Category: Technology

In the last decade social media has gone from silly dog lenses to over the top beauty filters. The latter is at the core of a new initiative from TikTok — the company currently being sued in 14 US states for negatively impacting young people’s mental health. TikTok is now taking a step to reduce young people’s access to these appearance altering effects, with the platform announcing new restrictions on Tuesday around which filters will be available to users under 18 years old. 

TikTok is limiting anyone in this age group’s use of “some appearance effects,” a vague promise that’s scope will determine if its to actually help young people or just TikTok’s image. The company also plans to expand how much information each filter must have about changes to a person’s appearance. Plus, TikTok is “refreshing” its guidance for creators in its TikTok Effects House around the impact certain filters might have — again vague, so we’ll have to see if it’s just talk or actually beneficial. 

Then there’s the matter of finding and banning users under 13 years old. The company claims to removes six million accounts worldwide each month of users that it suspects are underage. Now, TikTok is also “exploring” how to use machine learning to technology to detect accounts run by individuals under 13 years old to then be sent to a moderator to confirm. A TikTok spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that the company will initially test this in the UK, while the filter restrictions and guidance should roll out globally in the coming weeks and months. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/tiktok-is-limiting-appearance-altering-effects-for-anyone-under-18-140006448.html?src=rss 

Black Friday and the holidays are a time for rest, and there are few better ways to unwind and relax by binging a good show or a few movies. The Disney+ and Hulu duo basic bundle has a ton of good content, and right now it only costs $36 for a one-year subscription thanks to Black Friday streaming deals. In other words, it’s $3 a month, which is a far cry from its usual $11-per-month price tag. However, only new users or subscribers who canceled their plans at least a month ago are eligible to redeem this discount. If you have an existing Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ or Disney Bundle subscription, the discount won’t apply.

This bundle with ads contains content from Disney+ and Hulu. The content is still the same as with ad-free plans, including movies and series like Deadpool & Wolverine, Frozen, Godmothered and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, the anticipated Star Wars series only on Disney+. If some of these newer shows aren’t to your liking, there are likely older classics worth your time in the library.

The deal will begin on November 27 and end on December 2. After 12 months, the subscription will renew at the regular price if automatic renewal is enabled. Disney+ is one of the best streaming services out there, focusing on providing family-friendly content but also with some more mature content. If you want even more adult-oriented shows and series, Hulu fits the bill. Both have original content as well.

There are a number of other Black Friday streaming deals available now as well. Key among them are discounts on one year of Peacock and six months of Max. Here are more details:

Peacock annual subscription for $20 (75 percent off): This Peacock Black Friday deal brings the price of one year of access to the ad-supported tier down to only $20. Note that the subscription will automatically renew at the regular rate after the first year, and the deal is only available to new subscribers who are not currently paying for Peacock.

Max 6-month subscription for $18 (70 percent off): This Max Black Friday deal gives you access to the Ads tier for $3 per month for the first six months, coming out to a total of only $18 for the promo period. New and returning Max subscribers can take advantage of this.

Paramount+ with Showtime two-month subscription for $6 (76 percent off): New and former subscribers can get two months of access to either the ad-supported tier Essentials or the Showtime tier for only $6 in this Paramount+ Black Friday deal. Essential lets you watch on three devices at once, while the premium tier includes access to Showtime originals and ad-free viewing (with the exception of live TV).

Check out all of the latest Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/black-friday-streaming-deals-include-one-year-of-the-disney-hulu-bundle-for-36-140024361.html?src=rss 

Earlier this year OpenAI unveiled Sora, a text-to-video AI model, showing off detailed scenes and complex camera motion from relatively simple prompts. It’s been radio silence since then, but the company recently granted artists free early access to the tool for testing. However, a group off around 20 of those just leaked access to Sora in protest, saying they were acting as “PR puppets,” prompting OpenAI to suspend access, The Washington Post reported. 

“We received access to Sora with the promise to be early testers, red teamers and creative partners. However, we believe instead we are being lured into ‘art washing’ to tell the world that Sora is a useful tool for artists,” the group wrote on the AI art repository site, Hugging Face.

Pointing out that OpenAI recently hit a $150 billion evaluation, they noted that artists have been providing unpaid testing and feedback. The group also noted that all Sora-generated content needed to be approved by OpenAI, making it “less about creative expression… and more about PR and advertisement.” The group then said it had released the tool to let anyone play with it, saying it hopes that OpenAI will “support the arts beyond PR stunts.” 

