Why is the US going after TikTok?

The BBC's Suranjana Tewari considers what the future holds for the hugely popular social media app.

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FCC fines T-Mobile $80M, AT&T $57M, and Verizon $47M for allegedly illegally sharing customers' location data to aggregators "without customer consent" (Lauren Feiner/The Verge)

Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
FCC fines T-Mobile $80M, AT&T $57M, and Verizon $47M for allegedly illegally sharing customers' location data to aggregators “without customer consent”  —  The FCC says it found the carriers “sold access to its customers' location information to 'aggregators …

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OpenAI rolls out an optional feature called Memory, allowing ChatGPT Plus users to tell ChatGPT things they want the chatbot to remember across chats (Matthias Bastian/The Decoder)

Matthias Bastian / The Decoder:
OpenAI rolls out an optional feature called Memory, allowing ChatGPT Plus users to tell ChatGPT things they want the chatbot to remember across chats  —  Online journalist Matthias is the co-founder and publisher of THE DECODER.  He believes that artificial intelligence will fundamentally change …

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'Invisible in our own country': Being Muslim in Modi's India

Since Narendra Modi's BJP took power in 2014, India's 200 million Muslims have faced turmoil.

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AI is making Meta's apps basically unusable, as the company adds Meta AI everywhere and viral user-generated AI images proliferate on Facebook and Instagram (Scott Nover/Fast Company)

Scott Nover / Fast Company:
AI is making Meta's apps basically unusable, as the company adds Meta AI everywhere and viral user-generated AI images proliferate on Facebook and Instagram  —  The intended and unintended generative AI flooding Facebook and Instagram.  —  Meta has flooded its social media platforms with artificial intelligence.

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World Central Kitchen to resume food aid in Gaza

The aid organisation had stopped distributing food in Gaza after an Israeli strike killed seven workers.

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Lawmakers, TikTok staff, and others detail how TikTok lost the war in Washington, including due to CEO Shou Zi Chew's failure to build support on Capitol Hill (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
Lawmakers, TikTok staff, and others detail how TikTok lost the war in Washington, including due to CEO Shou Zi Chew's failure to build support on Capitol Hill  —  Combination of coordinated efforts by its critics and missteps by the company led to the law forcing a sale or ban of the popular app

from Techmeme https://ift.tt/vgHBO0Q

Why is the US going after TikTok?

The BBC's Suranjana Tewari considers what the future holds for the hugely popular social media app.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/JyngBtK

Mastodon forms a new US non-profit, to receive tax-deductible US donations and in-kind support, with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and others on its board (Eugen Rochko/Mastodon Blog)

Eugen Rochko / Mastodon Blog:
Mastodon forms a new US non-profit, to receive tax-deductible US donations and in-kind support, with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and others on its board  —  As part of our commitment to supporting the growth and operational capabilities of Mastodon, we have established a 501(c)(3) …

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Major Gaza protests at US universities

Protests have erupted across more than two dozen campuses, including New York, Texas and California.

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Discord bans Spy Pet-affiliated accounts, which were scraping 12K+ Discord servers to archive and sell user data, and says it is considering legal action (Joseph Cox/404 Media)

Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
Discord bans Spy Pet-affiliated accounts, which were scraping 12K+ Discord servers to archive and sell user data, and says it is considering legal action  —  After 404 Media reported on the service last week, Discord has now shut down a mass of scraping accounts and says it is considering legal action.

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Nagomi Security, which has developed a proactive security and threat exposure management platform, emerges from stealth with a $23M Series A and a $7M seed (Meir Orbach/CTech)

Meir Orbach / CTech:
Nagomi Security, which has developed a proactive security and threat exposure management platform, emerges from stealth with a $23M Series A and a $7M seed  —  The Israeli startup's platform helps security teams prioritize the most urgent risks based on an organization's unique threat profile …

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Stripe will let customers accept crypto payments, starting with USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, the first time it has taken crypto payments since 2018 (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Stripe will let customers accept crypto payments, starting with USDC on Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, the first time it has taken crypto payments since 2018  —  Stripe, the fintech giant, continues to inch its way back into the cryptocurrency market.  On Thursday the company announced …

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Sources: ByteDance prefers a TikTok shutdown in the US rather than a sale if legal options fail, deeming TikTok's algorithm as core to overall ByteDance systems (Reuters)

Reuters:
Sources: ByteDance prefers a TikTok shutdown in the US rather than a sale if legal options fail, deeming TikTok's algorithm as core to overall ByteDance systems  —  TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer shutting down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts …

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Worldcoin subsidiary World Assets plans to sell WLD tokens to meet the demand for orb-verified World IDs and support Worldcoin network growth; WLD drops 7%+ (Brian McGleenon/The Block)

Brian McGleenon / The Block:
Worldcoin subsidiary World Assets plans to sell WLD tokens to meet the demand for orb-verified World IDs and support Worldcoin network growth; WLD drops 7%+  —  - Worldcoin says its subsidiary World Assets may routinely sell WLD tokens to meet increasing demand for orb-verified World IDs and support network growth.

