syndication

lawsuit-from-elon-musk’s-x-against-anti-hate-speech-group-dismissed-by-us-judge

Lawsuit from Elon Musk’s X against anti-hate speech group dismissed by US judge

free speech —

Ruling says case appeared to be directed at “punishing” speech from nonprofit.

A smartphone displays Elon Musk's profile on X, the app formerly known as Twitter.

Getty Images | Dan Kitwood

A US judge has struck down a lawsuit brought by X against a nonprofit group that researched toxic content on the social media platform, finding the Elon Musk-owned company’s case appeared to be an attempt at “punishing” the group for exercising free speech.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate had sought to dismiss the case from X, which alleged the nonprofit unlawfully accessed and scraped X data for its studies. The CCDH found a rise in hate speech and misinformation on the platform. X had also alleged the group “cherry-picked” from posts on the platform to conduct a “scare campaign” to drive away advertisers, costing it tens of millions of dollars.

In a stinging ruling, US judge Charles Breyer in California granted the motion. “Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose. Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech,” he wrote in the decision.

The judge found that on top of punishing the CCDH for a report criticizing the company, X appeared to have filed the suit “perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism.”

The lawsuit is just one of several bitter disputes between Musk, a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” and civil rights groups and academics whose research argues the platform has not been adequately policed following the billionaire’s takeover in late 2022.

It comes as X’s revenue has fallen after brands pulled away over Musk’s decision to relax moderation on the platform. He, in turn, has lashed out at advertisers, saying last year that those who have left should “go fuck themselves” despite the company struggling financially.

CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed said following the ruling: “The courts today have affirmed our fundamental right to research, to speak, to advocate, and to hold accountable social media companies for decisions they make behind closed doors that affect our kids, our democracy, and our fundamental human rights and civil liberties.”

He described the suit as “Elon Musk’s loud, hypocritical campaign of harassment, abuse, and lawfare designed to avoid taking responsibility for his own decisions.”

In a statement on X, the company said it disagreed with the court’s decisions and “plans to appeal.” Musk did not immediately comment on the case but last week wrote on the platform that the CCDH was a “truly evil organization that just wants to destroy the first amendment under the guise of doing good!”

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reddit-faces-new-reality-after-cashing-in-on-its-ipo

Reddit faces new reality after cashing in on its IPO

r/WallStreetBets —

Reddit must now answer to its shareholders as well as its vocal users.

Steve Huffman

Enlarge / Steve Huffman, u/spez on Reddit, sold 500,000 of his shares in Reddit’s IPO on Thursday

AFP via Getty Images

In an interview on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor ahead of Reddit’s market debut on Thursday, chief executive Steve Huffman acknowledged that the mischievous retail investors that congregate on the social media platform might deliberately drive down its share price.

“It’s a free market!” he said.

For Reddit, as for Huffman, the bet on a public offering for a site he described as a “fun and special, but sometimes crazy place” has appeared to pay off.

Shares of the social media company soared on its Big Board debut under the ticker RDDT, closing at $50.44, or 48 percent above its IPO price. This brought its fully diluted market capitalization to $9.5 billion, close to where the company was last valued privately at $10 billion in 2021.

Reddit’s journey to public markets marks a turning point for a fringe, free speech-oriented platform dominated by esoteric memes, sardonic humor, and gamers, as it transforms itself into a more mainstream discussion hub that enforces stricter moderation rules in order to attract advertising dollars.

The picture for its earlier investors was mixed. One big winner was the Newhouse family, who through Advance Magazine Publishers Inc own Condé Nast, which bought Reddit in 2006 for $10 million before spinning it out in 2011. Its shares are now worth about $2.1 billion, a handsome windfall to their publishing empire, which also includes Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and Vogue. Entities affiliated with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman now hold a stake worth $613 million.

But investors who put money in at the last financing round in 2021 at $61.79 a share, such as Fidelity, were looking at slightly less on that particular investment.

Founded in 2005, the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet” has battled through management upheaval and moderation scandals to grow to 73 million daily users across its 100,000 communities, or “subreddits,” per Reddit parlance. It is a social media minnow, however, relative to Meta or X, which have more than 2.1 billion and 245 million daily active users, respectively.

Still, its IPO attracted institutional interest. Demand was strong, and the top two dozen investors in the deal, who received the majority of its shares, were typically large asset managers who intend on owning the stock for the long term, one person familiar with the matter said.

Reddit’s surge on its first day of trading, a day after AI infrastructure group Astera Labs jumped 72 percent in its Nasdaq debut, also signals a validation of public investor demand for listings—even a company that is unprofitable, such as Reddit.

“Overall, this is a very positive development for IPO markets [and] should bode well for many of the pre-IPO companies sitting in the queue,” said Christian Munafo, chief investment officer of Liberty Street Advisors.

But, Munafo said, “while [Reddit] performed well out of the gate, the stock may come under pressure unless they are able to demonstrate better growth and monetization.”

Either way, the deal is a boon for Huffman. The chief executive sold 500,000 of his shares in the IPO, cashing out a plump $17 million, and is due to receive additional equity awards as a result of listing the company above a $5 billion valuation. He also received an estimated $193 million pay package last year, mostly made up of equity awards, according to filings.

Historically, Huffman’s style as a leader has reflected that of Reddit’s unruly user base. The self-confessed “internet troll” initially squirmed at the idea of policing the more extreme communities hosted on the platform, relying on these groups to create their own rules and self-moderate. He has defended and cheered on Reddit’s WallStreetBets trading forum that shot to mainstream fame when members collectively bought so-called meme stocks in a bid to squeeze hedge funds*.