In response, OpenAI shut down early Sora access after just three hours while it looks into the situation. “Hundreds of artists in our alpha have shaped Sora’s development, helping prioritize new features and safeguards,” OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix wrote in a message to The Post. “Participation is voluntary, with no obligation to provide feedback or use the tool.” Another artist in the program, André Allen Anjos, chimed in as well saying that the protest artists’ stance didn’t reflect the views of most artists in the program. 

Though Sora isn’t yet widely available, the tool has been scrutinized over its training materials. In March, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said she wasn’t sure if Sora took training data from YouTube or other video platforms. The next month, YouTube’s CEO specifically warned OpenAI that training models on its videos was against its terms of service. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-suspends-access-to-sora-video-generation-tool-after-artists-protest-133015289.html?src=rss 

Another legal complication may have surfaced in The Onion’s bid to buy the Infowars empire from bankrupt conspiracy media mogul Alex Jones. X filed a limited objection to the transfer of Infowars’ X accounts to the satirical media empire in a federal Bankruptcy Court on Monday.

The objection claims that X Corporation’s terms of service states “the Trustee cannot sell, assign or otherwise transfer such license absent X Corp.’s consent,” according to court records.

X Corporation cites its own Terms of Service (TOS) agreement in its objection. The TOS states accounts cannot be transferred, gifted, sold or assigned to other parties ”without X’s express written consent.”

“Because the X accounts are governed by the TOS, the TOS make clear that X accounts are X Corp.’s ‘exclusive property,” according to X’s court filing.

Jones’ assets including the Infowars website went into a liquidation auction earlier this month to raise money for the nearly $1.5 billion in damages he accrued in civil trials brought by the family members of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Jones was found liable for spreading rumors about the victims’ family members that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged as a false flag attack.

The Onion’s parent company Global Tetrahedron stepped in to purchase the Infowars site after receiving permission from the families to accept a lower bid and forgo a portion of the sale to pay Jones’ other creditors. Onion CEO Ben Collins announced the deal on his Bluesky account as well as the newspaper’s plans to turn Infowars.com into “a very funny, very stupid website.”

US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez halted the deal calling for an evidentiary hearing to review the auction process. The auction’s trustee Christopher Murray said in court that Global Tetrahedron’s bid was not the highest offered but the sale price included a legal clause citing its deal with the families. The Associated Press reported Monday that Lopez will hear arguments on the trustee’s sale of Infowars to The Onion on December 9 or 17 in order to ensure “a fair and transparent process.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-says-the-onion-cant-have-alex-jones-infowars-accounts-000006993.html?src=rss 

Microsoft has quietly announced the end of an era, with the Xbox Avatar Editor going away early next year. “Due to low engagement and our shift in focus towards delivering other player experiences, the Xbox Avatar Editor app will no longer be available starting on January 9, 2025,” the company wrote in its FAQ about the feature.

The latest approach to personalizing avatars launched in 2018. The Xbox Avatar Editor allowed players to customize cartoon versions of themselves with both a free and purchased library of cosmetics. The options gave a lot of room for diversity and personal expression, so that you really could create a clear likeness of yourself, or whatever self you wanted to show to the Xbox community. Microsoft said it will refund players for Xbox Avatar Editor purchases made between November 1, 2023 and the app’s end date.

Microsoft introduced avatars to player accounts back in the Xbox 360 era. These Xbox Original Avatars will not be impacted by the editor app’s departure; they’ll continue to appear for players using those old school images as well as on Xbox 360 hardware.

If you created an avatar that you want to preserve as your profile photo on the Xbox into the future, you can use the Avatar Editor app until the shutdown date to save a picture to your account. The Xbox support forums have a full explainer on how to create or upload your profile photo.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/microsoft-is-taking-away-the-xbox-avatar-editor-233712034.html?src=rss 

Bloomberg reports that Uber has started farming out independent contractors for data-labeling services as well as coders-for-hire.

Uber describes its new Scaled Solutions division as a platform of “analysts, testers and independent data operators,” according to the company’s website. Scaled Solutions began life as an internal team, handling “large-scale annotation tasks” for Uber’s other services. Now it’s been expanded to provide coders and data labelers for outside companies like Pokémon Go developer Niantic Inc. and the self-driving trucking software firm Aurora Innovations. Aurora acquired Uber’s self-driving Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) unit in 2020 and Uber is one of Aurora’s investors.

