Tag Archives: region|US

DOJ says TikTok collected users’ views on issues like abortion, gun control and religion

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The Department of Justice on Friday night asked a federal court to reject TikTok’s bid to have the law that could ban it overturned, citing national security concerns that include its alleged use of internal search tools to collect information on users’ views around sensitive topics. It comes in response to a petition filed in May by TikTok in an attempt to challenge the law that now requires its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or it will be banned in the US. President Biden signed the bill into law in April.

In one of the documents filed with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the DOJ says a search tool within Lark, the web-suite system the company’s employees use to communicate, “allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.” The DOJ also argues in the filings that TikTok could be used to subject US users to content manipulation, and that their sensitive information could end up stored on servers in China.

TikTok has repeatedly denied the accusations about it being a threat to national security and has called the efforts to ban it “unconstitutional.” In its latest statement responding to the DOJ filing, posted on X, TikTok said, “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doj-says-tiktok-collected-users-views-on-issues-like-abortion-gun-control-and-religion-201617503.html?src=rss

DOJ says TikTok collected users’ views on issues like abortion, gun control and religion

Posted on by

The Department of Justice on Friday night asked a federal court to reject TikTok’s bid to have the law that could ban it overturned, citing national security concerns that include its alleged use of internal search tools to collect information on users’ views around sensitive topics. It comes in response to a petition filed in May by TikTok in an attempt to challenge the law that now requires its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or it will be banned in the US. President Biden signed the bill into law in April.

In one of the documents filed with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, the DOJ says a search tool within Lark, the web-suite system the company’s employees use to communicate, “allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.” The DOJ also argues in the filings that TikTok could be used to subject US users to content manipulation, and that their sensitive information could end up stored on servers in China.

TikTok has repeatedly denied the accusations about it being a threat to national security and has called the efforts to ban it “unconstitutional.” In its latest statement responding to the DOJ filing, posted on X, TikTok said, “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doj-says-tiktok-collected-users-views-on-issues-like-abortion-gun-control-and-religion-201617503.html?src=rss

What to read this weekend: Keanu Reeves wrote a book with ‘weird fiction’ author China Miéville

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New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.

The cover for The Book of Elsewhere showing neon purple text on a space background with a link line drawing

A few years ago, Keanu Reeves took a dive into the world of comics with a series called BRZRKR, which he wrote with longtime comic creator Matt Kindt. The limited series, which played out over 12 issues, follows a half-mortal, half-God warrior known as B who lives a violent existence but cannot die. And after 80,000 years of being alive, he really wants to. Eventually, he ends up working as a killing machine for the US government.

Netflix has plans for a film and anime spinoff of the series, and the BRZRKR universe is still growing even beyond that. This week, Reeves and author China Miéville — known for his works of “weird fiction” that blend sci-fi, fantasy and other genres — released The Book of Elsewhere, a novel that returns to the story of B in a pulpy, blood-soaked epic. It’s written with a unique style, starting off choppy in the prologue before shifting into something else entirely. If there’s one thing reviewers seem to agree on, it’s that this book is not afraid to get weird.

The book cover for Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI

AI is all around us, and these days, conversations about the Big Tech race to build better and better systems sometimes feel almost escapable. But how often do we on the outside stop and take a look at how we got here in the technical sense, down to the math that made it all possible?

In Anil Ananthaswamy’s new book, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, the award-winning science journalist and author explains the history and mathematics underlying machine learning as we know it today. It’s not exactly light reading, but sometimes it’s nice to put your brain to work a little. You don’t need to be a math whiz to keep up with it — Ananthaswamy has said a basic understanding of calculus should be enough.

The cover for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, showing the brothers in black-and white with their face masks in color, against a city background that is tinted green

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back in another new comic series from IDW, written by Jason Aaron (Batman: Off-World, Thor, Scalped), with art by Joëlle Jones (Lady Killer, Catwoman). The first issue was released this week — and it finds Raphael behind bars.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2024) celebrates the 40th anniversary of the franchise that we as a society just cannot seem to get enough of (no complaints here). In it, the turtles have all split off on their own and left New York, and it looks like the first few issues will each focus on one of the brothers. But, they’ll eventually be brought back together to do what they do best — fight bad guys and eat pizza. It’s meant to be something that even people who haven’t kept up with the many series over the years will be able to get into without feeling lost.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-to-read-this-weekend-keanu-reeves-book-of-elsewhere-ai-math-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-173909519.html?src=rss

What to read this weekend: Keanu Reeves wrote a book with ‘weird fiction’ author China Miéville

Posted on by

New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.

