tech

Global police sting targets users of organised crime app

BY LAURA CHUNG

  • The "computer geek" was driven by profit and was "slightly surprised" when police arrested him Tuesday, McCartney said.
  • A 32-year-old Australian "computer geek" has been arrested on suspicion of building an encrypted messaging app used by hundreds of criminals worldwide to arrange drug deals and order killings, police said Wednesday.
  • The "computer geek" was driven by profit and was "slightly surprised" when police arrested him Tuesday, McCartney said.
A 32-year-old Australian "computer geek" has been arrested on suspicion of building an encrypted messaging app used by hundreds of criminals worldwide to arrange drug deals and order killings, police said Wednesday.
Australian Federal Police said the Ghost app was marketed to underworld figures as "unhackable" and was used by hundreds of suspected criminals from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. 
But, unbeknownst to users, global policing authorities had hacked the network and were watching as the criminals discussed illicit drug trafficking, money laundering, homicides and serious violence.
Authorities made their move on Tuesday and Wednesday, arresting criminals from Italy, Ireland, Sweden, Canada and Australia -- including Jay Je Yoon Jung, the alleged "mastermind" of the app.
Europol executive director Catherine De Bolle said law enforcement from nine countries had been involved in the international sting.
"Today we have made it clear that no matter how hidden criminal networks think they are, they can't evade our collective effort," she said.
Authorities dismantled an Australian drug lab while weapons, drugs and more than one million euros ($1.1 million) in cash have been seized globally, the EU policing agency added.
Ghost, a kind of WhatsApp for criminals, was created nine years ago and could only be accessed via modified smartphones that sold for about Aus$2,350 (US$1,590). 
The hefty price tag included a six-month subscription to the Ghost app and tech support, Australian police said Wednesday, and users were required to purchase an ongoing subscription.
French police traced the creator's location to Australia and joined forces with local police to target the platform.
The app's creator regularly pushed out software updates but in 2022, Australian police were able to hijack those updates to access encrypted content.
For two years, authorities watched as Ghost became more popular and criminals exchanged messages -- including 50 death threats that Australian police said they were able to thwart.
Several thousand people worldwide use Ghost and around 1,000 messages are exchanged on it every day, according to Europol.
There were 376 phones with the Ghost app installed in Australia alone.
In one case, police intercepted an image of a gun to someone's head and were able to save that person within the hour, Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner Kirsty Schofield said.

Breaking the unbreakable

Hacking into encrypted apps on phones has become increasingly challenging for authorities, but not impossible. 
Three years ago, a similar network -- called ANOM -- led to 800 arrests worldwide. 
Little did they know, ANOM was produced and distributed by the FBI, allowing US and other nations' law enforcement to decrypt 27 million messages, many of which related to criminal activity.
Australian Federal Police deputy commissioner Ian McCartney said after the ANOM network unravelled, Ghost started to "fill that space". 
He added that law enforcement was aware of other similar encrypted apps and that he hoped some of these would be shut down within 12 months.
Europol said encrypted communications had become "increasingly fragmented" after other services were disrupted or shut down, leading criminals to diversify their methods.

Element of 'surprise'

McCartney said the Ghost app creator from New South Wales lived at home with his parents and did not have a criminal history. 
The "computer geek" was driven by profit and was "slightly surprised" when police arrested him Tuesday, McCartney said.
Schofield added that police had to act quickly given the man had the ability to "wipe the communications on the system". 
"Our tactical teams were able to secure him and the devices within 30 seconds of entry," she said.
The 32-year-old was charged with five offences, including supporting a criminal organisation, which carries a sentence of up to three years' imprisonment.
He appeared in a Sydney court on Wednesday and was denied bail, with no future court date set.
Another 38 people have been arrested across Australia.
lec/arb/imm/js

US

EU court scraps 1.5-bn euro fine against Google

BY RAZIYE AKKOC

  • The ruling is especially welcome for Google after the EU's highest court last week upheld a 2017 fine worth 2.42 billion euros, imposed for abusing its dominance by favouring its own comparison shopping service.
  • An EU court on Wednesday scrapped a 1.49-billion euro ($1.65 billion) fine imposed by Brussels against Google over abuse of dominance in online advertising.
  • The ruling is especially welcome for Google after the EU's highest court last week upheld a 2017 fine worth 2.42 billion euros, imposed for abusing its dominance by favouring its own comparison shopping service.
An EU court on Wednesday scrapped a 1.49-billion euro ($1.65 billion) fine imposed by Brussels against Google over abuse of dominance in online advertising.
"The General Court annuls the (European) Commission's decision in its entirety," the Luxembourg-based court said in a statement, adding that the "institution committed errors in its assessment".
Brussels "failed to take into consideration all the relevant circumstances in its assessment of the duration of the contract clauses that the commission had deemed abusive", the court said.
The commission, the EU's influential competition regulator, said it "takes note" and would "carefully study the judgment and reflect on possible next steps" -- which could include an appeal.
A Google spokesperson said the company welcomed the ruling, noting it had "made changes" to its ad services in 2016, before the EU decision.
"We are pleased that the court has recognised errors in the original decision and annulled the fine," a Google spokesperson added.
The ruling is especially welcome for Google after the EU's highest court last week upheld a 2017 fine worth 2.42 billion euros, imposed for abusing its dominance by favouring its own comparison shopping service.
As part of a major push to target big tech abuses, the EU slapped Google with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros between 2017 and 2019 over antitrust violations.
The 1.49-billion euro fine is the third of those penalties, focused on Google's AdSense service.
But the long-running legal battles between Google and the EU do not end there.

