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Google says it plans to counter Japan's FTC over claims that it hobbles rivals in search; a source says Japan's FTC sent a cease-and-desist order to Google (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg : Google says it plans to counter Japan's FTC over claims that it hobbles rivals in search; a source says Japan's FTC s...

31 August 2024

How Brazil's experiment to fight fake news during the 2022 elections, giving a justice broad power to order social media content removal, led to the ban on X (New York Times)

New York Times:
How Brazil's experiment to fight fake news during the 2022 elections, giving a justice broad power to order social media content removal, led to the ban on X  —  To combat disinformation, Brazil gave one judge broad power to police the internet.  Now, after he blocked X, some are wondering whether that was a good idea.

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A look at the farcical situation at Bolt as it insists in a letter that Silverbear is on the hook to invest $200M; Source: Bolt lost $310M on $27M 2023 revenue (Eric Newcomer/Newcomer)

Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
A look at the farcical situation at Bolt as it insists in a letter that Silverbear is on the hook to invest $200M; Source: Bolt lost $310M on $27M 2023 revenue  —  I've got the company's financial performance, a letter to investors, and a statement from Ashesh Shah at The London Fund.

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In a lawsuit, OSOM's ex-chief privacy officer alleges that the CEO of the smartphone startup misused funds to pay for his racing hobby and lavish lifestyle (Mishaal Rahman/Android Authority)

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority:
In a lawsuit, OSOM's ex-chief privacy officer alleges that the CEO of the smartphone startup misused funds to pay for his racing hobby and lavish lifestyle  —  Lawsuit alleges that OSOM's founder misused company funds to pay for Lamborghinis and his racing hobby

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Bluesky reports a record spike in usage as many X users in Brazil move to Bluesky and Threads; Brazil is X's fifth-largest international market, with 20M+ users (New York Times)

New York Times:
Bluesky reports a record spike in usage as many X users in Brazil move to Bluesky and Threads; Brazil is X's fifth-largest international market, with 20M+ users  —  The platform went dark across Brazil on Saturday, sending online commentators to new digital town squares.

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Coatue founder Philippe Laffont has left the board of ByteDance following a report that Coatue was considering selling a portion of its ByteDance stake (The Information)

The Information:
Coatue founder Philippe Laffont has left the board of ByteDance following a report that Coatue was considering selling a portion of its ByteDance stake  —  Coatue Management founder Philippe Laffont has left the board of ByteDance, the parent of TikTok, according to the company's website.

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A profile of Alexandre de Moraes as even some supporters wonder if the Brazilian Supreme Court judge has become too powerful and gone too far by banning X (Nick Burns/Americas Quarterly)

Nick Burns / Americas Quarterly:
A profile of Alexandre de Moraes as even some supporters wonder if the Brazilian Supreme Court judge has become too powerful and gone too far by banning X  —  An escalating clash with Elon Musk and damaging revelations in the press are intensifying a long-running debate about whether Alexandre de Moraes is too powerful.

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X is right to stand up to Brazil's unjust "hostage laws," but Elon Musk's fight highlights his cynical free speech stance after he caved to Modi's demands (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
X is right to stand up to Brazil's unjust “hostage laws,” but Elon Musk's fight highlights his cynical free speech stance after he caved to Modi's demands  —  from the none-of-this-looks-good-for- anyone dept  —  In the battle between Elon Musk and Brazil, there are no heroes …

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A reporter tries fixing his reputation with AI chatbots, including by adding a "strategic text sequence" to data sources, and via an AI optimization startup (Kevin Roose/New York Times)

Kevin Roose / New York Times:
A reporter tries fixing his reputation with AI chatbots, including by adding a “strategic text sequence” to data sources, and via an AI optimization startup  —  When I set out to improve my tainted reputation with chatbots, I discovered a new world of A.I. manipulation.

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How the Israeli army's Unit 8200 became an incubator for cybersecurity startups, with its alumni starting Wiz, Palo Alto Networks, and other companies (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
How the Israeli army's Unit 8200 became an incubator for cybersecurity startups, with its alumni starting Wiz, Palo Alto Networks, and other companies  —  Unit 8200 has become an incubator for cybersecurity startups defending the world's biggest companies against hackers

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It's time for audio services like Spotify to deal with AI by using labels and banning or downweighting music made with AI tools that don't license training data (Ed Newton-Rex/Music Business Worldwide)

Ed Newton-Rex / Music Business Worldwide:
It's time for audio services like Spotify to deal with AI by using labels and banning or downweighting music made with AI tools that don't license training data  —  The following MBW Views op/ed comes from Ed Newton-Rex (pictured inset), CEO of the ethical generative AI non-profit, Fairly Trained.

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Social media companies' reliance on Section 230 protections is in jeopardy after a US court ruled TikTok's algorithmic curation is not protected by Section 230 (Matt Stoller/BIG)

Matt Stoller / BIG:
Social media companies' reliance on Section 230 protections is in jeopardy after a US court ruled TikTok's algorithmic curation is not protected by Section 230  —  Algorithms are no longer a Get out of Jail free card.  The Third Circuit ruled that TikTok must stand trial for manipulating children into harming themselves.

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Amazon hires the founders of industrial robot maker Covariant and ~25% of its staff, and signs a non-exclusive license to Covariant's robotic foundation models (Taylor Soper/GeekWire)

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Amazon hires the founders of industrial robot maker Covariant and ~25% of its staff, and signs a non-exclusive license to Covariant's robotic foundation models  —  Amazon is acquiring the founders from Covariant, a Bay Area startup that develops AI software for robotic picking machines.