The cover for The Book of Elsewhere showing neon purple text on a space background with a link line drawing

A few years ago, Keanu Reeves took a dive into the world of comics with a series called BRZRKR, which he wrote with longtime comic creator Matt Kindt. The limited series, which played out over 12 issues, follows a half-mortal, half-God warrior known as B who lives a violent existence but cannot die. And after 80,000 years of being alive, he really wants to. Eventually, he ends up working as a killing machine for the US government.

Netflix has plans for a film and anime spinoff of the series, and the BRZRKR universe is still growing even beyond that. This week, Reeves and author China Miéville — known for his works of “weird fiction” that blend sci-fi, fantasy and other genres — released The Book of Elsewhere, a novel that returns to the story of B in a pulpy, blood-soaked epic. It’s written with a unique style, starting off choppy in the prologue before shifting into something else entirely. If there’s one thing reviewers seem to agree on, it’s that this book is not afraid to get weird.

The book cover for Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI

AI is all around us, and these days, conversations about the Big Tech race to build better and better systems sometimes feel almost escapable. But how often do we on the outside stop and take a look at how we got here in the technical sense, down to the math that made it all possible?

In Anil Ananthaswamy’s new book, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, the award-winning science journalist and author explains the history and mathematics underlying machine learning as we know it today. It’s not exactly light reading, but sometimes it’s nice to put your brain to work a little. You don’t need to be a math whiz to keep up with it — Ananthaswamy has said a basic understanding of calculus should be enough.

The cover for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, showing the brothers in black-and white with their face masks in color, against a city background that is tinted green

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back in another new comic series from IDW, written by Jason Aaron (Batman: Off-World, Thor, Scalped), with art by Joëlle Jones (Lady Killer, Catwoman). The first issue was released this week — and it finds Raphael behind bars.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2024) celebrates the 40th anniversary of the franchise that we as a society just cannot seem to get enough of (no complaints here). In it, the turtles have all split off on their own and left New York, and it looks like the first few issues will each focus on one of the brothers. But, they’ll eventually be brought back together to do what they do best — fight bad guys and eat pizza. It’s meant to be something that even people who haven’t kept up with the many series over the years will be able to get into without feeling lost.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-to-read-this-weekend-keanu-reeves-book-of-elsewhere-ai-math-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-173909519.html?src=rss

Websites accuse AI startup Anthropic of bypassing their anti-scraping rules and protocol

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Freelancer has accused Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude large language models, of ignoring its "do not crawl" robots.txt protocol to scrape its websites' data. Meanwhile, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said Anthropic has ignored the website's policy prohibiting the use of its content for AI model training. Matt Barrie, the chief executive of Freelancer, told The Information that Anthropic's ClaudeBot is "the most aggressive scraper by far." His website allegedly got 3.5 million visits from the company's crawler within a span of four hours, which is "probably about five times the volume of the number two" AI crawler. Similarly, Wiens posted on X/Twitter that Anthropic's bot hit iFixit's servers a million times in 24 hours. "You're not only taking our content without paying, you're tying up our devops resources," he wrote. 

Back in June, Wired accused another AI company, Perplexity, of crawling its website despite the presence of the Robots Exclusion Protocol, or robots.txt. A robots.txt file typically contains instructions for web crawlers on which pages they can and can't access. While compliance is voluntary, it's mostly just been ignored by bad bots. After Wired's piece came out, a startup called TollBit that connects AI firms with content publishers reported that it's not just Perplexity that's bypassing robots.txt signals. While it didn't name names, Business Insider said it learned that OpenAI and Anthropic were ignoring the protocol, as well. 

Barrie said Freelancer tried to refuse the bot's access requests at first, but it ultimately had to block Anthropic's crawler entirely. "This is egregious scraping [which] makes the site slower for everyone operating on it and ultimately affects our revenue," he added. As for iFixit, Wiens said the website has set alarms for high traffic, and his people got woken up at 3AM due to Anthropic's activities. The company's crawler stopped scraping iFixit after it added a line in its robots.txt file that disallows Anthropic's bot, in particular. 

The AI startup told The Information that it respects robots.txt and that its crawler "respected that signal when iFixit implemented it." It also said that it aims "for minimal disruption by being thoughtful about how quickly [it crawls] the same domains," which is why it's now investigating the case. 

