Kalakshar US

Seattle public schools have sued the tech giants behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, accusing them of creating a “mental health crisis among America’s Youth.” The 91-page lawsuit filed in a US district court states that tech giants exploit the addictive nature of social media, leading to rising anxiety, depression and thoughts of self-harm. 

“Defendants’ growth is a product of choices they made to design and operate their platforms in ways that exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users into spending more and more time on their platforms,” the complaint states. “[They] have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms.” 

Harmful content pushed to users includes extreme diet plants, encouragement of self-harm and more, according to the complaint. That has led to a 30 percent increase between 2009 and 2019 of students who report feeling “so sad or hopeless… for two weeks or more in a row that [they] stopped doing some usual activities.”  

Defendants’ misconduct has been a substantial factor in causing a youth mental health crisis, which has been marked by higher and higher proportions of youth struggling with anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, and suicidal ideation. The rates at which children have struggled with mental health issues have climbed steadily since 2010 and by 2018 made suicide the second leading cause of death for youths.

That in turn leads to a drop in performance in their studies, making them “less likely to attend school, more likely to engage in substance use, and to act out, all of which directly affects Seattle Public Schools’ ability to fulfill its educational mission.”

Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act means that online platforms aren’t responsible for content posted by third parties. However, the lawsuit claims that the provision doesn’t protect social media companies for recommending, distributing and promoting content “in a way that causes harm.” 

“We have invested heavily in creating safe experiences for children across our platforms and have introduced strong protections and dedicated features to prioritize their wellbeing,” a Google spokesperson told Axios. “For example, through Family Link, we provide parents with the ability to set reminders, limit screen time and block specific types of content on supervised devices.” 

“We’ve developed more than 30 tools to support teens and families, including supervision tools that let parents limit the amount of time their teens spend on Instagram, and age verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences,” Meta’s global head of safety Antigone Davis said in a statement. “We’ll continue to work closely with experts, policymakers and parents on these important issues.” TikTok has yet to react, but Engadget has reached out to the company.

Critics and experts have recently accused social media companies of exploiting teens and children. Meta whistleblower Frances Haugen, for one, testified to Congress that “Facebook’s products harm children.” Eating disorders expert Bryn Austin wrote in a 2021 Harvard article that social media content can send teens into “a dangerous spiral.” And the issue has caught the attention of legislators, who proposed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) last year. 

The humble honeybee hasn’t had an easy go of things recently. Between climate change, habitat destruction, pesticide use and attrition from diseases, one of the planet’s most important pollinators has seen its numbers decline dramatically in recent years. All of that bodes poorly for us humans. In the US, honeybees are essential to about one-third of the fruit and produce Americans eat. But the good news is that a solution to one of the problems affecting honeybees is making its way to farmers.

This week, for the first time, the US Department of Agriculture granted conditional approval for an insect vaccine. A biotech firm named Dalan Animal Health recently developed a prophylactic vaccine to protect honeybees from American foulbrood disease. The drug contains dead Paenibacillus larvae, the bacteria that causes the illness.

Thankfully, the vaccine won’t require beekeepers to jab entire colonies of individual insects with the world’s smallest syringe. Instead, administering the drug involves mixing it in with the queen feed worker bees eat. The vaccine then makes its way into the “royal jelly” the drones feed their queen. Her offspring will then be born with some immunity against the harmful bacteria.

The treatment represents a breakthrough for a few reasons. As The New York Times explains, scientists previously thought it was impossible for insects to obtain immunity to diseases because they don’t produce antibodies like humans and animals. However, after identifying the protein that prompts an immune response in bees, researchers realized they could protect an entire hive through a single queen. The vaccine is also a far more humane treatment for American foulbrood. The disease can easily wipe out colonies of 60,000 bees at once, and it often leaves beekeepers with one choice: burn the infected hives to save what they can.

Dr. Annette Kleiser, the CEO of Dalan, told The Times the company hopes to use the vaccine as a blueprint for other treatments to protect honeybees. “Bees are livestock and should have the same modern tools to care for them and protect them that we have for our chickens, cats, dogs and so on,” she said. “We’re really hoping we’re going to change the industry now.”

Elon Musk has asked a federal judge to move his upcoming Tesla shareholder trial out of San Francisco. Per the Associated Press, Alex Spiro, the billionaire’s personal lawyer, filed the request late Friday, less than two weeks before the trial is scheduled to kick off on January 17th. Musk’s legal team argues “a substantial portion” of the potential jury pool in San Francisco is likely to hold a bias against Musk due to recent media coverage criticizing his actions at Twitter and the seemingly never-ending layoffs at the company. Musk has asked to move the trial to Texas, which has been home to Tesla headquarters since late 2021.

