Investigation finds hacker group linked to Russian intelligence responsible for attacks targeting politicians and defence sectorGermany has summoned a top Russian envoy over a series of cyber-attacks targeting members of the governing Social Democrats and its defence and technology sector.The 2023 attacks, in which several websites were knocked offline in apparent response to Berlin's decision to send tanks to Ukraine, have been blamed on a hacker group linked to Russian military intelligence. Continue reading...
Researchers and Silicon Valley are using tools powered by AI to read what had long been thought unreadableMore than 2,000 years after Plato died, the towering figure of classical antiquity and founder of the Academy, regarded by many as the first university in the west, can still make front-page news.Researchers this week claimed to have found the final resting place of the Greek philosopher, a patch in the garden of his Athens Academy, after scanning an ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the library of a Herculaneum villa that was buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79. Continue reading...
His youth support declining, the president needs to be where the people are'. His account regularly mocks Trump - but remains silent on GazaIn Joe Biden's TikTok debut, timed to the Super Bowl in February, the president answered rapid-fire questions like Chiefs or Niners?" (neither, he picked the Eagles because his wife's a Philly girl") and flashed the Dark Brandon meme. He got more than 10m views, so by pure metrics, the video was no flop. But to use one of TikTok's favorite disses, for many gen Z viewers it felt cringe" - even pandering. Worse still, the TikTok, captioned lol hey guys", made the rounds after Israel struck Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza strip. Biden's jokes infuriated users who flooded the post with the comment WHAT ABOUT RAFAH?"I don't want my president to be a TikTok influencer," read the headline of one USA Today editorial. One (actual) influencer told CNN the president's attempt at meme-ing felt performative". A warm welcome to the app, it was not. But Biden's team kept posting. Continue reading...
iPhone sales fell 10% compared with the same time period last year, but the company still beat Wall Street's expectationsApple released its earnings report on Thursday, revealing a drop in overall revenue fueled by slackening iPhone sales.Earnings exceeded market expectations, however, and Apple's shares rose in after-hours trading. Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, said in a statement released before the call that Apple is reporting revenue of $90.8bn for the March quarter, including an all-time revenue record in services". Continue reading...
Andy Jassy said employees in a union would find it harder to get things done quickly and would be better off' without oneA federal administrative law judge ruled that the the Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, violated labor law by making certain anti-union comments during media interviews two years ago.Jassy said in 2022 that unions make workplaces much slower" and more bureaucratic". Continue reading...
Creative director and writer Dmitry Svetlov explains how his religious upbringing shaped this game about a nun with a rebellious streakA young woman stands amid the labyrinthine architecture of a Russian nunnery. At first glance, you'd be forgiven for mistaking the scene for one from Tomb Raider. Then the woman moves - slowly, and without the athletic gait of action hero Lara Croft. Her head is bowed, shrouded in black cloth, and her shoulders are hunched in such a way that you have to angle the camera just so to catch a glimpse of her bright, nervous eyes.Indika, the titular protagonist of this dreamy yet eerily photorealist adventure game, cuts a submissive" figure according to its creative director and writer, Dmitry Svetlov - and that is precisely the point. The Moscow-born developer set out to make a game about the ways, in his view, people have come to hate themselves" while growing too used to living in fear." Continue reading...
by Hannah Verdier, Hollie Richardson and Ammar Kalia on (#6MGRK)
Original cast members Olivia Colman, Tamsin Greig and more return for a revamp of the show, 17 years later, in audio form. Plus: five of the best home improvement podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereGreen Wing: Resuscitated
In this week's newsletter: Delta can be used to play games on vintage consoles from the Game Boy to the Snes ... but for how long? Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereA new app has been at the top of the charts on Apple's store for a couple of weeks now: Delta. Its app store page is illustrated with shots of very Nintendo-esque on-screen controls, framing screenshots from Game Boy, Snes and Mega Drive games. The reviews are glowing: I've been downloading tons of games I played when I was a kid, it's so nostalgic!" This has saved me so much money." And yet neither Sega nor Nintendo has anything to do with the app, and until recently, software of this type was banned from Apple's platforms. How can this be?Delta is an emulator: that is, a piece of software that can successfully mimic a games console, and can run code designed for that games console (ie, games). Delta can run ROMs (digital copies, basically) of games for all the different iterations of the Game Boy, the Nintendo DS, the Nes, Snes and the Sega Mega Drive. This is not illegal. However, downloading those copies of games themselves is illegal. This is an imperfect analogy, but imagine Delta like a Kindle: it imitates a book, and you can read books on it, but only if you have the PDFs. Continue reading...