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Spain's PM halts public duties as wife faces inquiry

Pedro Sánchez says he will "stop and reflect" on whether to remain in the job.

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WhatsApp rolls out passkey support on iOS, removing the need for users to deal with SMS one-time passcodes, six months after introducing the feature on Android (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp rolls out passkey support on iOS, removing the need for users to deal with SMS one-time passcodes, six months after introducing the feature on Android  —  WhatsApp is introducing support for passkey verification on iOS, removing the need for users to deal with SMS one-time passcodes.

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Apple debuts OpenELM, a family of language models with 270M, 450M, 1.1B, and 3B parameters, designed to run on-device, pre-trained and fine-tuned on public data (Shubham Sharma/VentureBeat)

Shubham Sharma / VentureBeat:
Apple debuts OpenELM, a family of language models with 270M, 450M, 1.1B, and 3B parameters, designed to run on-device, pre-trained and fine-tuned on public data  —  Just as Google, Samsung and Microsoft continue to push their efforts with generative AI on PCs and mobile devices …

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Girl, 7, among five dead on Channel migrant boat

French authorities say the victims had boarded an overloaded boat which was attempting to reach the UK.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/FmjWGtd

Taylor Swift's new album smashed streaming records; Spotify says it had 300M+ streams on launch day and became 2024's most-streamed album within just 12 hours (Chris Morris/Fortune)

Chris Morris / Fortune:
Taylor Swift's new album smashed streaming records; Spotify says it had 300M+ streams on launch day and became 2024's most-streamed album within just 12 hours  —  Never bet against Swifties.  —  Taylor Swift's loyal fan base not only sent the singer's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department …

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Train cars catch fire while moving through Ontario

Local officials reported no injuries after five train cars were spotted ablaze heading towards a downtown area.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/uLWYbUe

Meta opens up its VR OS called Horizon OS to third parties and says Asus and Lenovo are both planning Meta Horizon OS-compatible headsets (Scott Stein/CNET)

Scott Stein / CNET:
Meta opens up its VR OS called Horizon OS to third parties and says Asus and Lenovo are both planning Meta Horizon OS-compatible headsets  —  Meta's Horizon OS, as it's now called, will bring Quest-alikes: Asus, Lenovo, and even an Xbox variant are coming.  Here's what to expect.

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Damage seen at Iran air base after Israeli attack

Satellite imagery analysis by BBC Verify reveals damage from Friday's Israeli strike on Iran

from BBC News https://ift.tt/k3c27xv

A look at Home Assistant, an open-source smart home platform with an estimated 1M users, as its creators announce a foundation to help it reach the mainstream (Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge)

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
A look at Home Assistant, an open-source smart home platform with an estimated 1M users, as its creators announce a foundation to help it reach the mainstream  —  How Home Assistant plans to transition from an enthusiast platform to a mainstream consumer product.

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Seven killed as car hits crowd at Sri Lanka race

The car veered off track at the Fox Hill Supercross event, killing race officials and spectators.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/38kbsLT

Netanyahu to fight any sanctions on Israeli army

Reports say the US is planning to cut military aid to one Israeli unit over alleged rights violations.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/ByJh0TI

US Speaker may pay political price for Ukraine deal

Republican Mike Johnson can savour a hard-fought victory, but hard-line colleagues are plotting to oust him.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/LrowSJn

Open-source GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin is not coming to App Store as Apple doesn't allow JIT recompilers on iOS, possibly due to security considerations (oatmealdome.me)

oatmealdome.me:
Open-source GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin is not coming to App Store as Apple doesn't allow JIT recompilers on iOS, possibly due to security considerations  —  Two weeks ago, Apple modified their App Store guidelines to allow retro game emulators in the App Store.

from Techmeme https://ift.tt/W4knX31

Watch US House pass critical Ukraine aid package

The long-awaited vote comes as Kyiv faces a weapons shortage in its fight against Russia.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/aD7muhY

The House passes a TikTok divestiture bill with a longer sale deadline as part of a package of Ukraine/Israel aid bills, pressuring the Senate to vote on TikTok (Lauren Feiner/The Verge)

Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
The House passes a TikTok divestiture bill with a longer sale deadline as part of a package of Ukraine/Israel aid bills, pressuring the Senate to vote on TikTok  —  The House once again passed a bill that could ban TikTok from the US unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance divests it …

