I became your enemy because I tell you the truth
Elon Musk Changes Course and Proposes Going Through With Twitter Deal at Original Price: Sources
Elon Musk has reversed course and is again proposing to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Twitter shares jumped 15% on Tuesday after Bloomberg first reported the Tesla CEO’s plans to go forth with his deal to acquire the company. The stock was halted after the report.
A few weeks after Musk agreed to the deal earlier this year, valuing Twitter at $44 billion, he quickly changed course and tried to back out of the agreement. Twitter sued Musk to force him to go through with the purchase. The two sides were scheduled to go to trial in Delaware Chancery Court on Oct. 17.
Zuckerberg’s Metaverse a Gateway to ‘Transhumanism,’ Gettr CEO Warns
Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse will encourage people to distance themselves from reality and devote more time to the virtual world, says Gettr CEO Jason Miller.
Miller, who founded Gettr in July 2021 in response to censorship from incumbent social media services, said Meta’s endeavors to create a virtual world is an attempt by the tech giant to capture more of the youth audience that it is losing to other platforms.
There have been questions over the positive or negative impact of a wide-scale Metaverse engaging billions of people with some experts pointing to already prevalent problems such as online bullying and addiction — an “opium for the masses.”
“It’s not real life, and I think there’s a certain point where you start getting into transhumanism and all kinds of weirdo stuff. It’s not that big of a leap,” Miller said.
Arizona AG Announces $85 Million Google Settlement Over Location Privacy Lawsuit
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Tuesday announced that his office had reached an $85 million settlement with Google over the state’s lawsuit targeting the Alphabet-owned tech giant’s efforts to track user’s locations.
Brnovich’s office said the settlement marks the end of one of the biggest consumer fraud lawsuits in the state’s history.
Brnovich’s office sued Google in May 2020, alleging that the tech giant used deceptive and unfair practices to track users’ location, even if they had opted out — and used that information to target users with ads that generated more than $130 billion in revenue in 2019.
Google later tweaked its privacy settings, but Brnovich’s office launched the lawsuit, alleging that Google acted deceptively, misleading consumers.
Another Court Mulls Biden Vaccine Mandate for U.S. Contractors
A federal appeals court in New Orleans on Monday became the latest to hear arguments on whether President Joe Biden overstepped his authority with an order that federal contractors require that their employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The contractor mandate has a complicated legal history. It is being challenged in more than a dozen federal court districts, and the mandate has been blocked or partially blocked in 25 states. At one time, enforcement was blocked nationwide under a ruling by a Georgia-based federal judge. But an appeals court in Atlanta narrowed the scope of that ruling to the seven states that had sued in that case.
A government website says the mandate isn’t being enforced while legal challenges play out in various jurisdictions around the country.
Biden administration lawyers defended the mandate Monday at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They hope to vacate a ruling by a federal judge in western Louisiana who said the mandate couldn’t be enforced in contracts between Indiana, Louisiana or Mississippi and the federal government.
Biden’s AI Bill of Rights Is Toothless Against Big Tech
Last year, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced that the U.S. needed a bill of rights for the age of algorithms. Harms from artificial intelligence disproportionately impact marginalized communities, the office’s director and deputy director wrote in a WIRED op-ed, and so government guidance was needed to protect people against discriminatory or ineffective AI.
Today, the OSTP released the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, after gathering input from companies like Microsoft and Palantir as well as AI auditing startups, human rights groups and the general public. Its five principles state that people have a right to control how their data is used, to opt out of automated decision-making, to live free from ineffective or unsafe algorithms, to know when AI is making a decision about them and to not be discriminated against by unfair algorithms.
However, unlike the better-known U.S. Bill of Rights, which comprises the first 10 amendments to the constitution, the AI version will not have the force of law — it’s a nonbinding white paper.
The White House’s blueprint for AI rights is primarily aimed at the federal government. It will change how algorithms are used only if it steers how government agencies acquire and deploy AI technology, or helps parents, workers, policymakers or designers ask tough questions about AI systems. It has no power over the large tech companies that arguably have the most power in shaping the deployment of machine learning and AI technology.
Norwegian Cruise Line Drops All COVID Mask, Vaccine and Testing Rules
Norwegian Cruise Line will further ease its COVID-19 rules, dropping all mask, vaccination and testing requirements starting Tuesday.
Passengers will no longer need to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test result to board, though the changes are subject to local requirements at various destinations. The cruise line previously began welcoming all guests regardless of vaccination status on Sept. 3, but unvaccinated passengers had to take a test prior to embarkation.
The change comes as major cruise lines, including Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International and Holland America Line, have dropped vaccine requirements for many sailings in recent weeks.
Spain Travel Rules: U.K. And EU Travelers Still Face Different Rules at the Border
Spain is the only European country that still has COVID restrictions in place for non-EU travelers this month. The popular destination dropped all entry rules for anyone arriving from the EU or Schengen area.