CBP One app offers far too few appointments, meaning asylum seekers must wait or pay human trafficking groups, report revealsA US government smartphone app that tightly limits asylum appointments at the US-Mexico border is stranding vulnerable migrants in Mexico and enriching organised crime groups, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).The report, which draws on interviews with more than 100 migrants, as well as officials and activists, documents how the CBP One app - which is all but mandatory for asylum seekers - offers 1,450 appointments a day, when arrivals at the border averaged 7,240 a day between May 2023 and January 2024. Continue reading...
Bethesda has just released a huge next gen update' for 2015's Fallout 4. Now that the TV series is a hit, is it worth returning to the wasteland?Last month, developer Bethesda released a hefty update for 2015's Fallout 4, probably timed to welcome new fans eager to learn more about the inspiration behind Amazon's hit TV adaptation. The base game and its expansions offered hundreds of hours of gameplay already, and this update expands Fallout 4 even further with new quests, experiential upgrades and in-game goodies to collect. Fallout 4 is nearly a decade old, but there's never been a better time to jump into its nuclear wasteland.The biggest addition is the most visible: new performance and quality modes boost the ageing game up to 4K resolution, running at 60 frames-per-second. The patch also provides widescreen support and Steam Deck compatibility, so you can play it on the go. These are welcome additions that sharpen the visuals, adding new detail to everything from rust to radscorpions, but it also highlights an uglier reality: Fallout 4 looks dated. This was arguably true even in 2015, but it's undeniably so now. Continue reading...
Symptoms include paranoia, anxiety and a compulsion to snoop on your neighbours. I'm not judging - I've had a brush with it myselfOne of my many guilty pleasures is lurking on my former home's Facebook group. The New York apartment complex, which houses the population of a small town, is classified as a naturally occurring retirement community, which means there are a lot of people in the group with time and energy to devote to petty feuds. The gossip is unrivalled and often a little unhinged. At one point there was a heated debate about birth control for pigeons that resulted in at least one person getting banned.Recently, a mania of sorts has swept the group. An influential neighbour rather belatedly learned about video doorbells. When he bought one it set off a spate of other people buying the devices - and obsessively monitoring them to check for package thieves. Every other Facebook post now seems to be a photo of some hapless stranger taken by a video doorbell with a panicked caption along the lines of stranger danger". Continue reading...
Revenue at Amazon Web Services increases to $25bn as retail giant releases earnings report surpassing Wall Street expectationsAmazon profits soared once again in the first quarter of 2024, the company announced on Tuesday - the latest in a series of robust earnings reports for the retail giant. The company attributed the boost to artificial intelligence and advertising sales.Amazon reported overall revenue of $143.3bn in the first three months of the year - up 13% from the same period in 2023 and surpassing Wall Street expectations of $142.65bn. The e-commerce giant reported an increase of more than 200% to $15bn, with net income more than tripling to $10.4bn from $3.17bn at the same time in 2023. Continue reading...
Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty and stepped down as CEO of the crypto trading company last yearChangpeng Zhao, the former head of the world's largest cryptocurrency trading company, was sentenced to four months in jail on Tuesday in a Seattle courtroom. Zhao pleaded guilty late last year to money-laundering violations and stepped down as CEO of Binance. The company itself was fined $4.3bn. Zhao was fined $50m last year.Judge Richard Jones told Zhao that there were a number of mitigating factors in his sentencing, including that he had cooperated with law enforcement. Jones also cited numerous letters the court had received that testified to Zhao's character, and stated that he did not believe Zhao was likely to reoffend. Continue reading...
The Chicago Tribune, Denver Post and others file suit saying the tech companies purloin millions' of articles without permissionA group of eight US newspapers is suing ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the technology companies have been purloining millions" of copyrighted news articles without permission or payment to train their artificial intelligence chatbots.The New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post and other papers filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in a New York federal court. Continue reading...