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A Texas federal judge who held Tesla stock denies a motion to dismiss X's lawsuit accusing Media Matters of misrepresenting the amount of extremist content on X (Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica)

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
A Texas federal judge who held Tesla stock denies a motion to dismiss X's lawsuit accusing Media Matters of misrepresenting the amount of extremist content on X  —  Judge says Musk critic “targeted” advertisers in Texas, denies motion to dismiss.  —  A federal judge in Texas yesterday ruled …

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30 August 2024

An analysis of 6,599 keywords shows Google is offering AI Overviews for 17% of queries in the UK and US, but rarely for searches about current events (Dominic Ponsford/Press Gazette)

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:
An analysis of 6,599 keywords shows Google is offering AI Overviews for 17% of queries in the UK and US, but rarely for searches about current events  —  AI Overviews now being offered for 17% of queries in UK and US.  —  New research suggests Google AI Overviews are having a significant impact …

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Brazilian judge orders Apple and Google to prevent downloads of X's app in Brazil and says those using a VPN to access X would face a fine of ~$9,000 a day (New York Times)

New York Times:
Brazilian judge orders Apple and Google to prevent downloads of X's app in Brazil and says those using a VPN to access X would face a fine of ~$9,000 a day  —  The social network will go dark in the nation of 200 million, the result of an escalating fight between Elon Musk and a Brazilian judge over what can be said online.

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Mark Zuckerberg says Meta AI has over 185M weekly active users and over 400M MAUs and it's "growing quickly" even without a rollout "in UK, Brazil, or EU yet" (Kalley Huang/The Information)

Kalley Huang / The Information:
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta AI has over 185M weekly active users and over 400M MAUs and it's “growing quickly” even without a rollout “in UK, Brazil, or EU yet”  —  Meta Platforms' artificial intelligence assistant, Meta AI, has more than 185 million weekly active users …

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Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes orders X's suspension in Brazil after Elon Musk refused to name a legal representative in the country (Associated Press)

Associated Press:
Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes orders X's suspension in Brazil after Elon Musk refused to name a legal representative in the country  —  SAO PAULO (AP) — A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday ordered the suspension of Elon Musk's social media giant X in Brazil …

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Microsoft says a North Korean hacking group earlier in August exploited a now-patched zero-day in a Chromium core engine to steal crypto from organizations (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Microsoft says a North Korean hacking group earlier in August exploited a now-patched zero-day in a Chromium core engine to steal crypto from organizations  —  A North Korean hacking group earlier in August exploited a previously unknown bug in Chrome to target organizations with the goal …

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Telegram's 2023 financials: $342.5M revenue, 40% of which came from crypto-related line items, and $108M operating loss; it had holdings of ~$400M in Toncoin (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Telegram's 2023 financials: $342.5M revenue, 40% of which came from crypto-related line items, and $108M operating loss; it had holdings of ~$400M in Toncoin  —  Pavel Durov's company has been coining it in  —  Pavel Durov's arrest in France for allegedly failing to control criminal content on Telegram …

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Sources: OpenAI is in discussions about changing its corporate structure to become more investor-friendly, including removing a cap on profits for investors (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Sources: OpenAI is in discussions about changing its corporate structure to become more investor-friendly, including removing a cap on profits for investors  —  Discussions come as Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft consider participating in round that would value AI start-up at over $100bn

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LAION, a research org whose dataset was used to train Stable Diffusion and other models, releases a new dataset it claims has been "thoroughly cleaned" of CSAM (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
LAION, a research org whose dataset was used to train Stable Diffusion and other models, releases a new dataset it claims has been “thoroughly cleaned” of CSAM  —  LAION, the German research org that created the data used to train Stable Diffusion, among other generative AI models …

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The City of Columbus, OH, sues security researcher David Leroy Ross, aka Connor Goodwolf, accusing him of sharing data stolen by a ransomware gang with media (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
The City of Columbus, OH, sues security researcher David Leroy Ross, aka Connor Goodwolf, accusing him of sharing data stolen by a ransomware gang with media  —  The City of Columbus, Ohio, has filed a lawsuit against security researcher David Leroy Ross, aka Connor Goodwolf …

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Google says Search AI Overviews, Gemini image generation, and other AI products will not respond to election-related topics ahead of the US elections (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google says Search AI Overviews, Gemini image generation, and other AI products will not respond to election-related topics ahead of the US elections  —  Google is gearing up for the upcoming U.S. presidential election by rolling out safeguards for more of its generative AI products.

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Sources: the cryptology part of France's charges against Pavel Durov raises concerns at providers of messaging apps with E2EE, like Signal, Apple, and WhatsApp (New York Times)

New York Times:
Sources: the cryptology part of France's charges against Pavel Durov raises concerns at providers of messaging apps with E2EE, like Signal, Apple, and WhatsApp  —  The criminal charges against Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder, raised concerns in Silicon Valley about encryption and the app's approach to privacy and security.

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Investor note: 360 One values Indian startup VerSe, which operates popular news aggregator Dailyhunt, at $2.9B, down from $5B in April 2022 when it raised $805M (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Investor note: 360 One values Indian startup VerSe, which operates popular news aggregator Dailyhunt, at $2.9B, down from $5B in April 2022 when it raised $805M  —  Indian tech and media startup VerSe, which operates popular news aggregator Dailyhunt, is worth about 42% below its last private valuation …

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Once hesitant to openly comment about politics, German tech leaders publicly voice their opposition to the far-right AfD ahead of Sunday's state elections (J.D. Capelouto/Semafor)

J.D. Capelouto / Semafor:
Once hesitant to openly comment about politics, German tech leaders publicly voice their opposition to the far-right AfD ahead of Sunday's state elections  —  DRESDEN — The rise of populist candidates in Germany is spurring the country's tech scene into the political fray.

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