including the contents of documents uploaded for printing services, leaving room for potential advertising or sharing with third parties. Although FedEx prioritizes customer privacy, it did not specify the extent of encryption or whether document content is included.
UPS: While the UPS Store, a subsidiary of UPS, can store the contents of printed documents, it does not use this information for marketing or advertising without user consent. The storage duration is undisclosed, but UPS honors customer requests for data deletion.
Staples: According to Staples' privacy policy, the company can store personal data such as copy/print materials, driver's license numbers, passport numbers, and mail contents. They may also use copy/print materials for advertising. The duration of data storage is not disclosed.
PrintWithMe: PrintWithMe, a company placing printers in shared spaces, temporarily stores printed documents with a third-party cloud provider for 24 hours. CEO Jonathan Treble assures that the data is never used for advertising.
Your local library: The New York Public Library, one of the largest library systems, does not store the contents of printed documents. Their computers only retain file names and delete them at the end of the day. However, privacy policies may vary among different libraries, so it is advisable to inquire beforehand.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: No one in the Android ecosystem can hold a candle to Apple's software support timeline for the iPhone, but there is one company that comes the closest: Fairphone. Following in the footsteps of the Fairphone 2, the Fairphone 3 is also getting an Android-industry-best seven years of OS support. Fairphone continues to run circles around giant tech companies that have a lot more resources than it does, and it's doing this even in the face of component vendors like Qualcomm dropping support for the phone's core components.

The company announced today that the Fairphone 3, which was released in 2019, has had its support extended to 2026, making for seven years of updates. The company also just released Android 13 for the Fairphone 3. Google's own 2019 phone, the Pixel 4, shut down support in October 2022. Fairphone strives to make sustainable smartphones, designing its products to be repairable and also offering replacement parts for sale online. Part of that sustainability mission is an absolutely herculean effort to keep the Android updates flowing, even when Qualcomm drops critical software support for the SoC. Fairphone says the Snapdragon 632 SoC in the Fairphone 3 was only supported up to Android 11, so continuing to support the Fairphone 3 meant doing the upgrades all by itself.

Last week, Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads, was launched to the public and achieved an impressive milestone by surpassing 30 million sign-ups in less than 24 hours. This made Threads the fastest app to reach the 1 million users mark, beating ChatGPT's record. In a recent update, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media app has now exceeded 100 million users, just days after its initial launch. The Verge reports: Instagram head Adam Mosseri also posted about it, likewise noting that it took just five days to get there. Users aren't just signing up: they're posting, too. As of Thursday, my colleague Alex Heath reported that there have already been more than 95 million posts and 190 million likes shared on the app.

That said, Threads is still in its infancy, and we'll have to wait and see if it captures the same cultural cachet that Twitter once did. Meta isn't specifically targeting trying to replace Twitter, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and the company isn't going to actively encourage politics and hard news on the platform, but it could end up being the place people go for a conversation-based social media platform. And while Meta "couldn't be more psyched" about how the launch week has gone, "we don't even know if this thing is retentive yet," Mosseri said.

Although the numbers aren't directly comparable, as of last November Twitter had around 260 million monetizable daily active users, per a tweet from owner Elon Musk at the time. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reports it's been telling advertisers that it has around 535 million monetizable monthly active users.