Children should be banned from most social media until 18 amid attempts to monetise' them, says Macron-commissioned studyChildren should not be allowed to use smartphones until they are 13 and should be banned from accessing conventional social media such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat until they are 18, according to a report by experts commissioned by Emmanuel Macron.The French president had asked scientists and experts to suggest screen use guidelines for children with a view to France taking unprecedented steps on limiting their exposure. It was unclear how the government might now proceed after the report's publication. Macron said in January: There might be bans, there might be restrictions." Continue reading...
With his interchangeable T-shirts and short neat hair, Facebook's founder famously never tried to be cool'. Is his makeover just a distraction from what's going on at Meta?A vibe shift is afoot in Silicon Valley. For aeons, the movers and shakers of the tech industry signalled that they were serious people working on serious things via their simple outfits. Crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried (now in jail) always looked as if he had rolled out of bed and forgotten to change out of his pyjamas. The late Steve Jobs famously adopted a uniform of black polo necks. Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, once boasted that he owned and wore multiple versions of the same T-shirt because it was efficient.I'm not a cool person and I've never really tried to be cool," Zuckerberg said in a 2014 Q&A. I really want to clear my life so that I have to make as few decisions as possible ... I feel like I'm not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous." That attitude seemed to extend to his hair, which has always been kept Lego-style short. Continue reading...
In 2021, the web felt dead because algorithms were driving people to act like robots. Now, the robots are posting like people Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereI know I'm real. And you, dear reader, know you're real. But do you ever suspect that everyone else on the internet is acting strange? That the spaces you used to frequent feel a bit ... dead? You aren't alone. Dead internet theory" first hit the web almost three years ago, propelled to the mainstream by an essay in the Atlantic by Kaitlyn Tiffany:Dead-internet theory suggests that the internet has been almost entirely taken over by artificial intelligence. Like lots of other online conspiracy theories, the audience for this one is growing because of discussion led by a mix of true believers, sarcastic trolls and idly curious lovers of chitchat ... But unlike lots of other online conspiracy theories, this one has a morsel of truth to it. Person or bot: Does it really matter?On Twitter itself, after Musk rescued the site from the frying pan and tossed it in a volcano, an ill-conceived monetisation scheme has made it profitable to buy a blue checkmark, attach it to a large language model, and set it running wild replying to viral content. The social network now pays verified users a proportion of the ad revenue received from their own comment threads, turning the most viral posts on the site into a low-stakes all-bot battle royale.Death permeates Google. The top of its search results is a valuable position - so valuable that businesses competing to be there have no spare money to actually write their articles. No problem: ChatGPT can churn something out in a second. Of course, that's only valuable if the resultant visitors are humans who you can make money from. Bad news, because ...... across the web, bots account for around half of all internet traffic, according to research from cybersecurity firm Imperva. Almost one-third of all traffic is what the company calls bad bots", doing anything from ad fraud to brute force hacking attacks. But even the good bots" are struggling to earn that categorisation: Google's crawler" was a welcome sight when it was updating your search entry, but less so when it was simply training an AI to repeat what you wrote without sending any users over.And then there's Crab Jesus. An unholy marriage of Facebook content farms, AI-generated imagery, and automated testing to work out what goes the most viral led to weeks of viral content featuring combinations of Jesus, crustaceans and female flight attendants. In one such image, Jesus was pictured eating shellfish wearing a jacket made of prawns. More confusing was the image of a sort of crab-centaur saviour walking along a beach arm-in-arm with what appears to be the entire crew from a long-haul flight. It was, at least, interestingly bizarre - a step up from the previous viral chum of the 122-year-old woman posing in front of her homemade birthday cake.The supreme court on Monday rejected an appeal from Elon Musk over a settlement with securities regulators that requires him to get approval in advance of some tweets that relate to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he leads.The justices did not comment in leaving in place lower-court rulings against Musk, who complained that the requirement amounts to prior restraint" on his speech in violation of the first amendment. The ruling comes a day after he made an unannounced visit to China aimed at sealing a deal to roll out Tesla's driver assistance features there. Continue reading...