EU's greater powers

Google is also challenging a 4.3-billion-euro penalty Brussels levied on it for putting restrictions on Android smartphones to boost its internet search business.
The 2018 fine remains the EU's largest-ever antitrust penalty.
The General Court in 2022 slightly reduced the fine to 4.1 billion euros, but mainly supported the commission's argument that Google had imposed illegal restrictions.
The legal saga continues in that case after Google appealed the latest decision before the higher European Court of Justice.
The EU has since armed itself with a more powerful legal weapon known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), to rein in tech giants including Google.
Rather than regulators discovering egregious antitrust violations after probes lasting many years, the DMA gives businesses a list of what they can and cannot do online.
The aim is that tech titans change their ways before the need for deterrent fines.
Google is already the subject of one investigation under the DMA alongside Facebook owner Meta and Apple.

Mounting problems

Google is in the US regulators' crosshairs as well.
Last week, the tech titan faced its second major antitrust trial in less than a year with the US government accusing Google of a monopoly in ad technology -- the complex system determining which online ads people see and their cost.
It comes after a US judge in August found Google's search business to be an illegal monopoly, a ruling which threatens a possible break-up for the tech behemoth.
Ad tech is at the centre of multiple probes by regulators around the world.
British and EU competition watchdogs have said in preliminary findings that Google abused its dominance in the market. Google has the right to respond in both cases before the regulators reach final conclusions.
Parent company Alphabet in July said revenue from online ad searches climbed to $48.5 billion in the second quarter of this year.
raz/ec/jm

disinformation

Russia intensifies disinformation ops against Harris campaign: Microsoft

  • Russian operatives are ramping up disinformation operations to malign Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign by disseminating conspiracy-laden videos, Microsoft said Tuesday, amid heightened alert over foreign influence operations targeting the US election.
Russian operatives are ramping up disinformation operations to malign Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign by disseminating conspiracy-laden videos, Microsoft said Tuesday, amid heightened alert over foreign influence operations targeting the US election.
The report comes after the US government accused Russia's state news agency RT earlier this month of seeking to influence the presidential election in November and imposed sanctions on its top editors.
Starting in late August, a Kremlin-aligned influence group called Storm-1516 produced two fake videos to discredit the campaign of Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, Microsoft said in a report. Both videos garnered millions of views.
One video purported to show a group of alleged Harris supporters attacking a supposed Trump rally attendee, while the second featured an actor peddling fabricated claims that Harris paralyzed a girl in a 2011 hit-and-run case.
This second video was disseminated through a website posing as a local San Francisco media outlet, the report said.
A second Russian group, known as Storm-1679, pivoted its focus from the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to publish false videos discrediting Harris.
"The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the candidates," said Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center.
"As we inch closer to the election, we should expect Russian actors to continue to use cyber proxies and hacktivist groups to amplify their messages through media websites and social channels geared to spread divisive political content, staged videos, and AI-enhanced propaganda," Watts added.
The Microsoft report comes a day before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on foreign threats to the upcoming election.
On Monday, tech giant Meta said it was banning Russian state media outlets from its apps around the world due to foreign interference activity.
The ban came after the United States accused RT and employees of the state-run outlet of funneling $10 million through shell entities to covertly fund influence campaigns on social media channels including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube. 
Earlier this year, the Justice Department said the United States had disrupted a Russian disinformation campaign involving an AI-powered "bot farm" used to create fake profiles on the social media platform X.
The campaign -- aimed at sowing "discord" in the United States -- was developed by a senior editor of RT, financed by the Kremlin and aided by an officer of Russia's FSB security service, it added.
US officials have also warned of efforts by other foreign powers, including Iran, to meddle in the November election.
In a separate report last month, Microsoft said Iran was ramping up efforts to influence the US elections by using fake news sites, hacking, and cyber attacks.
ac/dw

