Threads Passes 30 Million Sign-Ups In Less Than 24 Hours (techcrunch.com) 110
Further reading: Twitter Threatens To Sue Meta Over Threads
Twitter Threatens To Sue Meta Over Threads (semafor.com) 179
"Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information," Spiro wrote in a letter obtained exclusively by Semafor. "Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta." Spiro accused Meta of hiring dozens of former Twitter employees who "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information."
Thanks To AI, San Francisco's Tech Companies Are Hiring Again (bloomberg.com) 15
"The stock market, especially Big Tech, is doing very well this year and that tends to be a leading indicator for hiring, especially in San Francisco," said Egan. He expects the artificial intelligence sector accounted for much of the job growth given the "huge chunk of buzz" the industry is generating. Companies like OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and Anthropic, which recently raised $450 million for a competing AI-powered chatbot, are both based in San Francisco. While the latest data indicates an AI-fueled hiring increase, it does not provide a breakdown of where the new jobs were located between San Francisco and nearby cities to the south in San Mateo County.
Nine British Banks Sign Up To New AI Tool for Tackling Scams (bloomberg.com) 7
The tool comes as UK banks prepare for new rules from the Payment Systems Regulator that will require them to compensate customers affected by APP scams from 2024. Historically banks haven't been liable for this type of fraud, although some signed a voluntary agreement to pay back victims. Ajay Bhalla, president of cyber and intelligence at Mastercard, described APP scams as a "huge problem" that banks have historically struggled to detect because victims' accounts aren't compromised. Clients voluntarily make the transfer and so pass many of the security checks used to identify other types of fraud, such as unauthorized payments, he said.
Meta Will Nuke Your Instagram Account If You Delete Threads Profile (techcrunch.com) 86
Instagram's Head of Content posted on Threads:
"To clarify, you can deactivate your Threads account, which hides your Threads profile and content, you can set your profile to private, and you can delete individual threads posts - all without deleting your Instagram account. Threads is powered by Instagram, so right now it's just one account, but we're looking into a way to delete your Threads account separately."
Toyota Claims Solid-State Battery Has 745 Mile Range, 10 Minute Charging Time (cleantechnica.com) 230
CleanTechnica readers, being the well-informed people they are, are aware that the leap from the laboratory to commercial production is often long and difficult. If Toyota has made progress in that area, that is indeed something to be celebrated. But once again, we have to emphasize, that is a big "if." Nevertheless, our readers will want to know some specifics, things like energy density, charge and discharge rates, the number of charging cycles possible, how the batteries perform in cold temperatures, what they are made of -- things like that. They have been trained over many years to be skeptical of announcements such as this one. After all, companies like QuantumScape have been making similar promises for almost a decade, and we are all still waiting for that company to get its batteries into production.
David Bailey, a professor of business economics at the University of Birmingham, told The Guardian that if Toyota's claims are accurate, it could be a landmark moment for the future of electric cars. "Often there are breakthroughs at the prototype stage but then scaling it up is difficult. If it is a genuine breakthrough it could be a game changer -- very much the holy grail of battery vehicles." Congratulations to Bailey for using two of the three most trite phrases about new technology in one sentence. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that even with this solid-state battery news, Toyota still has modest goals for its battery-electric cars. It plans to manufacture 3 million of them a year by 2030 -- half with solid-state batteries.
UK Universities Draw Up Guiding Principles on Generative AI (theguardian.com) 6
Staff will also have to be trained so they are equipped to help students, many of whom are already using ChatGPT in their assignments. New ways of assessing students are likely to emerge to reduce the risk of cheating. All 24 Russell Group universities have reviewed their academic conduct policies and guidance to reflect the emergence of generative AI. The new guidance says: "These policies make it clear to students and staff where the use of generative AI is inappropriate, and are intended to support them in making informed decisions and to empower them to use these tools appropriately and acknowledge their use where necessary."