Rachel Coster's TikTok show, which documents the extremely messy dwelling spaces of New York's young men, has clearly struck a nerveSnowboarding boots on the kitchen table. A steering wheel in the bedroom. And clothes absolutely everywhere, with no system to determine which, if any, are clean.These are just a few of the sights that indicate you're in a boy room. It's a bedroom with no form and little function, inhabited by an adult male who doesn't think much about either concept. The decor, if you can call it that, generally consists of arbitrary trinkets - a favorite old skateboard on the wall, a handful of childhood action figures on the windowsill. The floor is often difficult to see thanks to the density of piled-up sneakers or trash. The best you can say for the furniture is that there might be some; otherwise the resident sleeps on a bare mattress set directly on the floor, with a single pillow and a coverless duvet insert. Continue reading...
Justices reject appeal from CEO, who said requirement amounts to prior restraint' on his speech in violation of first amendmentThe supreme court on Monday rejected an appeal from Elon Musk over a settlement with securities regulators that requires him to get approval in advance of some tweets that relate to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he leads.The justices did not comment in leaving in place lower-court rulings against Musk, who complained that the requirement amounts to prior restraint" on his speech in violation of the first amendment. The ruling comes a day after he made an unannounced visit to China aimed at sealing a deal to roll out Tesla's driver assistance features there. Continue reading...
Under deal, ChatGPT users will receive summaries and quotes from Financial Times content and links to articlesThe Financial Times has struck a deal with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI that allows its content to be used in training artificial intelligence systems.The FT will receive an undisclosed payment as part of the deal, which is the latest to be agreed between OpenAI and news publishers. Continue reading...
Brussels to act later this week against Facebook and Instagram owner over policies on deceptive advertising and political content, reports sayThe EU is set to launch formal proceedings against Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, amid concerns it is not doing enough to counter Russian disinformation before the EU elections in June, according to reports.It is also expected to express concerns about the lack of effective monitoring of election content and a potentially inadequate mechanism for flagging illegal content. Continue reading...
Deal to use mapping data from web search giant Baidu is a big step towards launching driver assistance tech in world's biggest car marketElon Musk's visit to China has reportedly reaped immediate rewards with a deal for Tesla to use mapping data provided by web search company Baidu, a big step in introducing driver assistance technology in the world's largest car market.Musk made an unannounced visit to China over the weekend. The billionaire posted a picture of his meeting with the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, on X, the social network he took over in 2022. Continue reading...
Makers of phones, TVs and smart doorbells legally required to protect devices against access by cybercriminalsTech that comes with weak passwords such as admin" or 12345" will be banned in the UK under new laws dictating that all smart devices must meet minimum security standards.Measures to protect consumers from hacking and cyber-attacks come into effect on Monday, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said. Continue reading...
The effectiveness of Tinder and Hinge is hard to judge without access to their data. But now researchers are creating a free alternative with full transparencyA class-action lawsuit filed in a US federal court last Valentine's Day accuses Match Group - the owners of Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid dating apps, among others - of using a predatory business model" and of doing everything in its power to keep users hooked, in flagrant opposition to Hinge's claim that it is designed to be deleted".The lawsuit crystallised an ocean of dissatisfaction with the apps, and stimulated a new round of debate over their potential to harm mental health, but for scientists who study romantic relationships it sidestepped the central issue: do they work? Does using the apps increase your chances of finding your soulmate, or not? The answer is, nobody knows. Continue reading...
Founded in 2005 and lauded by Silicon Valley, the Nick Bostrom's centre for studying existential risk warned about AI but also gave rise to cultish ideas such as effective altruismTwo weeks ago it was quietly announced that the Future of Humanity Institute, the renowned multidisciplinary research centre in Oxford, no longer had a future. It shut down without warning on 16 April. Initially there was just a brief statement on its website stating it had closed and that its research may continue elsewhere within and outside the university.The institute, which was dedicated to studying existential risks to humanity, was founded in 2005 by the Swedish-born philosopher Nick Bostrom and quickly made a name for itself beyond academic circles - particularly in Silicon Valley, where a number of tech billionaires sang its praises and provided financial support. Continue reading...
In the early days it was seen as a place for genuine public discourse', but users have fled since Elon Musk took over. What went wrong?If anything is emblematic of the demise of Twitter, it is the rise and stall of the account of Oprah Winfrey.Oprah joined the platform in 2009, tweeting for the first time live from her wildly popular TV show: HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY."Sign up for Guardian Australia's free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Continue reading...
