Saturday, July 13, 2024

Threads needs to foster community builders rather than get celebrity creators from platforms like Instagram, who tend not to do well on a microblogging platform (Anuj Ahooja/augment)

Anuj Ahooja / augment:
Threads needs to foster community builders rather than get celebrity creators from platforms like Instagram, who tend not to do well on a microblogging platform  —  It's been just over a year since Meta launched Threads, a microblogging platform built upon Instagram's foundation.



A look at MetaFilter, which turns 25 on July 14; owner Jessamyn West, who helped stabilize it after near death, doesn't plan to license its archives to AI (Steven Levy/Wired)

Steven Levy / Wired:
A look at MetaFilter, which turns 25 on July 14; owner Jessamyn West, who helped stabilize it after near death, doesn't plan to license its archives to AI  —  After a quarter century the community-driven site hasn't changed much.  And don't ask it to license its archive to AI.



Ahead of a key UK Amazon workers' union vote, a look at Amazon's efforts to prevent employees from organizing, after fending off most of the similar US attempts (Delphine Strauss/Financial Times)

Delphine Strauss / Financial Times:
Ahead of a key UK Amazon workers' union vote, a look at Amazon's efforts to prevent employees from organizing, after fending off most of the similar US attempts  —  Campaign is part of tech giant's long-running global battle to prevent employees from organising



Friday, July 12, 2024

Apple launches Vision Pro in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Australia after launching in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore on June 28 (Tim Hardwick/MacRumors)

Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Apple launches Vision Pro in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Australia after launching in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore on June 28  —  Apple's Vision Pro spatial computing headset today arrived at Apple Store locations in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, and Australia.



AT&T says it will begin notifying consumers about a data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal phone records of "nearly all" of its customers (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
AT&T says it will begin notifying consumers about a data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal phone records of “nearly all” of its customers  —  Stolen data includes millions of AT&T customer phone numbers, calling and text records, and location-related data.



Preliminary findings: the EU says X's paid blue checkmark deceives users and breaches the DSA; X faces a fine of up to 6% of its global revenue if found guilty (Javier Espinoza/Financial Times)

Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
Preliminary findings: the EU says X's paid blue checkmark deceives users and breaches the DSA; X faces a fine of up to 6% of its global revenue if found guilty  —  Brussels regulators use new digital powers to threaten social media company with huge fines over transparency issues



Hanover, Germany-based HERO Software, whose SaaS acts as an operating system for trade SMEs like plumbing, raised a €40M Series B led by Eight Roads Ventures (Cate Lawrence/Tech.eu)

Cate Lawrence / Tech.eu:
Hanover, Germany-based HERO Software, whose SaaS acts as an operating system for trade SMEs like plumbing, raised a €40M Series B led by Eight Roads Ventures  —  HERO acts as an operating system for SMEs across various trades, including plumbing, carpentry, photovoltaic installation, and electrical services.



Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Google now lets Advanced Protection Program users set up with a single passkey, using Android or iOS biometric authentication, instead of two physical keys (Wes Davis/The Verge)

Wes Davis / The Verge:
Google now lets Advanced Protection Program users set up with a single passkey, using Android or iOS biometric authentication, instead of two physical keys  —  Google has made it a little easier for those at more risk of targeted online attacks to enroll in its Advanced Protection Program for Google accounts.



Elliptic finds a Cambodian online market offering the crypto scam industry products and services, including money laundering and victim data, with $11B in sales (Wired)

Wired:
Elliptic finds a Cambodian online market offering the crypto scam industry products and services, including money laundering and victim data, with $11B in sales  —  Deepfake scam services.  Victim data.  Electrified shackles for human trafficking.  Crypto tracing firm Elliptic found …



A US judge rules in favor of X in a lawsuit alleging X owes $500M+ in severance pay to ~6,000 laid-off staff, saying the claims were not covered under ERISA (Robert Burnson/Bloomberg)

Robert Burnson / Bloomberg:
A US judge rules in favor of X in a lawsuit alleging X owes $500M+ in severance pay to ~6,000 laid-off staff, saying the claims were not covered under ERISA  —  The suit alleged that X, formerly known as Twitter, and Musk owed at least $500 million in severance pay to about 6,000 laid-off …



Russia's finance minister says Russian companies have begun using bitcoin and other digital currencies in international payments to counter Western sanctions (Gleb Bryanski/Reuters)

Gleb Bryanski / Reuters : Russia's finance minister says Russian companies have begun using bitcoin and other digital currencies in i...