children

Instagram, under pressure, tightens protection for teens

BY JULIE JAMMOT

  • "'Teen Accounts' is a significant update, designed to give parents peace of mind," Antigone Davis, Meta vice-president in charge of safety issues, told AFP. Under the new policy, users aged 13 to 17 will have private accounts by default, with tighter safeguards on who can contact them and what content they can see.
  • Meta on Tuesday announced the creation of "Teen Accounts," designed to better protect underage users from the dangers associated with Instagram.
  • "'Teen Accounts' is a significant update, designed to give parents peace of mind," Antigone Davis, Meta vice-president in charge of safety issues, told AFP. Under the new policy, users aged 13 to 17 will have private accounts by default, with tighter safeguards on who can contact them and what content they can see.
Meta on Tuesday announced the creation of "Teen Accounts," designed to better protect underage users from the dangers associated with Instagram.
Many experts and authorities accuse the hugely popular photo-sharing app of damaging the mental health of its youngest users through addiction to the app, bullying, and body image and self-esteem issues.
"'Teen Accounts' is a significant update, designed to give parents peace of mind," Antigone Davis, Meta vice-president in charge of safety issues, told AFP.
Under the new policy, users aged 13 to 17 will have private accounts by default, with tighter safeguards on who can contact them and what content they can see.
Thirteen to 15-year-olds who want a more public profile and fewer restrictions -- because they want to become influencers, for example -- will need to obtain permission from their parents. The new rules apply for both existing and new users to the platform.
"This is a big change. It means making sure that we do this really well," Davis said.

3 billion IDs

For the past year, pressure has been building across the globe against the social media giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg and its rivals. 
Last October, some forty US states filed a complaint against Meta's platforms, accusing them of harming the "mental and physical health of young people," due to the risks of addiction, cyber-bullying or eating disorders.
Australia, meanwhile, will soon set the minimum age for its social networks at between 14 and 16.
For the time being, Meta refuses to check the age of all of its users, in the name of confidentiality.
"When we have a strong signal that someone's age is wrong, we're going to ask them to verify their age, but we don't want to make three billion people have to provide IDs," Davis said.
In her opinion, it would be simpler and more effective if age checks were carried out at the level of the smartphone's mobile operating system, i.e. Google's Android or Apple's iOS.
"They actually have significant information about the age of users. And if they were to share that broadly across all the apps that teens use, that would provide peace of mind for parents."
It's not clear whether the new protections will be enough to reassure governments and online safety advocates, such as Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center.
"Instagram is addictive. Instagram leads kids down dangerous rabbit holes, where they are shown not what they want to see, but what they can't look away from," he said.
His group represents 200 parents whose children committed suicide "after being encouraged to do so by videos recommended by Instagram or TikTok."
Bergman points to the many cases where young girls have developed serious eating disorders. 
Meta now prevents the promotion of extreme diets on its platforms, among other measures taken in recent years. 
These measures are "baby steps, but nevertheless, steps in the right direction," he told AFP.
In his view, all that's needed is for groups to make their platforms less addictive -- "and therefore a little less profitable."
This can be done without the platforms losing their quality for users, he said.
juj/arp/dw

technology

Germany's Scholz disappointed by delay to Intel chip plant

  • The chip-making giant announced plans for the German plant in 2022, in what was seen as a major boost for EU efforts to ramp up semiconductor production in the bloc.
  • Chancellor Olaf Scholz voiced disappointment Tuesday after US semiconductor giant Intel delayed plans to build a mega chip-making plant in Germany which had been championed by Berlin.
  • The chip-making giant announced plans for the German plant in 2022, in what was seen as a major boost for EU efforts to ramp up semiconductor production in the bloc.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz voiced disappointment Tuesday after US semiconductor giant Intel delayed plans to build a mega chip-making plant in Germany which had been championed by Berlin.
The news also stoked fresh tensions in Scholz's uneasy ruling coalition, with a row breaking out over what should be done with around 10 billion euros ($11 billion) in subsidies earmarked for the project.
The government "takes note of the announcement about the delay with disappointment and continues to believe the project is worthwhile and deserves support", said Scholz.
The chancellor welcomed the fact that Intel had indicated it wants to "stick with" the project in the long term.
Intel announced Monday that it was postponing the project in the eastern German city of Magdeburg, along with another one in Poland, by around two years due to lower expected demand.
The chip-making giant announced plans for the German plant in 2022, in what was seen as a major boost for EU efforts to ramp up semiconductor production in the bloc.
Construction work on the Intel project was due to begin in 2023 but it stalled after the Ukraine war sent inflation soaring. 
German officials and the company were then locked in talks on financing for months, but the two sides finally signed a deal in June 2023, which included higher government subsidies for the 30-billion-euro project.
Since, Intel has reported disappointing results and announced major job cuts as it faces fierce competition, particularly from Nvidia, in the race to make cutting-edge chips for artificial intelligence.
Despite the setback for Germany, Scholz stressed there were still over 30 semiconductor projects underway in Germany. Other chip giants, including Taiwan's TSMC, have announced major investments in Germany.
"For the sake of our sovereignty, and for our technological leadership, we will continue to insist that semiconductor production takes place in Europe and especially in Germany," he said during a visit to Kazakh capital Astana.
He refused to be drawn on what should be done with the public funds that had been set aside for the Intel plant.
But shortly after Intel's announcement, Finance Minister Christian Linder from the pro-business FDP party said the money should be used to plug holes in the budget. 
"Anything else would not be responsible policy," he wrote on X.
But sources from the economy ministry, which is headed by the Green party, the third member of the coalition led by Social Democrat Scholz, said the money should remain in a special "climate and transformation fund", and could not be used in the main budget.
sr/sea/lth

