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☆ Russian court fines Wikipedia 2 mln roubles for not deleting 'banned content' on military -Ifax
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

Asia Pacific category · April 27, 2023 · 7:28 AM UTCA senior lawmaker and Indonesia's consumer watchdog have urged the food regulator to examine a product of one of the world's biggest instant noodle brands, following a recall in Taiwan and Malaysia on concerns it could contain a carcinogenic ingredient.

☆ Senators unveil bipartisan legislation to ban kids under 13 from joining social media platforms
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

The proposed legislation by a bipartisan group of US senators aims to address what policymakers, mental health advocates and critics of tech platforms say is a mental health crisis fueled by social media. “Social media companies have stumbled onto a stubborn, devastating fact,” Schatz said. But it would represent a potentially vast expansion of the government’s role in regulating websites where age verification is a requirement. Tech companies could still develop their own in-house age verification technology or hire third party companies to perform the verification, lawmakers said. Violations of the proposed law could mean millions of dollars in Federal Trade Commission fines for social media companies.

☆ EU singles out 19 tech giants for online content rules
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Foo Yun Chee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The 19 companies include Alphabet's Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping and YouTube, Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Amazon's (AMZN.O) Marketplace and Apple's App Store. The others are Microsoft's two units Linkedin and Bing, booking.com (BKNG.O), Pinterest (PINS.N), Snap Inc's (SNAP.N) Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia, Zalando (ZALG.DE) and Alibaba's (9988.HK) AliExpress. "We consider these 19 online platforms and search engines have become systematically relevant and have special responsibilities to make the internet safer," Breton told reporters. Breton singled out Facebook's content moderation system for criticism because of its role in building opinions on key issues. So I look forward to an invitation to Bytedance's headquarters to understand better the origin of Tiktok," Breton said.

☆ Amazon, Apple and more: EU names the Big Tech platforms set to face tougher regulatory scrutiny
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( Silvia Amaro | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, in late 2020 presented new legislation on how regulators should keep a closer eye on tech giants. Under this Digital Services Act (DSA), which was implemented four months ago, regulators are able to police content to reduce harmful comments and set rules for the use of artificial intelligence. European regulators have previously warned Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, that his firm faces significant amounts of work to comply with the new rulebook. He added in a statement Tuesday: "The countdown is starting for 19 very large online platforms and search engines to fully comply with the special obligations that the Digital Services Act imposes on them." "The Digital Services Act is comprehensive and will be a challenge for online intermediaries to get their head around, with the largest players facing the biggest impact.

☆ How Anthropic cofounder and former journalist Jack Clark turned a chance meeting into an AI newsletter with over 34,000 subscribers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Jack Clark was a Bloomberg tech journalist in 2015 when he came across OpenAI for the first time. He was so inspired that he quit his job and dove into the world of AI, later cofounding Anthropic. Now, he writes Import AI, a weekly AI-focused newsletter that reaches over 34,000 subscribers. A "weird" newsletterA weekly newsletter, Import AI features detailed analyses on AI research papers, Clark's thoughts on current events, and AI-focused short fiction stories. He estimates that he's read around 4,000 research papers while writing Import AI — and more importantly, he jokes, spent over $6,000 in lattes due to his persistent habit of drinking multiple caffeinated beverages while writing each week.

☆ Opinion: Banning TikTok isn’t just a bad idea. It’s a dangerous one
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Evan Greer | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

CNN —The US government is racing ahead with proposals aimed at banning TikTok, the viral video platform used by more than 150 million Americans. Banning TikTok won’t make us safer from China’s surveillance operations. But banning TikTok isn’t just foolish and dangerous, it’s also unconstitutional. You do that by passing a strong national data privacy law that bans companies from collecting more data about us than they need to provide us with the service we’ve requested. Join us on Twitter and FacebookIt’s a national embarrassment that we have no basic data privacy law in the United States.

☆ Jack Teixeira's alleged Discord leaks show why the US should not give Top Secret clearances to 21-year-olds
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-15 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Nevertheless, that looks to be the US intelligence community's approach to handling classified information. The tangled views of Jack Teixeira, who was indicted Friday in connection with leaking hundreds of classified documents to a private Discord server, are still coming into focus. There are classified phone systems, email systems, fiber optic cables, and a Wikipedia clone. Aside from the question of how many people have access to secrets, it's also worth considering how many of those supposed secrets belong on classified systems at all. Who was tracking the whereabouts of the volume of secret files he appears to have sent to the printer?

☆ Phone Cameras vs. ‘Real’ Cameras: Which Is Right for You?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Sami Reiss | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

HOW GOOD is a camera if you use it mostly to text? In the past decade, as smartphone camera tech has improved exponentially—better lenses, higher resolution, the ability to zoom in to identify a ballplayer’s sneakers even from the nosebleeds—the devices they are attached to have gained power over our lives. When you shoot with a dedicated camera, by contrast, the possibilities are decidedly limited. While they better equip you to literally focus on photography, and so have earned legions of new fans, they have their own downsides. Mirrorless cameras are sleeker than a DSLR but bulkier than your phone, and instant cameras can be entertaining but often render subjects dull and colorless.

