Quote:Microsoft cybersecurity researchers published a report on Friday that said hackers tied to the Iranian government are attacking U.S. officials during the American presidential campaign.

The Microsoft report comes after U.S. intelligence officials said Iran is increasing its use of social media to exacerbate political discord as the election approaches.

Microsoft’s report said Russia is still a major player in “foreign malign influence concerning the 2024 U.S. election,” but Iranian mischief has surged over the past few months. Iran also caused trouble during the past three presidential elections.

“Iran’s operations have been notable and distinguishable from Russian campaigns for appearing later in the election season and employing cyberattacks more geared toward election conduct than swaying voters,” the report observed.

The Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) said Russia, Iran, and the other top mischief-maker China have experimented with using generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their influence campaigns, but those cutting-edge techniques seemed to have “little effect,” so they pivoted back to tried-and-true old-school tactics like “simple digital manipulations, mischaracterization of content, and use of trusted labels or logos atop false information.”

One of the AI-driven capers described in Microsoft’s report was Iran creating four phony “news” websites – some leaning left, the others leaning right – and using AI to harvest legitimate news content to stock them with.

It was not clear what Iran’s hackers hoped to accomplish with this setup, since actual news sites in the United States tend to be rather polarized these days. The examples of Iranian propaganda included in the Microsoft report did not look all that much different from the fare on mainstream-media websites. Presumably Iran thought it could use its phony sites to sow even more discord, but that would be a tall order in 2024.

Quote:A security researcher’s mission to investigate a wave of fraudulent text messages impersonating the United States Postal Service (USPS) has uncovered a massive “smishing” operation, hacking into fraudsters’ systems after they tried to trick him with a bogus package delivery message.

Wired reports that Grant Smith, a red team engineer and founder of offensive cybersecurity firm Phantom Security, began his investigation after receiving a suspicious USPS package delivery text message earlier this year. The message, similar to those received by thousands of others, directed recipients to a website where they were prompted to enter their credit card information and other personal details. This scam is often referred to as “Smishing.”

Recognizing the scam, Smith set out to track down the group responsible for the mass-smishing campaign. Within a few weeks, he had hacked into the scammers’ systems, collected evidence of their activities, and began the process of gathering victim data to provide to USPS investigators and a US bank.

Smith’s findings revealed the staggering scale of the scam. Across 1,133 fraudulent domains used by the scammers, 438,669 unique credit cards were entered, with many victims entering multiple cards. Over 50,000 email addresses were logged, including hundreds from universities and 20 from military or government domains. In total, more than 1.2 million pieces of information were collected, with California being the state with the most victims at 141,000 entries.

The group behind the smishing campaign, identified as the “Smishing Triad” by cybersecurity company Resecurity, operates by selling a customizable smishing kit on Telegram for a monthly subscription of $200. The kit allows scammers to easily create fake websites impersonating various organizations, with USPS being just one of many targets. Resecurity estimates that the Smishing Triad sends between 50,000 and 100,000 scam messages daily, targeting online banking, ecommerce, and payment systems in multiple countries.

Smith’s investigation revealed vulnerabilities in the scammers’ websites, allowing him to access files and databases containing victim information. By reverse-engineering the smishing kit and automating the process of pulling data from the network of fraudulent websites, Smith was able to gather a significant amount of evidence to provide to authorities.

The United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) confirmed that the information provided by Smith is being used as part of an ongoing investigation, with the agency actively working to protect the public, identify victims, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Quote:The former CEO of Google-owned YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, died on Friday at the age of 56, following a two-year battle with lung cancer.

“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non small cell lung cancer,” Dennis Troper wrote in a Friday Facebook post.

It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to…

Posted by Dennis Troper on Friday, August 9, 2024

“Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many,” Troper continued. “Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable.”

“We are heartbroken, but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time,” Troper concluded in his post.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai also announced “Susan Wojcicki has passed away after two years of living with lung cancer” in a Friday blog post.

“I feel so fortunate to have spent so many years working with Susan closely — she was absolutely loved by her teams here. Her time on earth was far too short, but she made every minute count,” Pichai added.

Quote:Venezuelan socialist regime strongman and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello claimed on Wednesday evening that YouTube awarded his television show Con el Mazo Dando (“Hitting with the Mallet”) a commemorative plaque for allegedly reaching 100,000 subscribers on its YouTube channel.

“They sent me this plaque, get wrecked, escualidos! [‘scrawny ones,’ a slang term for the opposition],” Cabello said, claiming that YouTube administrators sent him a letter “congratulating [him] for the content and international reach of the channel.”

“The vermin cut [my channels] every time they can,” he continued.

Cabello “predicted” that the award would lead to the closure of his YouTube channel, claiming that long-time critics, such as Venezuelan journalist Alberto Ravell, would “exert pressure” to such an end.

“Next week, they will knock down this channel. I guarantee it,” Cabello said. “You will see because, here, the Ravells will get a hernia in because they have not even been thanked, and they were looking for me to give me the plaque.”

Cabello, a former member of the Venezuelan military, is widely known as one of the most powerful members of Venezuela’s authoritarian socialist regime, having occupied numerous high-ranking positions throughout the past 25 years. Cabello is presently the vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and one of the lawmakers of the National Assembly, which the Maduro regime seized control of from the Venezuelan opposition through a sham election held in December 2020.

Cabello was a close ally of late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez and was one of the military officials who participated in Chávez’s failed February 1992 coup attempt against the government of former President Carlos Andrés Pérez.

U.S. authorities have long accused Cabello of being one of the leading figures of the Cartel of the Suns, an intercontinental cocaine trafficking operation that high-ranking members of the Venezuelan military and some PSUV leading figures run.

Quote:Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro announced on Monday that he would “break ties” with the WhatsApp messaging platform, effectively declaring it illegal to use.

Maduro accused foreign interests of using the application to threaten members and sympathizers of his authoritarian regime.

During a rally of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Maduro asked PSUV members to carry out a “progressive, voluntary, and radical withdrawal” of the messaging application, adding that he would replace it with the Telegram messaging app and the Chinese communication platform WeChat.

“I am going to break relations with WhatsApp because WhatsApp is being used to threaten Venezuela, and then I am going to remove my WhatsApp from my phone forever,” Maduro said during a rainy event with PSUV youth members. “Little by little, I will move my contacts to Telegram, to WeChat. Do you all understand me? It is necessary to do it. Say no to WhatsApp. Get WhatsApp out of Venezuela because there the criminals threaten the youth, the popular leaders.”

Quote:Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro announced on Thursday that he would ban the social media platform Twitter (or “X”) in the country, accusing its owner Elon Musk of inciting “hate, civil war, and death.”

Maduro, during a rally with his sympathizers, said that the proposal to ban Twitter came from the National Commission of Telecommunications (Conatel), the Venezuelan government entity that regulates all telecommunications in the country — and which acts as the Maduro regime’s censorship enforcement agency.

The socialist dictator claimed that the ban on X will last “ten days” and that it has given that same amount of time to the social media platform to “present” documentation that Conatel is demanding. Maduro did not specify what documents Conatel has requested.

“The social network that was called Twitter, X. Elon Musk is the owner of X and has violated all the rules, all the rules of the Twitter social network  itself, today known as X – all of them, and has violated inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death, confrontation of Venezuelans, has violated all the laws of Venezuela,” Maduro said.

“In Venezuela there is a law, and we are going to enforce the law, that is why I have signed a letter with the proposal made by Conatel who has decided to remove the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, from circulation in Venezuela for ten days so that they can present their arguments. X out of Venezuela for ten days,” he continued.

Maduro also announced through his Twitter account that he was banning Twitter.

“Get out, Elon Musk!” Maduro said, claiming that “no one will shut me up, I will face the espionage of the technological empire.”

Netblocks, a London-based firm that monitors internet access worldwide, reported that access to Twitter began to be restricted on Venezuela’s internet service providers in the evening hours of Thursday. VE sin Filtro (“Venezuela without filters”), an initiative that monitors the Maduro regime’s censorship and assists Venezuelans in bypassing it, also confirmed the access restrictions. Venezuelan citizens have begun bypassing the ban with the use of Virtual Private Networks and other censorship-overriding methods.

The “ten day” ban on Twitter is part of Maduro’s brutal repression campaign against dissents and protesters following the July 28 sham presidential election, which Venezuela’s socialist-controlled electoral authorities claim Maduro “won.” The sham election has been widely called into question by several countries and international organizations. The Venezuelan opposition has accused Maduro of attempting to steal the election, claiming that they are in possession of sufficient vote tallies that can demonstrate their candidate, Edmundo González, defeated Maduro by a landslide.

Quote:Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said on Thursday that access to the children’s online video game “Roblox” has been blocked because the game can allegedly lead to the abuse of children.

Critics of the game in the United States have made similar allegations.

“According to our Constitution, our State is obliged to take the necessary measures to ensure the protection of our children. It is everyone’s duty to look out for, protect, and support the best interests of our children,” Tunc said in a post on Twitter.

“Turkey is one of the countries that closely follows developments in the world and uses technology in the best way. However, using technology in a negative way is never acceptable,” he said.

“Attempts to undermine our social structure, abuse of children, encouragement of violence, and activities that will negatively affect the development of our children, each of whom is a precious gift, will never be allowed,” he declared.

Quote:Dell Technologies is undergoing a significant restructuring, which includes layoffs and the formation of a new group dedicated to artificial intelligence services, according to sources. The company will reportedly lay off 12,500 employees representing 10 percent of the company’s headcount.

Silicon Angle reports that Dell is navigating through a period of change as it lays off a large number of employees while simultaneously reorganizing its sales and marketing teams. Sources familiar with the matter have revealed that the restructuring efforts include the establishment of a new group specifically focused on artificial intelligence services.

Although the exact number of layoffs remains unconfirmed, one source close to the situation initially suggested that approximately 12,500 employees, or roughly 10 percent of Dell’s global workforce, were set to be let go starting Tuesday. In February 2023, Dell filed a 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission, indicating a reduction of about 6,000 employees.

The company has declined to provide specific details regarding the layoffs. In an email to SiliconANGLE, Dell stated, “Through a reorganization of our go-to-market teams and an ongoing series of actions, we are becoming a leaner company. We are combining teams and prioritizing where we invest across the company. We continually evolve our business so we’re set up to deliver the best innovation, value and service to our customers and partners.”

An internal memo from Bill Scannell, president of global sales and operations, and John Byrne, president of sales for Global Theaters and Dell Technologies Direct, reportedly informed employees, “We are getting leaner. We’re streamlining layers of management and reprioritizing where we invest.”

Rumors of the layoffs have been circulating on TheLayoff.com website, with one person claiming, “Despite whatever person from corporate put in here earlier about this being a one percent layoff, it is in fact larger than that and is hitting services, sales, marketing & engineers. Half of my team is gone in marketing and still no coms.”

Quote:In a tragic incident near Houston, Texas, a Tesla Cybertruck owner was incinerated alive after the electric vehicle crashed and burst into flames.

KHOU reports that the fatal crash, believed to be the first for the new Tesla Cybertruck, occurred at 1:45 a.m. on Monday, just off the east Texas coast. According to police reports, the trendy but troubled EV veered off Cedar Parkway in the Baytown area for unknown reasons and crashed into a concrete drainage channel or culvert. The intense fire that followed left the owner’s body and the truck’s identifying features, such as license plates and VIN, unrecognizable among the char.

Local authorities, along with the federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), are investigating the cause of the deadly incident. The Cybertruck, once touted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk as “apocalypse proof,” has faced numerous safety issues since its debut in late November 2023, requiring no less than four recalls.

While some Tesla enthusiasts have questioned the media’s focus on this particular incident, scientists and automotive safety experts have highlighted the unique challenges posed by lithium-ion battery fires in electric vehicles. Dr Apparao Rao, a physicist at Clemson University, and his colleagues have explained that a typical runaway battery fire in an EV burns at approximately 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 Celsius), which is half the temperature on the surface of the sun.

At these extreme temperatures, most metals, including the Cybertruck’s stainless steel, can melt. Additionally, extinguishing an EV battery fire requires up to 10 times more water than a standard combustion-engine automotive fire.

The severity of the fire in this incident prevented the identification of the Cybertruck driver due to the extreme temperatures. NHTSA is currently seeking further information from Tesla regarding potential flaws in the Cybertruck that may have contributed to this fatality.

Quote:Driverless cars stationed in a San Francisco parking lot created a traffic jam at 4:00 a.m. and began honking at each other, waking up local residents. Many report the pre-dawn traffic snarl is a regular occurrence for the driverless cars.

A resident of San Francisco, California, filmed the driverless vehicles as they honked in the middle of the night in a nearby parking lot, according to a report by BBC News.

The video shows more than 30 driverless cars — some of which were slowly moving, appearing to be stuck in traffic jams — as they began to honk.

Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project, reportedly said that the honking was the result of a feature meant to prevent the driverless vehicles from getting into crashes.

The company told CBS News that it has since updated the software that causes the vehicles to honk.

“Our electric vehicles should keep the noise down for our neighbors moving forward,” Waymo said.

This is not the first time a driverless Waymo vehicle has caused a stir.

As Breitbart News reported, a driverless Waymo vehicle in Phoenix, Arizona, was pulled over by police in June after it was seen going “haywire” in traffic. This moment was also caught on camera.

Waymo blamed the incident on construction in the city, saying the construction signage has been inconsistent, and claimed the vehicle impeded oncoming traffic because the officer had blocked the driverless car.

Quote:Former Google CEO and noted leftist Eric Schmidt’s recent comments at Stanford University have ignited a firestorm of discussion about the future of AI and the ethics of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

The Verge reports that during an interview with Stanford professor Erik Brynjolfsson, Schmidt made several provocative statements that have since drawn scrutiny. Most notably, he suggested that if TikTok were to be banned, aspiring Silicon Valley entrepreneurs should instruct their AI language models to “Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it’s not viral, do something different along the same lines.”

While Schmidt later clarified that he was not advocating for the illegal theft of content, his comments raised eyebrows among those concerned about the ethical implications of AI-powered entrepreneurship. “Silicon Valley will run these tests and clean up the mess,” Schmidt said. “And that’s typically how those things are done.”

The former Google executive also made headlines for attributing Google’s alleged slowness in responding to the rise of ChatGPT to employees prioritizing working from home over “winning.” This remark, which Schmidt has since walked back, sparked debate about the role of remote work in fostering innovation within tech giants like Google.

Schmidt’s wide-ranging conversation with Brynjolfsson touched on various other topics, including his investment in the AI startup Mistral, his role as “a licensed arms dealer” to the US military, and his recent dinner with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The video of the interview was initially posted on Stanford’s YouTube channel but was later removed after Schmidt’s comments gained widespread attention.

The removal of the video has only heightened interest in Schmidt’s remarks, with many in the tech industry and beyond speculating about the implications of his statements for the future of AI development and regulation. Some have praised Schmidt for his candor and willingness to tackle controversial topics, while others have criticized him for appearing to endorse unethical business practices.

Quote:Mercedes-Benz and BMW have reportedly disclosed the names of their electric vehicle battery suppliers in South Korea, following a recent EV explosion that triggered widespread revolt against electric vehicles.

Bloomberg reports that the South Korean units of Mercedes-Benz Group AG and BMW AG have taken a significant step towards transparency by revealing the names of their electric vehicle (EV) battery suppliers on their websites. This rare disclosure comes in the wake of an incident where an unplugged electric Mercedes-Benz sedan caught fire at an apartment complex in Incheon, South Korea, earlier this month. The explosion led to the evacuation of 200 families and sparked calls for stricter government measures on EV safety.

Typically, automakers around the world keep information about their battery suppliers confidential. However, the growing fears over EV safety in South Korea have prompted Hyundai and Kia to share the names of their battery makers in recent days. The German carmakers, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, have now followed suit as the government plans to hold a joint meeting with automakers to discuss short-term measures to prevent further EV fires.

Although Mercedes did not specify which company manufactured the battery in the car involved in the fire, local media identified it as China’s Farasis Energy. The transport ministry has advised Mercedes to conduct a special inspection of the vehicle in question. In response, Mercedes-Benz Korea announced that it will offer free inspections for all of its EV models starting from Wednesday. Additionally, the company plans to donate approximately 4.5 billion won ($3.3 million) to help residents affected by the explosion, even as the investigation into the fire continues.

Farasis Energy, ranked 15th among global battery makers according to a BloombergNEF estimate of manufacturing capacity between 2023-2025, began supplying batteries to Mercedes-Benz in 2018 as part of an eight-year contract. In 2020, the German carmaker became a strategic investor in the company. However, Farasis did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the recent incident.

Quote:Actors and performers in the SAG-AFTRA union have been calling for AI protections in the video game industry.

Over the past 20 years, video games have become an increasingly lucrative industry for actors, with voice work often going to high-level stars in mega-blockbuster video game series. With the advancement of AI, actors who have found steady work in that industry fear the work will soon dry up and have called for protections. Per The Hollywood Reporter (THR):

Thursday’s event was the second picket organized by SAG-AFTRA after the union called a strike against video game companies on July 25. Performers first demonstrated outside of Warner Bros. Games on August 1 before setting up shop a little over a mile away in front of the Disney building two weeks later. (Beyond Disney Character Voices and Warner Bros. Games, the union is also currently striking Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and Insomniac Games, among others.)