tech

Intel delays Germany, Poland chip factories for two years

  • "We will pause our projects in Poland and Germany by approximately two years based on anticipated market demand," he added.
  • Chip-making giant Intel on Monday said it was delaying its plans to build two mega chip-making factories in Germany and Poland as the company faces lower demand than anticipated.
  • "We will pause our projects in Poland and Germany by approximately two years based on anticipated market demand," he added.
Chip-making giant Intel on Monday said it was delaying its plans to build two mega chip-making factories in Germany and Poland as the company faces lower demand than anticipated.
The announcement will come as a major blow to the German and Polish governments that have heavily subsidized the projects and touted them as a boost to their national industry.
Intel also said it would pull back on its projects in Malaysia, but said that its US plans would remain unaffected.
In Germany, construction work on the Intel project was due to begin in 2023 but it stalled after the Ukraine war sent inflation soaring. 
German officials and the company were then locked in talks on financing for months, but both sides finally signed a deal in June 2023, which included increased subsidies.
Germany stepped up its subsidy to launch the 30-billion-euro ($33 billion) factory project to almost 10 billion euros, some three billion more than first offered.
"We recently increased capacity in Europe through our fab (or factory) in Ireland, which will remain our lead European hub for the foreseeable future," Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement.
"We will pause our projects in Poland and Germany by approximately two years based on anticipated market demand," he added.
In Poland, Intel had received $1.8 billion to set up a semiconductor factory near Wroclaw.
EU countries are seeking to boost production of semiconductors, used in everything from fighter jets to smartphones, and reduce reliance on Asia after pandemic-induced shortages hit some industries, and Russia's war on Ukraine brought home the risks of over-dependency.
On Monday, Intel also said it would receive up to $3 billion in direct funding from the US government, to boost its manufacturing of semiconductors for the US military.
This is part of efforts to “secure the domestic chip supply chain,” according to an Intel statement.
The company also said it would work with the Department of Defense to improve the resilience of US technological systems. 
arp/bgs

TikTok

TikTok battles US ban threat in court

BY ALEX PIGMAN

  • TikTok has until January to find a buyer or face the ban, which would likely provoke a strong response from the Chinese government and further strain US-China relations.
  • TikTok faced pushback in a federal court on Monday in its efforts to stop a law that requires the app to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States.
  • TikTok has until January to find a buyer or face the ban, which would likely provoke a strong response from the Chinese government and further strain US-China relations.
TikTok faced pushback in a federal court on Monday in its efforts to stop a law that requires the app to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington heard arguments from TikTok, its owner ByteDance, and a group of users claiming that the ban violates free speech and is unconstitutional.
The US government alleges TikTok allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users. It also says TikTok is a conduit to spread propaganda. China and the company strongly deny these claims.
TikTok has until January to find a buyer or face the ban, which would likely provoke a strong response from the Chinese government and further strain US-China relations.
It would also upend the social media business and rile many of the app's 170 million US users.
ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has stated it has no plans to sell TikTok, leaving the app's legal appeal -- focused on US guarantees for free speech -- as its only option for survival.
"The law before this court is unprecedented. Its effect would be staggering," said Andrew Pincus, the lawyer arguing on behalf of the wildly popular video-sharing app. 
"For the first time in history, Congress has expressly targeted a specific US speaker (i.e., TikTok USA)," he added.
In their questions, the judges challenged this argument, comparing it to earlier cases in US jurisprudence. 
This included a case from the 1980s where closing the Palestine Information Office in Washington was deemed legal because it was backed by the PLO, an organization officially designated as a terrorist group.
TikTok's lawyer countered: "Mere foreign ownership can't possibly be a justification, because it would turn the First Amendment (protecting free speech) on its head." 
He added that seeing foreign ownership alone as criteria for forced divestiture "would be a pretty shocking change here," citing other foreign-owned media companies such as Politico, Al Jazeera, and the BBC.
The lawyer also questioned why the US law did not target e-commerce sites with similar Chinese ownership. 
Pincus said that if you followed the US government's logic, which he disagreed with, "certainly those sites could well be susceptible to (China's) action, but they've been excluded by Congress (in the law)."