But Huffman has recently been forced to tidy up the darker underbelly of the platform for advertisers, present a more professional front to Wall Street and hunt harder for profitability. As a result, Reddit has shifted its ambitions slightly to pin its fortunes to wider tech trends. When Reddit first filed for an IPO in 2021, AI was mentioned once in its prospectus. In the 2024 version, AI appeared more than 60 times.

Nevertheless, the approach has left Huffman and the company at odds with some Reddit communities, who have been resistant to any changes to the platform. Facing new pressures as it enters public markets, some analysts warn that Reddit’s character could be destroyed and users may seek out alternatives, in a drag to the company.

“Reddit, more so than many social media platforms, has been a very community-based, non-commercial space and people know and love it for [this],” said Samuel Woolley, a propaganda expert and assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

“I think the big question that should be on everyone’s mind for Reddit is to what extent the IPO will change the very nature and fabric of the platform.”

Additional reporting by Nicholas Megaw in New York.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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hackers-can-unlock-over-3-million-hotel-doors-in-seconds

Hackers can unlock over 3 million hotel doors in seconds

Picture of Saflok lock on hotel door

Enlarge / A Saflok branded lock.

Dormakaba

When thousands of security researchers descend on Las Vegas every August for what’s come to be known as “hacker summer camp,” the back-to-back Black Hat and Defcon hacker conferences, it’s a given that some of them will experiment with hacking the infrastructure of Vegas itself, the city’s elaborate array of casino and hospitality technology. But at one private event in 2022, a select group of researchers were actually invited to hack a Vegas hotel room, competing in a suite crowded with their laptops and cans of Red Bull to find digital vulnerabilities in every one of the room’s gadgets, from its TV to its bedside VoIP phone.

One team of hackers spent those days focused on the lock on the room’s door, perhaps its most sensitive piece of technology of all. Now, more than a year and a half later, they’re finally bringing to light the results of that work: a technique they discovered that would allow an intruder to open any of millions of hotel rooms worldwide in seconds, with just two taps.

Today, Ian Carroll, Lennert Wouters, and a team of other security researchers are revealing a hotel keycard hacking technique they call Unsaflok. The technique is a collection of security vulnerabilities that would allow a hacker to almost instantly open several models of Saflok-brand RFID-based keycard locks sold by the Swiss lock maker Dormakaba. The Saflok systems are installed on 3 million doors worldwide, inside 13,000 properties in 131 countries.

By exploiting weaknesses in both Dormakaba’s encryption and the underlying RFID system Dormakaba uses, known as MIFARE Classic, Carroll and Wouters have demonstrated just how easily they can open a Saflok keycard lock. Their technique starts with obtaining any keycard from a target hotel—say, by booking a room there or grabbing a keycard out of a box of used ones—then reading a certain code from that card with a $300 RFID read-write device, and finally writing two keycards of their own. When they merely tap those two cards on a lock, the first rewrites a certain piece of the lock’s data, and the second opens it.

“Two quick taps and we open the door,” says Wouters, a researcher in the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography group at the KU Leuven University in Belgium. “And that works on every door in the hotel.”

Wouters and Carroll, an independent security researcher and founder of travel website Seats.aero, shared the full technical details of their hacking technique with Dormakaba in November 2022. Dormakaba says that it’s been working since early last year to make hotels that use Saflok aware of their security flaws and to help them fix or replace the vulnerable locks. For many of the Saflok systems sold in the last eight years, there’s no hardware replacement necessary for each individual lock. Instead, hotels will only need to update or replace the front desk management system and have a technician carry out a relatively quick reprogramming of each lock, door by door.

Wouters and Carroll say they were nonetheless told by Dormakaba that, as of this month, only 36 percent of installed Safloks have been updated. Given that the locks aren’t connected to the Internet and some older locks will still need a hardware upgrade, they say the full fix will still likely take months longer to roll out, at the very least. Some older installations may take years.

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deepmind-co-founder-mustafa-suleyman-will-run-microsoft’s-new-consumer-ai-unit

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman will run Microsoft’s new consumer AI unit

Minding deeply —

Most staffers from Suleyman’s startup, Inflection, will join Microsoft as well.

Mustafa Suleyman, talks on Day 1 of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park at Bletchley Park on November 1, 2023 in Bletchley, England.

Enlarge / Mustafa Suleyman, talks on Day 1 of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park at Bletchley Park on November 1, 2023 in Bletchley, England.

Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind and chief executive of artificial intelligence start-up Inflection, to run a new consumer AI unit.

Suleyman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind in London in 2010, will report to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, the company announced on Tuesday. He will launch a division of Microsoft that brings consumer-facing products including Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, Edge, and GenAI under one team called Microsoft AI.

It is the latest move by Microsoft to capitalize on the boom in generative AI. It has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and rapidly integrated its technology into Microsoft products.

Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI has given it an early lead in Silicon Valley’s race to deploy AI, leaving its biggest rival, Google, struggling to catch up. It also has invested in other AI startups, including French developer Mistral.

It has been rolling out an AI assistant in its products such as Windows, Office software, and cyber security tools. Suleyman’s unit will work on projects including integrating an AI version of Copilot into its Windows operating system and enhancing the use of generative AI in its Bing search engine.

Nadella said in a statement on Tuesday: “I’ve known Mustafa for several years and have greatly admired him as a founder of both DeepMind and Inflection, and as a visionary, product maker and builder of pioneering teams that go after bold missions.”

DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 for $500 million, one of the first large bets by a big tech company on a startup AI lab. The company faced controversy a few years later over some of its projects, including its work for the UK healthcare sector, which was found by a government watchdog to have been granted inappropriate access to patient records.