According to SAG-AFTRA’s negotiators, video game companies only would agree to partial but “dangerously incomplete” AI proposals in the parties’ last formal bargaining session, which would have left stunt and movement performers particularly vulnerable if they had been enacted. A spokesperson for the video game companies has countered that their offer was “directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA’s concerns” and would offer “meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA,” the Interactive Media Agreement. The spokesperson called this contract language “among the strongest in the entertainment industry.”

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s national executive director and chief negotiator, said that actors fear they will not be able to make a living if they do not fight AI protections.

Quote:The FTC has taken a significant step towards combating fake reviews and deceptive marketing practices with the announcement of a new rule targeting bogus online reviews designed to trick consumers.

TechCrunch reports that in a unanimous 5-to-0 vote, the FTC has finalized a rule that aims to address various types of fake reviews and prohibits marketers from engaging in deceptive practices. The new rule, set to be enforced 60 days after its publication in the Federal Register, targets practices such as AI-generated reviews, censorship of honest negative reviews, and compensating third parties for positive reviews.

The decision comes as a response to the long-standing issue of unreliable online reviews, particularly on platforms like Amazon, where merchants have been using fake and paid reviews extensively. In 2020 alone, Amazon claimed to have shut down more than 200 million fake reviews. Yelp, another popular review platform, reported over 950 instances of “deceptive review practices” on other online platforms in 2021.

The rise of generative AI has further exacerbated the problem, making it easier for bad actors to create fake reviews. The FTC’s new rule aims to address this growing concern and improve the trustworthiness of online reviews.

Under the new rule, businesses are prohibited from using fake or disingenuous reviews, including AI-generated reviews and reviews from individuals who lack experience with the actual product. The rule also bans the buying or selling of reviews, whether negative or positive. Company insiders writing reviews must clearly disclose their connection to the business, and officers or managers are not allowed to give testimonials or ask employees to solicit reviews from relatives.

Furthermore, the rule prohibits company-controlled review websites that claim to be independent and bans the use of legal threats, physical threats, or intimidation to forcefully delete or prevent negative reviews. Businesses are also prohibited from misrepresenting that the review portion of their website comprises all or most of the reviews when they are suppressing negative ones.

Quote:The state of Texas has filed a lawsuit against General Motors, accusing the automaker of installing technology in over 14 million vehicles to collect driver data it could then sell to insurers and other companies without consent.

CNBC reports that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced this week that the lawsuit stemmed from an investigation initiated in June, which examined whether several automakers were collecting and selling vast amounts of data without the knowledge of drivers. The probe revealed that GM had allegedly installed data-collecting technology in most of its vehicles starting from the 2015 model year.

According to Paxton, the data collected by GM was used to create “Driving Scores” that assessed the driving habits of more than 1.8 million Texas drivers. These scores took into account factors such as speeding, hard braking, sharp steering, seatbelt usage, and late-night driving. The concern is that insurers could then use this data to make decisions about raising premiums, canceling policies, or denying coverage altogether.

The lawsuit alleges that GM’s practice involved dealers subjecting unsuspecting consumers to the belief that enrolling in OnStar diagnostic products, which collected the data, was mandatory. This often occurred immediately after the stressful buying and leasing process when consumers were more vulnerable.

Paxton expressed his outrage at the situation, stating, “Companies are using invasive technology to violate the rights of our citizens in unthinkable ways. Our investigation revealed that General Motors has engaged in egregious business practices that violated Texans’ privacy and broke the law. We will hold them accountable.”

In response to the lawsuit, GM stated that they have been in discussions with the Attorney General’s office and are currently reviewing the complaint. The automaker added, “We share the desire to protect consumers’ privacy.”

Quote:Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been charged with repeatedly releasing pollutants into or near bodies of water in Texas, according to a notice of violation from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

CNBC reports that the notice, which was issued last week, focuses on SpaceX’s water deluge system at its Starbase launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas. This comes five months after the EPA Region 6 office had also informed SpaceX of violating the Clean Water Act with the same type of activity.

TCEQ stated that its office in Harlingen, near the SpaceX Starbase, received a total of 14 complaints alleging environmental impacts from the facility’s deluge system. The first complaint, received on August 6, 2023, alleged that SpaceX “was discharging deluge water without TCEQ authorization.”

An environmental investigator with TCEQ conducted a compliance record review on July 25, 2024, and found that SpaceX had discharged industrial wastewater without a permit four times between March and July of this year.

SpaceX is developing its Starship spacecraft to transport people and equipment to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and perhaps even further destinations like Mars. However, during the first test flight of Starship in April 2023, the rocket caused the concrete launchpad to explode, and the spacecraft also blew up in mid-air. In response, SpaceX rushed to rebuild the launchpad and installed a new water deluge system without going through the proper permitting process.

The company ran its first full-pressure test of the water deluge system in July 2023. Despite receiving a formal notice of violation from the EPA on March 13, SpaceX proceeded with its third test flight of Starship on March 14, using the unauthorized water deluge system.

Quote:After actor Dennis Quaid accused Facebook of censoring promotional content for his upcoming movie Reagan, the social media giant has admitted to “incorrectly” rejecting ads for the movie.

Facebook made the admission in a statement to Newsweek, which first reported on Dennis Quaid’s accusations earlier this week.

“While there are no restrictions on this page that would prevent the admins from posting, we did identify a handful of ads from this account that were incorrectly rejected,” a Facebook spokesperson told the outlet.

“This happened because our automated systems mistakenly determined that content about President Reagan required prior authorization in accordance with our policies for ads about Social Issues, Elections or Politics. This was a mistake and the restriction on the ads has been lifted.”

Earlier this week, Dennis Quaid accused Facebook of censoring Reagan marketing content as well as twice suspending the movie’s official Facebook page.

The apparent efforts to censor Reagan come during a presidential election year — a time when left-wing Silicon Valley giants have censored content that they believe will hurt Democrats.

Quote:A recent study conducted by Accountable Tech, a social media integrity nonprofit, has shed light on the impact of Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to reduce the spread of political content on Instagram.

Bloomberg reports that the study, which spanned a period of approximately three months following the implementation of the new policy in early March, focused on five prominent Instagram accounts with a combined following of 13.5 million users. These accounts, including those of Hillary Clinton and LGBT activist group GLAAD, frequently share leftist political content. Although the study focused on five large leftist accounts, the same rules are dampening conservatives on Instagram, which already have been the target of Zuckerberg’s censorship for years.

Researchers at Accountable Tech gathered viewership data from the Instagram Insights pages of the participating accounts throughout the study period. The findings revealed a staggering 65 percent drop in the average weekly reach per post across the five accounts over the 10-week duration.

Meta’s decision to limit the reach of political content through its recommendation algorithms has drawn criticism from various quarters. While Meta executives maintain that users will still see political posts from accounts they follow, critics argue that the company’s definition of “political” lacks clarity and may stifle important information from activists, news organizations, and individual creators during a crucial global election year.

Zach Praiss, Accountable Tech’s campaigns director who spearheaded the research, emphasized the importance of Instagram as a platform for people to engage in meaningful discussions about issues that matter to them. “Millions of people are using it on a daily basis for many, many hours,” Praiss stated. “It’s a place where I think it’s important for people to have the ability to talk about what matters to them in a safe, productive manner.”

Meta has increasingly distanced itself from politics in recent years, following accusations of amplifying misinformation and partisan bias. In a February blog post, the company announced updates to Instagram and Threads, describing political content as “potentially related to things like laws, elections, or social topics.”

Quote:In the wake of a recent court decision that found Google guilty of illegally monopolizing the online search market, the DOJ is weighing options to restore competition, including a potential breakup of the tech giant.

Bloomberg reports that the DOJ is deliberating on the possibility of breaking up Google following a landmark court ruling that found the company guilty of illegally monopolizing the online search and search text advertising markets. This marks the first time since the unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft two decades ago that Washington has considered dismantling a company for illegal monopolization.

According to people with knowledge of the deliberations, the Justice Department is also exploring less severe options, such as requiring Google to share more data with competitors and implementing measures to prevent the company from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products. However, the government is likely to seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were central to its case against Google, regardless of the chosen course of action.

If the DOJ decides to pursue a breakup plan, the Android operating system and Google’s web browser, Chrome, are the most likely candidates for divestment. Officials are also considering the possibility of forcing a sale of AdWords, the platform used by the company to sell text advertising.

The Justice Department’s discussions have intensified following Judge Amit Mehta’s August 5 ruling, which found that Google illegally monopolized the markets of online search and search text ads. Google has stated its intention to appeal the decision, but Mehta has ordered both parties to begin planning for the second phase of the case, which will involve the government’s proposals for restoring competition, potentially including a breakup request.

The government’s plan will need to be accepted by Mehta, who would then direct the company to comply. A forced breakup of Google would be the most significant dismantling of a U.S. company since the breakup of AT&T in the 1980s.

Quote:The new UK government’s dragnet continues to dredge the internet, with the state broadcaster noting the arrest of an internet user for “anti-Muslim and anti-establishment rhetoric” going to court this week.

The BBC states a 40-year-old man was arrested on Sunday in Lincolnshire over the use of social media. Wayne O’Rourke appeared in Magistrate’s court on Tuesday, did not enter a plea, and will appear at Lincoln Crown Court on Friday.

The UK state broadcaster, which is funded by a mandatory tax levied on all households that operate a television set, or which receive live television or BBC content by internet data, states:

Nottingham Magistrates’ Court heard the posts were alleged to contain anti-Muslim and anti-establishment rhetoric.
The court heard Mr O’Rourke had allegedly expressed support for the recent riots and offered advice on how to remain anonymous to his 90,000 followers.

Quote:The “primal fear” among the European left of dissent has driven them to believe Elon Musk and X are actually a greater threat to democracy than the “totalitarian censorship” being enacted in the name of freedom, the lead reporter in a top European newspaper writes.

The European Union is developing a pretty taste for paradox in its quest to save freedom by killing freedom, so says the leader editorial in Germany’s newspaper of record Die Welt in response to the Commission’s petulant letter addressed to Elon Musk on Monday night.

Published shortly before Musk’s big interview with President Trump on Monday night, the letter from European Commissioner Thierry Breton, the bloc’s would-be censor-in-chief demanded X/Twitter deploy “mitigation measures” against “harmful content” that could “generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security” in Europe.

Breton warned of repercussions if Elon Musk didn’t fall into line with his demands.

Mr Musk responded with characteristic disdain, and enjoying his American freedom of expression to its fullest limits, telling Commissioner Breton — in meme form — to go fuck himself.

Anna Schneider, the chief reporter for Die Welt had Breton’s “totalitarian” bid in her sights on Tuesday with a sardonic take, noting that “despite the fact that the European Union wants to stand for values such as democracy, the rule of law, human rights and, last but not least, freedom” it somehow ends up treating a law ” to abolish freedom of expression… as a masterpiece”.

The Union finds itself in the position of being “against freedom for freedom or something like that,”  she quipped. The paradoxical logic of Breton as illustrated by Schneider is immediately redolent of the Colonel Blimp character created by cartoonist David Low, who satirised the attitudes of the British ruling class of the time, noting the attitude that colonised people needed the British Empire to protect them from massacres, and if they didn’t like it, they’d have to be shot to teach them a lesson.

Quote:Facing accusations of election interference, the European Union on Tuesday tried to walk back censorship threats made by Brussels’ speech code arbiter, Thierry Breton, over Elon Musk’s interview with former President Donald Trump.

Breton appears to have been thrown under the bus as panic broke out after he allegedly acted unilaterally to publish a letter to X owner Elon Musk ahead of his uncensored, live conversation with Donald Trump on Monday evening.

In his letter, the French business executive-turned politician threatened to use all powers in his “toolbox” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) if the interview broke the EU’s speech restrictions on hate speech, disinformation, or anything deemed harmful to “civic discourse and public security” in Europe.

However, according to a report from POLITICO on Tuesday, a European Commission spokesman said that the threats made in the letter were made without the knowledge of EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.

The website then cited “four separate EU officials” speaking on condition of anonymity to condemn the censorship czar’s threats to Musk amid accusations that they had represented “election interference” in the United States.

“The EU is not in the business of electoral interference,” one EU official told POLITICO. “DSA implementation is too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.”
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X CEO Linda Yaccarino accused Breton of “an unprecedented attempt to stretch a law intended to apply in Europe to political activities in the US.”

Eurosceptic politicians have also expressed support for Musk in the face of EU censorship demands, including Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who described the letter from Breton as a “surreal and venomous threat” and noted that his League party had voted against the EU’s DSA speech restrictions.

Quote:The tech industry publication the Information revealed on Tuesday that it had discovered a wide variety of baby and toddler products on the Chinese e-commerce applications Temu and Shein that pose a danger to their intended users, including padded crib bumpers that the U.S. government has banned from sale.

Temu and Shein are both China-based consumer applications. Shein specializes in “fast fashion” items marketed to young women, though it also sells clothing for men and children. Temu sells clothing as well as household goods, art supplies, health-related products, and more. Both sell products widely considered to be very low quality at cheap prices.

The companies are massive international operations that rake in billions of dollars for their Chinese owners, particularly in the United States. Shein reached record-high profits of $2 billion in 2023, up from $700 million in 2022, lagging only behind Amazon and Walmart in online fast fashion sales in America. Temu’s parent company, Pinduoduo, which operates a parallel cheap goods retailer in China, saw a 246-percent increase in net profits in the first quarter of 2024; 60 percent of Temu’s transactions in 2023 were in America.

The success of both companies is largely based on being able to dramatically undercut the prices of their competitors and ship their products directly to American consumers from their Chinese suppliers, cutting shipping middlemen. Their trade practices have fallen under intense criticism in the United States, as evidence suggests they both have ties to China’s sprawling Uyghur slave trade, the backbone of the ongoing genocide against the Uyghur people in occupied East Turkistan. Shein has also been accused of stealing copyrighted designs to rapidly manufacture clothing items, while Temu is facing legal action in Arkansas for essentially running a customer “data-theft business.”

The Information added to concerns about Americans using Temu and Shein on Tuesday, as its reporters found items for sale on the apps intended for children that could present a significant danger. A top concern for the outlet was the availability of padded crib bumpers, which are intended to soften the sides of a crib for babies. Congress passed the Safe Sleep for Babies Act in 2021, banning crib bumpers as a result of significant evidence that they pose a threat of suffocating babies if they fall on their faces during sleep.

On Shein, the Information found drawstring hoodies for sale in sizes for very small children. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission explains on its website that “drawstrings at the hood and neck area of children’s upper outerwear in sizes 2T to 12 (or the equivalent) are prohibited” because they could become entangled in a child’s neck and asphyxiate them.

“The Commission has determined that hood and neck drawstrings on children’s upper outerwear in sizes 2T to 12 or the equivalent present a strangulation hazard that is a substantial product hazard,” the commission explains. “In addition, the Commission has determined that waist and bottom drawstrings on children’s upper outerwear not meeting certain requirements also present a substantial product hazard.”

Quote:The company that was named in a class-action lawsuit filed by internet users who claim that the Social Security number of every American was stolen from its servers has confirmed that it was hacked by cybercriminals who obtained the sensitive data.

Jerico Pictures Inc., the Coral Springs, Fla.-based entity that does business as National Public Data, released a statement last week in which it acknowledged that “the information that was suspected of being breached contained name, email address, phone number, social security number, and mailing address(es).”

NPD, which attributed the “data security incident” to an attempted hack by a “third-party bad actor,” released the statement on its website.
It said there was an attempted hack in December 2023 as well as “potential leaks of certain data in April 2024 and summer 2024.”

NPD, which conducts criminal background checks for employers and investigators “for some of the lowest fees in the industry,” did not specify how many people were affected.
The company said it had “cooperated with law enforcement and governmental investigators and conducted a review of the potentially affected records.”

NPD also said it undertook “additional security measures in efforts to prevent the reoccurrence of such a breach and to protect our systems.”

The company said it would be reaching out to all of the affected users “so that you can take action which will assist to minimize or eliminate potential harm.”
NPD recommended that online users “closely monitor your financial accounts and if you see any unauthorized activity, you should promptly contact your financial institution.”

Social Security number holders are also being encouraged to contact the three large credit reporting agencies — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — in order to obtain a free credit report as well as to place a fraud alert on their file.

Fraud alerts, which are free of charge, lets creditors know that they should contact you in case someone tries to open any new accounts or change existing accounts that are under your name.

At least eight separate lawsuits have been filed against NPD since Aug. 1, when news of the breach came to light.

Quote:A joint statement that the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released on Monday said hackers linked to the Iranian government were most likely responsible for the August cyberattack on former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Iran perceives this year’s elections to be particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests, increasing Tehran’s inclination to try to shape the outcome,” the statement said.

It continued:

We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting Presidential campaigns. This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign, which [the U.S. intelligence community] attributes to Iran.

