Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber, made it clear on Wednesday: he believes the company’s decision to abandon its autonomous driving program was a mistake. Said Kalanick at the Abundance Summit in L.A., “Look, [new management] killed the autonomous car project we had going on. At the time, we were really only behind Waymo […]
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Meta has notched an early victory in its attempt to halt a surprise tell-all memoir from a former policy executive turned whistleblower. An arbitrator has sided with the social media company, saying that the book’s author should stop selling and publicizing the book, which went on sale earlier this week.
The drama stems from Careless People, a new book by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former policy official at Facebook who Meta says was fired in 2017. Described by its publisher as an “explosive insider account,” Wynn-Williams reveals some new details about Mark Zuckerberg’s push to bring Facebook to China a decade ago. She also alleges that Meta's current policy chief, Joel Kaplan, acted inappropriately, and reveals embarrassing details about Zuckerberg’s awkward encounters with world leaders
The book was only announced last week, and Meta has waged a forceful PR campaign against it, calling it a “new book of old news.” Numerous former employees have publicly disputed Wynn-Williams’ account of events that transpired while she worked at Facebook.
Meta also filed an emergency motion with an arbitrator in an attempt to block the book, arguing that Wynn-Williams had violated a non-disparagement agreement with the company. In a decision, the arbitrator said that she should immediately stop making disparaging comments about Meta and stop “further publishing or distributing” the book. It’s unclear what exactly this means for the book, which is already on sale. The publisher, Flatiron Books, which was also named in Meta’s complaint, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “This urgent legal action was made necessary by Williams, who more than eight years after being terminated by the company, deliberately concealed the existence of her book project and avoided the industry’s standard fact-checking process in order to rush it to shelves after waiting for eight years.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is-trying-to-stop-a-former-employee-from-promoting-her-book-about-facebook-004938899.html?src=rss©
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Earlier today, Google unveiled Gemma 3—a series of open-source AI models that run on just a single GPU or TPU, designed to make AI development faster and more accessible. That’s a sharp contrast to rivals like DeepSeek’s 6R1, which burns […]
The post Is Nvidia in Trouble? Tech giants are building their own custom AI chips to slash costs and break free first appeared on Tech Startups.
Snapchat on Wednesday announced a new feature for its users – at least for some of them. Starting today, Snapchat Platinum (the platform’s premium subscription) members will have access to new AI-generated Lenses.
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Google is pushing back on a bill that would make Utah the first state in the US to have a law requiring app stores to conduct age verification of their users. The company has formally requested the state's governor to veto the bill, passed by the state legislature last week, as it urges states to consider a different approach to app safety.
In a blog post from Google public policy director Kareem Ghanem, the company said the Utah law poses “real privacy and safety risks” and that states shouldn’t rush to pass laws “pushed by Meta” and other social media companies. Instead, Ghanethe says that Google has proposed an “alternative legislative framework” that would allow the developers of potentially “risky” apps to request “age signals” from app store owners like Google.
The statement is the first time Google has publicly opposed the bill, which would make Apple and Google responsible for age verification and parental permission features for children under 18. A spokesperson also confirmed that the company requested that Utah Governor Spencer Cox veto the bill. Cox has previously signed off on laws that imposed age verification and parental permission requirements on social media companies, though the measures were revised and later blocked by a judge. A spokesperson for Cox didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
While it’s not surprising that Google is opposing the law and others like it (there are at least eight other states considering similar measures), it’s notable that the company is proposing its own parameters for a law that would take into account what kind of content is available in a given app, which would place more of a burden on social media companies.
Ghanem argues that not all apps should be subject to age verification. “This level of data sharing isn’t necessary — a weather app doesn’t need to know if a user is a kid,” he writes. “By contrast, a social media app does need to make significant decisions about age-appropriate content and features.” He also argues that app store safety proposals should come with a ban on all personalized ads to anyone under 18, pointedly noting that "other companies" should follow Google's lead on the issue.
Google obviously has a vested interest in not being responsible for age verification of its users, which would impose significant logistical and legal risks for the company. But many other privacy and digital rights groups have also opposed age verification laws.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-asks-utahs-governor-to-veto-the-states-app-store-age-verification-bill-233733280.html?src=rss©
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Spectre Divide, a Valorant-like free-to-play shooter where you control two bodies, is shutting down just months after its September launch.
“We were optimistic about the first week,” developer Mountaintop Studios says in a post. “We’ve had ~400,000 players play, with a peak concurrent player count of ~10,000 across all platforms. But as time has gone on, we haven’t seen enough active players and incoming revenue to cover the day-to-day costs of Spectre and the studio.”
The studio expects to take Spectre Divide offline “within the next 30 days,” and it will refund all money since the game’s first season, which kicked off on February 25th. Mountaintop Studios will also be “closing its doors” at the end of the week, according to the post.
“We pursued every avenue to keep going, including finding a publisher, additional investment, and/or an acquisition,” Mountaintop says. “In the end, we weren’t able to make it work. The industry is in a tough spot right now.”
In December, Mountaintop CEO Nate Mitchell and Spectre Divide game director Lee Horn told The Verge that things were already dire, and that the game’s console launch and new season would be its hail mary play. Horn said that the marketing was working going into launch, but that server issues beginning on launch day axed its momentum. “Unfortunately, the game fell over on day one,” he admitted.