Suleyman, who was the main public face for the company, was placed on leave in 2019. DeepMind workers had complained that he had an overly aggressive management style. Addressing staff complaints at the time, Suleyman said: “I really screwed up. I was very demanding and pretty relentless.”

He moved to Google months later, where he led AI product management. In 2022, he joined Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock and launched Inflection later that year.

Microsoft will also hire most of Inflection’s staff, including Karén Simonyan, cofounder and chief scientist of Inflection, who will be chief scientist of the AI group. Microsoft did not clarify the number of employees moving over but said it included AI engineers, researchers, and large language model builders who have designed and co-authored “many of the most important contributions in advancing AI over the last five years.”

Inflection, a rival to OpenAI, will switch its focus from its consumer chatbot, Pi, and instead move to sell enterprise AI software to businesses, according to a statement on its website. Sean White, who has held various technology roles, has joined as its new chief executive.

Inflection’s third cofounder, Reid Hoffman, the founder and executive chair of LinkedIn, will remain on Inflection’s board. Inflection had raised $1.3 billion in June, valuing the group at about $4 billion, in one of the largest fundraisings by an AI start-up amid an explosion of interest in the sector.

The new unit marks a big organizational shift at Microsoft. Mikhail Parakhin, its president of web services, will move along with his entire team to report to Suleyman.

“We have a real shot to build technology that was once thought impossible and that lives up to our mission to ensure the benefits of AI reach every person and organization on the planet, safely and responsibly,” Nadella said.

Competition regulators in the US and Europe have been scrutinising the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI amid a broader inquiry into AI investments.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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redwoods-are-growing-almost-as-fast-in-the-uk-as-their-californian-cousins

Redwoods are growing almost as fast in the UK as their Californian cousins

growth gains —

New study finds that giant sequoias add 70 cm of height and store 160 kg of carbon per year.

view of redwood tree canopy from below

Enlarge / Looking up at the canopy of a redwood tree in a forest near Golden Gate Live Steamers, Grizzly Peak Boulevard in Oakland.

What can live for over 3,000 years, weigh over 150 tonnes and could be sitting almost unnoticed in your local park? Giant sequoias (known as giant redwoods in the UK) are among the tallest and heaviest organisms that have ever lived on Earth, not to mention they have the potential to live longer than other species.

My team’s new study is the first to look at the growth of giant sequoias in the UK—and they seem to be doing remarkably well. Trees at two of the three sites we studied matched the average growth rates of their counterparts in the US, where they come from. These remarkable trees are being planted in an effort to help absorb carbon, but perhaps more importantly they are becoming a striking and much-admired part of the UK landscape.

To live so long, giant sequoias have evolved to be extraordinarily resilient. In their native northern California, they occupy an ecological niche in mountainous terrain 1,400–2,100 meters above sea level.

Their thick, spongy bark insulates against fire and disease, and they can survive severe winters and arid summers. Despite these challenges, these trees absorb and store CO₂ faster and in greater quantities than almost any other in the world, storing up to five times more carbon per hectare than even tropical rainforests. However, the changing climate means Californian giant sequoias are under threat from more frequent and extreme droughts and fires. More than 10 percent of the remaining population of around 80,000 wild trees were killed in a single fire in 2020 alone.

Tree giants from the US

What is much less well-known is that there are an estimated half a million sequoias (wild and planted) in England, dotted across the landscape. So how well are the UK giant sequoias doing? To try and answer this, my team used a technique called terrestrial laser scanning to measure the size and volume of giant sequoias.

The laser sends out half a million pulses a second and if a pulse hits a tree, the 3D location of each “hit” is recorded precisely. This gives us a map of tree structure in unprecedented detail, which we can use to estimate volume and mass, effectively allowing us to estimate the tree’s weight. If we know how old the trees are, we can estimate how fast they are growing and accumulating carbon.

As part of a Master’s project with former student Ross Holland, and along with colleagues at Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, we measured giant sequoias across three sites—Benmore botanical gardens in Scotland, Kew Wakehurst in Sussex, and Havering Country Park in Essex. These sites span the wettest (Benmore) and driest (Havering) climates in the UK, enabling us to assess how rainfall affects growth.

The fastest-growing trees we measured are growing almost as fast as they do in California, adding 70 cm of height and storing 160 kg of carbon per year, about twice that of a native UK oak. The trees at Benmore are already among the tallest trees in the UK at 55 meters, the current record-holder being a 66-meter Douglas Fir in Scotland. The redwoods, being faster growing, are likely to take that title in the next decade or two. And these trees are “only” around 170 years old. No native tree in the UK is taller than about 47 meters. We also found significant differences in growth rates across the UK. They grow fastest in the north, where the climate is wetter.

So, how did these trees get here? Exotic plant collecting was big business in the 18th and 19th centuries, in large part as a display of wealth and taste. Giant sequoias were first introduced in 1853 by Scottish grain merchant and keen amateur collector Patrick Matthew, who gave them to friends. Later that same year commercial nurseryman William Lobb brought many more from California, along with accounts of the giant trees from which they came.

Giant sequoias quickly became a sensation and were planted to create imposing avenues, at the entrances of grand houses and estates, in churchyards, parks and botanic gardens. The letters about these trees helps us to accurately age planted trees, enabling us to calculate their growth rates.

Normally, you need to take samples from a tree’s core to get an accurate age estimate, but that can damage the tree.

Imagine their potential

UK sequoias are unlikely to grow as tall as their Californian counterparts, which tend to grow in forests, due to lightning strikes and high winds—always a risk when you’re the tallest thing in the landscape rather than one among many. More recently, there has been a resurgence in planting giant sequoias in the UK, particularly in urban settings. This is because of their carbon storage potential and perhaps because people seem to really like them.

