PornHub is breaking up with Florida

The pornographic website PornHub is adding Florida to its list of states to block starting next year. Gizmodo reported that Floridians who visited the porn website recently were greeted with a warning that says “You will lose access to PornHub in 14 days” thanks to a new state law that requires an ID to visit the website.

PornHub has already blocked a number of states from accessing its wealth of sexually explicit content because of new state laws that require visitors to provide a valid government ID to verify their age for access. Florida’s legislature passed its porn ID law and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law on March 25 as part of a series of regulations intended to protect minors from explicit materials. The adult entertainment trade association The Free Speech Coalition is fighting Florida’s law in federal court, according to The Florida Times-Union.

Florida will become the 13th state to institute an age verification law for adult websites. Florida follows Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, Mississippi, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky and Nebraska that all have ID verification laws on its books.

“Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing [the state’s] stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors,” according to the official PornHub blog

The PornHub blog also states that the company is concerned about the safety and welfare of children but the idea of using identification creates more risks with users’ safety and privacy. The Louisiana law in particular has no state regulator overseeing the new laws’ implementation “which results in a flawed enforcement regime,” the PornHub blog states.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/pornhub-is-breaking-up-with-florida-202650152.html?src=rss 

Flipboard just launched Surf, which is sort of like an RSS feed for the open social web

The company behind the news app Flipboard just launched something called Surf, which is sort of like an RSS feed for the open social web. The app allows users to create feeds that pull from the open social web, including services like Mastodon and Bluesky. It also sources content from blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos.

Flipboard CEO Mike McCue calls it a “browser for the social web” and that description makes a whole lot of sense. Surf supports a whole bunch of open protocols, including RSS, Bluesky’s AT Protocol and ActivityPub. That last one is used to power decentralized platforms like Mastodon, Threads, Pixelfed, PeerTube and Friendica, among others. This follows Flipboard itself moving to the fediverse, which allowed for full interoperability with Mastodon and other decentralized networks.

The app has been in development for nearly two years and lets users build custom feeds using a combination of sources. If you wanted to follow a niche topic like, say, 3D printing, you could add notable people to a feed, along with hashtags, specific RSS feeds, preferred podcasts and more. As of the initial beta launch, Surf comes with 30,000 predefined topics to explore. Custom feeds can also explore multiple topics at once, to personalize things.

Flipboard

The app’s home page includes a wide swath of curated feeds to follow that are organized into sections like Featured, Trending, Communities and Expert Voices. Feeds are configurable in a number of ways, which lets users include or exclude stuff like replies, reposts or mature content. Thankfully, the order of the feed is also fully adjustable, with an option for a Twitter-like timeline.

This sounds pretty cool right? One of the main problems in this new era of the social web, in which the old guard has lost so much steam, is the lack of a centralized hub. This looks to solve that problem to some extent.

Now a spot of bad news. Surf is technically available right now, but only as an invite-only, closed beta. If you can get a hold of one of those invites, the app is available for both iOS and Android, with a desktop client coming soon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/flipboard-just-launched-surf-which-is-sort-of-like-an-rss-feed-for-the-open-social-web-184015833.html?src=rss 

OpenAI brings ChatGPT to WhatsApp

ChatGPT is now available on WhatsApp. Starting today, if you add 1 (800) CHAT-GPT to your contacts — that’s 1 (800) 242-8478 — you can start using the chatbot over Meta’s messaging app. In this iteration, ChatGPT is limited to text-only input, so there’s no Advanced Voice Mode or visual input on offer, but you still get all the smarts of the o1-mini model. 

What’s more, over WhatsApp ChatGPT is available everywhere OpenAI offers its chatbot, with no account necessary. OpenAI is working on a way to authenticate existing users over WhatApp, though the company did not share a timeline for when that feature might launch. It’s worth noting Meta offers its own chatbot in WhatsApp.   

Separately, OpenAI is launching a ChatGPT hotline in the US. Once again, the number for that is 1 (800) 242-8478. As can probably imagine, the toll-free number works with any phone, be it a smartphone or old flip phone. OpenAI will offer 15 minutes of free ChatGPT usage through the hotline, though you can log into your account to get more time. 

“We’re only just getting started on making ChatGPT more accessible to everyone,” said Kevin Weil, chief product officer at OpenAI, during the company’s most recent 12 Days of OpenAI livestream. According to Weil, the two features were born from a recent hack week the company held. Other recent livestreams have seen OpenAI make ChatGPT Search available to all free users and bring its Sora video generation out of private preview.  

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-brings-chatgpt-to-whatsapp-184653703.html?src=rss 

Five more Amazon facilities authorize worker strikes

Teamsters unions at five additional Amazon facilities have voted to go on strikes, following similar action in New York City and Illinois. The international Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) announced in a statement that union members “unanimously” approved measures to authorize strikes in four Southern California facilities and a fifth facility in Atlanta.

The four Southern California facilities are based in City of Industry, Palmdale, Victorville and San Bernardino, according to SiliconValley.com. This brings the total number of Amazon facilities that have authorized worker strikes to eight. The total includes a facility in Skokie, Illinois and two New York City warehouses on Staten Island and in Queens. The IBT represents just under 10,000 workers in 10 Amazon facilities nationwide.

