President Biden used his final public address from the Oval Office to warn the nation about the dangers presented by the spread of misinformation and power-hungry tech leaders.
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
In his farewell message on Wednesday, Biden called back to warnings that President Dwight Eisenhower gave about the military-industrial complex causing a “disastrous rise of misplaced power.”
“Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well,” Biden said. Despite praising US technology leadership for its innovation and ability to transform lives, Biden said he was concerned about “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people,” warning that there could be alarming consequences “if their abuse of power is left unchecked.”
While he didn’t specify names, Biden’s oligarch remark likely refers to Elon Musk, who has landed himself a leadership role in a not-really-government-department of the incoming administration after spending an estimated $250 million of his own money to help get Donald Trump elected.
Alongside Musk, Mark Zuckerberg also appears to be a specific target of Biden’s concerns regarding the rise in misinformation and conspiracy theories across social media platforms. Last week, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would scrap its third-party fact-checking program for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the US and remove several restrictions around heated topics.
“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden warned. “The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.”
On Monday, tech CEOs including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg are expected to attend Trump’s inauguration, seated in a position of honor on the dais alongside former presidents and family members. These same CEOs — either through their companies or via personal contributions — have reportedly donated $1 million apiece to Trump’s inauguration fund.
The latest update for social media aggregator Openvibe has now officially added support for notifications with Mastodon and Bluesky.
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The last few years have brought a barrage of “cozy games,” video games expressly designed to generate good vibes. That said, coziness isn’t a virtue in and of itself. If you’re looking for games to help you wind down, allow us to help. We’ve curated a selection of our favorite chill titles, ones that purposefully deemphasize fail states, grinding, intense violence and other aggressive urges, but aren’t insufferably twee, dull or same-y. Yes, these include the Stardew Valleys and Animal Crossings of the world, but we’ve also highlighted a number of lesser-known gems that span across genres. Here’s a few of the best relaxing games for your Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC or mobile device.
January 2025: We’ve added Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley and Little Kitty, Big City to the list.
Check out our entire Best Games series including the best Nintendo Switch games, the best PS5 games, the best Xbox games, the best PC games and the best free games you can play today.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/best-relaxing-video-games-140048572.html?src=rss©
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Just a day after Google inked a deal with The Associated Press, Mistral is also announcing a content deal with the Agence France-Presse (AFP) to improve the accuracy of answers in Le Chat, Mistral’s chatbot product. This is the first deal of this kind for the Paris-based artificial intelligence company. And it indicates that Mistral […]
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