Tech is reshaping the world — and not always for the better. Whether it’s the rules for Apple’s App Store or Facebook’s plan for fighting misinformation, tech platform policies can have enormous ripple effects on the rest of society. They’re so powerful that, increasingly, companies aren’t setting them alone but sharing the fight with government regulators, civil society groups, and internal standards bodies like Meta’s Oversight Board. The result is an ongoing political struggle over harassment, free speech, copyright, and dozens of other issues, all mediated through some of the largest and most chaotic electronic spaces the world has ever seen.
The government torpedoed Anthropic’s newest, most powerful model. Sources tell The Verge that the AI lab and other AI boosters spent the weekend trying to explain that Fable 5 wasn’t too powerful.
A month after a jury dismissed Elon’s claims in the Musk v. Altman case, US District Judge Rita Lin dismissed an xAI lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets and poaching employees. This time, it was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled, unlike when she dismissed the case in February.
The judge wrote in her ruling that continuing the case “would be futile.”
It’s still unclear what the T1 Phone even is, or if it will ever ship.
On Sunday, the rich and powerful gathered to watch men choke each other out on the White House lawn. Welcome to peak idiocracy.
Unlike Eric Schmidt or Gloria Caulfield, Pichai didn’t mention AI. Instead, it seems the students were protesting Google’s broader politics, and chanted “Free Palestine” over Pichai’s speech as they filed out.
DJI sued in China when Insta360 muscled in on drones, and both companies are Spider-Man Pointing in US lawsuits now they’re competing on stickcams. Recall: Insta360 just launched its Osmo Pocket competitor Luna Ultra in the US, but DJI can’t sell its Osmo Pocket 4 here.
“Outsider Enterprise” allegedly distributes phishing templates that have scammed people out of millions of dollars. Google says over a million fraudulent URLs are linked to the group, and that over just two weeks, it sent 2.5 million messages to Android users with links to fraudulent websites.
Among the moratorium’s fiercest supporters were Amazon employees, who joined others to testify in support of the policy in multiple Seattle city council hearings.
Russia banned Roblox last year over “LGBT propaganda” and “extremist” content, but the platform “has fully complied with Russian legislation on ensuring user safety,” according to a statement from the country’s Digital Development Ministry reported on by Interfax.
A report from 404 Media shows how more than a dozen cases around the US have shown police using Flock to illegally stalk victims. Flock acknowledged it’s aware of 15 incidents, claiming“each surfaced because of the transparency and accountability features deliberately built into our platform.”
But that doesn’t reflect how some victims only found out by using the HaveIBeenFlocked.com website that Flock has tried to have taken down, or the many years of similar reports with other surveillance tech, a problem the NSA tagged “LOVEINT.”
The early decision found AI summaries are different from conventional search:
A regular search engine just points to outside websites. But AI overviews generate “independent, new, and substantive statements” by evaluating and combining content from various third-party sites. And only Google can check those statements, the court said, “at least by comparing the underlying third-party websites with its own statements based on them.”
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
The European Commission and Apple are at loggerheads over Siri AI after Apple blamed EU law for delays. Brussels says nothing in the law blocks a launch. Apple says compliance would create unacceptable privacy and security risks.
The standoff continues.
The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s Kalshi’s latest effort to address insider trading:
Users seeking to make bets in some markets linked to material nonpublic information will be required to submit an online form disclosing where they work, Kalshi said. The changes are set to be rolled out in the coming weeks. Sensitive betting markets related to issues such as company performance and national security, including the war in Iran, are expected to require employment disclosure, according to a Kalshi official.
Apple blames DMA for delaying Siri AI in Europe. The EU says nothing is stopping Apple from launching it.
One federal judge certainly thinks so. District Judge Leo Sorokin struck down Trump’s H-1B fee increase, ruling that the “substance and application” of the policy “reveal that it is a tax, regardless of what the payment is called.”
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Reuters that the administration plans on appealing the ruling.
While Apple is launching Siri AI in English later this year, it wants EU users to have someone to blame for why it won’t be available there immediately on all of its platforms (only macOS, watchOS, and visionOS at first), similar to other EU-delayed Apple Intelligence updates:
Siri AI is private by design and deeply integrated across Apple’s platforms using on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, which extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud. However, under EU regulators’ extreme interpretation of the DMA, Apple would have to give any virtual assistant direct access to users’ private data — and the ability to directly control other installed applications — as soon as Siri AI is made available in the EU, without the essential protections necessary to keep users and their data safe.
In a 135-page opinion, Judge John J. McConnell, of Rhode Island vacated four Trump administration policies severely restricting legal immigration, including a visa ban affecting nationals of 39 “high risk” countries.McConnell said that US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles legal immigration, implemented the policy “with pre textual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making.”
The convicted FTX fraudster serving a 25-year prison sentence now has a formal filing for the presidential pardon he’s been openly seeking, plus a new jailhouse phone interview with Fox Business. He presumably hopes that was seen inside the White House, despite Donald Trump’s comments in January that he had no plan to pardon SBF.
If you’ve ever wondered what the hell is going on with Bending Spoons’ “buy, do layoffs, ????” strategy, perhaps the statement it filed Monday with the SEC for a public listing will explain.
Named for the scene in The Matrix, it’s pulled this move with brands including AOL, Vimeo, Meetup, Evernote, Eventbrite, Brightcove, WeTransfer, Filmic, and many others, hoovering up and leveraging their accumulated 500 million users, data, and 9 million monthly paying subscribers to raise more money for more acquisitions.
British prime minister Keir Starmer is set to announce a new policy next week that will ban children under 16 from accessing social media platforms, following Australia’s precedent. Starmer is also calling for online platforms to introduce device-level controls that prevent children from sending and receiving nude images.