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Nato pledges more advanced air defences to Ukraine

Kyiv has long been pressing for hi-tech Patriot systems to defend against deadly Russian attacks.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/1hmOL5X

Midas, which lets users in Turkey invest in US and Turkish equities, raised a $45M Series A, after a $11M seed in 2022, and plans crypto trading and more (Mike Butcher/TechCrunch)

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:
Midas, which lets users in Turkey invest in US and Turkish equities, raised a $45M Series A, after a $11M seed in 2022, and plans crypto trading and more  —  Midas, a fintech startup that allows people in Turkey to invest in U.S. and Turkish equities, says it has raised $45 million in a funding round led by Portage Ventures of Canada.

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Attack sends message to Iran but Israelis divided over response

Some in Israel had been calling for a stronger move than this apparently limited strike, writes James Landale.

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Sources: EU may accept Apple's proposal to open its NFC payments tech to rivals, and may close its antitrust probe in May, letting Apple avoid hefty fines (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Sources: EU may accept Apple's proposal to open its NFC payments tech to rivals, and may close its antitrust probe in May, letting Apple avoid hefty fines  —  Apple's (AAPL.O) offer to open its tap-and-go mobile payments system to rivals is set to be approved by EU antitrust regulators as soon …

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Chinese cities sinking under their own weight

Extracting ground water for growing urban populations causes half of China's big cities to sink.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/g0GNEHy

DARPA reveals that an AI-controlled X-62A jet successfully faced a human pilot in an F-16 during an in-air dogfight test carried out in 2023 (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Emma Roth / The Verge:
DARPA reveals that an AI-controlled X-62A jet successfully faced a human pilot in an F-16 during an in-air dogfight test carried out in 2023  —  The US Air Force is putting AI in the pilot's seat.  In an update on Thursday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) …

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Meta rolls out real-time AI image generation, which changes the image as the user types a prompt, in beta on WhatsApp and Meta AI on the web in the US (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Meta rolls out real-time AI image generation, which changes the image as the user types a prompt, in beta on WhatsApp and Meta AI on the web in the US  —  As soon as you start typing a text-to-image prompt in a chat with Meta AI, you'll see how the image changes as you add more detail about what you want to create.

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Runaway circus elephant stops traffic in Montana

Viola, the elephant, was startled by the sound of a nearby car and ran away while having a bath.

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Sources: German grocery delivery startup Flink raised another €100M from existing investors and has been in merger talks with rivals Getir and Just Eat Takeaway (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Sources: German grocery delivery startup Flink raised another €100M from existing investors and has been in merger talks with rivals Getir and Just Eat Takeaway  —  - Flink has been in merger talks with Getir, Just Eat Takeaway  — Grocery apps boomed in the pandemic but struggled with costs

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Deadly settler attacks on Palestinians follow Israeli boy's killing

Palestinians and the UN demand that Israeli forces stop a rampage across the occupied West Bank.

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Spotify says 25% of paid users in the US, UK, and Australia have started an audiobook as part of their subscriptions; 57% are between 18 and 34 years old (Ashley Carman/Bloomberg)

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Spotify says 25% of paid users in the US, UK, and Australia have started an audiobook as part of their subscriptions; 57% are between 18 and 34 years old  —  - Spotify listeners skew younger, with 57% age 18 to 34  — Certain subscribers receive 15 hours of listening per month

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Tel Aviv residents unfazed by Iran attack threat

People were seen drinking in the streets of Tel Aviv despite Iran confirming a drone launch.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/zvFluWr

Sources: Instagram is in the early stages of testing "Creator AI" chatbots for top influencers, which would automate DM responses to fans in a creator's "voice" (New York Times)

New York Times:
Sources: Instagram is in the early stages of testing “Creator AI” chatbots for top influencers, which would automate DM responses to fans in a creator's “voice”  —  Instagram is testing a program that offers its top influencers the ability to interact with their followers over direct messages using a chatbot.

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'Obvious' Sydney killer targeted women - police

Joel Cauchi, 40, fatally stabbed six people in a crowded Sydney shopping centre on Saturday.

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Israel to respond to Iran attack 'when time is right'

The US says it won't take part in any Israeli response and urges its ally to exercise caution.

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LinkedIn: the number of companies with a designated head of AI position or a chief AI officer (CAIO) has almost tripled globally in the past five years (Emma Jacobs/Financial Times)

Emma Jacobs / Financial Times:
LinkedIn: the number of companies with a designated head of AI position or a chief AI officer (CAIO) has almost tripled globally in the past five years  —  As boards grapple with the opportunity and risk of generative artificial intelligence, companies are leaning into a new role: the chief AI officer.

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