Macron Accused of Authoritarianism After Threat To Cut Off Social Media During Riots (theguardian.com) 76
"We need to think about how young people use social networks, in the family, at school, the interdictions there should be ... and when things get out of hand we may have to regulate them or cut them off," Macron told a meeting of more than 250 mayors, whose municipalities were hit by the violence, on Tuesday. "Above all, we shouldn't do this in the heat of the moment and I'm pleased we didn't have to. But I think it's a real debate that we need to have in the cold light of day," Macron told the mayors in a video obtained by BFM television. Critics said considering such measures would put France alongside authoritarian countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Speaking after a ministerial meeting on Wednesday, government spokesperson Olivier Veran said a cross-party committee to look at a modification of a law on cybersecurity currently going through parliament would be set up. Veran said the government had made a "firm request" to social media platforms to take down materials encouraging violence as quickly as possible and remove the anonymity of those possibly breaking the law. A young person should know he cannot sit behind his screen and write, organize or do whatever he wants. Anonymity in terms of offenses doesn't exist. You have to understand this can have consequences and the consequences can lead to punishment," Veran said. Asked if it meant suspending social media, the Veran added: "It could be something like suspending a function, such as geolocalization."
Meta Launches New Social Media App 'Threads' To Rival Twitter (theverge.com) 45
The web interface is fairly basic right now for viewing threads, with options to like, comment, repost, and share -- all prompting you to download the mobile app for the time being. If you're in an unsupported country, like markets in the EU, then you'll only be able to view threads right now. Much like Twitter, you can view an account's main posts in one section and the full reply history in another.
Fediverse integration won't be available immediately at the launch of Threads, but it's clear Instagram is looking to add this soon. Profiles include an Instagram username and link, with a threads.net label that includes the following description: "Soon, you'll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, like Mastodon. They can also find people on Threads using full usernames, like @zuck@threads.net."
Judge Rules White House Pressured Social Networks To 'Suppress Free Speech' (arstechnica.com) 246
The agencies and officials are prohibited from communicating "with social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms," Doughty ruled. The injunction prohibits "specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech." Government agencies and officials are further barred from urging, encouraging, or pressuring social media companies "to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech." The ruling also said the government may not coordinate with third-party groups, including the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, and the Stanford Internet Observatory, to pressure social media companies.
Doughty provided several exceptions that allow the government to communicate with social media companies about criminal activity and other speech that the First Amendment doesn't protect. The Biden administration may continue to inform social networks about posts involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies, national security threats, extortion, criminal efforts to suppress voting, illegal campaign contributions, cyberattacks against election infrastructure, foreign attempts to influence elections, threats to public safety and security, and posts intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures. The US can also exercise "permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern," communicate with social networks "in an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity," and "communicat[e] with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."
Grammys CEO: Music Containing AI-Created Elements Eligible 14
If an AI or voice modeling program performs the lead vocal on a song, the track would be eligible in a songwriting category, for example, but not a performance category, because what is performing is not human creation, he explains. Conversely, if a song was sung by an actual human in the studio, and they did all the performing, but AI wrote the lyric or the track, the song would not be eligible in a composition or a songwriting category... As long as the human is contributing in a more than de minimis amount, which to us means a meaningful way, they are and will always be considered for a nomination or a win," he continued. "We don't want to see technology replace human creativity. We want to make sure technology is enhancing, embellishing, or additive to human creativity. So that's why we took this particular stand in this award cycle."
Lamborghini Takes Last Combustion Engine Model Order (reuters.com) 80
Zuckerberg Under Fire in China After Report of Quest Sale Talks (bloomberg.com) 49
Zuckerberg "dropped a rock on his own foot," the Beijing Daily said in a WeChat post that garnered more than 100,000 views. "You smashed the wok, and now you want to enjoy a Chinese meal?" Zuckerberg's relationship with China has run hot and cold. The Meta CEO was famously pictured jogging through a smog-filled Beijing and greeting then internet-czar Lu Wei at the height of a campaign to court officials in the world's largest internet arena.
Nintendo's CEO Says its Online Accounts Key To Its Next Console Transition (theverge.com) 33
In response to an investor asking if the company has any specific measures in place to make the leap to a Switch successor, Furukawa pointed to the difficulty of switching customers from one console to the next, saying in the past, the company had to rebuild a relationship with its customers each time. Furukawa noted that the more than 290 million Nintendo Accounts are cross-platform and can be used with console games as well as mobile apps. To close out his answer, he said that while moving onto the company's yet-unannounced next-generation console, Nintendo would do its best to make the transition smooth for customers.