CNN —A Moscow court has fined the Wikimedia Foundation for refusing to remove an article on Russian-language Wikipedia called “The Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia region,” according to state media. The foundation — which owns Wikipedia, a site with pages in around 300 languages, including Russian — has been fined 2 million rubles ($24,500), Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported Thursday. The court documents allege that Wikimedia refused to remove “material” about the hostilities “within the framework of the special military operation” in Ukraine and about the country’s Zaporizhzhia region becoming part of Russia, TASS said. Wikimedia had also been fined in Russia last week and in February, TASS reported. Asked about the possibility of shutting down the website in the country, the Kremlin said last week that a Russian alternative needed to be developed first.

☆ My editor's note to the newsroom on AI: Let's think of it like a 'bicycle of the mind'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Nicholas Carlson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Ask AI to make suggested edits to your writing to make it more readable and concise. Ask AI to make suggested edits to your writing to make it more readable and concise. Ask AI to summarize old news stories and suggest lessons that can be learned from them. For me, the really exciting thing about using generative AI is that I keep figuring out new ways to use it. Editors: It is already impossible for you to know if work produced by your colleagues was created using AI.

☆ A Texas judge tried to school the FDA on the abortion pill. Only problem? He used debunked research and a study based on an anonymous blog to do it.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Hannah Getahun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

A Texas judge on Friday issued a ruling overturning FDA approval of an abortion medication. The 67-page document, written by right-wing Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, cited Wikipedia and is full of inaccuracies and falsehoods about the health effects of medical abortion, experts told Insider on Friday. Julia Steinberg, an expert on mental health and abortion, told Reuters in 2012 that most women in the study who experienced mental health issues after having an abortion had also experienced them before the abortion. The study also did not note whether or not the abortions had been done for health reasons or were elective abortions. So he is really outside of his lane making, in essence, a medical judgment that was informed by really, really bad information."

☆ Elon Musk says Twitter is using a Wikipedia list to help decide which news organizations are labeled 'government-funded media'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Elon Musk says Twitter is relying on Wikipedia to help decide which news outlets to label "government-funded media." It recently labeled NPR "state-affiliated media," a move Musk later said might have been wrong, before changing it to "government-funded media." Elon Musk told as much to NPR reporter Bobby Allyn, and Twitter's Help Center page about government and state-affiliated media labels confirmed the policy. Twitter recently slapped a "state-affiliated media" label on NPR's Twitter account. Musk reportedly later admitted adding the "state-affiliated media" label to NPR's account might have been a mistake.

☆ Texas judge's ruling to ban mifepristone nationwide cites Wikipedia, contains pro-life talking points, and gets basic facts about abortion wrong: Experts say it's 'completely flawed'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-08 | by ( Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert | Hannah Getahun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

"So many of the things in this ruling I would say are completely flawed," a researcher told Insider. But an OB-GYN told Insider the judge's interpretation of what the drug does is medically inaccurate. Mifepristone and misoprostol are used before we can even see an embryo on ultrasound," Grossman told Insider. Spreading such misinformation through an official judicial ruling, Biggs said, is "inappropriate, unethical, and jarring." It's definitely not going to help or prevent mental health harm or physical harm as it claims – it's going to do the opposite."

☆ Exonerated 'Central Park 5' member mimics Trump's 1980s ad that called for the return of the death penalty
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Isobel Van Hagen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

One of the "Central Park Five" mimicked a 1989 full-page ad that Trump placed calling for the death penalty. In the mock ad, posted on Twitter, Salaam referred to Trump's recent indictment and arrest. In the ad, which was posted on Twitter, Yusef Salaam mocked Trump's recent indictment and arrest while imitating the statement Trump advertised in multiple New York newspapers. Salaam was one of five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted of the assault and rape of a young white woman in Central Park. Salaam, however, said he ultimately wished Trump "no harm," even though the former president had "effectively called for my death and the death of four other innocent children."

☆ ChatGPT reportedly made up sexual harassment allegations against a prominent lawyer
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

OpenAI's ChatGPT made up sexual harassment accusations against lawyer Jonathan Turley, WaPo reported. In its response, ChatGPT apparently cited a Washington Post article published in 2018 — but the publication said that article doesn't exist. In the post, Turley added that he initially thought the accusation was "comical," but that "after some reflection," it "took on a more menacing meaning." He said the false sexual harassment accusations could damage his reputation as a legal scholar. "As part of that reality in our age of rage, there is a continual stream of false claims about my history or statements."

Text-to-image tools like OpenAI's DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DreamUp can render images in various styles in seconds with a few words of direction. Now those purchasers can use the artist's work without compensating the artist at all," the class-action court filing against Stable Diffusion states. Stable Diffusion did not provide a comment by press time. Companies are selling AI-generated prints and Stable Diffusion can learn to copy an artist's style within hours. Given how new generative AI is, it's not surprising the legal system has yet to catch up.