The three agencies added that they are “confident that the Iranians have, through social engineering and other efforts, sought access to individuals with direct access to the Presidential campaigns of both political parties.”

The Trump campaign said “foreign sources hostile to the United States” hacked it on August 10. The hackers provided stolen internal documents to the political news website Politico, including research the campaign conducted on Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) before Trump chose him as his running mate.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the hackers sought to “sow chaos throughout our democratic process,” an analysis that the intelligence community statement supported on Monday.

Microsoft security researchers released a report in early August warning that hackers linked to the Iranian government were attacking U.S. officials during the presidential campaign. Google published a similar report on August 13, specifically naming a hacker group tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a major threat.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign said when the Google report was published that the FBI informed it of a threat from Iranian hackers in July. The Harris campaign said it was “not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts.”

The Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York dismissed the allegations in Monday’s intelligence community statement as “unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing.”

“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the U.S. presidential election,” the Iranian mission said.

“Should the U.S. government genuinely believe in the validity of its claims, it should furnish us with the pertinent evidence -if any- to which we will respond accordingly,” the Iranians added.

Quote:British tech magnate Mike Lynch and five other people were missing after their luxury superyacht sank during a freak storm off Sicily early Monday, Italy’s civil protection and authorities said. Lynch’s wife and 14 other people survived.

Lynch, who was acquitted in June in a big U.S. fraud trial, was among six people who remain unaccounted for after their chartered sailboat sank off Porticello, when a tornado over the water known as a waterspout struck the area overnight, said Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency.

One body had been recovered, and police divers were trying to reach the hull of the ship, which was resting at a depth of 50 meters (163 feet) off Porticello, near Palermo, where it had been anchored, rescue authorities said.

It had a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers, the Italian coast guard said. A sudden fierce storm had battered the area overnight, and struck the place precisely where the 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged Bayesian had been moored.

“They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Cocina, noting that another superyacht nearby wasn’t as badly damaged and helped rescue some of the 15 survivors, who included Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares.

The Bayesian was notable for its single 75-meter (246-feet) mast – one of the world’s tallest made of aluminum and which was lit up at night, just hours before it sank. Online charter sites listed it for rent for up to 195,000 euros (about $215,000) a week.

One of the survivors, identified as Charlotte Emsley, said she momentarily lost hold of her 1-year-old daughter Sofia in the water, but then managed to hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were both pulled to safety, Italian news agency ANSA reported, quoting the mother. The father, James Emsley, also survived, said Cocina.

Eight of the 15 people rescued and taken ashore at Porticello were hospitalized while the others were taken to a hotel. One body believed to be the cook was found near the wreck, but six others were unaccounted for and believed inside the hull, said Luca Cari, a spokesperson for the Italian fire rescue service.

Quote:Leftists around the world have been flocking to alternative social media platforms over the last year, fleeing Elon Musk’s X/Twitter. Although Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads has been touted as the ultimate X replacement, the reality is that many users find the platform “deathly dull.”

The Guardian reports that the social media world has been in flux since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, now rebranded as X, in 2022. Musk’s tenure has been controversial in the eyes of many leftists, who have been seeking out alternative platforms, with Meta’s Threads emerging as a frontrunner.

Threads, which launched just a year ago, has already amassed over 200 million active users, thanks in large part to its seamless integration with Instagram. This integration allows Instagram users to create a Threads account with just a few clicks, making it an attractive option for those looking to leave X. In contrast, other alternative platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon have struggled to gain the same level of traction.

For some users, like author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera, the decision to move away from X is driven by a desire to escape the “systematic abuse” and negative societal impact associated with the platform. However, Sanghera notes that while Threads has its merits, particularly its link to Instagram, it still lacks the engagement from the people he values most. He expresses hope for better regulation of social media platforms in the future.

Despite Threads’ rapid growth, not everyone is convinced of its long-term value. Emily Bell, director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, describes Threads as “deathly dull” and lacking in innovation. She believes that Meta designed Threads to compete with Twitter by creating a platform that is the antithesis of everything Twitter represents.

New users have also reported mixed experiences when attempting to join Threads. Some have encountered technical difficulties and account restrictions, while others have found the platform to be a more pleasant environment compared to X, largely due to active moderation and the absence of conservatives.

Quote:In a recent security report, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has identified Russia as the leading source of global coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) efforts, with at least 39 covert influence operations. Leading into the 2024 election, it appears that Facebook and Instagram are once again pushing the threat of Russian interference much like the Russiagate attacks against Donald Trump that started in 2016.

Business Insider reports that Meta’s newly released security report blames Russia for the extensive use of artificial intelligence to bolster its efforts in influencing international politics through social media. The report claims that Russia has been employing generative AI to create personas for fake journalists and publish distorted information from authentic articles on fictitious news sites.

According to Meta, Russia’s current “deceptive campaign” is primarily focused on garnering support for its ongoing war in Ukraine, marking a shift from its previous efforts that relied on exploiting divisive social and cultural issues within targeted countries to gain traction. The report suggests that between now and the upcoming US elections in November, Russia-based operations are expected to promote supportive commentary about candidates who oppose aid to Ukraine while criticizing those who advocate for aiding its defenses.

Meta anticipates that these efforts could manifest in various forms, such as blaming the US’s economic hardships on providing financial assistance to Ukraine, portraying Ukraine’s government as unreliable, or amplifying voices that express pro-Russia views on the war and its prospects.

The relationship between Russia and Meta has been strained since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In response to the invasion, Facebook took swift action by pulling all advertising in Russia and blocking Russian ads. Months later, Russia retaliated by categorizing Meta as an extremist and terrorist organization.

Despite Russia’s adoption of AI-powered tactics, Meta remains confident in its ability to detect and remove deceptive posts and accounts. The company targets and removes more deceptive content that heavily relies on AI or is run by contractors in for-hire deception campaigns. Meta characterizes these operations as “low-quality, high-volume” with lapses in operational security, making them less effective at avoiding detection.

The report emphasizes that “GenAI-powered tactics provide only incremental productivity and content-generation gains to the threat actors, and have not impeded our ability to disrupt their influence operations.” Meta further notes that real people continue to call out these networks as trolls, as they struggle to engage authentic audiences.

Quote:A leading EU parliamentarian has warned Elon Musk that X could be shut down entirely in the European Union if it fails to censor so-called “disinformation and hate speech”.

Sandro Gozi, an Italian Member of the European Parliament who serves as the Secretary-General for the European Democratic Party and in the leadership of French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renew Europe group in Strasbourg, issued another threat of censorship towards Elon Musk and X, warning of a potential outright ban of the platform if it does not abide by the speech directives in the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

Speaking to the Italian paper La Repubblica on Monday, the MEP said: “The former Twitter must also comply with the DSA directive on disinformation and hate speech.”

“If Elon Musk does not comply with European rules on digital services, the EU Commission will ask continental operators to block X or, in the most extreme case, will impose a total dismantling of the platform in the territory of the Union,” Gozi added.

The warning from the leading EU parliamentarian came just a week after Thierry Breton, the European Commission’s censorship czar, wrote an open letter to Musk, demanding that the X boss censor his live interview with former President Donald Trump.
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Breton’s intervention drew pushback from other power players within Brussels as the EU faced accusations of “election interference” in the United States by demanding censorship of the Republican nominee for president. The following day, after Breton’s letter, a spokesman for the European Commission said that it was sent without the knowledge of EU chief Ursula von der Leyen. Other unnamed EU sources slammed Breton for being “attention-seeking” and for engaging in “electoral interference.”

With the intervention of Gozi on Monday, it appears that Breton is not without allies in the push to launch a censorship campaign against Elon Musk and X.

However, following his threat to ban X, Gozi travelled to Chicago to attend the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and to support the Kamala Harris campaign, perhaps demonstrating his partisan reasons for seeking to censor the free speech-oriented social media platform.

Quote:The San Francisco City Attorney’s office has launched a lawsuit against 16 of the most visited AI-powered “undressing” websites, alleging violations of state and federal laws prohibiting revenge porn, deepfake pornography, and child pornography.

The Verge reports that in a move to combat the rising tide of AI-generated non-consensual nude images, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu has announced a groundbreaking lawsuit targeting 16 of the most frequently visited AI “undressing” websites. These sites, which use artificial intelligence to create fake nude images of real people without their consent, have collectively amassed over 200 million visits in just the first half of 2024.

The lawsuit, filed by the San Francisco City Attorney’s office, accuses the website operators of violating multiple state and federal laws, including those prohibiting revenge pornography, deepfake pornography, and child pornography. Additionally, the complaint alleges that these sites are in breach of California’s unfair competition law, arguing that the harm caused to consumers far outweighs any potential benefits associated with their practices.

The targeted websites employ sophisticated AI tools that allow users to upload images of fully clothed individuals, which are then digitally manipulated to simulate nudity. One unnamed website even boasted in its marketing material about circumventing the need for dating, suggesting users could simply generate nude images of their romantic interests instead.

This legal action comes at a time of increasing concern over the proliferation of deepfake technology and its potential for misuse. Recent incidents involving celebrities like Taylor Swift, who have fallen victim to sexually explicit deepfakes, have brought the issue into the public spotlight. Moreover, there have been alarming reports of schoolchildren facing expulsion or arrest for circulating AI-generated nude photos of their classmates.

The lawsuit seeks not only civil penalties but also aims to permanently shut down these websites and prevent their operators from engaging in the creation of deepfake pornography in the future. City Attorney Chiu expressed his horror at the exploitation enabled by these technologies, describing the investigation as leading to “the darkest corners of the internet.”

Quote:The cozy relationship between the Kamala Harris campaign and Big Tech giants including Google have sparked concerns about potential leniency in antitrust cases if she is elected president.

The New York Post reports that as the 2024 presidential election looms, the Kamala Harris campaign has come under scrutiny for its cozy ties with Big Tech, particularly Google. The Post has learned that these connections have raised worries that Google may be allowed to avoid a proposed breakup of its search empire if Harris secures the presidency.

Harris has close ties to Paul Weiss, the prominent law firm leading Google’s defense in a major antitrust case targeting its digital ad business. The firm’s top litigator, Karen Dunn, is assisting Harris with debate preparation, while the firm’s chairman, Brad Karp, is reportedly heading a “Lawyers Committee for Kamala Harris” to raise funds for her campaign.

Moreover, Harris is heavily relying on the guidance of Eric Holder, who vetted her potential running mates, and her brother-in-law Tony West, a Silicon Valley ally who took a leave from his position as chief legal officer at Uber to aid her campaign. Both Holder and West are reportedly on the shortlist for Cabinet positions in a potential Harris administration.

Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project, commented on the optics of the situation, stating, “It’s going to be a fork-in-the-road moment for a Harris administration that may become clear even before she’s inaugurated if we see whether or not these figures get slotted for key White House or Justice Department jobs.”

Experts have expressed concern that tech-friendly advisers could lobby behind the scenes for leniency toward Google if Harris, who would have the power to appoint antitrust leaders in the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission, wins the election. A well-connected tech policy expert told the Post, “They could lean on [deputy attorney general] Lisa Monaco to settle. Say ‘OK, we proved our point, go get Google’s best offer, make sure it has 3 commas and let’s call it a day.’ And nothing changes.”

Quote:Ford Motor Company is delaying production of an all-electric pickup truck at its Electric Vehicle (EV) plant in Stanton, Tennessee, while canceling plans to produce an all-electric SUV.

On Wednesday, Ford executives announced they are pumping the brakes on EV investments.

“… Ford’s mix of annual capital expenditures dedicated to pure electric vehicles will decline to 30% from about 40%,” the Detroit News reports:

In 2027, Ford will launch two all-electric pickups: a medium-sized truck built on the platform designed by its California skunkworks teams and the next-generation F-Series truck at the new Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center. The company didn’t specify where the midsize pickup will be built. The launch of the full-size truck codenamed “Project T3” in the second half of 2027 is postponed by 18 months. [Emphasis added]

Additionally, Ford is canceling plans to launch a forthcoming three-row SUV as an EV. Instead, it will launch as a hybrid, though the automaker declined to specify when or where. It originally has been expected to launch at the company’s Oakville Assembly Plant in Ontario, but Ford instead opted to expand Super Duty truck production there. [Emphasis added]

While production of the all-electric truck planned for Ford’s Stanton plant will be delayed, the plant will start producing cells for an all-electric van toward the end of next year. The Stanton plant, known as BlueOval City, is currently under construction.

Ford is increasingly backing off a full EV strategy, as are other automakers.

Last December, a leaked planning memo from Ford executives revealed that the automaker would only produce about 1,600 F-150 Lightning trucks a week at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford had initially planned to produce about 3,200 F-150 Lightning trucks a week at the plant.

Quote:CLAIM: “Creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in clean energy for American workers, including the IBEW installing 500,000—500,000—charging stations all across America.”

VERDICT: MOSTLY FALSE. They built eight, as of May.
President Joe Biden claimed credit Monday night for building 500,000 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, as part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The reality is that as of May 2024, two and-a-half years after the bill was passed, only eight of the charging stations had been built.

As Breitbart News recently noted:

[Vice President Kamala] Harris has a track record against which to measure her promise [of 3 million additional houses in four years], and it is the failure of the Biden-Harris administration to build the electric vehicle (EV) charging stations that it promised to build under the infrastructure bill of 2021. at a cost of $7.5 billion. The goal was 500,000; two-and-a-half years later, as of May 2024, only eight EV stations had been built.

In May, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was asked by CBS News’ Face the Nation to explain why only eight of the promised EV stations had been built:

Buttigieg promised that the remainder would be built by 2030. That could theoretically happen, though it is doubtful.

Regardless, Biden cannot claim credit for 500,000 EV charging stations. It is a promise his successor, whether Harris or former President Donald Trump, will have to fulfill.

Quote:Venezuela’s socialist regime published the latest cringe-inducing episode of its superhero propaganda cartoon Súper Bigote (“Super Mustache”) this week, featuring the titular Nicolás Maduro alter ego fighting a “satanic” version of his new arch-nemesis, Elon Musk.

Maduro has invested years into turning himself into an American-style cartoon superhero through the production of the Súper Bigote cartoon, intended to compete with America’s “capitalist” superheroes such as Superman and Spider-Man. Maduro has previously accused Spider-Man of fueling Venezuela’s violent crime in the past.

“Super Mustache,” an idealized version of Maduro and a socialist bastardization of Superman, appears in the cartoon fighting and defeating the dictator’s real-life “enemies” such as members of the Venezuelan opposition, the “Inflation Monster,” and even a cartoonish rendition of former President Donald Trump named Mister Odio (“Mister Hate”).

Much like other superhero franchises, the Maduro regime has launched Super Mustache’s own line of toys, costumes and other apparel, school supplies, and a salsa theme song.

The latest episode of Maduro’s “heroic” persona begins with a satanic rendition of Elon Musk stating that he will “change the way the Venezuelan people think” using all of his “technological power and social media control.” The “Satanic” Musk continues his monologue by stating that he wants “Venezuela’s natural riches” and that he “does not believe in superheroes.”

“I’m coming for you, Super Mustache,” villain-Musk declares.

The episode continues by showing Maduro surrounded by adoring fans inside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, claiming that he is “with God and our people.” Maduro, holding a crucifix and a Bible, then claims that he will prove to Musk that he is “David against Goliath.”

The dictator’s words make Musk’s head spin before a God-like figure sends him to Mars. The episode concludes with Maduro proclaiming that “God is with us [his regime]” and that “whoever messes with Venezuela shrivels up,” a mantra that Maduro has repeatedly espoused against anyone who dares to criticize him.

“Fascism will not enter Venezuela because the country has someone to defend it, and I’m its loyal protector,” Super Mustache declares.

The episode’s contents are the latest chapter in the ongoing feud between Maduro and Musk after the Tesla CEO accused Maduro in a Twitter post of commiting fraud in the July 28 sham presidential election.

Maduro responded to Musk’s accusations by ordering a ten-day ban on Twitter in Venezuela and accusing Musk of inciting “hate, civil war, and death” in the country. Access to Twitter remains restricted in Venezuela at press time after the ten day ban period ended on August 20, according to VE sin Filtro, an initiative that monitors the Maduro regime’s internet censorship and provides Venezuelans with information to bypass the online blocks.

Maduro has repeatedly accused Musk and other individuals, such as Argentine President Javier Milei, of being part of “satanic cults” in the United States. Musk and Milei are also, according to Maduro, part of an “international Zionism” plot to overthrow his socialist regime.

On Wednesday, Maduro accused Musk of financing a “coup” in Venezuela and of waiting to steal Venezuelan’s “sovereignty” with the intent to take away the country’s “direct, popular, radical, and socialist democracy.”

Quote:Google sales representatives have been accused of providing ad buyers with tips on how to target teenage users, despite the company’s policy prohibiting targeted advertising to users under the age of 18, according to a report from Adweek.

According to a recent report by Adweek, three ad buyers have claimed that Google sales representatives suggested targeting teens through the company’s “unknown” user category, which includes users whose age, gender, parental status, or household income is not known to Google. The buyers also shared written documents were reviewed by Adweek, supporting their claims.