India Aims To Make Domestic Microchips By End of 2024 (ft.com) 31
"This is the fastest for any country to set up a new industry," Vaishnaw said in an interview with the Financial Times. "I'm not just saying a new company -- this is a new industry for the country." He added: "Eighteen months is when we have targeted for [the first] production to come out of this factory -- that is, December of '24." The minister's remarks set a demanding timeline for Modi's government as it strives to build up India's capacity in producing smartphones, batteries, electric vehicles and other electronics. The country's tech manufacturing sector lags behind those of east Asia's export-led economies, notably China, which began earlier and offered more subsidies to industry.
Firefox 115 Released (mozilla.org) 61
* Hardware video decoding is now enabled for Intel GPUs on Linux..
* Migrating from another browser? Now you can bring over payment methods you've saved in Chrome-based browsers to Firefox.
* The Tab Manager dropdown now features close buttons, so you can close tabs more quickly.
* The Firefox for Android address bar's new search button allows you to easily switch between search engines and search your bookmarks and browsing history.
* We've refreshed and streamlined the user interface for importing data in from other browsers.
* Users without platform support for H264 video decoding can now fallback to Cisco's OpenH264 plugin for playback.
But the most important feature is that this release is the new ESR. Why this is important? y'all ask, well:
* Many a "downstream" project depends on Firefox ESR, for example the famous email client Thunderbird, or KaiOS (a mobile OS very popular in India, SE Asia, Africa and LatAm), so, for better or worse, whatever made it to (or is lacking from) this version of the browser, those projects have to use for the next year.
* Firefox ESR is the default browser of many distros, like Debian and Kali Linux, so, whatever made it to this version will be there for next year, ditto to whatever is lacking.
* If you are on old -- unsupported OSs, like Windows 7, 8-8.1 or MacOS 10.14 (Mojave, the last MacOS with support for 32 Bit Apps), 10.13 or 10.12 you will automatically be migrated to Firefox ESR, so this will be your browser until Sept. 2024.
AMAs Are the Latest Casualty In Reddit's API War (arstechnica.com) 179
The latest casualty in the Reddit battle has a profound impact on one of the most famous forms of Reddit content and signals a potential trend in Reddit content changing for the worse. On Saturday, the r/IAmA moderators announced that they will no longer perform these duties:
- Active solicitation of celebrities or high-profile figures to do AMAs.
- Email and modmail coordination with celebrities and high-profile figures and their PR teams to facilitate, educate, and operate AMAs. (We will still be available to answer questions about posting, though response time may vary).
- Running and maintaining a website for scheduling of AMAs with pre-verification and proof, as well as social media promotion.
- Maintaining a current up-to-date sidebar calendar of scheduled AMAs, with schedule reminders for users.
- Sister subreddits with categorized cross-posts for easy following.
- Moderator confidential verification for AMAs.
- Running various bots, including automatic flairing of live posts
The subreddit, which has 22.5 million subscribers as of this writing, will still exist, but its moderators contend that most of what makes it special will be undermined. "Moving forward, we'll be allowing most AMA topics, leaving proof and requests for verification up to the community, and limiting ourselves to removing rule-breaking material alone. This doesn't mean we're allowing fake AMAs explicitly, but it does mean you'll need to pay more attention," the moderators said. The mods will also continue to do bare minimum tasks like keeping spam out and rule enforcement, they said. Like many other Reddit moderators Ars has spoken to, some will step away from their duties, and they'll reportedly be replaced "as needed."
Kentucky Mandates Tesla's Charging Plug For State-Backed Charging Stations (reuters.com) 75
"Each port must be equipped with an SAE CCS 1 connector. Each port shall also be capable of connecting to and charging vehicles equipped with charging ports compliant with the North American Charging Standard (NACS)," the documents say. The U.S. Department of Transportation earlier this year said that charging companies must provide CCS plugs to be eligible for federal funding to deploy 500,000 EV chargers by 2030. It added that the rule allows charging stations to have other connectors, as long as they support CCS, a national standard.
Stop Using Google Analytics, Warns Sweden's Privacy Watchdog (techcrunch.com) 18
The regulator found that so-called supplementary measures applied by Google to European users' data sent to the U.S. for processing were insufficient to raise the level of protection to the required legal standard. Including Google's use of IP address truncation (an anonymization measure) as, in the Tele2 case, it said the company did not clarify whether the truncation was performed before or after the transfer of the data to the U.S. so had failed to demonstrate there is "no potential access to the entire IP address before the last octet is truncated." The watchdog also found breaches of the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules on transfers to third countries in the case of two other companies' use of Google Analytics, Coop and Dagens Industries, but did not issue fines in those cases.