We urgently need to understand how UK trees will fare in the face of much hotter, drier summers, stormier winters, and with increased risks of fire. Global trade is also increasing the spread of disease among plantlife. More work is needed to consider the impact of planting non-native species like giant sequoias on native habitats and biodiversity but our work has shown that they are apparently very happy with our climate so far.

More importantly, we have to remember that trees are more than just stores of carbon. If we value trees only as carbon sticks we will end up with thousands of hectares of monoculture, which isn’t good for nature.

But these giant sequoias are here to stay and are becoming a beautiful and resilient part of our landscape.

Mathias Disney, Reader in Remote Sensing, Department of Geography, UCL. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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tick-killing-pill-shows-promising-results-in-human-trial

Tick-killing pill shows promising results in human trial

Ticked off —

Should it pan out, the pill would be a new weapon against Lyme disease.

A tick on a human

If you have a dog or cat, chances are you’ve given your pet a flavored chewable tablet for tick prevention at some point. What if you could take a similar pill to protect yourself from getting Lyme disease?

Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is developing such a pill for humans—minus the tasty flavoring—that could provide protection against the tick-borne disease for several weeks at a time. In February, the Irvine, California–based biotech company announced results from a small, early-stage trial showing that 24 hours after taking the drug, it can kill ticks on people, with the effects lasting for up to 30 days.

“What we envision is something that would protect you before the tick would even bite you,” says Bobby Azamian, CEO of Tarsus.

Lyme disease is a fast-growing problem in the United States, where approximately 476,000 people are diagnosed and treated for it each year, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number is likely an overestimate, because many patients are treated after a tick bite even if an infection isn’t confirmed, but it underscores the burden of Lyme disease on the health care system—which researchers at the CDC and Yale University put at nearly $1 billion per year.

The disease is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, which gets passed to humans through the bite of an infected tick. In most cases, a tick has to be attached for around 36 to 48 hours before the bacteria can be transmitted. Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash that looks like a bullseye.

Without a vaccine for Lyme disease on the market, current prevention includes using insect repellents such as DEET and permethrin and wearing closed shoes, long pants, and long sleeves when in a tick-infested area.

“We’ve seen increasing rates of tick-borne diseases over the years, despite being told to do tick checks, use DEET, and impregnate your clothes with permethrin,” says Paul Auwaerter, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who studies Lyme disease.

A more effective treatment strategy would be welcome, Auwaerter says, especially because Lyme disease can sometimes cause serious health issues. Antibiotics are usually effective when taken early, although about 5 to 10 percent of patients can have lingering symptoms for weeks or months. If left untreated, the infection can spread to the joints and cause arthritis. It can also become established in the heart and nervous system, causing persistent fatigue, numbness, or weakness.

The experimental pill that Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is testing is a formulation of lotilaner, a drug that paralyzes and kills parasites by interfering with the way that signals are passed between their nerve cells. Lotilaner is already approved as a veterinary medicine under the brand name Credelio to control fleas and ticks in dogs and cats.

“Our animals have better options than we do for tick prevention,” says Linden Hu, a professor of immunology at Tufts Medical School who led the Tarsus trial. “There are quite a few drugs and vaccines available for dogs and cats, but there’s nothing for us.”

Tarsus first developed lotilaner for human use as an eye drop to treat blepharitis, or inflammation of the eyelid, which is caused by tiny mites. That drug, Xdemvy, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in July 2023. It stuns and kills mites present in the eyelid. Azamian and his team had the idea to test it against ticks in people. The oral version of the drug enters the bloodstream and is passed to a tick when it bites and starts sucking blood.

“A lot of drugs are tested in animals, but very few are commercialized for animal use and then go to human use,” Azamian says.

In a Phase II trial, 31 healthy adults took either a low or high dose of the Tarsus pill, or a placebo. Researchers then placed sterile ticks on participants’ arms and, 24 hours later, measured how many died. They also observed tick death 30 days after a single dose of the pill. At day one, 97 percent of ticks in the high-dose group and 92 percent in the low-dose group had died, while only 5 percent of ticks in the placebo group had. One month out, both doses of the pill killed around 90 percent of ticks. The company reported no serious adverse events from the pill, and none of the participants dropped out due to side effects.

“The takeaway is that it killed the ticks really quickly,” Hu says. “And the effect lasted for a long time.”

The fact that the drug targets ticks, rather than the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, means that it could protect against other tick-borne diseases that are spreading in the US, including babesiosis and anaplasmosis. Thanks to climate change and exploding deer populations, ticks are expanding their ranges—and carrying diseases with them.

Tarsus has not proven that its pill can actually prevent Lyme disease. That will require testing the drug in hundreds of people who are at high risk of contracting the disease. But Hu is cautiously optimistic: “This pill is potentially a pre-exposure prophylaxis that you don’t have to think about.”

Azamian imagines it as something people would take before going hiking or on a camping trip or just going outside in any tick-infested area.

“There is that subset of people that truly have persistent symptoms after Lyme disease that can really be devastating,” Auwaerter says, “so preventing that would be an amazing opportunity.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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some-states-are-now-trying-to-ban-lab-grown-meat

Some states are now trying to ban lab-grown meat

A franken-burger and a side of fries —

Spurious “war on ranching” cited as reason for legislation.

tanks for growing cell-cultivated chicken

Enlarge / Cell-cultivated chicken is made in the pictured tanks at the Eat Just office on July 27, 2023, in Alameda, Calif.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Months in jail and thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees—those are the consequences Alabamians and Arizonans could soon face for selling cell-cultured meat products that could cut into the profits of ranchers, farmers, and meatpackers in each state.