Google’s official policy strictly prohibits ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of individuals under 18. However, this is not the first time the company has been accused of helping ad buyers target teens through the use of its unknown user category. The Financial Times recently reported on a similar situation.

As Breitbart News previously reported:

According to documents reviewed by the Financial Times and insider sources, Google worked with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta on an advertising campaign that deliberately targeted a group of YouTube users labeled as “unknown” in its advertising system, which the company knew skewed towards under-18s. The project disregarded Google’s policies that prohibit personalizing and targeting ads to minors, including serving ads based on demographics and circumventing its own guidelines.

The collaboration between the two companies, who are typically fierce competitors as the world’s largest online advertising platforms, began late last year as Google sought to boost its advertising earnings and Meta scrambled to retain younger users’ attention against fast-growing rivals like TikTok. The project was developed by Spark Foundry, a U.S. subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, and was piloted in Canada between February and April this year before being trialed in the U.S. in May.

In response to the allegations, Google spokesperson Jacel Booth stated, “We strictly prohibit ads being personalized to people under 18—full stop. Our policies are reinforced with technical protections, which continue to work properly.” Booth also mentioned that Google would take “additional action with sales representatives to reinforce that they must not help agencies or advertisers attempt to circumvent our policies.”

The reported behavior could potentially raise concerns under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which prohibits platforms from collecting personal information on children under 13 without parental consent. An updated version of the law, which has passed the Senate and awaits a House vote, would ban targeted advertising to individuals under 17.

Quote:California lawmakers have announced a deal that will kill a bill that would have forced tech giants like Google and Facebook to pay news organizations for their content. In exchange, the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe will commit $250 million to fund newsrooms and an “AI accelerator.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the California Journalism Preservation Act, which aimed to impose fees on large digital platforms based on a percentage of their ad revenue, has been set aside in favor of a new partnership to support California newsrooms. Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, revealed that the nearly $250 million investment of public and private funds will be used to fund newsrooms and an artificial intelligence accelerator project over the next five years.

Under the deal, the majority of the funds will be allocated to newsrooms, with $100 million being spent in the first year to kick-start the efforts. The News Transformation Fund, as the money for California news publishers is being called, will be administered at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism — a sure sign it will focus on leftist and progressive news sources.

Governor Gavin Newsom (D) praised the deal, stating that it represents a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California, without imposing new taxes on Californians. However, some journalists and unions have expressed concerns about the deal, citing a lack of regulation over tech companies and the inclusion of funding for artificial intelligence, which many consider a threat to human journalists.

Matt Pearce, the president of the Media Guild of the West, criticized the deal, stating that it allows Google to avoid regulation and may actually cause harm to journalists instead of helping them. He also noted that the deal creates a public-private partnership with Google that allows the company’s contributions to be tax-deductible, with Californians footing a larger share of the bill for supporting local news.

Despite the concerns raised by some journalists and unions, the California News Publishers Association CEO Chuck Champion and board chair Julie Makinen said they would make the most of this initiative. The San Francisco Chronicle, among other news organizations, supported the original bill but acknowledged that the deal was a step in the right direction, although it did not go far enough.

Some top Democrats within the Legislature also criticized the deal, highlighting an intraparty rift over the agreement. California Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire, D-North Coast, expressed concerns that the deal lacks sufficient funding for newspapers and local media and doesn’t fully address the inequities facing the industry.

The tech companies targeted by the original bill, including Google and Facebook, have aggressively attacked the legislation for more than a year. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, even threatened to pull news from its platforms if the bill passed. In April, Google News removed links to California news websites in response to the bill, a move that was called an “abuse of power” by Senator McGuire.

Despite the controversy surrounding the deal, supporters of the original bill maintain that social media companies benefit financially from content produced by journalists posted on their sites, which help them attract and retain visitors. The platforms, however, are not paying the journalists who produce the content, effectively starving news organizations of advertising revenue generated by their own work.

Quote:Voters in Cheyenne, Wyoming, faced an unusual choice in Tuesday’s mayoral election — a candidate who describes himself as the “meat avatar” of an AI system he wanted to be put in charge of the city. Candidate Victor Miller conceded the race on Tuesday night as humans will remain in charge — for now.

The Guardian reports that Victor Miller, a mayoral candidate in Wyoming’s capital city, pledged to use a customized ChatGPT bot named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen) to assist in governing Cheyenne if he was elected. Miller, who calls himself the “meat avatar” of VIC, claims the AI bot would be capable of processing vast amounts of data and making unbiased decisions to benefit the city.

Voters did not agree with his vision of the city, leading him to concede the race on Tuesday night.

The unusual campaign has sparked debate about the role of artificial intelligence in government and raised legal questions about who or what can actually hold elected office. Miller has described his proposed approach as a “hybrid” model, with the AI bot providing data-driven insights and solutions while Miller would serve as the official mayor to ensure actions are legally executed.

“It’s about blending AI’s capabilities with human judgment to effectively lead Cheyenne,” Miller stated in an interview. He has promised that Vic would handle “100% of the decision-making completely on its own” if voters back his candidacy.

However, the campaign has faced pushback from state officials. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray launched an investigation earlier this summer into whether an AI bot could legally appear on the ballot. Gray argued that only registered human voters can run for office under state law.

“Wyoming law is clear than an AI bot cannot run for office,” Gray wrote in a letter to Cheyenne’s city clerk. City officials disagreed, countering that Miller himself is still the actual candidate even if receiving direction from an AI assistant.

The dispute was ultimately resolved when Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee announced in July that Miller could continue his campaign, but only his name and not the AI bot’s would appear on the official ballot. Lee cited both legal issues and potential voter confusion in the decision.

Miller’s eccentric campaign approach has drawn national attention as one of the first attempts to incorporate AI directly into political leadership. He has positioned it as embracing future technologies, telling voters “there’s a new intelligence in town” and that it’s “time to get drunk on intelligence.”

Critics have raised concerns about the wisdom and practicality of allowing an AI system to guide government decisions. Questions remain about accountability, transparency, and how to ensure human values and empathy factor into policymaking.

Supporters argue that AI could potentially make government more efficient and data-driven. Miller claims the bot would be free of political affiliations and focused solely on developing practical solutions to benefit the community.

Quote:Disney is no longer asking a Florida court to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit on the grounds that the victim’s family had signed up for its streaming service Disney+.

The company filed a notice in Orange County court on Tuesday to withdraw the motion, which had drawn swift backlash when it became public.

Josh D’Amaro, chairperson of Disney’s theme park division, said in a statement emailed earlier to The Associated Press that the entertainment giant will waive its arbitration rights and allow the suit, brought by the husband of a New York doctor who suffered a fatal allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant in Disney Springs, to proceed in court.

“At Disney, we strive to put humanity above all other considerations,” he said in the Monday night statement. “With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss.”

Disney had previously argued that Jeffrey Piccolo could not sue the company because he agreed to settle any lawsuits against the company out of court when he signed up for a one-month trial subscription to Disney+ back in 2019.

Brian Denney, Piccolo’s Florida-based lawyer, said Tuesday that his client will continue to “pursue justice on behalf of his beloved wife” and hopes that their ordeal has helped raised awareness of the challenges people with food allergies face.

He also noted that others seeking to take Disney to court risk facing a similar legal challenge as the arbitration provision remains in many of the company’s terms and conditions.

“The right to a jury trial as set forth in the Seventh Amendment is a bedrock of our judicial system and should be protected and preserved,” Denney wrote in an email. “Attempts by corporations like Disney to avoid jury trials should be looked at with skepticism.”

Quote:South Korean officials announced on Wednesday that they discovered high concentrations of toxic substances in women’s accessories that Chinese e-commerce giants Shein, AliExpress, and Temu sell.

South Korea has been subjecting products from the fast-growing Chinese online retailers to closer scrutiny due to allegations of dodgy business practices, shoddy workmanship, and poor quality control.

The South Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) launched a major investigation of Temu and its South Korean subsidiary, Whaleco Korea LLC, in April. The investigative action was based on growing complaints about Temu’s product quality and marketing tactics.

The investigation grew to include weekly inspections of products from the Chinese e-commerce superstores, including products aimed at children. The latest round of inspections included 144 products from Temu, Shein, and AliExpress. Items from all three companies failed to meet South Korean quality standards.

Inspectors in Seoul found that shoes from Shein contained high levels of phthalates, a suite of “plasticizer” chemicals designed to make plastic more flexible.

In high concentrations, phthalates can damage human reproductive functions, with effects ranging from low sperm count to infertility and premature birth. One such chemical has been classified as a human carcinogen by the International Cancer Institute.

South Korean inspectors said some of Shein’s shoes contained up to 229 times the legal limit on phthalates. Some Shein caps contained high levels of formaldehyde, and some of the company’s nail polish had more than 3.6 times the legal limit on dioxane, a potential human carcinogen that can be harmful to the liver.

Sandals from Temu were found to contain more than 11 times the maximum legal limit of lead in their insoles.

In July, South Korean inspectors found high levels of phthalates in children’s shoes, leather bags, and belts from Shein, plus high concentrations of lead in children’s watches and jewelry from both Shein and AliExpress. Almost half of the items from the three Chinese companies in the July round of testing were found to contain toxic chemicals.

In May, the Seoul Metropolitan Government found harmful substances in children’s leather items from Shein, including shoes. Industry analysts noted similar findings in Shein products that the United States, Europe, and Canada tested.

A tech industry publication called the Information discovered more contaminated products in August, including padded bumpers on cribs that the U.S. government banned in 2021 due to being a suffocation risk for babies, dangerous drawstrings on hoodies intended for very young children, and products for human babies that Shein evidently repurposed and marketed as pet toys.

A Temu spokesperson said on Wednesday that the company responded quickly to the warnings that the Seoul city government published by removing the affected products from its global marketplace and “enhancing our systems and guidance to merchants to ensure they comply with safety standards and local regulations.”

Quote:The Internal Affairs Ministry of Russia on Tuesday warned residents in the western border regions of Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk – which have sustained an ongoing Ukrainian invasion since August 6 –  not to use online dating sites out of concern that Ukraine is using them for intelligence-gathering.

“The use of online dating services is strongly discouraged. The enemy is actively using them to gather information,” the Russian government warned, according to a translation of a report on the Russian state media outlet Interfax by the Moscow Times.

In addition to dating sites, the government warned locals to shut off CCTV and security cameras.

“The enemy is identifying IP address ranges in our territories, remotely accessing unprotected security cameras, monitoring everything from private yards to strategic roads and highways,” the Interior Ministry reportedly warned through a spokesperson. “Unless necessary, it is better not to use security cameras.”

“It is important to monitor and moderate chats and to quickly delete the accounts of people captured by the enemy or those whose phones have been compromised,” the announcement continued, referring to soldiers captured by incoming Ukrainian forces.

The Russian government declared a state of emergency in Kursk, the most affected region, on August 9 after Ukrainian forces crossed the border into Russia and began capturing territory. As of Tuesday, the Ukrainian state media network Ukrinform claimed, citing military authorities, that Kyiv was in control of 486 square miles of territory in Kursk and fighting on a frontline stretching across nearly 650 miles. Russian officials have not significantly disputed Ukraine’s progress in undisputed Russian territory but have accused Ukrainian forces of human rights abuses against civilians in those areas.

According to Kursk acting governor Alexei Smirnov, his region is planning to evacuate 180,000 people as a result of the Ukrainian incursion, and of those, 121,000 have been displaced since August 13. In the same meeting during which Smirnov announced the mass evacuation, his counterpart in Belgorod said authorities were planning to evacuate as many as 11,000 people.

The Ukrainian government has insisted that – contrary to the Russian government, whose “special operation” in Ukraine was accompanied by the “annexation” of four occupied Ukrainian territories – Kyiv does not intend to capture Kursk or convert any uncontested Russian territory into Ukrainian land. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained in a national address this weekend that his military is “creating a buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory,” specifically Kursk, to make it more difficult for Russia to transfer soldiers to the front lines within Ukraine.

While the Ukrainian incursion into Russia came as a surprise this month, Zelensky appeared to hint that he was closely monitoring the border region in January, when he signed a decree delcaring Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk, among other territories, “historically” Ukrainian.

The Russian government warning on the potential of dating sites being used as intelligence collection tools is a response to over two years of reporting revealing that Ukrainians and supporters of their cause, men and women alike, are using accounts on dating websites to converse with Russians. Some target any Russians in the country, hoping to convey news that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin censors in other media. Others build communication with Russian soldiers hoping for some useful intelligence. Still other users have scammed Russians out of potentially thousands of dollars, some redirected into the Ukrainian war effort.

Quote:The Italian coast guard said Thursday the body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch is among those recovered off the coast of Sicily from the wreckage of a superyacht whose builders had called unsinkable.

One woman remains missing. She has not been identified, but Hannah Lynch, Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, is reportedly unaccounted for. The family had been celebrating his recent acquittal on fraud charges with the people who defended him at trial in the United States.

Five others were recovered by rescue crews following Monday’s tragedy.

The Bayesian, a 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged yacht, went down in a storm early Monday as it was moored about a kilometer (half a mile) offshore. Civil protection officials said they believe the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, and sank quickly.

Termini Imerese Public Prosecutor’s Office investigators were collecting evidence for a criminal investigation, which they opened immediately after the tragedy despite no formal suspects having been publicly identified.

The chief executive of The Italian Sea Group, which owns the Bayesian’s manufacturer, said superyachts like these are “the safest in the most absolute sense.”

“First of all, because they have very little surface compared to a yacht facing into the wind,” CEO Giovanni Costantino told Sky News on Wednesday. “Second, with the structure, the drift keel, they become unsinkable bodies.”

Investigators are now looking at why the Bayesian, built in 2008 by Italian shipyard Perini Navi, sank while a nearby sailboat remained largely unscathed. Fifteen of the 22 people aboard survived by escaping in a lifeboat, including a mother who reported holding her 1-year-old baby over the waves to save her. They were rescued by the sailboat Sir Robert Baden Powell.

The sailboat’s captain, Karsten Borner, said his craft sustained minimal damage – the frame of a sun awning broke – even with winds that he estimated had reached 12 on the Beaufort wind scale, which is the highest hurricane-strength force on the scale.

He said he had remained anchored with his engines running to try to maintain the ship´s position as the forecast storm rolled in.

“Another possibility is to heave anchor before the storm and to run downwind at open sea,” Borner said in a text message. But he said that might not have been possible for the Bayesian, given its 75-meter (246-foot) tall mast.

“If there was a stability problem, caused by the extremely tall mast, it would not have been better at open sea,” he said.

Quote:A Tesla semi-truck’s battery pack caught fire on California’s Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap in the Sierra Nevada mountains this week, prompting a hazardous materials response and causing a full closure of the freeway for more than half a day. California firefighters resorted to airdropping fire retardant on the Tesla truck, a technique normally reserved for forest fires.

CBS News reports that a electric semi-truck built by Elon Musk’s Tesla crashed and caught fire on Interstate 80 in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, leading to a prolonged closure of the major freeway. The incident, which occurred around 3:00 a.m., required a hazardous materials response due to potentially toxic fumes emanating from the burning batteries of the electric big rig.

California Highway Patrol (CHP) Officer Jason Lyman explained the complexity of the situation, stating, “The battery itself, you can’t just spray water on it to put it out. It takes either some sort of dry chemical or a very huge amount of water, I’ve heard as much as 40,000 gallons.” As a result, first responders had to keep people at least half a mile away from the scene to ensure their safety. As Breitbart News has previously reported, the major danger of an electric vehicle battery fire is the phenomena of “thermal runaway” in which batteries can overheat and explode many hours after the fire has been put out.

The crash occurred when the Tesla semi-truck veered off the roadway and collided with trees. Fortunately, no injuries were reported in the incident. However, the fire proved challenging to extinguish, with the batteries continuing to burn for hours after the initial crash.

To combat the flames, Cal Fire crews resorted to using aircraft to drop fire retardant on the semi, a tactic typically employed during wildfire fights. This unconventional approach was necessary to keep the fire under control while minimizing the risk to first responders.

The incident caused significant disruption to traffic along I-80, a crucial route connecting Northern California to Nevada. Initially, CHP expected the roadway to reopen by 8:00 a.m. Monday. However, the freeway remained fully closed through the late afternoon, with westbound lanes reopening around 4:30 p.m. and eastbound lanes remaining shut until late in the evening.

Quote:Silicon Valley is experiencing another round of significant job cuts as major companies announce layoffs in response to economic pressures and shifting industry priorities.

NBC Bay Area reports that the tech industry, long considered a bastion of job security and growth, is facing a new wave of uncertainty as several major companies announce substantial layoffs. This trend is raising concerns about the overall health of the sector and its ability to maintain its workforce in the face of economic challenges.

Intel, one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers, recently announced plans to cut 15,000 jobs, sending shockwaves through the industry. This move comes as the company struggles to regain its competitive edge in the chip market and streamline its operations. Similarly, networking giant Cisco revealed its intention to lay off 5,000 employees, citing the need to reallocate resources towards emerging technologies and growth areas.