Mitchell told us the game needed thousands of concurrent players if it was going to survive, or else the company would run out of money this year. Unfortunately, the game’s new season peaked at just over 1,000 concurrents on Steam, and has been downhill ever since; presumably, Mountaintop saw its multiplatform peak of around 10,000 players drop similarly.
“If the players are enjoying the game… if they aren’t into season one, they way we hope they are, we’ll have to take a hard look at if we should keep going on as we are, or if players are telling us this isn’t what we want,” Mitchell told us in December. Apparently, Mountaintop did have to take that hard look, and this is its decision.
The Spectre Divide shutdown follows the disastrous launch of Sony’s forgettable Concord hero shooter. Sony has since closed down Concord’s development studio and permanently shut down the game.
Additional reporting by Sean Hollister
Google has once again teased the next Android 16 preview update with Beta 3 officially coming Thursday, March 13.
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Semiconductor giant Intel hired semiconductor veteran Lip-Bu Tan to be its new CEO. This news comes three months after Pat Gelsinger retired and stepped down from the company’s board, with Intel CFO David Zinsner and executive vice president of client relations Michelle Johnston Holthaus stepping in as co-CEOs. Tan, who was most recently the CEO […]
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An arbitrator has decided in favor of Meta in a case the company brought against Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former Meta employee who wrote a memoir published this week detailing alleged claims of misconduct at the company. Macmillan Publishers and its imprint that published the memoir, Flatiron Books, were also named as respondents.
The memoir, titled Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, details alleged claims of sexual harassment, including by current policy chief Joel Kaplan, who was her boss, according to NBC News.
In the decision, the arbitrator said Wynn-Williams must stop making disparaging remarks against Meta and its employees and, to the extent that she can control, cease further promoting the book, further publishing the book, and further repetition of previous disparaging remarks. The decision also says she must retract disparaging remarks from where they have appeared.
However, it’s unclear if this arbitrator actually has the authority to halt the publishing of the book or if Wynn-Williams can stop the creation of future versions; as of this writing, it’s currently for sale at stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. In the decision, the arbitrator noted that the lawyer representing Macmillian and Flatiron objected to its jurisdiction. Wynn-Williams appears to have signed an arbitration agreement when she left Meta in 2017.
Meta, Macmillan, and Flatiron didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
“This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn-Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone says in a statement. “This urgent legal action was made necessary by Williams, who more than eight years after being terminated by the company, deliberately concealed the existence of her book project and avoided the industry’s standard fact-checking process in order to rush it to shelves after waiting for eight years.”
When it goes live, iOS 18.4 will allow some users to set a default navigation app other than Apple Maps. The software of choice can be set from the Settings app by going to Apps, then to Default Apps, then to Navigation. This way, users can opt for a program like Google Maps or Waze to be automatically opened when you're getting directions.
This sounds like a useful update that lots of iPhone owners would appreciate. But not all of them will be able to take advantage. Default navigation choice will only be available in the EU. The change was previously noted by Apple earlier in the month as part of its broader response to the bloc's Digital Markets Act.
There are some preferences iPhone owners in the US can set for default programs. Currently, Americans get options for setting the to-go apps for email, messaging, calling, call filtering, browser, passwords and codes, contactless and keyboards. And they've been thrown a bone in iOS 18.4, with the added choice to set a default translation app.
Across the Atlantic, however European users can make more impactful choices around their Apple use. Most notably, they can use alternative app stores. Some features that were sparked by compliance with the Digital Markets Act have been rolled out in other markets, such as third-party access to the near-field communication that powers functions like tap-to-pay. Having an international consumer base will often lead to situations where different laws and regulations create different user experiences around the world. But at the rate EU users are getting a better experience, either initially or permanently, over Apple's home market, these instances are feeling more like an accepted strategy rather than edge cases.
iOS 18.4 is still in beta; the final version is expected to release in April.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/ios-184-introduces-a-new-default-navigation-app-choice-but-only-in-europe-223408294.html?src=rss©
© Apple
Drinking alcohol is bad in many ways; raising a glass can raise your risks of various health problems, such as accidental injuries, liver diseases, high blood pressure, and several types of cancers. But, it's not all bad—in fact, it's surprisingly good for your cholesterol levels, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers at Harvard University led the study, and it included nearly 58,000 adults in Japan who were followed for up to a year using a database of medical records from routine checkups. Researchers found that when people switched from being nondrinkers to drinkers during the study, they saw a drop in their "bad" cholesterol—aka low-density lipoprotein cholesterol or LDL. Meanwhile, their "good" cholesterol—aka high-density lipoprotein cholesterol or HDL—went up when they began imbibing. HDL levels went up so much, that it actually beat out improvements typically seen with medications, the researchers noted.
On the other hand, drinkers who stopped drinking during the study saw the opposite effect: Upon giving up booze, their bad cholesterol went up and their good cholesterol went down.
© Getty | SimpleImages
Sonos has canceled plans to release a streaming box, The Verge reported today. The audio company never publicly confirmed that it was making a streaming set-top box, but rumors of its impending release have been floating around since November 2023. With everything that both Sonos and streaming users have going on right now, though, a Sonos-branded rival to the Apple TV 4K wasn’t a good idea anyway.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman was the first to report on Sonos’ purported streaming ambitions. He reported that Sonos’ device would be a black box that cost $150 to $200.
At first glance, it seemed like a reasonable idea. Sonos was facing increased competition for wireless speakers from big names like Apple and Bose. Meanwhile, Sonos speaker sales growth had slowed down, making portfolio diversification seem like a prudent way to protect business.
© Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