'Important questions'

The judges grilled the US government on whether TikTok USA, a US-based company, should be denied its free speech rights.
The US government lawyer, Daniel Tenny, insisted that the content being targeted was a recommendations algorithm based at ByteDance in China, not anything created by US users, and that it was therefore out of reach of free speech considerations. 
"There's really no dispute here that the recommendation engine is maintained, developed, and written by ByteDance, rather than TikTok USA, and that is what's being targeted," Tenny argued.
The trio of judges will decide the case in the coming weeks or months, but regardless of their decision, the case is likely to reach the US Supreme Court, experts said.
"After listening to the oral arguments, I am more convinced that this case will end up in the Supreme Court," said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell's Tech Policy Institute.
"Overall, the judges sounded more skeptical of the TikTok case but also raised important questions about the First Amendment, foreign influence and standards of scrutiny that I do not think were clearly resolved with today's exchanges,” she added.
The fate of Americans' access to TikTok has become a prominent issue in the country's political debates, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump opposing a ban. 
Democratic President Joe Biden, whose vice president Kamala Harris is running against Trump, signed the law that gives TikTok until January to shed its Chinese ownership or be expelled from the US market. 
Harris uses TikTok in her campaign for November's election and, despite signing the bill that could kill the app, Biden also created an account.
According to a survey from Pew Research earlier this month, just 32 percent of US adults back a TikTok ban.
arp/bjt

films

French YouTuber hits peak with Everest documentary

BY YASSINE KHIRI AND JOSEPH BOYLE

  • After obsessing over "Minecraft" and "Fortnite" for years, he said he wanted those experiences to be real.
  • The pitch is a classic: a young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some (if not all) odds.
  • After obsessing over "Minecraft" and "Fortnite" for years, he said he wanted those experiences to be real.
The pitch is a classic: a young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some (if not all) odds.
French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known everywhere as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge.
The film, titled "Kaizen", proved a smash hit on its release this weekend.
Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag's management saying on Monday the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema event, selling 300,000 tickets over the weekend in France.
The film was seen more than 11 million times in its first 24 hours on YouTube, a spokesperson told AFP, adding it was "undoubtedly one of the biggest launches in the history" of the platform in France.
The 22-year-old content creator started posting video game footage in his mid-teens and his livewire energy has since catapulted him to superstardom among young French people.
He has more than eight million subscribers on YouTube and more than 10 million followers on other platforms.
"I've always liked to have adventures -- when I was younger, they were on video games," he told AFP in an interview before the release.
After obsessing over "Minecraft" and "Fortnite" for years, he said he wanted those experiences to be real.

'Crazy goals'

Inoxtag posts relentlessly upbeat content and challenge videos like "30 seconds to save a life" or "Five days to walk across Corsica" but also professes a serious concern for the environment.
His film has the moments of tension and personal drama online documentaries are expected to serve up, while mixing in serious issues like over-tourism and pollution.
Fans have been in raptures over the movie, but the French press has not exactly embraced it.
The newspaper Liberation accused the filmmakers of overlooking the work of the Sherpas, the Nepalese who help climbers with their ascents -- though some later joined Inoxtag on stage in Paris.
Mountaineer and photographer Pascal Tournaire told L'Equipe newspaper the movie was "very egotistical" and said the YouTube star had not achieved any real feat.
On the other side of the ledger, Mathis Dumas, the climber who helped Inoxtag prepare for the ascent, told local media the young star had a "real love" for the mountain.
And fans gathered outside the cinema in Paris would not hear a word of criticism.
"I know there are plenty of people who climb the mountain and don't film themselves," said 19-year-old student Lucie Bonin.
"But it's wild that a YouTuber is entertaining us like this, just by setting himself such crazy goals."

Japanese inspiration

 
If the pitch for "Kaizen" sounds like it comes from a movie, that's probably because it does -- at least partially.
Inoxtag said he was inspired by 2017 French comedy film "The Climb", based on a true story where a young man from the Paris suburbs sets out to conquer Everest to impress his prospective girlfriend.
The online star is aware that his motivations come as much from fantasy as they do from concerns over real-world issues.
He told AFP one of his great inspirations was legendary Japanese comic creator Eiichiro Oda whose "One Piece" series is the biggest-selling manga comic in history.
"If he comes across my documentary, I'd just like to say thank you for making me believe that dreams can come true," he said of Oda.
The social media star bade an ostentatious farewell to his fans at the beginning of April, swearing off all social media for the duration of his ascent.
With his absence came tension and speculation -- would he make it to the summit after all?
It is probably not too much of a spoiler to reveal that he did get to the summit.
And he was keen to play down the pre-release tension, telling AFP: "I don't want everyone to focus too much on whether I succeeded or failed.
"I want people to see a little bit of the journey I made to get there."
yk-jxb/rlp