The impact of these layoffs extends beyond the tech giants. GoPro, known for its action cameras, announced a 15 percent reduction in its workforce, highlighting the challenges faced by companies in more specialized tech niches. These cuts reflect broader economic concerns, including high interest rates that are slowing company investments and fears of an impending economic slowdown — symptoms of the Kamalanomics policies plaguing the entire economy.

However, not all areas of the tech industry are experiencing contraction. San Francisco-based Rapid Robotics suggests that the current situation is not necessarily a slump but rather a shift in the types of skills and roles that tech companies are seeking. Jonathan Chu, director of engineering at Rapid Robotics, points out that new jobs are being created in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, with demand for roles that support and drive AI technology development.

This sentiment is echoed by Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, who highlighted the need for AI experts stating: “If you can do those things, this is the town for you. You can name your price and ka-ching, ka-ching. If you can’t do those things, it’s getting harder to be employed, even in the tech sector.”

Quote:Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on Saturday after his private jet landed at Le Bourget Airport, French media reported.

Durov was arrested under a warrant related to “various violations of his encrypted messaging service,” according to a report by Le Monde. The 39-year-old, who became a French citizen in 2021, is expected to be brought to court on Sunday.

French authorities are accusing Durov of a “lack of moderation” involving Telegram. The messaging app is reportedly under attack in Europe for the “viral circulation of false information.”

“Telegram has shielded itself from state moderation rules, at a time when the European Union and the United States are putting pressure on major platforms to remove illegal content,” Le Monde reported.

France’s OFMIN (Office to Combat Violence Against Minors) issued the warrant as part of an investigation into “offenses ranging from fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime, glorification of terrorism, and fraud,” a source told the French newspaper.

“Enough with Telegram’s impunity,” a French investigator said.

Durov, who doesn’t often sit down for interviews, spoke with Tucker Carlson in April, telling the former Fox News host that the Russian government was the first entity to demand that he censor speech — via his other platform, VK — in an effort to quell protests in the country.

“We were requested to ban these [protest organizing] communities — and I refused,” Durov explained. “But that did not go too well with the government.”

Quote:Shan Hanes, the former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kansas, has been sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for embezzling $47 million from the bank and sending it to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by scammers who tricked him with a “Pig butchering” scheme.

NBC News reports that Shan Hanes, the former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kansas, has been sentenced to 293 months in prison for looting the bank of $47 million in a cryptocurrency scam known as “pig butchering.” The massive embezzlement led to the collapse and FDIC takeover of the small Kansas bank, one of only five U.S. banks that failed in 2023.

Hanes, 53, fell victim to the scam in late 2022, which convinced him to invest in supposedly legitimate virtual currency investment opportunities. The scammers, whose true identities remain unknown, communicated with Hanes through the messaging app WhatsApp. Initially using personal funds to buy cryptocurrency, Hanes soon began stealing from various sources, including a local church, an investment club, his daughter’s college savings account, and the bank itself.

Between May and July 2023, Hanes directed 11 wire transfers from Heartland Tri-State Bank to accounts controlled by the scammers, totaling $47 million. He made misrepresentations to bank employees and circumvented the bank’s wire policy and daily limits to execute the transfers. Prosecutors noted that the series of wire transfers followed a common pattern in pig-butchering schemes, where initial investments are followed by requests for additional funds to secure or unfreeze the earlier transfers.

The impact of Hanes’ actions has been devastating for the small community of Elkhart. Many of the bank’s shareholders lost significant portions of their retirement savings, and some are now struggling to afford necessities like nursing home care. Brian Mitchell, Hanes’ former neighbor and a local businessman, recounted how Hanes approached him on July 5, 2023, requesting a $12 million loan to “activate” the funds he had already transferred to the scammers’ accounts. Despite Mitchell’s warnings that he was caught in a scam, Hanes proceeded to wire an additional $12.4 million to the scammers over the next two days.

Hanes was fired from the bank within days of Mitchell’s conversation with a board member, and on July 28, 2023, Heartland Tri-State was closed by the Kansas Office of the State Bank Commissioner and taken over by the FDIC. While depositors did not lose any money, shareholders were wiped out.

Quote:Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) sent a letter to Facebook and Google on Friday, demanding to know their policies on censoring free speech before the pivotal 2024 presidential election.

Schmitt wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, expressing concern about the “increasing attacks on free speech facilitated” by Meta and Google:

This is alarming because the freedom to speak your mind in the public square–or in the virtual public square–is vital to the health of our republic. Far too many Americans are being told what they can say because of censorship facilitated by your companies. While the powerful have often censored the weak for centuries, in America, we recognize and protect the natural right of all people to speak freely, especially when that speech is unpopular. The protection of inalienable rights, such as the freedom of speech, is the cornerstone of our Constitution and vital for this great experiment to flourish. The First Amendment must never be abrogated. [Emphasis added]

FILE_7103 by Breitbart News on Scribd

The Missouri senator, who previously served as attorney general, noted how big tech platforms suppressed free speech during the 2020 presidential election with the help of the Biden-Harris administration:

The suppression of free speech in ways was evident during the 2020 election. The Biden campaign, colluding with your organizations, enacted a coordinated campaign to suppress the free speech of millions of Americans. Since 2020, President Biden, his campaign, and his Administration repeatedly attacked your companies and threatened to revoke Section 230 protections if your companies did not conspire to censor speech opposed to their agenda. As we approach the 2024 election, it is imperative that this pattern of censorship does not repeat because free and open discourse is essential for a fair and democratic election process.
…
In the lawsuit I filed as the Attorney General of Missouri, Missouri v. Biden, I highlighted how government officials, including President Biden and White House officials, coerced and colluded with social media companies to censor speech under the guise of combatting, “disinformation” and “misinformation.” I will provide a few examples to show how this shady collusion resulted in the censorship of truthful information. This “censorship industrial complex”—that a federal judge called an Orwellian Ministry of Truth—suppressed truthful information on mask efficacy, the COVID-19 lab leak theory, and the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Quote:Yoshua Bengio, one of the “Godfathers of AI,” worries that regulators may be running out of time to properly govern the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence.

Bloomberg reports that Yoshua Bengio, a pioneering researcher in the field of deep learning and one of the most influential academics in artificial intelligence, is sounding the alarm on the urgent need for AI regulation. In a recent interview, Bengio expressed his growing concern that policymakers may not have enough time to implement proper safeguards as AI technology continues to advance at an unprecedented pace.

Bengio, whose groundbreaking work laid the foundation for today’s AI models, admitted that his assumptions about the speed of AI development have been upended following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. “I’ve completely changed my mind after we ended up with machines that can talk back to us,” he said, acknowledging that he once believed we were “decades away” from developing AI capable of human-level performance.

In light of this realization, Bengio has begun to focus more on advocating for AI regulation. Along with fellow AI pioneer Geoff Hinton, he has come out in support of a controversial bill in California that would hold companies liable for catastrophic harms caused by their AI models if they fail to take appropriate safety precautions. Given California’s central role in the tech ecosystem and the absence of federal legislation in the US, this bill could set a precedent for how other jurisdictions regulate AI.

While many tech companies, venture capitalists, and AI academics oppose the California bill, arguing that it would stifle innovation and harm U.S. competitiveness in the field, Bengio believes that the conversation around AI regulation may be influenced by those looking to profit from the technology.

Bengio emphasized the importance of swift action, stating that “policy takes a lot of time” and that we may not have a decade to “get this right.” He stressed the need for not only domestic regulation but also international treaties to address the global nature of the issue.

When asked about the potential risks of AI, Bengio remained agnostic, acknowledging that there are compelling arguments on both sides. However, he maintained that from a policy perspective, it is crucial to protect the public against the worst-case scenarios, just as governments do in many other areas.

Bengio also highlighted some of the most concerning applications of AI, such as synthetic child pornography and the potential for deepfakes to distort the democratic process. He noted a recent study from Switzerland that demonstrated GPT-4’s superior ability to persuade people to change their minds compared to humans.

Despite these concerns, Bengio remains optimistic about the potential benefits of AI in fields such as biology, medicine, and drug discovery. He emphasized that these applications are generally not dangerous and should receive significant investment.

Quote:Conservative and populist tech experts are slamming Kamala Harris and the Democrats for attempting to blame Biden-Harris inflation on AI algorithms. In addition to calling for nationwide rent control, Vice President Harris is now echoing far left law firms and non-profits in calling for laws against software that recommends rental prices based on market data.

In her speech outlining her economic policy in Raleigh last week, Kamala Harris denounced “corporate landlords collude with each other to set artificially high rental prices, often using algorithms and price-fixing software. It’s anti-competitive, and it drives up costs.”

Harris was referring to potential litigation against RealPage, a Dallas-based rental software company. According to Politico, the Justice Department’s antitrust division, led by Jonathan Kanter, is expected to sue the company for supposed antitrust violations – which is a “key part of” the Biden-Harris Administration’s “economic agenda.”

The suit is expected to allege that RealPage would “estimate supply and demand for their listings, allowing them to maximize rents.” Critics argue that giving these recommendations to multiple landlords using its platform constitutes price fixing.

The Justice Department’s likely action follows lawsuits from Democratic State AGs in the District of Columbia and Arizona. The District is outsourcing its lawsuit to Cohen Milstein, a far-left law firm that brags about partnerships with the NAACP, ACLU, and Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Its lawyers gave 94 percent of their political donations to Democrats and less than three percent to Republicans.

This crusade has been promoted by a host of far-left Soros and dark-money funded organizations such as More Perfect Union, The Groundwork Collaborative, and the American Economic Liberties Project.

Kamala Harris also endorsed the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, sponsored by ten Democratic Senators, including Amy Klobuchar, Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden, and Bernie Sanders, which would ban any software that recommends rental prices based on market data.

Antitrust law against Big Tech has been one area where populist Republicans and progressive Democrats have joined forces. Republican State AGs have joined Justice Department and FTC lawsuits against Facebook, Apple, and Google. Many antitrust reform bills have broad bipartisan support. However, Democrats’ attempts to blame high prices and rental fees on monopolies have received no Republican support.

Adam Candeub, a technology and telecom law professor at Michigan State who led the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under President Trump and has represented JD Vance in cases against Google, explains that this issue differentiates Republican populists from the Democratic party. “I support much of what Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter have done against monopolies like Google, Apple, and Amazon, but blaming high prices and rental costs on tech is just an attempt to cover up for Biden-Harris’s failed policies.”

Nick Whitaker, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who focuses on AI policy, similarly argued “prices are set by supply and demand. The Biden administration has failed to alleviate housing shortages, so they blame—and now even prosecute—’algorithms’ to excuse their own failure.” He noted that the Biden-Harris administration is focused on these  “spurious concerns” like this while “not paying any attention to the key national security issues raised by AI”.

Candeub further added, “Words like ‘algorithmic collusion’ are superficially appealing to antitrust populists, but they don’t hold up upon any scrutiny.” Candeub pointed out, “we want companies to have accurate information about supply and demand. More knowledge creates more competition.”

Quote:Senior NASA officials will convene on Saturday to determine whether Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is safe enough to bring astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth from the International Space Station.

Ars Technica reports that NASA is set to make a crucial decision this weekend regarding the safety of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and its ability to return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station (ISS) to Earth. The Flight Readiness Review (FRR), scheduled for Saturday in Houston, will see top NASA leaders, including administrator Bill Nelson, deliberate on the matter.

Wilmore and Williams, who have been on the ISS for 77 days—nearly ten times longer than their planned eight-day stay—were the first people to launch and dock at the station aboard a Boeing Starliner spacecraft. However, the mission encountered issues as the capsule approached the ISS on June 6, with multiple thrusters failing and a helium leak detected in the propulsion system.

The incident led to extensive testing, both in space and on the ground, as well as data reviews and modeling by engineers to determine the root cause of the thruster problems. The current hypothesis is that the thrusters overheated, causing Teflon seals to bulge and obstruct the flow of propellant to the control jets, resulting in a loss of thrust. The condition of the thrusters seemingly improved once Starliner docked at the station and the thrusters were no longer firing repeatedly.

Despite these findings, engineers and managers have yet to reach a consensus on whether the issue could reoccur or worsen during the capsule’s return journey to Earth. In the worst-case scenario, if too many thrusters fail, the spacecraft may be unable to orient itself properly for the critical braking burn required to guide it back into the atmosphere for landing.

If NASA managers deem the risk unacceptable, Wilmore and Williams would have to extend their stay on the ISS until at least February 2024, when they would return to Earth in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. While this alternative eliminates the potential threat posed by Starliner’s thruster issues, it comes with several complications. These include disrupting crew activities on the ISS, exposing the astronauts to additional radiation during their prolonged stay in space, and dealing a significant setback to Boeing’s Starliner program.

It seems reasonable to think here that the writer meant that they would have to wait till February 2025 to be rescued by a new NASA mission.

Quote:The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is sending a team of investigators to examine a crash and subsequent battery fire involving a Tesla semi-truck on a California freeway, focusing on the fire risks posed by electric vehicle batteries.

CNBC reports that a Tesla semi-truck was involved in a crash and fire along Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, California, this week, prompting an investigation by the NTSB. The incident has raised concerns about the fire risks associated with lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles.

According to the California Highway Patrol, the Tesla Semi veered off the road around 3:15 a.m., colliding with trees near the right shoulder. The impact caused the battery to catch fire, releasing toxic fumes and reaching temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Firefighters were forced to wait for the battery to burn out before they could begin the cleanup process, resulting in the closure of the freeway for over 16 hours.

The NTSB is sending a team of investigators from its Office of Highway Safety to work alongside the California Highway Patrol in examining the wreckage and gathering information about the events leading up to the collision and the subsequent fire response. The agency’s primary focus will be on the fire risks posed by lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles.

In 2021, the NTSB concluded an investigation that determined high-voltage electric vehicle battery fires present unique challenges to first responders. The agency found that guidelines provided by manufacturers on how to handle such fires were inadequate. As a result, the NTSB called for vehicle-specific response guides to be written by manufacturers, detailing how to combat battery fires, limit chemical thermal runaway, and prevent reignition. The guidelines were also expected to include information on the safe storage of vehicles with damaged lithium-ion batteries.

The Tesla Semi involved in the incident is part of the company’s recently launched line of electric trucks. Deliveries of the Semi began in December 2022, more than three years after Tesla CEO Elon Musk initially announced the company’s plans to produce the trucks. Musk has claimed that the Semi has a range of 500 miles on a single charge when hauling an 82,000-pound load.

Quote:The Port of Seattle and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) experienced a “possible cyberattack” on Saturday that caused significant issues for travelers.

Hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled as officials tried to work out the issue, Fox 13 reported. Authorities encouraged people heading to the airport on Saturday to check with their airlines for updated information regarding their itineraries.

In a social media post on Saturday, SEA explained what was happening and gave further information.

“Earlier this morning the Port of Seattle experienced certain system outages indicating a possible cyberattack. The Port isolated critical systems and is in the process of working to restore full service and do not have an estimated time for return,” the post read:

In a subsequent message, SEA said, “We are working closely with appropriate authorities and partners to help travelers who may be impacted. If you are traveling today, please check with our airline partners for travel information and allow extra time to get to SEA and to your gate.”

King 5 reported on Saturday that the possible cyberattack took down internet, phone lines, and additional systems. The outlet noted at the time that officials had no estimate of when the problem would be resolved. At the time of the report, the outlet said 225 flights had been delayed and six were canceled:
...
In a social media post early Sunday, SEA said, “The Port of Seattle, including SEA Airport, continues to see system outages. There is not an estimated time for return and Port teams continue to work to restore full service”:

In July, the U.S. cybersecurity company known as CrowdStrike issued a faulty software update to computers with Microsoft Windows which grounded flights and caused big problems at airports all over the world, Breitbart News reported.

The article noted that “Cybersecurity officials have stated that the issues are not believed to be the result of a malicious cyberattack.”

“Instead, the problems stem from a misconfigured or corrupted update pushed out by cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike to its customers. The incident appears to only be affecting devices running the Windows operating system,” the report stated.

Quote:The founder and CEO of the messaging service Telegram was detained at a Paris airport on an arrest warrant alleging his platform has been used for money laundering, drug trafficking and other offenses, French media reported Sunday.

Pavel Durov, a dual citizen of France and Russia, was taken into custody at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday evening after landing in France from Azerbaijan, according to broadcasters LCI and TF1.

Investigators from the National Anti-Fraud Office, attached to the French customs department, notified Durov, 39, that he was being placed in police custody, the broadcasters said.

Durov’s representatives couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

French prosecutors declined to comment on Durov’s arrest when contacted by The Associated Press on Sunday, in line with regulations during an ongoing investigation.

French media reported that the warrant for Durov was issued by France at the request of the special unit at the country’s interior ministry in charge of investigating crimes against minors. Those include online sexual exploitation, such as possession and distribution of child sexual abuse content and grooming for sexual purposes.

Telegram was founded by Durov and his brother in the wake of the Russian government’s crackdown after mass pro-democracy protests that rocked Moscow at the end of 2011 and 2012.

The demonstrations prompted Russian authorities to clamp down on the digital space, adopting regulations that forced internet providers to block websites and cellphone operators to store call records and messages that could be shared with security services.