State legislators from Florida to Arizona are seeking to ban meat grown from animal cells in labs, citing a “war on our ranching” and a need to protect the agriculture industry from efforts to reduce the consumption of animal protein, thereby reducing the high volume of climate-warming methane emissions the sector emits.

Agriculture accounts for about 11 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to federal data, with livestock such as cattle making up a quarter of those emissions, predominantly from their burps, which release methane—a potent greenhouse gas that’s roughly 80 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Globally, agriculture accounts for about 37 percent of methane emissions.

For years, climate activists have been calling for more scrutiny and regulation of emissions from the agricultural sector and for nations to reduce their consumption of meat and dairy products due to their climate impacts. Last year, over 150 countries pledged to voluntarily cut emissions from food and agriculture at the United Nations’ annual climate summit.

But the industry has avoided increased regulation and pushed back against efforts to decrease the consumption of meat, with help from local and state governments across the US.

Bills in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, and Tennessee are just the latest legislation passed in statehouses across the US that have targeted cell-cultured meat, which is produced by taking a sample of an animal’s muscle cells and growing them into edible products in a lab. Sixteen states—Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming—have passed laws addressing the use of the word “meat” in such products’ packaging, according to the National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas, with some prohibiting cell-cultured, plant-based, or insect-based food products from being labeled as meat.

“Cell-cultured meat products are so new that there’s not really a framework for how state and federal labeling will work together,” said Rusty Rumley, a senior staff attorney with the National Agricultural Law Center, resulting in no standardized requirements for how to label the products, though legislation has been proposed that could change that.

At the federal level, Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) introduced the Fair and Accurate Ingredient Representation on Labels Act of 2024, which would authorize the United States Department of Agriculture to regulate imitation meat products and restrict their sale if they are not properly labeled, and US Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) introduced a bill to ban schools from serving cell-cultured meat.

But while plant-based meat substitutes are widespread, cell-cultivated meats are not widely available, with none currently being sold in stores. Just last summer, federal agencies gave their first-ever approvals to two companies making cell-cultivated poultry products, which are appearing on restaurant menus. The meat substitutes have garnered the support of some significant investors, including billionaire Bill Gates, who has been the subject of attacks from supporters of some of the state legislation proposed.

“Let me start off by explaining why I drafted this bill,” said Rep. David Marshall, an Arizona Republican who proposed legislation to ban cell-cultured meat from being sold or produced in the state, during a hearing on the bill. “It’s because of organizations like the FDA and the World Economic Forum, also Bill Gates and others, who have openly declared war on our ranching.”

In Alabama, fear of “franken-meat” competition spurs legislation

In Alabama, an effort to ban lab-grown meat is winding its way through the State House in Montgomery.

There, state senators have already passed a bill that would make it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to three months in jail and a $500 fine, to sell, manufacture, or distribute what the proposed legislation labels “cultivated food products.” An earlier version of the bill called lab-grown protein “meat,” but it was quickly revised by lawmakers. The bill passed out of committee and through the Senate without opposition from any of its members.

Now, the bill is headed toward a vote in the Alabama House of Representatives, where the body’s health committee recently held a public hearing on the issue. Rep. Danny Crawford, who is carrying the bill in the body, told fellow lawmakers during that hearing that he’s concerned about two issues: health risks and competition for Alabama farmers.

“Lab-grown meat or whatever you want to call it—we’re not sure of all of the long-term problems with that,” he said. “And it does compete with our farming industry.”

Crawford said that legislators had heard from NASA, which expressed concern about the bill’s impact on programs to develop alternative proteins for astronauts. An amendment to the bill will address that problem, Crawford said, allowing an exemption for research purposes.

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apple-and-tesla-feel-the-pain-as-china-opts-for-homegrown-products

Apple and Tesla feel the pain as China opts for homegrown products

Domestically made smartphones were much in evidence at the National People’s Congress in Beijing

Enlarge / Domestically made smartphones were much in evidence at the National People’s Congress in Beijing

Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images

Apple and Tesla cracked China, but now the two largest US consumer companies in the country are experiencing cracks in their own strategies as domestic rivals gain ground and patriotic buying often trumps their allure.

Falling market share and sales figures reported this month indicate the two groups face rising competition and the whiplash of US-China geopolitical tensions. Both have turned to discounting to try to maintain their appeal.

A shift away from Apple, in particular, has been sharp, spurred on by a top-down campaign to reduce iPhone usage among state employees and the triumphant return of Chinese national champion Huawei, which last year overcame US sanctions to roll out a homegrown smartphone capable of near 5G speeds.

Apple’s troubles were on full display at China’s annual Communist Party bash in Beijing this month, where a dozen participants told the Financial Times they were using phones from Chinese brands.

“For people coming here, they encourage us to use domestic phones, because phones like Apple are not safe,” said Zhan Wenlong, a nuclear physicist and party delegate. “[Apple phones] are made in China, but we don’t know if the chips have back doors.”

Wang Chunru, a member of China’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said he was using a Huawei device. “We all know Apple has eavesdropping capabilities,” he said.

Delegate Li Yanfeng from Guangxi said her phone was manufactured by Huawei. “I trust domestic brands, using them was a uniform request.”

Financial Times using Bloomberg data

Outside of the US, China is both Apple and Tesla’s single-largest market, respectively contributing 19 percent and 22 percent of total revenues during their most recent fiscal years. Their mounting challenges in the country have caught Wall Street’s attention, contributing to Apple’s 9 percent share price slide this year and Tesla’s 28 percent fall, making them the poorest performers among the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks.