The class action lawsuit involves “false and misleading” statements Musk made in 2018 when he said he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. Musk’s now-infamous “funding secured” tweet landed the billionaire in trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, eventually leading to a $40 million settlement with the agency. The shareholders involved in the suit won an early victory last spring when federal judge Edward Chen concluded that Musk had “recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity.” The upcoming trial will determine whether Musk’s tweet affected the automaker’s stock price and if he should be held accountable for potential damages.

“Musk’s concerns are unfounded and his motion is meritless,” Nicholas Porritt, one of the lawyers representing Tesla shareholders, told the Associated Press. “The Northern District of California is the proper venue for this lawsuit and where it has been actively litigated for over four years.” On Saturday, Judge Chen told the two sides he would hear Musk’s request on January 13th.

In what has become a monthly occurrence at Twitter, the company has cut more of its workforce. On Friday night, Twitter reportedly laid off “at least a dozen” workers across its Dublin and Singapore offices. According to Bloomberg, the casualties include Analuisa Dominguez, the company’s former senior director of revenue policy. The outlet reports that Twitter also cut workers responsible for handling the company’s misinformation policy, in addition to a handful of employees involved with the platform’s global appeals process and state media program.

Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed the company recently laid off more staff but disputed the teams impacted by the cuts. “It made more sense to consolidate teams under one leader (instead of two) for example,” she told Bloomberg, adding Twitter eliminated roles in areas where the company didn’t see enough “volume” to justify the talent expenditure. She also said Twitter increased staffing at its appeals department and would continue to have a head of revenue policy.

On November 21st, shortly after issuing his “extremely hardcore” ultimatum to Twitter employees, Elon Musk reportedly said the company wouldn’t fire or lay off any more workers during an all-hands meeting. While the scale of Twitter’s subsequent layoffs hasn’t matched those that came shortly after Musk’s takeover, the company has cut staff despite the billionaire’s pledge. The company let go of part of its infrastructure division halfway through last month. One recent estimate by The Information puts the company’s headcount at around 2,000 employees or a little over a quarter of what it had before Musk’s purchase.

After years of development, Apple’s long-rumored augmented and virtual reality headset is nearly ready. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company plans to announce the device sometime this spring ahead of its annual WWDC conference in June. In a sign that a launch is finally on the horizon, Apple has reportedly shared the headset with a handful of high-profile software developers, giving them a first look at its new “xrOS” software. After announcing “Reality Pro” in the spring, Gurman expects Apple to release the device in the fall.

The final sprint to get the headset out the door will impact the rest of Apple’s 2023 product lineup. On the software front, the next version of the company’s iOS operating system is likely to ship with “fewer major changes than originally planned” due to Apple reassigning software engineers to the xrOS team. “The same goes for macOS 14,” Gurman adds. Apple’s hardware plans are even less thrilling. The company has no updates of “of note” planned for its iPad, Apple Watch and audio lines. Gurman says new iPad Pro models with OLED displays are on the way, but those likely won’t arrive until 2024. He warns the upcoming Apple Silicon MacPro will be “another disappointment.” The forthcoming desktop will reportedly feature the same design as its 2019 predecessor, and you won’t be able to upgrade the computer’s RAM on your own due to the architecture of Apple’s M-series chipsets.

The only bright spots in an otherwise dull release schedule could be a new 15-inch MacBook Air and the iPhone 15. Of the latter, Gurman says the entire iPhone 15 line will feature Apple’s new Dynamic Island feature and USB-C charging. The Pro models will also include new titanium frames and haptic volume buttons.

Apple has reportedly canceled the development of a new iPhone SE. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company recently told suppliers it would not release a fourth-generation SE model sometime in 2024. In a Medium post spotted by MacRumors, Kuo said the device would have been the debut of Apple’s first in-house 5G modem, adding that the company had planned to test and fine-tune the chip on the SE before rolling it out more broadly to the iPhone 16 and beyond. Instead, Kuo suggests Apple is now more likely to continue using Qualcomm modems through 2024.

Kuo doesn’t say why Apple shelved the fourth-generation iPhone SE or if the performance of its own 5G chip had anything to do with the decision. For the better part of a decade, Apple has tried to reduce its dependence on Qualcomm. In 2019, the two ended their bitter patent feud and signed a “multiyear” wireless chip supply deal. Months later, however, Apple bought the majority of Intel’s mobile modem business. Then, at the end of 2020, the company disclosed it was working on its own cellular chipset. There’s been little news about the project since.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is ceding control of Alipay owner Ant Group. Per The Wall Street Journal, the Alibaba-affiliated company announced it would end agreements that had allowed Ma to hold a dominant position within Ant Group’s corporate governance structure. The outspoken entrepreneur previously possessed more than 50 percent of voting rights at Ant, even though he did not sit on the company’s board of directors or was involved in day-to-day operations. Ma’s influenced Ant Group through a handful of investment vehicles that owned a combined 50.5 percent stake in the fintech giant.