Entertainment

Swifties raise $40k in wake of Trump post hating on star

  • , which the "Swifties for Kamala" organization capitalized on to raise money for his Democratic rival.
  • An organization of Taylor Swift fans said Monday they raised more than $40,000 for the Kamala Harris campaign following Donald Trump's post that he hates the pop megastar.
  • , which the "Swifties for Kamala" organization capitalized on to raise money for his Democratic rival.
An organization of Taylor Swift fans said Monday they raised more than $40,000 for the Kamala Harris campaign following Donald Trump's post that he hates the pop megastar.
The Republican hopeful fired a Sunday morning missive on Truth Social saying "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!", which the "Swifties for Kamala" organization capitalized on to raise money for his Democratic rival.
"As soon as we saw the post, we knew this was an opportunity. Our team was ready to go with lyric response ideas and ways to tie in our calls to donate and volunteer," said Carly Long, a member of the group's communications team, in a statement. 
"We use the memes to catch people's attention, and then tell them how to turn that emotion into action. Swifties know that haters gonna hate, but we also know we can do more than just shake, shake, shake."
The superfans stumping for Kamala Harris are not formally affiliated with the artist who unites them.
They say they've now raised more than $207,000 since kicking off their fundraising and outreach efforts less than two months ago.
A few weeks ago they held an inaugural fundraising call that was joined by 27,000 viewers, and featured appearances from stars like Carole King along with Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Ed Markey.
Since then Swift herself has endorsed Harris and her running mate Tim Walz over Donald Trump, calling the Democrat and current vice president a "steady-handed, gifted leader."
"I'm voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them," Swift posted in the minutes following the Harris-Trump debate last week.
In addition to fundraising and phone banking, the Swifties For Kamala outfit says they are planning additional outreach efforts particularly in swing states and at remaining dates of the blockbuster Eras Tour, which is currently on break.
It's scheduled to pick back up in Miami on October 18.
Irene Kim, a Swifties For Kamala cofounder, said in a statement that the group is "proof of the power Swifties have."
"We're building off our existing fandom culture to make voting and politics accessible."
mdo/md

Breton

Thierry Breton: France's bulldozer at the EU crashes out

BY DANIEL ARONSSOHN

  • His media prominence confounded some since Breton is not as eloquent an orator as other top officials in Paris and Brussels.
  • France's Thierry Breton became one of the European Union's most prominent faces in Brussels, gaining the reputation of a disrupter as he clashed with tech giants -- and even his own boss.
  • His media prominence confounded some since Breton is not as eloquent an orator as other top officials in Paris and Brussels.
France's Thierry Breton became one of the European Union's most prominent faces in Brussels, gaining the reputation of a disrupter as he clashed with tech giants -- and even his own boss.
That strained relationship with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen was at the centre of the outspoken and spotlight-seeking Breton's dramatic resignation Monday from the European Commission.
With his distinctive, salt and pepper mane and his thick-framed black eyeglasses, his influence in Brussels was wide-ranging. 
The bloc's internal market commissioner since 2019, he oversaw a defence industry push and marshalled the production of Covid jabs.
But he was better known for taking a hard line against abuses by the world's biggest digital platforms -- even sparring publicly with the billionaire boss of X, Elon Musk.
A former CEO of French tech and telecom firms, Breton was the first major business leader to arrive in the cosy world of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm.
He frequently gave media interviews and fired off quick quips on social media, building on his desire to be seen as an effector of change.
The centrist was outspoken in challenging von der Leyen -- and caused a stir earlier this year by publicly questioning the depth of support for her reelection within her centre-right European People's Party.
Breton also questioned her "transparency and impartiality" over the appointment of a political ally to a highly-paid post as small and medium-sized enterprises envoy.