Apple and Tesla are the latest foreign companies to feel the pain of China’s shift toward local brands. Sales of Nike and Adidas clothing have yet to return to their 2021 peak. A recent McKinsey report showed a growing preference among Chinese consumers for local brands.

Apple and Tesla feel the pain as China opts for homegrown products Read More »

florida-middle-schoolers-charged-with-making-deepfake-nudes-of-classmates

Florida middle-schoolers charged with making deepfake nudes of classmates

no consent —

AI tool was used to create nudes of 12- to 13-year-old classmates.

Florida middle-schoolers charged with making deepfake nudes of classmates

Jacqui VanLiew; Getty Images

Two teenage boys from Miami, Florida, were arrested in December for allegedly creating and sharing AI-generated nude images of male and female classmates without consent, according to police reports obtained by WIRED via public record request.

The arrest reports say the boys, aged 13 and 14, created the images of the students who were “between the ages of 12 and 13.”

The Florida case appears to be the first arrests and criminal charges as a result of alleged sharing of AI-generated nude images to come to light. The boys were charged with third-degree felonies—the same level of crimes as grand theft auto or false imprisonment—under a state law passed in 2022 which makes it a felony to share “any altered sexual depiction” of a person without their consent.

The parent of one of the boys arrested did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. The parent of the other boy said that he had “no comment.” The detective assigned to the case, and the state attorney handling the case, did not respond for comment in time for publication.

As AI image-making tools have become more widely available, there have been several high-profile incidents in which minors allegedly created AI-generated nude images of classmates and shared them without consent. No arrests have been disclosed in the publicly reported cases—at Issaquah High School in Washington, Westfield High School in New Jersey, and Beverly Vista Middle School in California—even though police reports were filed. At Issaquah High School, police opted not to press charges.

The first media reports of the Florida case appeared in December, saying that the two boys were suspended from Pinecrest Cove Academy in Miami for 10 days after school administrators learned of allegations that they created and shared fake nude images without consent. After parents of the victims learned about the incident, several began publicly urging the school to expel the boys.

Nadia Khan-Roberts, the mother of one of the victims, told NBC Miami in December that for all of the families whose children were victimized the incident was traumatizing. “Our daughters do not feel comfortable walking the same hallways with these boys,” she said. “It makes me feel violated, I feel taken advantage [of] and I feel used,” one victim, who asked to remain anonymous, told the TV station.

WIRED obtained arrest records this week that say the incident was reported to police on December 6, 2023, and that the two boys were arrested on December 22. The records accuse the pair of using “an artificial intelligence application” to make the fake explicit images. The name of the app was not specified and the reports claim the boys shared the pictures between each other.

“The incident was reported to a school administrator,” the reports say, without specifying who reported it, or how that person found out about the images. After the school administrator “obtained copies of the altered images” the administrator interviewed the victims depicted in them, the reports say, who said that they did not consent to the images being created.

After their arrest, the two boys accused of making the images were transported to the Juvenile Service Department “without incident,” the reports say.

A handful of states have laws on the books that target fake, nonconsensual nude images. There’s no federal law targeting the practice, but a group of US senators recently introduced a bill to combat the problem after fake nude images of Taylor Swift were created and distributed widely on X.

The boys were charged under a Florida law passed in 2022 that state legislators designed to curb harassment involving deepfake images made using AI-powered tools.

Stephanie Cagnet Myron, a Florida lawyer who represents victims of nonconsensually shared nude images, tells WIRED that anyone who creates fake nude images of a minor would be in possession of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. However, she claims it’s likely that the two boys accused of making and sharing the material were not charged with CSAM possession due to their age.

“There’s specifically several crimes that you can charge in a case, and you really have to evaluate what’s the strongest chance of winning, what has the highest likelihood of success, and if you include too many charges, is it just going to confuse the jury?” Cagnet Myron added.

Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the George Washington University School of Law and a lawyer who has studied the problem of nonconsensual explicit imagery, says it’s “odd” that Florida’s revenge porn law, which predates the 2022 statute under which the boys were charged, only makes the offense a misdemeanor, while this situation represented a felony.

“It is really strange to me that you impose heftier penalties for fake nude photos than for real ones,” she says.

Franks adds that although she believes distributing nonconsensual fake explicit images should be a criminal offense, thus creating a deterrent effect, she doesn’t believe offenders should be incarcerated, especially not juveniles.

“The first thing I think about is how young the victims are and worried about the kind of impact on them,” Franks says. “But then [I] also question whether or not throwing the book at kids is actually going to be effective here.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Florida middle-schoolers charged with making deepfake nudes of classmates Read More »

law-enforcement-doesn’t-want-to-be-“customer-service”-reps-for-meta-any-more

Law enforcement doesn’t want to be “customer service” reps for Meta any more

No help —

“Dramatic and persistent spike” in account takeovers is “substantial drain” on resources.

In this photo illustration, the icons of WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Facebook are displayed on an iPhone in front of a Meta logo

Enlarge / Meta has a verified program for users of Facebook and Instagram.

Getty Images | Chesnot

Forty-one state attorneys general penned a letter to Meta’s top attorney on Wednesday saying complaints are skyrocketing across the United States about Facebook and Instagram user accounts being stolen and declaring “immediate action” necessary to mitigate the rolling threat.

The coalition of top law enforcement officials, spearheaded by New York Attorney General Letitia James, says the “dramatic and persistent spike” in complaints concerning account takeovers amounts to a “substantial drain” on governmental resources, as many stolen accounts are also tied to financial crimes—some of which allegedly profits Meta directly.