Moving forward, Ant said Ma and nine other company executives and employees would have voting rights they had agreed to use independently of one another. Reuters estimates Ma will own 6.2 percent of Ant Group shares once the company implements the changes it announced over the weekend.

In 2020, shortly before Ant was scheduled to hold an initial public offering that was expected to raise a record $34 billion, Ma drew the ire of Chinese authorities after he called the country’s banks “state-owned pawnshops” during a speech in Shanghai. Chinese regulators went on to block the impending IPO and ordered Ant to scale down its business. Specifically, the company was ordered to return to its roots as a payment provider. A year later, authorities fined Alibaba, Ma’s other company, $2.8 billion following an antitrust investigation into alleged monopolistic practices by the company. Ma has avoided the public eye ever since.

Google has turned to India’s Supreme Court as a “last hope” to block an order that has the potential to reshape the Android ecosystem. Last October, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) fined Google $161.9 million and barred the search giant from requiring OEMs to preinstall Google apps and services on their phones. On Wednesday, an appeals tribunal rejected the company’s request to block the ruling, which is scheduled to go into effect on January 19th. According to court documents seen by Reuters, Google filed a challenge against the tribunal’s decision with the country’s top court on Saturday. The company reportedly sees the effort as its last and best hope at preventing the CCI’s order from impacting its business. Google did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

While the $161.9 million fine is tiny for Google, the order is likely to force the company to change its deals with Android manufacturers dramatically. The CCI seeks to prevent Google from including “anti-fragmentation” clauses that bar Android forks. The order would also force the company to allow third-party app stores on Google Play, and allow users to uninstall first-party apps they don’t want on their phones. India is a critical market for Google. The country is home to about 606.6 million smartphone users, and about 97 percent of the phones in India run Android. In other words, the company can’t afford to exit the market.

After nearly four decades in space, NASA’s retried Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) is about to fall from the sky. On Friday, the agency said the likelihood of wreckage from ERBS harming anyone on Earth is “very low.” NASA expects most of the 5,400-pound satellite will burn up upon re-entry. Earlier this week, the Defense Department predicted ERBS would re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday at approximately 6:40PM ET, give or take 17 hours.

While it may be a household name, the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite had anything but a dull history. Per Phys.org, the Space Shuttle Challenger carried the satellite to space in 1984, a little more than a year before Challenger’s heartbreaking demise in early 1986. Astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly to space, released ERBS from Challenger’s cargo hold using the spacecraft’s robotic arm. During that same mission, Ride’s crewmate, Kathryn Sullivan, became the first American woman to perform a space walk. It was also the first mission to see two female astronauts fly to space together. As for ERBS, it went on to collect ozone and atmospheric measurements until 2005. Scientists used that data to study how Earth absorbs and radiates solar energy. ERBS’s contribution to science is even more impressive when you consider NASA initially expected it would only stay functional for two years.

2022 marked the 50th anniversary of storied instrument maker Roland. But, even though we’ve switched over to our 2023 calendars, the company took the opportunity at CES to take one more victory lap by showing off its 50th Anniversary Concept Piano. It’s an audacious electronic piano built in collaboration with Japanese furniture maker Karimoku. The outside is one piece molded from Japanese Nara oak that hides a 360-degree, 14 speaker system. 

If the elegant curves stuffed to the brim with speakers aren’t exciting enough for you, well I’ve got good news: Roland has also built speakers into drones that hover above the piano and can be controlled by the player. Unfortunately, those couldn’t be flown on the show floor at CES, so Roland dangled a pair of them from wires. Those are combined with a proprietary low-latency audio connection and the company’s PureAcoustic Ambience tech to create flexible natural sounding reverb that more accurately mimics what you’d hear in, say, a concert hall. And I can confirm that even in the cavernous Las Vegas Convention Center, fighting against the constant din of people and other exhibitors, the concept piano sounded amazing. 

Above the keyboard itself there’s a large touchscreen that can be used to stream tutorials, video conference with a piano teacher, or even run Zenbeats from Roland Cloud, turning the instrument into a studio hub. There’s even USB MIDI and Bluetooth connectivity for interacting with other instruments.

Of course, the Roland 50th Anniversary Concept Piano is not for sale. And never will be. This is a creation in the tradition of over-the-top concept cars. Maybe some of its features will eventually make their way to future instruments, but for now it’s truly a one of a kind.