In the increasingly repressive environment, Telegram and its pro-privacy rhetoric offered a convenient way for Russians to communicate and share news. In 2018, Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor moved to block Telegram over its refusal to hand over encryption keys, but ultimately failed to fully restrict access to the app.

Telegram continued to be widely used — including by government institutions — and the ban was dropped two years later. In March 2024, Roskomnadzor said that Telegram was working with the Russian government to a certain extent and had removed more than 256,000 posts with prohibited content at Roskomnadzor’s request.

Telegram also continues to be a popular source of news in Ukraine, where both media outlets and officials use it to share information on the war, and deliver missile and air raid alerts.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Sunday.

A French judicial official suggested that Durov could appear before a judge later Sunday to determine whether he will remain in custody. The official wasn’t authorized to be named publicly during an ongoing investigation.

“If the person concerned is to be brought before a judge today, it is only in the context of the possible extension of his police custody measure — a decision that must be taken and notified by an investigating judge,” the official said.

Quote:Would you like a streaming subscription with your waffle fries?

Chick-Fil-A is reportedly planning to launch a streaming entertainment service that will feature original content, including family-friendly reality programming.

The popular purveyor of chicken sandwiches has made no formal announcement, but Deadline reported that Chick-Fil-A has been working with a number of major production companies, including some of the major Hollywood studios, to create family-friendly shows, particularly in the unscripted space.

Among the shows to reportedly receive the greenlight is a game show. Chick-Fil-A is also  in talks to license and acquire content.

Other details about the planned streaming service remain sparse. The plan is to launch the service later this year, according to Deadline.

Chick-Fil-A isn’t a complete stranger to the world of entertainment.

The company previously produced content for its site, including Stories of Evergreen Hills, a series of animated shorts.

Chick-Fil-A had long upheld Christian and rather conservative social views. But in 2019, the company took a turn for the woke when it stopped donating money to charities including the Salvation Army and Fellowship of Christian Athletes following pressure from LGBTQ+ groups.

An enormous backlash ensued from loyal customers who felt the company had too easily folded to woke pressure campaigns from the left.

Quote:China dominates the market for electric vehicles. Now it's chasing Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab in the race to build battery-powered humanoids expected to replace human workers building EVs on assembly lines.

At the World Robot Conference this week in Beijing, over two dozen Chinese companies showed off humanoid robots designed to work in factories and warehouses, with even more displaying the made-in-China precision parts needed to build them.

China's push into the emerging industry draws from the formula behind its initial EV drive more than a decade ago: government support, ruthless price competition from a wide field of new entrants and a deep supply chain.

"China's humanoid robot industry demonstrates clear advantages in supply-chain integration (and) mass production capabilities," said Arjen Rao, analyst at China-based LeadLeo Research Institute.

The robotics effort is backed by President Xi Jinping's policy of developing "new productive forces" in technology – a point made in brochures for this week's event.

The city of Beijing launched a $1.4 billion state-backed fund for robotics in January, while Shanghai announced in July plans to set up a $1.4 billion humanoid industry fund.

The robots on display this week draw from some of the same domestic suppliers that rode the EV wave, including battery and sensor manufacturers.

Goldman Sachs forecast in January the annual global market for humanoid robots would reach $38 billion by 2035, with nearly 1.4 million shipments for consumer and industrial applications. It estimated the cost of materials to build them had fallen to about $150,000 each in 2023, excluding research and development costs.

"There is big room to squeeze the cost down," said Hu Debo, CEO of Shanghai Kepler Exploration Robotics, a company he co-founded last year inspired by Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus.

"China specialises in fast iteration and production."

Hu's company is working on its fifth version of a worker robot to trial in factories. He expects the sales price to be less than $30,000.

Quote:Left-wing Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo has sided with Brazilian president Lula da Silva’s judiciary for blocking Elon Musk’s social media platform X, making it largely inaccessible on both the web and through its mobile app.

X missed a deadline imposed by Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Minister Alexandre de Moraes to name a legal representative in Brazil, triggering the nationwide suspension.

De Moraes, the equivalent of what in the United States would be a Supreme Court justice, subpoenaed X and its owner, Elon Musk, in a post made on the site itself on Wednesday night — a move the STF itself reportedly described as “unprecedented,” as it marks the first time the Brazilian top court has subpoenaed someone on social media.

It marks an escalation in the months-long feud between Musk and radical leftist de Moraes over free speech and alleged misinformation, as Breitbart News reported.

The court order, which de Moraes digitally signed, came one week after X announced the closure of its office in Brazil. The decision, according to X’s global government affairs team, was in response to de Moraes allegedly threatening to arrest the platform’s Brazilian legal team if it did not comply with his censorship orders, as noted by Breitbart’s Christian K. Caruzo.

“Avengers” star Ruffalo has now supported the ban and taken Musk to task for refusing to cooperate with Brazil’s authorities. He wrote on X:

“@elonmusk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” de Moraes wrote.Because he is a weird and entitled billionaire tech bro. Tax him

Quote:Elon Musk says it’s “probably wise” for him “to limit” his travels to areas where free speech is “constitutionally protected.” The X owner’s comments come after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France in connection to a “lack of moderation” on his messaging app.

“Probably wise to for me to limit movements to countries where free speech is constitutionally protected,” Musk said in a response to an X user who suggested that he “consider the implications” of his travels in the wake of the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France.

“While I hate caving to bullies, given the developments in France, Brazil, the UK and elsewhere, please consider the implications of your travels, @elonmusk,” the X user wrote to Musk.

“Your safety is paramount for the future of innovation and free speech and we need your continued vision and leadership,” the X user added.

Notably, Durov was arrested last week after his private jet landed at Le Bourget Airport in France. The Telegram CEO is being accuse of “various violations of his encrypted messaging service,” which French authorities say stem from a “lack of moderation” of his platform.

Musk reacted to Durov’s arrest, calling it an “ad for the First Amendment” that is “very convincing.”

The SpaceX CEO also wrote “Dangerous times” in response to another X user that pointed out the different ways in which “Free speech is under attack all across the globe.”

Quote:Apple is in discussions to invest in artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, joining a funding round that could value the company at over $100 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is reportedly in talks to invest in OpenAI, the artificial intelligence startup behind the popular ChatGPT language model, as part of a new multibillion-dollar funding round. The potential investment would further strengthen the ties between the two companies, following their recent partnership announcement for Apple’s new AI initiative called Apple Intelligence.

According to people familiar with the matter, the funding round is being led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital and is expected to value OpenAI at more than $100 billion. Microsoft, a key investor in OpenAI since 2019, is also anticipated to participate in this round. The exact investment amounts from Apple and Microsoft have not been disclosed.

The news comes just months after Apple revealed OpenAI as the first official partner for Apple Intelligence at its annual developer conference in June. Apple Intelligence is a system designed to integrate AI features across Apple’s operating system, including an enhanced Siri voice assistant, text proofreading capabilities, and the ability to create custom emojis. While some tasks will be handled by Apple’s proprietary AI technology, more complex functions like generating written messages will rely on OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Apple’s decision to invest in OpenAI underscores the company’s commitment to securing access to cutting-edge AI technology. OpenAI faces intense competition from other AI startups and tech giants, but ChatGPT remains a market leader in the field. Apple has also expressed interest in partnering with other companies, such as Google and its Gemini generative AI model, as well as AI startups like Anthropic and Perplexity.

However, investing directly in OpenAI could potentially complicate Apple’s efforts to maintain a neutral stance as a partner with other AI companies. This move is also unusual for Apple, which rarely invests in startups. In the past, Apple has made investments in manufacturing partners to secure component supplies for its devices, as well as strategic investments in SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Chinese ride-hailing startup DiDi Chuxing.

Quote:Tech giant Apple has laid off employees from its digital services group, primarily affecting those working on the Apple Books app and Apple News.

The Verge reports that Apple, the tech giant behind the iPhone and many other popular products that have made it one of the world’s most valuable companies, has recently made job cuts across its digital services group, according to a report by Bloomberg. The layoffs, which have aready affected around 100 employees, are said to be part of a “shift in priorities” for the division.

The majority of those laid off were working within the team that runs the Apple Books app and Apple Bookstore, with the remaining cuts being made to some engineering roles and services like Apple News. Despite these job cuts, sources familiar with the matter have stated that the layoffs are not a sign that Apple is shifting its focus away from services like Apple Books, and the app is still expected to receive future updates for new features.

While Apple’s services division, which includes offerings such as Apple TV Plus, Apple News, and Apple Music, has been a significant revenue driver for the company in recent years, Apple reportedly does not consider the Books app to be a major part of the lineup. This could explain why the Books team was hit harder by the layoffs compared to other digital services.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously stated that cutting jobs is a “last resort” for the company, and layoffs have been relatively rare or smaller in scale compared to those affecting other tech giants. However, this is not the first time Apple has made job cuts in recent years. In April, at least 600 job cuts were reportedly made to Apple’s canceled car and smartwatch display projects, and an undisclosed “small number” of roles were eliminated from its corporate retail teams in 2023.

The recent layoffs in the digital services group may be part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to streamline its operations and focus on core products and services. As the tech industry continues to evolve rapidly, companies like Apple must adapt and make difficult decisions to remain competitive and innovative.

Quote:An appeals court has revived a lawsuit against China’s TikTok, reversing a lower court’s ruling that Section 230 immunity shielded the app from liability after a child died participating in the dangerous viral “blackout challenge.”

In a significant ruling with potential implications for all social media platforms, Ars Technica reports that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that TikTok is not protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in a lawsuit related to the death of a child who participated in the “blackout challenge.” The challenge, which encouraged users to choke themselves until losing consciousness, tragically claimed the lives of several children including a 10-year-od Pennsylvania girl.

Tawainna Anderson, the mother of 10-year-old Nylah Anderson who died after taking part in the challenge, attempted to sue TikTok in 2022. However, the initial ruling stated that TikTok was not responsible for recommending the video that led to Nylah’s death.

The appeals court has now overturned that decision, with Judge Patty Shwartz stating in her opinion that Section 230 does not bar Anderson from arguing that TikTok’s algorithm, which curates and recommends content to users, is an “expressive product” that communicates to users that the selected videos will be of interest to them. This ruling is based on a recent Supreme Court decision that held that a platform’s algorithm reflecting “editorial judgments” about compiling and presenting third-party content is the platform’s own “expressive product” and thus protected by the First Amendment.

Crucially, while Section 230 shields platforms from liability for third-party speech, it does not protect platforms’ own speech or “expressive activity.” As TikTok’s For You Page (FYP) algorithm decides which content to include, exclude, and organize, it counts as TikTok’s own “expressive activity” and is therefore not shielded by Section 230, according to the ruling.

The case will now return to the district court to rule on Anderson’s remaining claims. Judge Paul Matey, concurring in part, noted that TikTok was aware of the dangers posed by the “Blackout Challenge” but took inadequate action to prevent the spread of the challenge and stop it from being shown to children on their FYPs. He encouraged a narrower interpretation of Section 230, stating that it should not permit companies like TikTok to display “casual indifference to the death of a 10-year-old girl.”

Quote:The FAA has grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket for the second time in less than two months following a failed booster landing attempt during the Starlink 8-6 mission.

SpaceFlightNow reports that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after the first stage booster, suffered a hard landing during the Starlink 8-6 mission on August 28. The booster, which had successfully completed a record-setting 23 flights, was consumed in a fireball on the deck of the drone ship ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ positioned in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 250 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the FAA announced that while no public injuries or property damage were reported, they are requiring an investigation into the incident. This marks the second time in less than two months that the FAA has grounded SpaceX rockets, with a similar declaration made following a Falcon 9 upper-stage failure on July 12 during the Starlink 9-3 mission, resulting in the loss of 20 satellites.

Jon Edwards, SpaceX vice president of Falcon Launch Vehicles, expressed sadness over the loss of the booster in a social media post, stating, “Losing a booster is always sad. Each one of them has a unique history and character. Thankfully this doesn’t happen often, due to the robust design and vigilance of the team.” He further added that SpaceX is working diligently to understand the root cause and implement corrective actions as soon as possible, emphasizing that the incident was purely a recovery issue and posed no threat to the primary mission or public safety.

The booster failure occurred in the same week that SpaceX had to postpone the launch of the Polaris Dawn astronaut mission twice, first due to a helium leak and then for recovery weather concerns at the end of the mission. Kiko Dontchev, vice president of launch, acknowledged the challenging week on X (formerly Twitter) and stated that the team will persevere, noting that lessons learned from recovery failures will improve both recovery and ascent reliability.

The timing of the next launch attempt for Polaris Dawn remains uncertain, as it depends on several factors, including the FAA’s investigation, landing weather conditions, and launch pad availability. The mission is set to launch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, which is also needed for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, with a narrow planetary launch window opening on October 10. SpaceX requires approximately three weeks to reconfigure the pad from a Falcon 9 to a Falcon Heavy configuration, putting pressure on the Polaris Dawn mission to vacate the pad soon or face further delays.

Quote:Wednesday on FNC’s “Hannity,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, highlighted the timing of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s admission that the federal government leaned on Facebook to restrict the dissemination of the so-called Hunter Biden laptop story, which comes ahead of the November presidential election.

Jordan speculated the timing was an effort to prevent a similar instance later in the current presidential election cycle.

“Now, you tell me is that the deep state? Is that our intelligence community, our FBI, our DOJ putting cinder blocks on the scales of a presidential election?” host Sean Hannity asked. “Did they flip the election into Joe Biden’s favor?”

“Right, right, Sean,” Jordan replied. “That’s why the timing of this letter from Mark Zuckerberg to us is so important because we don’t know what they all might have had in lined up for this October. What was the October surprise? What’s it going to be this time? We want to make sure it’s not censoring information that the American people have a right to see and know when they’re making the most important decision we make — who’s going to be commander-in-chief of our country? So understand what Mark Zuckerberg put in that letter. He said, A, the Biden-Harris regime sent — pressured Facebook to censor material. Second, they in fact did censor material largely conservative.”

“And then third, that he talks about how they throttled back the very thing you were talking about the Hunter Biden story, they throttled it back because they had done the whole pre-bunking, our government had met with big tech, Twitter, Facebook, all this now big tech, and prepped them for this,” he continued. “And then fourth, and just as importantly, he says he will not be doing the Zuckerbucks this time around this election. Thank goodness for that. So, four key facts he pointed out in that letter, but I think the timing is so important because we don’t know what they may have in store this election. What are they going to try in October? Let’s make sure it’s not censoring information that the American people need to know before voting in an election.”

Quote:Keith Ellison, attorney general for Minnesota – the state where Kamala Harris VP pick Tim Walz serves as governor – on Monday celebrated Brazil’s supreme court banning Elon Musk’s X from the country.

In a post on X for Labor Day, Keith Ellison said in response to the ban, “Obrigado Brasil!” – “Thanks, Brazil!”
His post prompted severe online reactions.

“Tim Walz’s attorney general in Minnesota — Keith Ellison — thanks Brasil for crushing free speech platform X,” said The Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemmingway.

As Breitbart News reported, Brazil blocked “Elon Musk’s X social media platform after the SpaceX and Tesla CEO refused to comply with the nation’s demands to blacklist certain accounts.

Musk claimed on his platform that the country also froze the assets of Starlink, his satellite internet company.

“Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the country’s telecom agency to block access to X across Brazil, adding that anyone caught trying to access the social media platform could be fined nearly $9,000 per day, according to a report by the New York Times,” it added. “The move reportedly came after Musk closed his X office in Brazil after Moraes threatened to make arrests over ignoring his demands to remove X accounts that he said broke Brazilian laws.”

Quote:Elon Musk has escalated his attacks against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, calling for his arrest after the country’s high court upheld a ban on the X social media platform.

Fox Business reports that in a scathing rebuke, tech billionaire Elon Musk took to his X platform on Monday to demand the imprisonment of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The statement came in response to the country’s high court upholding a temporary ban on the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.

“De Moraes deserves prison for his crimes,” Musk wrote on X, intensifying the ongoing feud between the billionaire and the Brazilian justice system. The ban was initially imposed over the weekend after Musk failed to meet a deadline to appoint a legal representative in Brazil. The case stems from the country’s demand that certain accounts implicated in probes of alleged digital militias, accused of spreading misinformation and hate, be suspended.

Despite Musk’s protests, a court panel unanimously voted to maintain the ruling on Monday. This is not the first time the tech mogul has publicly criticized de Moraes. In a series of posts on X, Musk accused the justice of violating his oath of office, calling him a “criminal” and a “dictator.” He even went as far as dubbing de Moraes “de Voldemort,” a reference to the villainous character from the Harry Potter series.

The court’s decision has not only affected X but also Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet provider, which is 40% owned by the billionaire. The court has frozen Starlink’s financial accounts in Brazil as part of the ongoing dispute. X has alleged that de Moraes is demanding the platform appoint a legal representative in the country so that authorities have someone to arrest, further escalating tensions between the company and the Brazilian government.

The ban has left tens of millions of X users in Brazil struggling to find alternative social platforms to stay connected with the world. The situation has drawn attention to the delicate balance between free speech, regulation, and the power of tech giants in shaping public discourse.