But the U.K., the U.S. and other tourists need to show proof of full vaccination, recovery from COVID-19, a negative antigen test result (taken in the 24 hours before departure) or a negative PCR test (taken in the 72 hours before departure).
Health screening is in place at all Spanish airports and ports to ensure passengers comply with these rules, which are set to stay until at least Nov. 15 .
Previously, if you did not have an EU Digital COVID Certificate (EUDCC), or another EU equivalent, you had to manually fill in Spain’s Health Control Form with these details, receiving a QR code to get through the airports. As of Sept. 20, 2022, this system has been abolished.
Victoria Closes $580 Million COVID Quarantine Facility That Housed 2,168 Guests
Victoria’s purpose-built Mickleham quarantine facility will close next week, having cost more than $500 million to build and after housing 2,168 guests.
The facility, in Melbourne’s outer north, was operated by the Victorian government but built and paid for by the commonwealth after COVID-19 leaked out of Victoria’s hotel quarantine program.
It was initially estimated to cost $200 million, but the federal government revised its estimate in February to $580 million.
With quarantine requirements for international arrivals lifted and cases falling, Victoria’s police minister, Anthony Carbines, said on Tuesday the quarantine hub had served its purpose.
Meta Settles Lawsuit for ‘Significant’ Sum Against Businesses Scraping Facebook and Instagram Data
Facebook parent Meta has settled a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in data scraping operations, which had seen them gathering data from Facebook and Instagram users for marketing intelligence purposes, according to the original complaint filed in October 2020.
The companies named in the suit, Israeli-based BrandTotal Ltd. and Delaware-incorporated Unimania Inc., agreed to a permanent injunction banning them from scraping Facebook and Instagram data going forward or profiting from the data they collected. They also agreed to pay a “significant financial sum” as part of their settlement, Meta says.
Meta declined to disclose the sum paid, however, and court filings didn’t specify the amount.
U.S. Set to Impose More Trade Restrictions on Chinese AI and Supercomputer Companies
The White House is set to unveil rules that would further restrict access to advanced computing technology in China that could be used by its military, according to The New York Times. The new measures, which may be announced this week, reportedly aim to reduce Beijing’s ability to produce advanced weapons and surveillance systems.
The new rules would build on restrictions that block companies from selling U.S.-developed technologies to smartphone manufacturer Huawei, first introduced by the Trump administration in 2019. President Biden is expected to apply such restrictions to additional Chinese firms, government research labs and other entities, insiders told the NYT. Companies around the world would then be prohibited from selling any American-made tech to the targeted organizations.
While the U.S. has the most performance in the Top 500 supercomputer list, China leads in the number of systems. The new U.S. curbs, if enacted, would be the largest effort to combat China’s ability to build supercomputers and data centers.
The Problem With Mental Health Bots
Teresa Berkowitz’s experiences with therapists had been hit or miss. ”Some good, some helpful, some just a waste of time and money,” she says. When some childhood trauma was reactivated six years ago, instead of connecting with a flesh-and-blood human, Berkowitz — who’s in her fifties and lives in the U.S. state of Maine — downloaded Youper, a mental health app with a chatbot therapist function powered by artificial intelligence.
Once or twice a week Berkowitz does guided journaling using the Youper chatbot, during which the bot prompts her to spot and change negative thinking patterns as she writes down her thoughts. The app, she says, forces her to rethink what’s triggering her anxiety. “It’s available to you all the time,” she says. If she gets triggered, she doesn’t have to wait a week for a therapy appointment.
Unlike their living-and-breathing counterparts, AI therapists can lend a robotic ear any time, day or night. They’re cheap, if not free — a significant factor considering cost is often one of the biggest barriers to accessing help. Plus, some people feel more comfortable confessing their feelings to an insentient bot rather than a person, research has found.
TikTok Reports $1 Billion Turnover Across International Markets
TikTok has reported a five-fold surge in turnover to $1 billion (£875m) across its operations in international markets including the U.K. and Europe last year, as trend-setting teens and young adults continue to make the video-sharing platform the hottest social app of the moment.
Financial filings for Chinese-owned TikTok U.K., which also covers operations in countries such as Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Colombia, show that its popularity with the public is rapidly translating into an advertising and e-commerce boom.
The rise of TikTok, fuelled by uber-cool moments at the height of the pandemic — such as Idaho laborer Nathan Apodaca skateboarding along lip-syncing to Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, which pushed the band’s Rumours album back into the Top 10, four decades after its release — has struck fear into the established Silicon Valley tech giants.
Meta-owned Facebook, which TikTok is beating in the battle for the most-coveted demographic of 18-to-25-year-old social media users, has launched a copycat product called Reels to defend its turf.
Elon Musk Changes Course, Proposes Going Through With Twitter Deal at Original Price + More
Michael Loyman