Uber started recruiting workers this month for its Scaled Solutions division from India, the US, Canada, Poland and Nicaragua. Scaled Solutions also posted some corporate openings for positions in San Francisco, New York and Chicago. According to an onboarding FAQ reviewed by Bloomberg, contractor pay is distributed monthly and totals are based on the tasks that contractors complete. The company did not reveal any specific rates to Bloomberg for its new crop of freelance employees.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/ubers-latest-gig-economy-play-is-offering-out-coders-for-hire-215036314.html?src=rss 

The US Fair Trade Commission published a paper that found 89 percent of connected devices do not detail how long the item will receive software support. The study examined product websites looking for specifics about how long the company expected to support the device. Within the 11 percent of product sites that shared this information, the review found cases with ambiguous language as well as inconsistencies in where dates were displayed. As a secondary test, the researchers conducted basic Google searches for information about support dates and couldn’t quickly find answers for 67 percent of the devices.

“Consumers stand to lose a lot of money if their smart products stop delivering the features they want,” said Samuel Levine, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC. “When shopping for smart devices, consumers should ask questions and consider how long their product will last.”

The 89 percent figure sounds like a pretty damning rate, but there is a major caveat to this research. The FTC only looked at 184 products, and they fell across a huge range of categories. The review excluded laptops, personal computers, tablets and automobiles, but any other “connected device” was covered. So while the real percentages are likely hazier than this report suggests, the FTC’s point about considering ongoing product support is still a good one.

It’s becoming more common for smartphone manufacturers to say upfront how long they’ll support the device; for instance, Samsung will keep the S24 line updated for seven years. The wave of right to repair laws that have been passed in a few states, most recently in California, could also point toward longer lifespans for hardware. However, that practice clearly hasn’t spread to all personal and home tech. Today’s paper from the FTC doesn’t advise any action on the topic, but it does highlight a need to set expectations around how and when companies will offer support for their software-driven products.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/ftc-warns-that-companies-dont-disclose-how-long-connected-devices-will-be-supported-212432111.html?src=rss 

The White House is reducing Intel’s CHIPS Act award by over $600 million. Initially set to receive $8.5 billion from the domestic silicon production bill, the company will get up to $7.85 billion instead. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Intel has extended some plant openings beyond 2030 government deadlines. However, the Commerce Department said the funding reduction was instead due to a $3 billion military contract Intel was awarded.

Intel posted its biggest-ever quarterly loss last month after announcing 15,000 layoffs in August. The chip-maker’s struggles have reportedly led some government officials to worry about its ability to deliver as a central component of the Biden White House’s CHIPS Act.

Intel will receive at least $1 billion in CHIPS Act funding before the end of the year. The company plans to invest $90 billion in the US by the decade’s end, a reduction from its initial goal of $100 billion in the next five years. The Commerce Department said the chip maker is still on schedule to invest the full $100 billion on projects in four states: Arizona ($3.94 billion), Oregon ($1.86 billion), Ohio ($1.5 billion) and New Mexico ($500 million).

One of the outgoing President’s landmark bills, the CHIPS Act is projected to create over 125,000 jobs across 20 states while spurring US silicon manufacturing and decreasing reliance on foreign manufacturers. Intel is the largest recipient of CHIPS Act money.

The Commerce Department has reportedly moved quickly to finalize awards with the bill’s recipients before the second Trump term begins in January. The President-elect attacked the legislation and its cost during his campaign, and House Speaker Mike Johnson said at the time Republicans “probably will” try to repeal the CHIPS Act. However, Johnson later walked back his remarks, and analysts predicted after the election that the legislation would likely survive.

Earlier this month, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s leading advanced chip maker, was the first to have its grants finalized. It will receive $6.6 billion (including at least $1 billion before the end of the year) for three plants in Arizona, which are expected to create “tens of thousands of jobs by the end of the decade.”

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has reportedly urged tech companies — including Apple, Amazon, NVIDIA, AMD and others — to work with Intel because the 56-year-old company is the only US-based logic chip maker. However, most companies were said to have rejected her pleas because “Intel’s chip-making techniques are not as sophisticated” as TSMC’s, according to a NYT report last month.

Although Taiwan is an ally and economic partner of the US, the Biden administration reportedly views reliance on it as “increasingly risky” as China poses a continual threat to take over the self-governing island. Last month, China held military “drills” in the sea and sky surrounding Taiwan as a warning after the island’s president, Lai Ching-te, reasserted the island’s independence in a holiday speech. The US State Department said it was “seriously concerned” about the show of force.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/intels-chips-act-funding-cut-by-over-600-million-184518662.html?src=rss