Quote:Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service has announced it will comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court order to block access to Musk’s social media platform X in Brazil.

The Hill reports that Starlink, the satellite internet service owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has declared its intention to block access to Musk’s own social media platform, X, in Brazil. This decision comes in response to a recent order from Brazil’s Supreme Court, which mandated the suspension of X throughout the country due to an ongoing feud between Musk and Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes.

The conflict between Musk and de Moraes has been escalating for months, with tensions reaching a boiling point earlier this month when X closed its office in Brazil after the judge ordered the platform to remove certain posts. Failure to comply with the order would have resulted in a daily fine of $3,650 and an arrest decree against X’s representative in the country, Rachel Nova Conceicao.

Last week, de Moraes threatened to shut down X entirely in Brazil, prompting a strong reaction from Musk, who called the judge an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge.” In response, de Moraes ordered the immediate suspension of X, directing internet service providers and app stores to block the platform within five days. The order also imposed daily fines of nearly $9,000 for those who use virtual private networks (VPNs) or other methods to access X.

Starlink, caught in the middle of this dispute, initially sought to fight what it called the “illegality” of the order to freeze its financial transactions. However, faced with the threat of sanctions from Brazil’s telecommunications regulator Anatel, the company ultimately decided to comply with the court’s ruling.

In a statement on X, Starlink wrote, “Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil. We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that @alexandre’s recent orders violate the Brazilian constitution.”

Quote:In a significant victory for Elon Musk’s social media platform X, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has partially blocked a California law that mandates social media companies to disclose their policies for addressing disinformation, harassment, hate speech, and extremism.

Reuters reports that the decision, which overturns a lower court judge’s ruling that had declined to pause the enforcement of the new California law, marks a crucial development in the ongoing debate over the extent of states’ authority to regulate social media companies. The law in question requires large social media platforms to publicly report their content moderation practices and provide data on the number of objectionable posts and how they were handled.

Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter last year and recently rebranded it as X, had filed a lawsuit to prevent the law from taking effect, arguing that it infringed upon the First Amendment’s speech protections. The case is one among several legal challenges that have emerged as states attempt to exert greater control over social media giants.

In May, the U.S. Supreme Court directed lower courts to reevaluate whether content moderation laws in Texas and Florida raised First Amendment concerns, setting the stage for further legal battles. In X’s case, U.S. District Judge William Shubb in Sacramento had initially refused to block the California law in December, finding that it was not “unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law.”

However, the appeals court disagreed with this assessment, holding that the law’s requirements were “more extensive than necessary” to justify the state’s goal of compelling social media companies to be transparent about their moderation policies and practices. The panel instructed the lower court to review whether the content moderation portion of the law can be severed from other provisions.

Quote:Fresh off the crackdown on so-called “keyboard warriors” over social media posts connected to the recent anti-mass migration riots, leading leftist politicians in Britain are beginning to demand for new speech restrictions on the internet.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose neo-liberal Labour Party government enacted some of the strictest speech laws in modern British history, has joined the chorus of commentators demanding a new crackdown on social media.

Speaking to LBC Radio this week, Blair said: “The world is going to have to come together and agree on some rules around social media platforms.

“It’s not just how people can provoke hostility and hatred but I think… the impact on young people particularly when they’ve got access to mobile phones very young and they are reading a whole lot of stuff and receiving a whole lot of stuff that I think is really messing with their minds in a big way.

“I’m not sure what the answer is but I’m sure we need to find one.”

Blair was not alone in calling for new restrictions on social media. Earlier this week, the left-wing Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle also said that the government should consider new limits against online speech.

“Misinformation is dangerous,” Hoyle said. “Social media is good but its also bad when people are using it in a way that could cause a riot, threat, intimidation, suggesting that we should attack somebody, it’s not acceptable.

“What we’ve got to do is factually correct what’s up there, if not I think the government has to think long and hard about what they are going to do about social media and what are they going to put through parliament as a bill.

Quote:Pavel Durov, the CEO of popular messaging app Telegram, has publicly addressed his recent arrest in Paris, calling the French authorities’ approach “misguided” and expressing surprise at being held personally responsible for illegal activities on his platform.

Novaya Gazeta Europe reports that in his first public statement since being detained on August 24, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has hit out at the French authorities’ “misguided approach” in arresting him on charges related to the management of the popular messaging app. Durov was indicted on 12 offenses, including administering a platform that permits illicit financial transactions, failure to provide information to authorities, complicity in the distribution of child pornography, drug trafficking, organized crime, and money laundering.

Writing on his personal Telegram channel, Durov expressed his surprise at learning he could be held responsible for the illegal activities of others on the platform. He argued that the established practice when a country is unhappy with an internet service is to initiate legal action against the service itself, not the CEO. “Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” Durov stated.

The Telegram CEO warned that holding innovators personally responsible for potential abuse of their tools would discourage the development of new technologies. He emphasized that while Telegram had experienced “growing pains” due to a rapid increase in users, now totaling 950 million, the app was not an “anarchic paradise.” Durov highlighted the efforts of Telegram moderators, who take down “millions” of harmful posts and channels every day.

Durov also pointed out that French authorities had numerous ways to reach him to address concerns about the app and that Telegram had an official EU representative to handle law enforcement requests. Despite this, he pledged to make it his “personal goal” to prevent illegal activity on the platform.

Following his arrest at Paris’ Le Bourget Airport in late August, Durov was charged and later freed after posting a €5-million bail bond. He is currently prohibited from leaving France as the case progresses.

Quote:In a new report that confirms many people’s worst suspicions, a leaked marketing pitch deck suggests major tech companies are using AI software to eavesdrop on users’ conversations through their devices.

The Daily Mail reports that a leaked pitch deck from marketing firm Cox Media Group (CMG) details how the company’s ‘Active-Listening’ software uses AI to collect and analyze “real-time intent data” from consumers by listening to their conversations via microphones on phones, laptops, and home assistants. The deck touts Facebook, Google, and Amazon as clients of CMG, implying these tech giants could be deploying the Active-Listening service to target users with ads based on what they say in private.

The leak, first reported by 404 Media, opens a window into a practice that tech companies have long denied — using device microphones to gather data on users for advertising purposes. CMG’s Active-Listening software is said to be able to pair voice data with users’ online behavioral data to identify “in-market consumers” who are actively considering purchase decisions. For example, the software could determine from a private conversation that a user is thinking about buying a car, and then serve them targeted ads for vehicles.

The pitch deck outlines a detailed six-step process that the Active-Listening AI uses to extract intent data from overheard conversations on any device with a microphone. It remains unclear whether the software is always listening or only at specific triggered times, such as when making a call. But the system is apparently advanced enough to analyze gathered voice data, combine it with online activity tracking, and pinpoint high-value consumers on the verge of making a purchase.

In response to the revelations, Google quickly distanced itself from CMG, removing the company from its official marketing partners list. Meta and Amazon issued statements indicating they are investigating CMG for potential violations of data privacy policies. However, all three tech giants have previously denied using such listening software, despite rampant user suspicions.

The leak sheds light on CMG’s stunning claim that their “Active-Listening” tools are completely legal, with user consent buried in the fine print of dense terms of service agreements. CMG boasted in a now-deleted blog post that “when a new app download or update prompts consumers with a multi-page terms of use agreement somewhere in the fine print, Active Listening is often included.”

Quote:Amazon insists that its Alexa voice-enabled assistant does not have any political opinions — and that Alexa’s responses explaining why someone should vote for VP Kamala Harris while refusing to answer the same question about Donald Trump was a mistake. Amazingly, Amazon devices claimed one reason to vote for Harris is that she is a “strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishment.”

Variety reports that on Tuesday, users on social media shared videos showing Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa providing disparate responses when asked “Why should I vote for Donald Trump?” versus “Why should I vote for Kamala Harris?” In response to the question about voting for Trump, Alexa stated, “I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate.” However, when asked about voting for Harris, Alexa in some cases provided a detailed list of reasons supporting the Democrat in the upcoming November presidential election. These reasons laughably included Harris being a “strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishment.”

Fox News Digital compiled varying responses to the questions, noting that the replies depended on the specific model of Amazon device being used. In one widely shared video on X (formerly Twitter), Alexa responded to the question “Why should I vote for Kamala Harris?” by saying: “While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishment. As the first female vice president, Harris has already broken down a major gender barrier, and her career in politics has been characterized by a commitment to progressive ideals and a focus on helping disenfranchised communities.”

In another case reported by Fox News Digital, when asked about voting for Harris, Alexa stated, “While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a female of color with a comprehensive plan to address racial injustice and inequality throughout the country.”

In response to inquiries from Variety about the discrepancy in Alexa’s responses, an Amazon spokesperson clarified that this was an error that the company quickly rectified. The spokesperson emphasized that Amazon makes continual changes to enhance the systems it has in place for detecting and blocking content that violates its policies. The tech giant also stated that it has dedicated teams working to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.

Trump campaign officials were quick to respond, with campaign spokesman Steven Cheung sharing a post on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption “BIG TECH ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”

And what exactly did she accomplish? To let the borders wide open?

Quote:Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station on Friday evening and return to Earth without its crew. The astronauts the ill-fated capsule were supposed to carry home will now be stranded until a SpaceX rescue mission can be launched.

The New York Times reports that the Boeing Starliner spacecraft is set to leave the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday evening, leaving behind the two NASA astronauts it transported to the orbiting laboratory three months ago. The spacecraft is scheduled to undock and begin its journey back to Earth, with a planned parachute landing at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico approximately six hours later.

The decision to have the astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, remain on the ISS for an additional five months stems from the propulsion system issues that Starliner encountered during its approach to the station in June. Despite lengthy analysis and ground tests, NASA officials stated that they do not fully comprehend the cause of these problems. However, both Boeing and NASA have expressed confidence in Starliner’s ability to safely return to Earth without its crew, citing successful landings during previous uncrewed test flights.

To ensure the safety of the astronauts, NASA opted to have Williams and Wilmore return to Earth in February aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. The astronauts have undergone training for an extended mission, including performing spacewalks and operating the robotic arm on the ISS.

For the return trip, Starliner will use a modified undocking procedure that involves short thruster pulses to quickly move away from the station, minimizing stress on the thrusters. The spacecraft will then position itself above the ISS before firing its larger thrusters to drop out of orbit and begin its descent. Although the larger thrusters have not experienced any issues thus far, the smaller thrusters, including those that malfunctioned during docking, serve as a backup for the deorbit maneuver.

The future of the Starliner program remains uncertain following this mission, which was intended to be the final step in NASA’s certification process for the spacecraft to begin regular crewed flights to the ISS. NASA may request that Boeing conduct another crewed flight test, similar to the company’s decision to redo an uncrewed flight test after experiencing technical difficulties during Starliner’s first launch in December 2019.

Quote:The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday unsealed an indictment of five Russian intelligence officers, plus one Russian civilian, for conducting the “WhisperGate” cyberattack on Ukrainian infrastructure in January 2022. The case is largely symbolic, but offers an interesting look at what the FBI described as “the first shot of the war.”

The unsealed indictment names five officers of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) as accomplices of a civilian hacker named Amin Timovich Stigal. A previous indictment in June named only Sitgal as perpetrator of the attack.

The GRU officers were part of a unit known as “Cadet Blizzard,” “Ember Bear,” and “Dev-0586.” The commander of the unit, Yuriy Denisov, was one of the men indicted on Thursday. The GRU team was tasked with using malware to attack critical infrastructure in Europe, Central America, and Asia.

Stigal, a native of Chechnya, either created or perfected an extremely destructive piece of malware known as “WhisperGate.”

The most remarkable feature of WhisperGate is that it “disguises” itself as a ransomware attack, in which data on the infected system would be encrypted and held hostage until the victims paid a ransom to unlock it. Stigal and the GRU team made some of the data they stole available for purchase on the Internet to maintain the illusion they were a routine gang of data thieves.

In reality, WhisperGate aggressively destroyed data beyond hope of recovery, including core operating software whose destruction would make devices, and entire systems, unusable.

According to DOJ, Stigal conspired with the GRU team to infect critical systems in Ukraine with WhisperGate and other destructive malware in January 2022 as a prelude to the Russian invasion, which was launched the following month.

The goals of the WhisperGate attack were to steal information from Ukrainian systems, cripple vital infrastructure, and sow terror among the Ukrainian population. Stigal and his GRU co-conspirators hacked Ukrainian websites to display messages such as, “Ukrainians! All information about you has become public, be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future!”

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said on Thursday that the WhisperGate attack was “emblematic of Russia’s abhorrent disregard for innocent civilians as it wages its unjust invasion.”

Other U.S. officials noted that the Russian malware spread very quickly, without restraint or control from its GRU handlers, turning it into an electronic pandemic that infected systems far beyond Ukraine’s borders.

The Russians also deliberately attacked computer systems in the United States and Europe, including a federal government system in Maryland, as part of their battlespace preparation for the Ukraine invasion.

Quote:A supposed “glitch” in Chase bank’s ATMs that allowed customers to withdraw large sums of money after depositing fake checks has led to a flurry of TikTok users posting videos online bragging about their ill-gotten gains. However, experts warn that this is not a harmless trick, but rather a clear case of check fraud that could result in serious legal consequences.

The Daily Mail reports that over the past few days, social media has been inundated with videos of people seemingly exploiting a flaw in Chase’s ATM system. By writing fraudulent checks for exorbitant amounts and then depositing them, some customers were able to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars that did not actually belong to them. On TikTok and other platforms, users referred to this as an “infinite money hack” and giddily showed off stacks of cash they had obtained.

One of the most prominent clips to emerge from this trend depicted a man walking out of a Chase branch in Yonkers, New York with his friends, all of them cheering as they fanned out wads of hundred dollar bills. Other videos showed long lines of people queuing up outside Chase locations, presumably hoping to take advantage of the supposed glitch before it was fixed.

However, financial experts caution that there is nothing clever or harmless about this activity. What may have seemed like a sneaky life hack is in fact a textbook example of check fraud. While the money initially appeared in customers’ accounts and could be withdrawn, any checks written without sufficient funds will inevitably bounce once they are fully processed by the bank.

“We are aware of this incident, and it has been addressed,” a Chase spokesperson told the Daily Mail. “Regardless of what you see online, depositing a fraudulent check and withdrawing the funds from your account is fraud, plain and simple.” The bank declined to provide further details on how some customers were able to circumvent standard security protocols.

It did not take long for Chase to crack down on the fraudulent activity. Many TikTok users who had gleefully posted about their gains soon shared sobering updates showing their accounts tens of thousands of dollars in the negative due to the fake checks being reversed. “They really told me to tap in, the next day it was supposed to clear, but look at my account,” one distressed man said while showing a balance nearly $40,000 overdrawn.

Quote:Internet trolls backed by the Chinese Communist Party are reportedly posing as Americans on social media platforms including China’s TikTok and targeting U.S. voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The Beijing-backed trolls have been pushing narratives on TikTok about a variety of issues including gun control, racial inequality, and the Israel-Hamas war, according to research reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

Breitbart News previously reported that TikTok sent sensitive user data about Americans, including their opinions on gun control and abortion, to their Chinese communist overlords:

In a new filing, the DOJ notes that TikTok employees communicate internally with one another using a tool called Lark, and claimed that “significant amounts of restricted US user data (including but not limited to personally identifiable information)” was shared on this platform, according to a report by the Register.

“This resulted in certain sensitive U.S. person data being contained in Lark channels and, therefore, stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees located in China,” the DOJ continues in its filing.

The Chinese propaganda push reportedly targets both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. The Beijing-backed initiative also previously targeted President Joe Biden before he was ousted from his reelection campaign.

Researchers attribute the initiative to the prolific Chinese disinformation group, Spamouflage, Associated Press reported. The report was published Tuesday by the research firm Graphika.

“One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations, an operation run by Chinese state-linked actors, has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and sway U.S. political conversations ahead of the election,” Graphika chief intelligence officer Jack Stubbs said.

Adopting fake identities to pose as U.S. voters, the Chinese trolls mimic Americans engaging in political debate online in an attempt to control or sway the narrative.

One TikTok account alleged to be part of the Spamouflage initiative — known as “Harlan Report” — raked in 1.5 million views on a single post. When asked for comment, the individual behind the TikTok account refused to disclose their identity.

“In your world, I am a clown. Sorry, You cannot know my identity, nobody ensure my safety,” the TikTok user told the Wall Street Journal.

Following an inquiry from the news paper, TikTok banned Harlan Report from the platform. Breitbart News reviewed Harlan Report’s X account, which boasted 11,000 followers, finding that the account has since been suspended from Elon Musk’s social media platform as well.

Harlan Report reportedly posed as a 31-year-old conservative on X, with the hashtags #Patriotsunited, #MAGA, and Trump2024 in its bio.

Another investigation by the Wall Street Journal found TikTok promoting “thousands of videos with political lies and hyperbole to its users,” the newspaper added.

Quote:Poland´s security officials said Monday they have foiled cyberattacks and online blackmail attempts by groups acting for Russian and Belarusian services.