“We have received a number of complaints of threat actors fraudulently charging thousands of dollars to stored credit cards,” says the letter addressed to Meta’s chief legal officer, Jennifer Newstead. “Furthermore, we have received reports of threat actors buying advertisements to run on Meta.”

“We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” the officials add. “Proper investment in response and mitigation is mandatory.”

In addition to New York, the letter is signed by attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia.

“Scammers use every platform available to them and constantly adapt to evade enforcement. We invest heavily in our trained enforcement and review teams and have specialized detection tools to identify compromised accounts and other fraudulent activity,” Meta says in a statement provided by spokesperson Erin McPike. “We regularly share tips and tools people can use to protect themselves, provide a means to report potential violations, work with law enforcement, and take legal action.”

Account takeovers can occur as a result of phishing as well as other more sophisticated and targeted techniques. Once an attacker gains access to an account, the owner can be easily locked out by changing passwords and contact information. Private messages and personal information are left up for grabs for a variety of nefarious purposes, from impersonation and fraud to pushing misinformation.

“It’s basically a case of identity theft and Facebook is doing nothing about it,” said one user whose complaint was cited in the letter to Meta’s Newstead.

The state officials said the accounts that were stolen to run ads on Facebook often run afoul of its rules while doing so, leading them to be permanently suspended, punishing the victims—often small business owners—twice over.

“Having your social media account taken over by a scammer can feel like having someone sneak into your home and change all of the locks,” New York’s James said in a statement. “Social media is how millions of Americans connect with family, friends, and people throughout their communities and the world. To have Meta fail to properly protect users from scammers trying to hijack accounts and lock rightful owners out is unacceptable.”

Other complaints forwarded to Newstead show hacking victims expressing frustration over Meta’s lack of response. In many cases, users report no action being taken by the company. Some say the company encourages users to report such problems but never responds, leaving them unable to salvage their accounts or the businesses they built around them.

After being hacked and defrauded of $500, one user complained that their ability to communicate with their own customer base had been “completely disrupted,” and that Meta had never responded to the report they filed, though the user had followed the instructions the company provided them to obtain help.

“I can’t get any help from Meta. There is no one to talk to and meanwhile all my personal pictures are being used. My contacts are receiving false information from the hacker,” one user wrote.

Wrote another: “This is my business account, which is important to me and my life. I have invested my life, time, money and soul in this account. All attempts to contact and get a response from the Meta company, including Instagram and Facebook, were crowned with complete failure, since the company categorically does not respond to letters.”

Figures provided by James’ office in New York show a tenfold increase in complaints between 2019 and 2023—from 73 complaints to more than 780 last year. In January alone, more than 128 complaints were received, James’ office says. Other states saw similar spikes in complaints during that period, according to the letter, with Pennsylvania recording a 270 percent increase, a 330 percent jump in North Carolina, and a 740 percent surge in Vermont.

The letter notes that, while the officials cannot be “certain of any connection,” the drastic increase in complaints occurred “around the same time” as layoffs at Meta affecting roughly 11,000 employees in November 2022, around 13 percent of its staff at the time.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Law enforcement doesn’t want to be “customer service” reps for Meta any more Read More »

spain-tells-sam-altman,-worldcoin-to-shut-down-its-eyeball-scanning-orbs

Spain tells Sam Altman, Worldcoin to shut down its eyeball-scanning orbs

Only for real humans —

Cryptocurrency launched by OpenAI’s Altman is drawing scrutiny from regulators.

A spherical device that scans people's eyeballs.

Enlarge / Worldcoin’s “Orb,” a device that scans your eyeballs to verify that you’re a real human.

Spain has moved to block Sam Altman’s cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, the latest blow to a venture that has raised controversy in multiple countries by collecting customers’ personal data using an eyeball-scanning “orb.”

The AEPD, Spain’s data protection regulator, has demanded that Worldcoin immediately ceases collecting personal information in the country via the scans and that it stops using data it has already gathered.

The regulator announced on Wednesday that it had taken the “precautionary measure” at the start of the week and had given Worldcoin 72 hours to demonstrate its compliance with the order.

Mar España Martí, AEPD director, said Spain was the first European country to move against Worldcoin and that it was impelled by special concern that the company was collecting information about minors.

“What we have done is raise the alarm in Europe. But this is an issue that affects… citizens in all the countries of the European Union,” she said. “That means there has to be coordinated action.”

Worldcoin, co-founded by Altman in 2019, has been offering tokens of its own cryptocurrency to people around the world, in return for their consent to have their eyes scanned by an orb.

The scans are used as a form of identification as it seeks to create a reliable mechanism to distinguish between humans and machines as artificial intelligence becomes more advanced.

Worldcoin was not immediately available for comment.

The Spanish regulator’s decision is the latest blow to the aspirations of the OpenAI boss and his Worldcoin co-founders Max Novendstern and Alex Blania following a series of setbacks elsewhere in the world.

At the point of its rollout last summer, the San Francisco and Berlin headquartered start-up avoided launching its crypto tokens in the US on account of the country’s harsh crackdown on the digital assets sector.

The Worldcoin token is also not available in major global markets such as China and India, while watchdogs in Kenya last year ordered the project to shut down operations. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has previously said it would be making inquiries into Worldcoin.

While some jurisdictions have raised concerns about the viability of a Worldcoin cryptocurrency token, Spain’s latest crackdown targets the start-up’s primary efforts to establish a method to prove customers’ “personhood”—work that Altman characterizes as essential in a world where sophisticated AI is harder to distinguish from humans.

In the face of growing scrutiny, Altman told the Financial Times he could imagine a world where his start-up could exist without its in-house cryptocurrency.

