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Tech News
Bluesky rolled out a new privacy toggle letting users exclude their posts from the app's algorithmic Discover feed, which can otherwise surface any public post on the network. The setting, found under Privacy and Security, takes up to an hour to apply and doesn't make posts private—only less discoverable to people outside a user's follower base.
Special Master Jose Linares has denied the Justice Department's motion to reconsider his earlier ruling allowing Apple to obtain documents from 14 federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA and Department of Defense. The DOJ had argued Linares used the wrong legal standard and that Apple's requests were overly burdensome and only marginally relevant, but Apple countered that these objections failed on every point, and Linares agreed.
After the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an FCC order that extended discounted 'lowest unit charge' TV ad rates to political parties and joint fundraising committees, the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees said they will petition the Supreme Court. The 4th Circuit denied their request for an emergency stay but issued the mandate immediately, clearing the way for a Supreme Court appeal.
Meta's settlement with attorneys general from 29 states, which includes up to $18 billion in payments and new child safety measures, contains a clause shielding Meta from COPPA-related lawsuits over its use of children's data. The exemption applies specifically to data used to build and test an age-verification model meant to detect users under 13, and Meta must build this system within a year of the agreement taking effect. The deal explicitly bars use of under-13 data for ad targeting or algorithmic optimization, though critics note enforcement could be tricky.
A wave of polls and news reports indicates widespread American opposition to data centers, Flock surveillance cameras, and Meta's AI-equipped Ray-Ban glasses, which critics have nicknamed 'pervert glasses.' Recent events, including a grand jury declining to indict a man filmed damaging Flock equipment and protestors against data centers gaining online praise, underscore how deep and public this hostility has become.
Sony has introduced the Bravia 6, a lower-cost OLED television line built to compete directly with entry-level OLED sets like the LG B6. Pricing starts at $1,300, with the 65-inch model at $2,000, well below the $2,800 Bravia 8 II. The set uses a 4K OLED panel with Sony's Triluminos Pro processing, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X support, and runs Google TV with Gemini integration.
Nvidia is said to be pursuing an acquisition of Hugging Face, the widely used repository where developers share and download AI models, according to reports from The Information and CNBC citing sources familiar with the matter. The deal isn't finalized, and Hugging Face had reportedly drawn interest from other suitors including Salesforce, while Nvidia, Google and Microsoft have all previously invested in the startup founded in 2016.
YouTube announced eligible U.S. creators can now tag Amazon products directly within shorts, long-form videos, and livestreams to earn a share of resulting sales. The feature integrates Amazon's catalog natively into YouTube's Shopping Affiliate Program, replacing the older method of pasting Associates links in video descriptions. Creators can also enable auto-tagging, letting YouTube's systems scan past uploads to identify and tag eligible products automatically.
Barret Zoph, who co-founded Thinking Machines with Mira Murati after leaving OpenAI in 2024, returned to OpenAI in January but departed again after just five months leading enterprise AI sales. He has now joined Google as vice president of research, where he previously worked, to apply his reinforcement learning and post-training expertise to Gemini.
A startup called Generation claims a combination of two generic drugs can reverse aging effects, citing informal reports from a small group of participants describing benefits like improved vision, better grip strength, and increased libido. The company plans a larger trial of 100+ people, but is already distributing the drug to others before any rigorous evidence confirms its effectiveness. The trial will be overseen by alternative-medicine practitioners, including a doctor previously linked to promoting FDA-discredited covid-19 treatments.
Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Seth Moulton are clashing over artificial intelligence ahead of Tuesday's Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary. Moulton has seized on Markey's admission during a debate that he didn't know if he used AI on his devices, using it to argue for generational change, while Anthropic-backed nonprofit Public First Action has funneled $500,000 to a pro-Markey PAC citing his record on AI regulation.
Google has acknowledged a bug in its Messages app that causes existing group conversations to unexpectedly split into multiple separate threads with the same participants, often erasing prior message history. The company is asking affected users to submit feedback tagged #splittingthreads to help its engineers investigate. Some users also report similar duplication happening in one-on-one RCS chats, though Google hasn't confirmed a link between the two issues.