AI firms use crawlers to collect content from websites that they can use to train their generative AI technologies. They've been the target of multiple lawsuits as a result, with publishers accusing them of copyright infringement. To prevent more lawsuits from being filed, companies like OpenAI have been striking deals with publishers and websites. OpenAI's content partners, so far, include News Corp, Vox Media, the Financial Times and Reddit. iFixit's Wiens seems open to the idea of signing a deal for the how-to-repair's website's articles, as well, telling Anthropic in a tweet he's willing to have a conversation about licensing content for commercial use.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/websites-accuse-ai-startup-anthropic-of-bypassing-their-anti-scraping-rules-and-protocol-133022756.html?src=rss

Websites accuse AI startup Anthropic of bypassing their anti-scraping rules and protocol

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Freelancer has accused Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude large language models, of ignoring its "do not crawl" robots.txt protocol to scrape its websites' data. Meanwhile, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said Anthropic has ignored the website's policy prohibiting the use of its content for AI model training. Matt Barrie, the chief executive of Freelancer, told The Information that Anthropic's ClaudeBot is "the most aggressive scraper by far." His website allegedly got 3.5 million visits from the company's crawler within a span of four hours, which is "probably about five times the volume of the number two" AI crawler. Similarly, Wiens posted on X/Twitter that Anthropic's bot hit iFixit's servers a million times in 24 hours. "You're not only taking our content without paying, you're tying up our devops resources," he wrote. 

Back in June, Wired accused another AI company, Perplexity, of crawling its website despite the presence of the Robots Exclusion Protocol, or robots.txt. A robots.txt file typically contains instructions for web crawlers on which pages they can and can't access. While compliance is voluntary, it's mostly just been ignored by bad bots. After Wired's piece came out, a startup called TollBit that connects AI firms with content publishers reported that it's not just Perplexity that's bypassing robots.txt signals. While it didn't name names, Business Insider said it learned that OpenAI and Anthropic were ignoring the protocol, as well. 

Barrie said Freelancer tried to refuse the bot's access requests at first, but it ultimately had to block Anthropic's crawler entirely. "This is egregious scraping [which] makes the site slower for everyone operating on it and ultimately affects our revenue," he added. As for iFixit, Wiens said the website has set alarms for high traffic, and his people got woken up at 3AM due to Anthropic's activities. The company's crawler stopped scraping iFixit after it added a line in its robots.txt file that disallows Anthropic's bot, in particular. 

The AI startup told The Information that it respects robots.txt and that its crawler "respected that signal when iFixit implemented it." It also said that it aims "for minimal disruption by being thoughtful about how quickly [it crawls] the same domains," which is why it's now investigating the case. 

AI firms use crawlers to collect content from websites that they can use to train their generative AI technologies. They've been the target of multiple lawsuits as a result, with publishers accusing them of copyright infringement. To prevent more lawsuits from being filed, companies like OpenAI have been striking deals with publishers and websites. OpenAI's content partners, so far, include News Corp, Vox Media, the Financial Times and Reddit. iFixit's Wiens seems open to the idea of signing a deal for the how-to-repair's website's articles, as well, telling Anthropic in a tweet he's willing to have a conversation about licensing content for commercial use.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/websites-accuse-ai-startup-anthropic-of-bypassing-their-anti-scraping-rules-and-protocol-133022756.html?src=rss

Amazon drops the first teaser for its upcoming Yakuza adaptation

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Amazon has released its first teaser video for Like A Dragon: Yakuza, its live action adaptation of SEGA's Yakuza games, at San Diego Comic-Con. There's a lot of focus on the inking process of Kazuma Kiryu's iconic dragon tattoo, but you'll also get glimpses of Kamurocho's night scene, various characters in the series and the underground fight club that shows up as a mini-game across the franchise. In the last few seconds of the video, you'll see a shirtless Kiryu heading to a circle of cheering viewers betting on his match. 

When the company announced the show in June, it described the adaptation as a "crime-suspense-action series" that "follows the life, childhood friends, and repercussions of the decisions of Kazuma Kiryu, a fearsome and peerless Yakuza warrior with a strong sense of justice, duty, and humanity." Seeing as the show is set between 1995 and 2005, it will most like be based on the first Yakuza game with glimpses of the years that took place after the events in Yakuza 0.