Worldcoin has registered 4 million users, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Investors poured roughly $250 million into the company, including venture capital groups Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures, internet entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and, prior to the collapse of his FTX empire, Sam Bankman-Fried.

The project attracted media attention and prompted a handful of consumer complaints in Spain as queues began to grow at the stands in shopping centers where Worldcoin is offering cryptocurrency in exchange for eyeball scans.

In January, the data protection watchdog in the Basque country, one of Spain’s autonomous regions, issued a warning about the eye-scanning technology Worldcoin was using in a Bilbao mall. The watchdog, the AVPD, said it fell under biometric data protection rules and that a risk assessment was needed.

España Martí said the Spanish agency was acting on concerns that the Worldcoin initiative did not comply with biometric data laws, which demand that users be given adequate information about how their data will be used and that they have the right to erase it.

Sharing such biometric data, she said, opened people up to a variety of risks ranging from identity fraud to breaches of health privacy and discrimination.

“I want to send a message to young people. I understand that it can be very tempting to get €70 or €80 that sorts you out for the weekend,” España Martí said, but “giving away personal data in exchange for these derisory amounts of money is a short, medium and long-term risk.”

Spain tells Sam Altman, Worldcoin to shut down its eyeball-scanning orbs Read More »

what-a-potential-post-xbox-future-could-mean-for-sony-and-nintendo

What a potential post-Xbox future could mean for Sony and Nintendo

shifting landscape —

“All signs point to the hardware becoming less and less important to Microsoft.”

What a potential post-Xbox future could mean for Sony and Nintendo

Aurich Lawson

Microsoft’s decision to ease off its 23-year competition with Sony and Nintendo over supremacy in games hardware has opened a path for Japan’s return as the world’s undisputed home of the console.

The prospect of a new, less internationalized era of console wars has raised hopes of happier times for the Japanese survivors but has also caused analysts and investors to revisit the question of how much longer the whole genre of dedicated games machines will continue to exist.

Microsoft head of gaming Phil Spencer last month revealed plans to release what would previously have been exclusively Xbox games for use on rival platforms, as part of a new focus on cloud-based gaming.

While the US technology giant has said it is still working on a new generation of more powerful consoles, analysts think its long-term direction is clear.

“All signs point to the hardware becoming less and less important to Microsoft, so there is that possibility that we could go back to a point like we were in the 1990s where the viable choices of console were all Japanese,” said Serkan Toto, head of the games consultancy Kantan Games.

Giving up the console fight to concentrate on software could be taken as a huge victory for Japan. To many, the birthplace of Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy, and Pokémon is the spiritual home of the console and has featured the industry’s fiercest “golden age” 1980s and 1990s clashes of Nintendo vs Sega, and later, Nintendo vs Sony.

“It may not happen immediately because the technology of cloud gaming is clearly not ready yet, but from what Microsoft is indicating, there is a possibility that we go back to an all-Japan console industry with Sony and Nintendo each dominating their part of that market in their different, unique ways,” said David Gibson, an analyst at MST Financial.

But the return to a Japan-only industry for dedicated games hardware could more clearly define the console as a commercial cul-de-sac.

That issue, said independent games analyst Pelham Smithers, could be particularly acute for Sony, which last week announced plans to cut 900 staff from its games unit.

“It was tough enough for Sony arguing the need to investors for a PS5—and a lot of people at the time were saying that the PS5 could be the end of the line—but Microsoft’s commitment to console gaming helped,” said Smithers.

Nintendo, meanwhile, faces an issue of timing. Its Switch machine, released in 2017 and now significantly underpowered even when compared with some mobile phones, is to be replaced with a next-generation successor. But the Kyoto-based company has yet to say precisely when and what it will look like.

Analysts said Nintendo is still traumatized by the experience in 2012 when it launched a poorly conceived successor to the global blockbuster Wii console.

Sales of the existing Switch are respectable, said Toto, but more or less everyone who wanted the console has bought one by now. The market, he said, will be waiting for Nintendo’s successor and may hold back on buying games for the Switch ahead of a new machine being released.

Gibson said Sony’s problems are very different: its PS5 machine, now four years old, is popular, but its games business is now guided by “accountants,” rather than people primed to manage a creative business.

Previous generations of the PlayStation had been launched with an expectation that the machine would initially be sold at a loss, before the price of components quickly fell, allowing the company to break even and, in time, allow price cuts for customers.

By its fifth year of release the PS4 had two price cuts totaling $100. The PS5 has had none. “With the accountants in charge, Sony is not prepared to cut prices by $100 to stimulate demand because that would cost $2 billion in profits,” Gibson said.

Microsoft, which has spent huge sums on acquisitions of game studios such as the $75 billion purchase of Activision, is facing similar issues with its hardware economics. Analysts said the US company may have greater motivation than Sony to become an all-platform king.

“The state of the console market right now may not be an advertisement per se for Japan getting its mojo back. It feels more like these three very idiosyncratic businesses are doing well or not for idiosyncratic reasons,” said Robin Zhu, games analyst at Bernstein.

There is a chance that Microsoft’s new direction is a “win, win, win situation,” according to Atul Goyal at Jefferies, because of the different situation each company finds itself in.

Microsoft, he said, could pump up returns by offering its games across different platforms, while Nintendo and Sony would face “less intense competition” and benefit from having a wider choice of titles for customers.

But, as Zhu said, one factor that might keep Microsoft from killing off the Xbox entirely is the same thing that will keep Sony and Nintendo in the market—the fierce loyalty of gamers.

“The concern [Microsoft] will have is that you’ve already convinced your customers to buy the hardware; by telling them that Xbox games will be on every other platform, you risk upsetting your highest engagement and most dogmatic customers,” he said.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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