Tech enforcer

The 69-year-old was seen by Paris as a key counterweight to Berlin's influence at the heart of the EU.  
But, an engineer by training, Breton, did not have a smooth path into the commission. 
The former French finance minister was French President Emmanuel Macron's second choice after a scandal surrounding his first.
His media prominence confounded some since Breton is not as eloquent an orator as other top officials in Paris and Brussels.
He was at times mocked for the length of his speeches and for the multiple ideas he introduced all at once in a disorderly fashion.
But he was in his element when he talked about digital issues and industry, after serving for several years as the head of several large French companies including France Telecom -- now Orange -- and Atos.
The resigning commissioner once had a wafer of semiconductor material in his hand as he launched into a long, technical explanation of electronic chips.
The EU's landmark laws taking on mainly US-based web giants, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), are among Breton's biggest achievements.
The rules demanded better policing of content online and curbed the market powers of companies, like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft.
"It's time to put some order in the digital 'Wild West'", he said in 2022.
Breton even went to see Musk in Texas to explain the rules that he would have to follow under the DSA. They were all smiles in a video that went viral.
- Wily figure - 
Breton, a former professor of corporate governance at Harvard University and author of several science fiction novels, wanted a more sovereign Europe to better defend its interests against challenges from China and the United States.
His thinking was often in line with the French government, but he frequently insisted he spoke for Europe and not just Paris.
During the coronavirus pandemic, when the United States and Britain had successful deliveries of vaccines in 2021, the EU had fallen behind.
Von der Leyen appointed Breton to lead a task force to fix the situation, and his knowledge of the world of business came in handy.
With factory visits and frequent dialogue with pharma bosses, he faced down the Americans who blocked key components by threatening retaliation.
A wily figure, he had been tipped to get a promotion to be a commission vice president stewarding industrial growth, under von der Leyen's second term. 
Instead he rocked Brussels by surprisingly quitting with immediate effect, claiming von der Leyen had sought at the last-minute to bar him from her incoming team.
aro-raz-ub/del/jm

TikTok

TikTok's US future hangs in balance at federal court

BY ALEX PIGMAN

  • Democratic President Joe Biden, whose vice president Kamala Harris is running against Trump, signed the law that gives TikTok until January to shed its Chinese ownership or be expelled from the US market.
  • TikTok will attempt to convince a federal court on Monday that a law requiring the video-sharing app to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States is unconstitutional.
  • Democratic President Joe Biden, whose vice president Kamala Harris is running against Trump, signed the law that gives TikTok until January to shed its Chinese ownership or be expelled from the US market.
TikTok will attempt to convince a federal court on Monday that a law requiring the video-sharing app to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States is unconstitutional.
The fate of Americans' access to TikTok has become a prominent issue in the country's political debate, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump opposing any ban of the wildly popular app. 
Democratic President Joe Biden, whose vice president Kamala Harris is running against Trump, signed the law that gives TikTok until January to shed its Chinese ownership or be expelled from the US market.
ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has stated it has no plans to sell TikTok, leaving the app's legal appeal -- focused on US guarantees for free speech -- as its only option for survival.
A ban would likely provoke a strong response from the Chinese government and further strain US-China relations.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear arguments from TikTok, ByteDance, and a group of users. 
They will primarily contend that the law violates free speech rights. 
The judges will decide the case in the coming weeks or months, but regardless of their decision, the case is likely to reach the US Supreme Court.
"There is no question: the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025," TikTok's appeal stated, "silencing those who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere." 
TikTok also argued that even if divestiture were possible, the app "would still be reduced to a shell of its former self, stripped of the innovative and expressive technology that tailors content to each user."
TikTok asserts that "the Constitution is on our side," as it pushes for a ruling that would favor the app and its 170 million American users.
The US government counters that the law addresses national security concerns, not speech, and that ByteDance cannot claim First Amendment rights in the United States. 
"Given TikTok's broad reach within the United States, the capacity for China to use TikTok's features to achieve its overarching objective to undermine American interests creates a national-security threat of immense depth and scale," the US Justice Department wrote in its filing.
The US argues that ByteDance could and would comply with Chinese government demands for data about US users, or yield to Chinese government pressure to censor or promote content on the platform.

'Vote for Trump'

TikTok first faced scrutiny under former president Trump's administration, which tried unsuccessfully to ban it. 
That effort was halted when a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump's move, citing in part the potential infringement of free speech rights.
Trump has since changed his position.
"For all of those that want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump," he said in a video post last week.
In a measure of the app's popularity, Biden's reelection campaign created a TikTok account earlier this year.
Biden has since stepped aside from his reelection bid, but Harris, running in his place, also maintains a presence on the app, having embraced social media as a means to communicate with younger voters.
The new effort signed by Biden was designed to overcome the previous legal hurdles Trump faced, but some experts believe the US Supreme Court will have difficulty allowing national security considerations to outweigh free speech protections.
Much of the US side's national security arguments are sealed, which "complicates efforts to evaluate" them, said professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law.
"However, the US Supreme Court has generally been very cautious about accepting national security arguments when government regulation restricts First Amendment rights, especially involving the internet," he added.
arp/nro