The first three of episodes of Like A Dragon: Yakuza will arrive on Prime Video on October 24, with the next three coming on October 31. It stars Ryoma Takeuchi (Kamen Rider Drive, Roppongi Class) as Kiryu. And as this teaser has revealed, his best friend Nishiki, who plays a pivotal role in the story, will be portrayed by Kento Kaku (Netflix's House of Ninjas).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-drops-the-first-teaser-for-its-upcoming-yakuza-adaptation-110442602.html?src=rss

Amazon drops the first teaser for its upcoming Yakuza adaptation

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Amazon has released its first teaser video for Like A Dragon: Yakuza, its live action adaptation of SEGA's Yakuza games, at San Diego Comic-Con. There's a lot of focus on the inking process of Kazuma Kiryu's iconic dragon tattoo, but you'll also get glimpses of Kamurocho's night scene, various characters in the series and the underground fight club that shows up as a mini-game across the franchise. In the last few seconds of the video, you'll see a shirtless Kiryu heading to a circle of cheering viewers betting on his match. 

When the company announced the show in June, it described the adaptation as a "crime-suspense-action series" that "follows the life, childhood friends, and repercussions of the decisions of Kazuma Kiryu, a fearsome and peerless Yakuza warrior with a strong sense of justice, duty, and humanity." Seeing as the show is set between 1995 and 2005, it will most like be based on the first Yakuza game with glimpses of the years that took place after the events in Yakuza 0.

The first three of episodes of Like A Dragon: Yakuza will arrive on Prime Video on October 24, with the next three coming on October 31. It stars Ryoma Takeuchi (Kamen Rider Drive, Roppongi Class) as Kiryu. And as this teaser has revealed, his best friend Nishiki, who plays a pivotal role in the story, will be portrayed by Kento Kaku (Netflix's House of Ninjas).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-drops-the-first-teaser-for-its-upcoming-yakuza-adaptation-110442602.html?src=rss

ISPs are fighting to raise the price of low-income broadband

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A new government program is trying to encourage Internet service providers (ISPs) to offer lower rates for lower income customers by distributing federal funds through states. The only problem is the ISPs don’t want to offer the proposed rates.

Ars Technica obtained a letter sent to US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo signed by more than 30 broadband industry trade groups like ACA Connects and the Fiber Broadband Association as well as several state based organizations. The letter raises “both a sense of alarm and urgency” about their ability to participate in the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. The newly formed BEAD program provides over $42 billion in federal funds to “expand high-speed internet access by funding planning, infrastructure, deployment and adoption programs” in states across the country, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The money first goes to the NTIA and then it’s distributed to states after they obtain approval from the NTIA by presenting a low-cost broadband Internet option. The ISP industries’ letter claims a fixed rate of $30 per month for high speed Internet access is “completely unmoored from the economic realities of deploying and operating networks in the highest-cost, hardest-to-reach areas.”

The letter urges the NTIA to revise the low-cost service option rate proposed or approved so far. Twenty-six states have completed all of the BEAD program’s phases.

Americans pay an average of $89 a month for Internet access. New Jersey has the highest average bill at $126 per month, according to a survey conducted by U.S. News and World Report. A 2021 study from the Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of households with an annual salary of $30,000 or less have a broadband connection.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/isps-are-fighting-to-raise-the-price-of-low-income-broadband-220620369.html?src=rss

Amazon is giving The Boys the prequel treatment

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The Boys may be one season away from ending but it’s not done caking your screens with blood and torn muscle tissue. Cast member Jensen Ackles who plays Soldier Boy on The Boys revealed at the San Diego Comic-Con that Amazon will produce a prequel of the superhero show called Vought Rising.

The new prequel will take place in the 1950s during the early days of the evil Vought empire, the mega conglomerate that runs the entire superhero industry in The Boys’ universe. The new series will show the early exploits of characters like Soldier Boy and the almost-immortal Nazi supe Stormfront played by Aya Cash. The story will revolve around some kind of “twisted murder mystery about the origins of Vought,” according to executive producer Eric Kripke and showrunner and executive producer Paul Grellong.

Vought Rising sounds like a reimagining of Watchmen without the brooding and self-importance. That’s not to say Watchmen is bad. Those things and its brutal honesty about the nature of its characters are what makes it great but would it kill Rorschach to make just one curse-laden pop culture reference?

The Boys has become Amazon’s Game of Thrones. Even when the main series ends, it won’t be the last we hear from it. The same Comic-Con panel also revealed its college themed spinoff Gen V is getting another season, according to GamesRadar+. There’s also another spinoff in development called The Boys: Mexico with Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal and Blue Beetle writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, according to Deadline.

There’s also The Boys Presents: Diabolical, the animated anthology series in which some of the original series’ writers and producers like Garth Ennis and Seth Rogen and special guest stars like Awkwafina and Andy Samberg penned original stories about supes and presented them in different animation styles. Not to sound ungrateful but when are we gonna get another season of that?

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-is-giving-the-boys-the-prequel-treatment-201058614.html?src=rss