☆ SBF played 'League of Legends' so much he was gaming during pitch meetings. Now his lawyers say there'll be no more online games for the crypto king.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

He's said to have played it at a pitch meeting, and says he's been gaming while under house arrest. The conditions also say Bankman-Fried will be prohibited from accessing any video games or gaming hardware that "permit chat or voice communication." Bankman-Fried, who was arrested in the Bahamas in December, previously touted his penchant for the online game "League of Legends." "I'm (in)famous for playing League of Legends while on calls," Bankman-Fried tweeted. But Bankman-Fried isn't very good at playing "League of Legends," according to billionaire Elon Musk and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

☆ Fact Check-Altered image shows Donald and Melania Trump standing with Stormy Daniels
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

An image appearing to show former U.S. President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump standing alongside adult film star Stormy Daniels is digitally altered. The image is altered and juxtaposes a photograph of the Trumps taken in 2005 with an image of Daniels standing by herself captured in 2006. The original image of the Trumps shows Donald and Melania Trump standing alongside Ivanka Trump and was taken at The Fashion Group International's Night of Stars in New York on Oct. 27, 2005. A similar image showing Melania and Donald Trump standing with Ivanka to their left and Vanessa Haydon, Donald Trump Jr taken at a slightly different angle is viewable (here). The image is altered to juxtapose two separate images and make it appear as if Donald and Melania Trump were standing with Stormy Daniels.

Both are owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, but Douyin launched before TikTok and became a viral sensation in China. Like TikTok, it’s a short-form video app. Then in 2017, the privately-owned tech company bought a US-based video startup and released TikTok as the overseas version of Douyin. The download page for the TikTok app displayed on an Apple iPhone. Besides TikTok, there’s also shopping app Temu, fast fashion retailer Shein and video editing app CapCut, which is also owned by ByteDance.

☆ This isn't tech's first boom and bust cycle. Here's what we can learn from the previous bubbles: Stay agile and never rest on your laurels.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Every previous boom and bust in tech over the decades has resulted in winners and losers. The ones that survived were those that stayed agile, kept focused on innovation, and made sure their foundations were solid. Whichever way you slice it, one thing is certain, the valuations of most major tech companies were high — and now they're not. For Dr. Govindarajan, the theme is austerity, telling Insider that tech "can't afford to be wasteful" anymore. Some people would've lost," said Dr. Govindarajan.

☆ Crypto is banned in China, but Binance employees and support volunteers tell people how to bypass the ban
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +18 min

The messages CNBC reviewed come from accounts identified as Binance employees or Binance-trained volunteers known as "Angels." Whatever the method, Binance's Chinese users take on a significant risk: In China, crypto exchanges have been outlawed since 2017, while crypto itself was outlawed in 2021. But Chinese customers have continued to seek ways to trade on Binance, which include using instructions provided by employees and volunteers. "'Binance does not offer a 'Binance Chinese Android app," a spokesperson said. In addition, hours after Binance responded to CNBC, messages apeared on Twitter suggesting that some customers' Binance debit cards had been frozen.

☆ Google's new Bard chatbot told an AI expert it was trained using Gmail data. The company says that's inaccurate and Bard 'will make mistakes.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Google Bard started rolling out this week, and it's off to a bit of a rocky start. The AI chatbot told one user that it was trained on data from Gmail, among other sources. AI expert Kate Crawford posted an exchange she had with the new AI chatbot in which she asks where Bard's training dataset comes from. "Anyone a little concerned that Bard is saying its training dataset includes... Gmail? It is not trained on Gmail data," the company said in a tweet.

☆ Trump thinks an indictment will help him. It'll give DeSantis and Pence major headaches about how to respond.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Brent D. Griffiths | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Trump's indictment might appear to open the door to the Republican Party ridding themselves of him. Trump thinks the GOP voters will stand with him. The most recent national poll of Republican voters found that 77% have a favorable view of him. Among key parts of the GOP primary coalition, Trump continues to do quite well. An earlier CNN-SSRS poll found a narrower race between Trump, DeSantis, and the rest of the field, but it also showed that 34% of self-described white evangelicals would name Trump as their preferred pick for the nominee.

☆ Hey, Bing, Help Me Overcome My Fear of College Basketball
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +15 min

I’m still learning so I appreciate your understanding and patience.🙏Do you know a lot about college basketball, and do you enjoy talking about it? Why are people so obsessed about the college basketball brackets? I've never filled out a college basketball March Madness bracket, and I heard that it's virtually impossible to do completely accurately, even if you predict the winner. When filling out my college basketball bracket, should I just guess according to what team names I like the best? :)I’m afraid I can’t fill out a March Madness bracket, as I’m just a chat mode of Microsoft Bing search.

☆ Fact Check-Photo of 1999 Serbia bombing shared with missing context
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

On Facebook the same screenshot was shared with the remark: “Be careful who you follow...” (here). A Bosnian newspaper published the 1999 photo identified as Kyiv in a February 2022 article (here). The war in Ukraine is well documented and the latest Reuters reporting can be seen (www.reuters.com/places/ukraine) , (here) , (here). Reuters Fact Check has previously debunked images and videos claimed as proof that the war in Ukraine is fake (here) and (here). A photograph showing the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbian forces was not widely used by media to depict Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

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