Tech giant fired number of people who protested against $1.2bn Project Nimbus, which supports Israeli military and governmentGoogle has been accused of throwing a tantrum" after sacking more than 50 workers in response to a protest over the company's military ties to the Israeli government - firings that have shone a light on a controversial project and long-simmering tensions between staff and management.The workers were sacked following protests at Google offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, organized by No Tech for Apartheid - an alliance of Google and Amazon workers who have been protesting against a $1.2bn contract with the Israeli government called Project Nimbus that they claim will make it easier for the Israeli government to surveil Palestinians and force them off their land". Continue reading...
The photographer documents daily life at Sunda Kelapa harbour in North Jakarta, Indonesia, including the schoolchildren who turn it into their playgroundAfter school, many of the children local to theSunda Kelapa harbour, in North Jakarta, Indonesia, go down to the water to swim and play. Jelly Febrian enjoys shootingthe daily activities there whenever the weather isgood. Always preparedfor the right moment, he carries his phone with him tocapture crews loadingtheir boats, people fishing, and boysand girls jumping from the boats,aspictured.In the maritime villages near here there aren't many fields, so the children mostly play around the pier. Every boat that docks here has a different owner and purpose, they load and unload basic necessities, and every week they sail to other Indonesian islands, such as Papua, Sumatra and Sulawesi. Continue reading...
Federal transportation agency finds Tesla's claims about feature don't match their findings and opens second investigationUS auto-safety regulators said on Friday that their investigation into Tesla's Autopilot had identified at least 13 fatal crashes in which the feature had been involved. The investigation also found the electric carmaker's claims did not match up with reality.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) disclosed on Friday that during its three-year Autopilot safety investigation, which it launched in August 2021, it identified at least 13 Tesla crashes involving one or more death, and many more involving serious injuries, in which foreseeable driver misuse of the system played an apparent role". Continue reading...
Ultimate firepower companion' is purportedly for wildlife control, ecological conservation, and snow and ice removalWhat has four legs and can breathe fire? Apparently the Thermonator, a controversial first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog".According to Throwflame, an Ohio-based company that manufactures flamethrowers, its latest invention features a 30ft firing range, light detection and range mapping, as well as laser sighting, aboard a battery-powered thing with legs that can jump around. Continue reading...
Tech company's shares rise as it plans to reward investors after strong quarterly resultsGoogle's parent company has hit a stock market value of $2tn (1.6tn) as investors reacted to a declaration of its first ever dividend alongside strong results on Thursday.Shares in Alphabet rose 10% in early Wall Street trading on Friday to give the tech group a stock market capitalisation - a measure of a corporation's value - of more than $2tn. Alphabet last hit that level in intraday trading in 2021, but Friday was the first time it has closed above that benchmark. Continue reading...
EV sales have plateaued across the world but the newfound glut of vehicles may just be temporaryElon Musk became the world's richest man by evangelising about electric cars - and delivering them by the million. Yet in recent months his company, Tesla, has struggled to maintain its momentum: sales have dropped this year, and so has its share price.Those struggles have become emblematic of a broader reckoning facing the electric vehicle (EV) industry. After the soaring demand and valuations of the coronavirus pandemic years, the pace of sales growth has slowed. The industry has entered a new phase, with questions over whether the switch from petrol and diesel to cleaner electric is facing a troublesome stall or a temporary speed bump. Continue reading...
It may have looked like something you'd see a bank teller use, but it withstood heavy battering. And it ran the coolest gamesI have told my wife that I want a Mini Amiga for Christmas. I know it's only April, but I do this with things I want in the hope that when it suddenly appears in the house next week, my wife will think she bought it for me. I have slipped the purchase of seven games machines, a stuffed tarantula and an air fryer under the radar this way. In an inconsistent world, I like the way this institution of marriage works.I read the reviews and was surprised at the appearance of two words I never associated with the original Amiga: cool, and love. It might seem strange to say the Amiga wasn't loved, because a lot of people bought and used one. But people use things every day that they don't love: electric shavers, patience, door handles, the train. Continue reading...