Poland has registered up to 1,000 online attacks daily targeting government institutions and agencies, officials said, linking them to the country’s support for neighboring Ukraine in its 2 1/2-year war against Russia’s invasion.

The group that was broken up was seeking access to information in state and individual companies with the goal of blackmailing them, said Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski.

He said that in the first half of 2024, more than 400,000 attempted or successful cyberattacks were recorded, compared to 370,000 in all of last year.

The government plans new legislation to increase Poland’s cybersecurity, Gawkowski said. The government would like internet operators to store data on servers in Poland, not abroad, to ensure better internal protection and oversight by national authorities.

Quote:The European Union’s highest court ruled against Apple and Google on Tuesday in two landmark legal cases, delivering a major victory for the bloc’s efforts to regulate the technology industry, and leaving the tech giants facing billions in tax bills and penalties.

The New York Times reports that the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against Apple and Google in two separate cases on Tuesday. The decisions, which have been years in the making, are seen as a crucial test of the EU’s efforts to clamp down on the world’s largest technology companies.

In the Apple case, the court upheld a 2016 European Union order for Ireland to collect €13 billion (approximately $14.4 billion) in unpaid taxes from the company. EU regulators had determined that Apple had entered into illegal deals with the Irish government, allowing the company to pay virtually no taxes on its European business in some years. Although Apple had initially won a decision to strike down the order, the European Commission appealed the ruling to the Court of Justice. The €13 billion, which had been placed in an escrow account during the appeals process, will now be released to Ireland.

Apple expressed disappointment with the decision, arguing that it effectively allows the European Union to impose a double tax on company income that has already been taxed in the United States. The company stated, “This case has never been about how much tax we pay, but which government we are required to pay it to.”

In the Google case, the court agreed with the commission’s 2017 decision to fine the company €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) for giving preferential treatment in Google search results to its own price-comparison shopping service over rival offerings. Google had lost an appeal in 2021 and stated that it was “disappointed” by the ruling. However, the company noted that it had already adjusted its products to comply with the 2017 decision, including new designs to steer consumers to rival shopping price comparison websites.

The Apple and Google cases represented a major shift in how the tech industry was regulated when the European Union first penalized the companies. Until then, governments worldwide had largely taken a hands-off approach to tech oversight as companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook (now Meta) grew exponentially and transformed how people live, work, shop, and communicate. The cases helped establish the European Union and its antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, as the world’s most aggressive tech industry watchdog, with other countries following Europe’s lead in intensifying scrutiny of the sector’s business practices.

Quote:Google knew that publishers would be unhappy when it implemented measures in 2019 to prevent them from diverting ad sales to competitors, it recognized that its stranglehold over the digital ads market would prevent them from fleeing the internet giant’s ad marketplace, according to internal documents presented at the tech giant’s antitrust trial on Thursday.

Reuers reports that during the ongoing antitrust trial against Google, the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of states are seeking to demonstrate that the company unfairly dominated markets for the technology that facilitates online advertising. A key piece of evidence in the case is Google’s removal of a feature that publishers used to reduce their dependence on the tech giant.

Internal emails and documents shown in court revealed that Google employees discussed the company losing revenue because publishers were using their ability to set a higher minimum for bids from Google’s AdX than for other exchanges. As a result, when ads were offered through multiple exchanges, publishers often sold to exchanges other than Google’s.

The documents also showed that Google knew publishers were willing to accept making less money on some ad sales in exchange for the ability to preference other ad tech companies, such as those who charged a lower fee. In a 2017 email thread, Google executives discussed how this helps publishers “keep Google at bay and put pressure on us (similar to any industry).”

As Google prepared to terminate the feature in 2019, employees discussed ways to mitigate potential blowback from publishers. Nitish Korula, then a research scientist at Google, stated in an email that rolling out the change by itself “would be viewed as pure loss of functionality that we’re doing for our own (perceived ‘nefarious/self serving’ reasons).”

Ultimately, Google introduced the change alongside other features that publishers favored, such as ending the practice whereby Google’s ad selling tools would receive a “last look” that allowed it to outbid other sellers. Former Google employee Rahul Srinivasan testified that the changes were meant to simplify the system and make it fairer, with Google estimating that its top 500 publishers saw a median increase of 2.7 percent in ad auction revenue.

Quote:Social media platforms including Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Instagram, China’s TikTok, and Snapchat have become dangerous marketplaces for the sale of deadly fake pills laced with fentanyl, contributing to a growing epidemic of overdose deaths among young Americans.

AP News reports that social media has a new dark side — the ease with which drug dealers can sell their deadly wares to unsuspecting youth. In the last five years, fentanyl overdoses due to counterfeit pills have become a leading cause of death for minors, even as overall drug use has slightly declined. The DEA found in a 2022 analysis that six out of 10 fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills contained a potentially lethal dose.

Experts, law enforcement, and children’s advocates point to social media companies like Snap, TikTok, Telegram, and Meta Platforms (owner of Instagram) as enablers of this crisis. They argue these companies are not doing enough to keep children safe on their platforms. With just a few clicks, kids can find dealers promising prescription pills like Percocet or Xanax. But all too often, what arrives instead are fake pills tainted with lethal doses of fentanyl.

The stories of victims follow a tragic pattern. Teens hear pills are available on social media. They connect with a dealer, a package arrives, they take a pill in their bedroom, and within minutes they are dead, sometimes not found until the next morning. The National Crime Prevention Council estimates 80 percent of teen and young adult fentanyl poisoning deaths trace back to some social media contact.

While overall accidental overdoses have decreased slightly each year since 2021 according to the CDC, the decline is very small. In 2021 there were 1,622 overdose deaths among ages 0-19, 1,590 in 2022, and 1,511 last year. Education and awareness have helped, but much more needs to be done.

Social media companies say they are constantly working to address the issue, while law enforcement has made some high-profile busts. But the problem persists. Encrypted messaging and alleged lax moderation on some platforms make illegal activity even easier. Money is sent through legitimate payment platforms and drugs delivered by mail.

Quote:A recent academic study has uncovered evidence that AI chatbots powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) have an inherent leftist political bias, potentially influencing the information and advice they provide to users.

ScienceAlert reports that in an increasingly digital world, AI chatbots are becoming a go-to source for information and guidance especially for young people. However, a new study conducted by David Rozado, a computer scientist from Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, has revealed that these AI engines may have a political bias that could unknowingly sway society’s values and attitudes.

The study, published in academic journal PLOS ONE, involved testing 24 different LLMs, including popular chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, using 11 standard political questionnaires such as The Political Compass test. The results showed that the average political stance across all the models was not neutral but rather left-leaning.

This will not surprise those who have closely followed AI. For example, Google Gemini ran amok when it was launched, rewriting history into a woke mess of leftist fantasy.

While the average bias was not strong, it was still significant. Further experiments on custom bots, where users can fine-tune the LLMs’ training data, demonstrated that these AIs could be influenced to express political leanings using left-of-center or right-of-center texts.

Rozado also examined foundation models like GPT-3.5, which serve as the basis for conversational chatbots. Although no evidence of political bias was found in these models, the lack of a chatbot front-end made it challenging to collate the responses meaningfully.

As AI chatbots increasingly replace traditional information sources like search engines and Wikipedia, the societal implications of embedded political biases become substantial. With tech giants like Google incorporating AI answers into search results and more people turning to AI bots for information, there is a growing concern that these systems could influence users’ thinking through the responses they provide.

The exact cause of this bias remains unclear. One possible explanation is an imbalance of left-leaning material in the vast amounts of online text used to train these models. Additionally, the dominance of ChatGPT in training other models could be a contributing factor, as the bot has previously been shown to have a left-of-center political perspective.

It is important to note that bots based on LLMs rely on probabilities to determine the sequence of words in their responses, which can lead to inaccuracies even before considering various types of bias.

Quote:Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday his left-wing government is preparing to impose a minimum age limit, probably between 14 and 16, for children to use social media.

“I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts. We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm,” Albanese said in an interview with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

“Parents are worried sick about this,” he said of social media. “We know they’re working without a map. No generation has faced this challenge before.”

Albanese said he personally would prefer an even higher minimum age than 16. His Labor government is planning to conduct “age verification” trials to test both its censorship technology and determine the ideal minimum age for social media access.

“What we’re looking at is how you deliver it,” Albanese said on Tuesday. “We know that it’s not simple and it’s not easy. Otherwise, governments would have responded before.”

The prime minister said the new policies had to be imposed at the national level, to avoid having “eight different states responses” with different minimum ages for social media.

Albanese added that state and territorial governments would be consulted before laws to restrict social media access are introduced next year. The state of South Australia has already proposed fining social media companies that allow children younger than 14 to use their platforms.

“This is a scourge. We know that there is mental health consequences for what many of the young people have had to deal with. The bullying that can occur online, the access to material which causes social harm, and parents are wanting a response,” Albanese said.

Although Internet rights activists and civil libertarians are generally critical of proposals to ban young people from social media, there is little serious political opposition to the idea in Australia. The opposition Liberal Party, headed by Peter Dutton, is demanding a 16-year age limit. Only the Green Party strongly opposes the idea, saying it prefers better education about the perils of social media to banning young people from using it.

Critics of the minimum age proposal noted that it would prevent children from accessing useful knowledge online and might even force them into darker corners of the Internet as they seek to evade a social media ban.

Queensland University of Technology digital media director Daniel Angus warned the “knee-jerk move” could “create serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world, potentially driving them to lower quality online spaces.”

“This is a very blunt instrument that’s going to potentially exclude children from some very, very helpful supports on social media,” said IT expert Lisa Given of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Quote:A new congressional report accuses an office within the State Department of funding groups that targeted and censored small businesses in the United States, overstepping its mandate to combat foreign disinformation.

The Washington Examiner outlines a recently released report by the Republican-led House Small Business Committee that raises serious concerns about the activities of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC). The 66-page report alleges that the GEC, which has an estimated budget of $61 million and a staff of 125, has been funding groups engaged in domestic censorship, thereby skirting its primary mandate of thwarting foreign disinformation.

The investigation, which began following a series of reports on the GEC’s involvement with the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British group pressuring advertisers to defund right-of-center media outlets in the U.S., has uncovered a pattern of questionable funding practices. The report argues that the GEC promoted “tech start-ups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space to private sector entities with domestic censorship capabilities.”

Moreover, the National Endowment for Democracy, a State Department-funded nonprofit that awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to GDI, is accused of violating its international restrictions by collaborating with fact-checking entities to assess the credibility of domestic press businesses.

The report also highlights the GEC’s involvement in a secret group chat targeting conservatives over alleged “fake news.” Internal documents show that the GEC was added to a private email list titled “#FakeNewsSci,” in which apparent censorship activists critiqued applicants, including domestic businesses such as the Daily Caller and its fact-checking organization.

Participants in the email list were affiliated with various entities, including the National Endowment for Democracy, Snopes, Poynter, Clemson University, and the University of Washington. In one instance, a then-National Endowment for Democracy official, Dean Jackson, slammed the Daily Caller, citing links to articles critical of the outlet’s content and writers.

The House Small Business Committee report emphasizes that it is not appropriate for the GEC or the NED to “belong to a cohort that gatekeeps domestic press companies from belonging to a private credibility organization.” The report also notes issues in the GEC’s recordkeeping and insufficient audit procedures to efficiently track its use of taxpayer dollars.

Quote:2020 Election censors True Media are repositioning themselves as “AI Deepfake” authorities heading into the 2024 election thanks to backing from tech giant Microsoft.

Microsoft is positioning itself as an authority on fighting election-related “disinformation” caused by AI deepfakes, and is lobbying for new regulations in this area. Yet a closer look at its anti-disinformation projects reveal the involvement of extreme Democrat partisans with a track record of pushing political censorship.

LinkedIn founder and Microsoft board member Reid Hoffman and “Chief Question Officer,” Trevor Noah are promoting the Microsoft-partnered project True Media — an organization ostensibly focused on curtailing deepfakes but advised by the same far-left, pro-censorship activists behind the now discredited Election Integrity Project, the DHS-linked consortium that played a leading role in censoring Republican speech during the 2020 presidential election.

Russell Dye, Spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), commented:

The House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government continue to conduct oversight of how and the extent to which the executive branch has coerced or colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor lawful speech. As part of this oversight, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have examined the risk artificial intelligence (AI) poses to free speech, and have uncovered how the Biden-Harris Administration is already seeking to influence the development of private AI models and is funding the development of AI-powered speech-monitoring tools that could enable the mass censorship of American speech. Reports that the censorship-industrial complex is seeking to pressure AI companies like they did social media companies is deeply troubling and represents a serious risk to free speech in our country.

In an interview  with True Media CEO Oren Etzioni for Microsoft’s podcast The Prompt, former Daily Show Host Trevor Noah (who was previously exposed for failing to disclose his affiliation with Microsoft when giving softball interviews to the company’s execs) Noah calls the 2024 election “one of the most consequential elections of all time.” Reinforcing the argument for third-party authorities to moderate and regulate the AI space, Etzioni said Americans “cannot figure this stuff out on their own.”

Hoffman linked to the video on X and added that he was “excited to see new technologies being created to help detect political deepfakes and ensure that our elections are free and fair.”

The threat of “deepfakes” has emerged as a favorite narrative among those pushing for tighter top-down control of online content, with familiar rhetoric. According to True Media, “Disinformation, transmitted virally over social networks, has emerged as the Achilles heel of democracy in the 21st Century.”

Quote:Woke tech giant Microsoft has announced a round of layoffs affecting 650 employees within its Xbox gaming unit, marking the third gaming-related layoff since the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.

CNBC reports that in a memo sent to employees on Thursday, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, revealed that the company had made the “difficult” decision to cut 650 roles at its Xbox division. The layoffs primarily affect corporate and supporting functions, as Microsoft aims to align its post-acquisition team structure and position the business for long-term success.

Spencer expressed the company’s gratitude for the contributions of the affected employees, stating, “We are deeply grateful for the contributions of our colleagues who are learning they are impacted.” He assured that those affected in the US would receive support through exit packages, including severance, extended healthcare, and outplacement services to aid in their transition. Packages for employees outside the US will vary according to location.

The memo also indicated that there would be some impact on other teams as they adapt to shifting priorities and manage the lifecycle and performance of games. However, Spencer emphasized that no games, devices, or gaming experiences are being canceled, and no studios would be closed as a result of the redundancies.

Microsoft’s gaming division has undergone significant changes in recent years, with the company acquiring ZeniMax Media, the owner of Bethesda Softworks, for $7.5 billion in 2021. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the publisher behind the popular Call of Duty franchise, for $69 billion in cash, has further reshaped the company’s gaming landscape.

The layoffs at Xbox are part of a broader trend in the video game industry, with several major gaming studios cutting thousands of jobs worldwide since the beginning of 2023. Sony, Unity, Twitch, Playtika, and Discord have all announced substantial rounds of layoffs in recent months.

Quote:Amazon will be shuttering one of its grocery fulfillment centers in West Sacramento, California, resulting in layoffs impacting nearly 160 employees.

The facility will close on October 30, according to a notice filed with the state Employment Development Department, obtained by the Sacramento Bee.

Five Amazon managers and 154 associates will reportedly be impacted by the closure at its warehouse facility at 3640 Ramos Drive.

Amazon spokesperson, Sam Stephenson, told the newspaper that the laid off workers will have the opportunity to find employment at other job sites in the area.

Stephenson added that the facility is closing because Amazon decided not to renew its lease at that particular facility location.

The retail giant also told KCRA 3 that the closed warehouse in West Sacramento will not affect the company’s customers.

Quote:The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) revealed in a recent report that China has become the world leader in roughly 90 percent of critical technologies and is on track to take the lead in defense technologies as well, including drones and satellites.

ASPI’s latest update to its Critical Technology Tracker reporting project found China “effectively switched places” with the United States as world technology leader in less than twenty years.

“The U.S. led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–20074 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies,” ASPI found.

“Critical technologies” are a basket of 64 fields covering “defense, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas.”

ASPI launched the Critical Technology Tracker in March 2023, and recently expanded it to include data stretching all the way back to the turn of the century.

By analyzing data on research papers and technological developments, the tracker determined that China is now leading in quantum sensors, high-performance computing, gravitational sensors, space launch, and advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication. The United States retains a lead in quantum computing, vaccines, nuclear medicine, small satellites, atomic clocks, genetic engineering, and natural language processing.

Most disturbingly, ASPI said China took the lead in every one of the advanced technologies its researchers have classified as “high risk,” meaning a single nation could develop an effective worldwide monopoly on the tech.

“The technologies newly classified as high risk include many with defense applications, such as radar, advanced aircraft engines, drones, swarming and collaborative robots and satellite positioning and navigation,” ASPI added.

The new critical tracker update found that India is also making big strides in critical technology fields. In fact, India has pushed the U.S. out of second place in several fields that are now dominated by China.

On the other hand, the United Kingdom is in straight decline, falling out of the top five nations in eight critical technology fields. Some other tech and industrial powerhouses, including Germany, South Korea, and Japan, have held relatively stable since 2023.

ASPI researchers attributed much of China’s remarkable progress in critical technologies to heavy government financial support and high-performance academic institutions, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).