These facilities approved a strike right in the middle of the holiday shopping season, one of the busiest and most lucrative times of the year for the online retail giant. Amazon crews went on strike to protest against low wages, hazardous working conditions and “Amazon’s illegal refusal to recognize their union,” according to IBT statements.

Teamsters General President Sean N. O’Brien said in the statement that Amazon has failed to provide adequate compensation and protections for its workforce. If their demands are ignored, O’Brien says they will start strikes.

“Amazon workers want to earn a good living, have decent health care and be safe on the job,” O’Brien said. “They are done with the disrespect and if Amazon keeps pushing them, they will push them to strike.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/five-more-amazon-facilities-authorize-worker-strikes-185030459.html?src=rss 

LG’s transparent OLED T television can be yours for the low low price of $60,000

LG’s transparent wireless OLED TV is now available. The 77-inch OLED T has 4K resolution, LG’s wireless transmission tech for video and audio and the ability to shift between transparent and opaque modes with the push of a button. This futuristic tech, first introduced at CES 2024, will only set you back… oh, holy hell, this thing costs $60,000.

Engadget’s Billy Steele checked out the OLED T in January and was impressed with its unique presentation. Although some transparent visuals can appear unsettling — like a miniaturized singer who appeared to be in the room — the fish tank video in the image below was more pleasant. He also found the TV’s downward-firing speakers to sound surprisingly good.

Billy Steele for Engadget

You can change between transparent and opaque modes by pressing a button that raises or lowers a contrast screen. It rolls down into a box at its base when you prefer the funky fish-tank look. It also includes backlights to accentuate its transparent look.

The TV also has a chyron-like T-Bar at the bottom, which you can use to check out sports scores, weather, song titles and more. The bar can stay on even when the rest of the TV is off.

The OLED T is powered by LG’s Alpha 11 A1 processor, which has four times the performance of the previous-gen chip — including 70 percent better graphics performance and 30 percent faster processing speed. The TV maintains its clean profile with LG’s Zero Connect Box, which sends video and audio wirelessly to the TV. Just plug your streaming boxes and game consoles into it rather than the TV.

If you happen to be Bill Gates (’sup, Bill!), you can lay down $60 grand to order the LG OLED T starting today. It’s available on LG’s website and at select retail partners, including Best Buy.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/lgs-transparent-oled-t-television-can-be-yours-for-the-low-low-price-of-60000-185850374.html?src=rss 

PlayStation’s Mark Cerny did a deep-dive on the PS5 Pro and Sony’s new partnership with AMD

PlayStation Lead Architect Mark Cerny is back again to explain the nitty-gritty details of how the PlayStation 5 Pro achieves its various graphical improvements. Cerny first introduced the PS5 Pro in September and in a new 37-minute video, he gets into how the Pro’s improved GPU uses tech from AMD and announces a “deeper collaboration” between Sony and the chip maker.

The PS5 uses AMD’s RDNA 2 GPU architecture originally released in 2020, while the PS5 Pro uses what Cerny refers to in the video as RDNA 2.X. The new GPU is a mixture of what was already offered on the PS5, with some cherry-picked features from the more advanced RDNA 3 architecture AMD introduced in 2022. That’s paired with ray tracing techniques that Cerny says are from future RDNA tech on AMD’s roadmap, and custom machine learning features created for the PS5 Pro. Those machine learning components are also apparently a key part of AMD and Sony’s future work together.

“AMD has been a fantastic partner for SIE for many years now,” Cerny says. “And I’m honored to announce that we have begun a deeper collaboration with a focus on machine learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay.”

“Amethyst,” the name the companies chose for their new project together, is primarily concerned with creating “a more ideal architecture for machine learning,” according to Cerny. The new hardware architectures the companies are developing could benefit future consoles and AMD’s own GPUs, but they’re just one part of the plan. Sony and AMD are also working towards the “democratization of machine learning,” which sounds like possible software tools to make it easier for developers to implement AI in gameplay and graphics.

The whole video is jam-packed with information on the thinking and engineering that went into the PS5 Pro and worth a watch if you’re looking for more detail on what “Pro” means in this case. It might not convince you to upgrade to the new $700 console, but it certainly makes the case that Sony didn’t take designing it lightly.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/playstations-mark-cerny-did-a-deep-dive-on-the-ps5-pro-and-sonys-new-partnership-with-amd-193613727.html?src=rss 

US Supreme Court agrees to hear TikTok’s ban appeal

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear TikTok owner ByteDance’s appeal of a law that could ban the app. The court took up the case (via NBC News) unusually quickly — only two days after the company filed its appeal. Oral arguments are scheduled for January 10.

The law being challenged, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, is set to go into effect on January 19, the day before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. The court didn’t provisionally block the law when saying it would take up the case.

The bill mandates that the app be banned if ByteDance doesn’t sell the platform to an American company. It was passed with overwhelming support in Congress and signed by President Biden in April. The argument was that TikTok had become a national security issue.

The Justice Department defended the law in lower courts, citing concerns that the Chinese government could influence the company and collect data about American citizens. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the legislation earlier this month.

ByteDance has claimed the law violates free speech rights, a position the ACLU has supported. Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term but changed his tune during the 2024 Presidential campaign.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/us-supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-tiktoks-ban-appeal-172302392.html?src=rss 

Generated by Feedzy
Exit mobile version