App's secret source' algorithm reportedly core to operations of parent company, which sources say make a sale highly unlikelyByteDance would prefer to shut down TikTok rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the US, four sources said.The algorithms TikTok relies on for its operations are deemed core to ByteDance's overall operations, which would make a sale of the app with algorithms highly unlikely, said the sources close to the parent. Continue reading...
World's largest public company reports $61.86bn revenue after investing billions into artificial intelligenceProfits at Microsoft beat Wall Street's expectations as its heavy bet on artificial intelligence continued to bear fruit in the latest quarter.The technology giant has invested billions of dollars into AI in a bid to turbocharge its growth, particularly of its cloud computing services. Its cloud computing revenue surged by more than 20%. Continue reading...
Shares surge after tech giant issues first ever dividend and posts revenue of $80.5bn, up 15% since last year, despite staff turmoilShares in Alphabet, the owner of Google and YouTube, surged after it issued its first ever dividend and revealed that profits had surged in the last quarter.Sundar Pichai, CEO, hailed the transition to artificial intelligence as a once-in-a-generation opportunity" as his company races to integrate the technology across its business. Continue reading...
Snap's share surged 21% in after-hours trading as app's users increased by 422 million, bringing in $1.2bn in revenueShares in the owner of Snapchat surged 21% during after-hours trading after the social media group beat Wall Street's expectations for quarterly revenue and user growth.Improvements to Snap's advertising system are delivering results faster than anticipated, the company said. Continue reading...
Strict rules have led to a wild west of rentals, with visitors choosing between huge hotel bills or word-of-mouth dealsUntil recently, visitors to New York basically had two options: hotel rooms or short-term rental platforms like Airbnb. But in September 2023, the city started enforcing a 2022 law that banned people from renting their homes for fewer than 30 days (unless the host stayed in the home with guests).Now the only legit option for people visiting the city is hotel rooms - and they're unaffordable for many. Most of the Times Square hotels don't have rooms for less than $300 a night. A search for Thursday 2 May found the Muse at $356, Hampton Inn at $323 and the Hard Rock at $459 (although, because of dynamic pricing, these are subject to regular change). They're getting more expensive still. Hotel rates have increased between the first quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2023 at twice the rate of inflation, said Jan Freitag, an analyst at the real-estate data firm CoStar Group. Continue reading...
by Hollie Richardson and Hannah Verdier on (#6MB41)
In this week's newsletter: TV journalist Scott Bryan looks back at the making of I Wanna Marry Harry" - and the dubious ethics behind the show. Plus: five of the best podcasts hosted by pop stars Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThe Competition
Tired of colonial artefacts being hoarded, Chidi Nwaubani and Ahmed Abokor use tech to redistribute them from museums in audacious digital heistsIn March last year, two men in tracksuits, wearing hockey masks and carrying matching laundry bags, headed for the British Museum. Just outside, patrolling police asked the two strange-looking men where they were going. We're going to the British Museum to loot back stolen goods," one of them said. Well, we'll see you in there then!" the policewoman answered.But no arrests were made, as nothing incriminating happened. What did take place was a digital heist" of one of the most famous objects in the British Museum, an artefact that is, according to Egyptologist Monica Hanna, a symbol of western cultural power" and of British imperialism": the Rosetta Stone. Continue reading...
Push to integrate AI into Meta products boosts financial results, but share prices tumble with weak sales forecastMeta's drive to integrate artificial intelligence into its products yielded strong financial results for the second quarter in a row. The company plans to spend even more on AI in the coming months, though, and its share price slumped more than 15% as the company reported earnings on Wednesday. A weak sales forecast and higher spending guidance rattled investors.Mark Zuckerberg said his main focus for the rest of 2024 and probably 2025 would be getting millions or billions of people to use Meta AI" rather than generating revenue from it. He cautioned that Meta products such as Instagram Reels had in the past not immediately generated revenue as they scaled before they became profitable pieces of Meta's ad business. Continue reading...
Service suspended in France and Spain amid safety and addiction concerns among children, in first use of new digital lawsA TikTok service offering rewards such as gift vouchers for watching videos has been suspended by the company shortly after the EU threatened to block it amid fears of addiction among children.On Monday the digital commissioner, Thierry Breton, said the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform had failed to prove" the feature on TikTok Lite, which launched recently in France and Spain, complied with obligations under sweeping new Digital Service Act (DSA) laws. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian