Month: April 2023

Why Elon Musk’s cull of Twitter ‘verified’ blue ticks could prove costly

End of ‘lords & peasants system’ may help business in short term but risks sustainability if it leads to loss of trust Twitter’s aristocracy is no more. Last year Elon Musk described the verification process as a “lords & peasants system” and on Thursday he deployed the guillotine. Feudalism has now given way to capitalism: …

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‘Muted, soft, like watercolours’: The Last Guardian’s soundtrack was an appeal to the heart

Composer Takeshi Furukawa talks about creating the soundtrack for Fumito Ueda’s touching tale about the relationship between human and beast From the opening moments of The Last Guardian, developer Japan Studio and legendary game director Fumito Ueda need you to understand one simple thing: this game is about empathy. Before you are given the opportunity …

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‘Legacy blue checks’ disappear from Twitter as Musk’s changes take effect

Checkmark denoted accounts verified for authenticity, which can now be bought for an $8 a month subscription called Twitter Blue Blue checkmarks began to disappear from formerly verified Twitter accounts on Thursday, as policies implemented under new owner Elon Musk began to take hold. Musk, who purchased the company for $44bn in 2022 and has …

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Fresh concerns raised over sources of training material for AI systems

Investigations reveal limited efforts to ‘clean’ datasets of fascist, pirated and malicious material Fresh fears have been raised about the training material used for some of the largest and most powerful artificial intelligence models, after several investigations exposed the fascist, pirated and malicious sources from which the data is harvested. One such dataset is the …

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BuzzFeed News to close and parent company to make substantial layoffs

Chief executive Jonah Peretti says in company-wide email BuzzFeed ‘can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News’ BuzzFeed is shutting down what remains of its award-winning news department, signalling the end of an era for a website that once promised to upend the industry. Founder Jonah Peretti told staff on Thursday that “the company can …

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Pushing Buttons: your top local multiplayer games

In this week’s newsletter: Party quiz games, an interactive thriller, a dungeon crawler and more – your split-screen multiplayer recommendations are an inspiration. Here’s are some of the best Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here Last month I asked you all for your favourite couch co-op or competitive multiplayer games …

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Seagate to pay $300m settlement over $1.1bn hard disk drive sales to Huawei

Technology company violated US export control laws with shipments to Chinese firm, commerce department says Seagate Technology Holdings has agreed to pay a $300m penalty in a settlement with US authorities for shipping over $1.1bn worth of hard disk drives to China’s Huawei in violation of US export control laws, the Department of Commerce said …

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Crime agencies condemn Facebook and Instagram encryption plans

Global alliance including NCA and FBI says Meta’s decision to encrypt direct messages could harm children An alliance of the world’s most powerful law enforcement agencies including the FBI, Interpol and Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have condemned Meta’s plans to encrypt direct messages on Facebook Messenger and Instagram, saying that doing so will weaken …

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