science

AI is 'accelerating the climate crisis,' expert warns

BY MATHIEW LEISER

  • "I find it particularly disappointing that generative AI is used to search the Internet," laments the researcher, who spoke with AFP on the sidelines of the ALL IN artificial intelligence conference, in Montreal.
  • If you care about the environment, think twice about using AI. Generative artificial intelligence uses 30 times more energy than a traditional search engine, warns researcher Sasha Luccioni, on a mission to raise awareness about the environmental impact of the hot new technology.
  • "I find it particularly disappointing that generative AI is used to search the Internet," laments the researcher, who spoke with AFP on the sidelines of the ALL IN artificial intelligence conference, in Montreal.
If you care about the environment, think twice about using AI.
Generative artificial intelligence uses 30 times more energy than a traditional search engine, warns researcher Sasha Luccioni, on a mission to raise awareness about the environmental impact of the hot new technology.
Recognized as one of the 100 most influential people in the world of AI by the American magazine Time in 2024, the Canadian computer scientist of Russian origin has sought for several years to quantify the emissions of programs like ChatGPT or Midjourney.
"I find it particularly disappointing that generative AI is used to search the Internet," laments the researcher, who spoke with AFP on the sidelines of the ALL IN artificial intelligence conference, in Montreal.
The language models on which the programs are based require enormous computing capacities to train on billions of data points, necessitating powerful servers. 
Then there's the energy used to respond to each individual user's requests.
Instead of simply extracting information, "like a search engine would do to find the capital of a country, for example," AI programs "generate new information," making the whole thing "much more energy-intensive," she explains.
According to the International Energy Agency, the combined AI and the cryptocurrency sectors consumed nearly 460 terawatt hours of electricity in 2022 -- two percent of total global production.

Energy efficiency

A leading researcher on the impact of AI on climate, Luccioni participated in 2020 in the creation of a tool for developers to quantify the carbon footprint of running a piece of code. "CodeCarbon" has since been downloaded more than a million times.
Head of the climate strategy of startup Hugging Face, a platform for sharing open-access AI models, she is now working on creating a certification system for algorithms.
Similar to the program from the US Environmental Protection Agency that awards scores based on the energy consumption of electronic devices and appliances, it would make it possible to know an AI product's energy consumption in order to encourage users and developers to "make better decisions."
"We don't take into account water or rare materials," she acknowledges, "but at least we know that for a specific task, we can measure energy efficiency and say that this model has an A+, and that model has a D," she says.

Transparency

In order to develop her tool, Luccioni is experimenting with it on generative AI models that are accessible to everyone, or open source, but she would also like to do it on commercial models from Google or ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, which have been reluctant to agree.
Although Microsoft and Google have committed to achieving carbon neutrality by the end of the decade, the US tech giants saw their greenhouse gas emissions soar in 2023 because of AI: up 48 percent for Google compared to 2019 and 29 percent for Microsoft compared to 2020.
"We are accelerating the climate crisis," says Luccioni, calling for more transparency from tech companies.
The solution, she says, could come from governments that, for the moment, are "flying blindly," without knowing what is "in the data sets or how the algorithms are trained."
"Once we have transparency, we can start legislating."

'Energy sobriety'

It is also necessary to "explain to people what generative AI can and cannot do, and at what cost," according to Luccioni.
In her latest study, the researcher demonstrated that producing a high-definition image using artificial intelligence consumes as much energy as fully recharging the battery of your cell phone.
At a time when more and more companies want to integrate the technology further into our lives -- with conversational bots and connected devices, or in online searches -- Luccioni advocates "energy sobriety."
The idea here is not to oppose AI, she emphasizes, but rather to choose the right tools -- and use them judiciously.
maw/tib/aem/amc/nro

deepfake

Beware 'deepfakes' of famous doctors promoting scams: experts

BY JULIE PACOREL

  • "People do seem to trust these videos," British doctor John Cormack told AFP.  "A lot of these media doctors have spent a great deal of time creating an image of trustworthiness, so they are believed even when they make incredible claims," said Cormack, who has worked with the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on the subject. 
  • Social media is being flooded by digitally created "deepfake" videos using the trusted identities of famous doctors to promote dangerous miracle cures for serious health problems, experts warn. 
  • "People do seem to trust these videos," British doctor John Cormack told AFP.  "A lot of these media doctors have spent a great deal of time creating an image of trustworthiness, so they are believed even when they make incredible claims," said Cormack, who has worked with the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on the subject. 
Social media is being flooded by digitally created "deepfake" videos using the trusted identities of famous doctors to promote dangerous miracle cures for serious health problems, experts warn. 
Videos on Facebook and Instagram have taken advantage of the credibility of star TV doctors to advertise untested "natural" syrups for diabetes, even claiming that the proven, first-line drug metformin "could kill" patients.
These scams risk endangering lives, experts said, particularly because they deploy the likenesses of popular health experts such as British TV presenter Michael Mosley, who died earlier this year. 
"People do seem to trust these videos," British doctor John Cormack told AFP. 
"A lot of these media doctors have spent a great deal of time creating an image of trustworthiness, so they are believed even when they make incredible claims," said Cormack, who has worked with the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on the subject. 
Artificial intelligence (AI) expert Henry Ajder said that doctor deepfakes "really took off this year".  
The AI videos typically target older audiences by faking the identity of doctors who appear regularly on daytime television, Ajder said. 
French doctor Michel Cymes, who often appears on TV in France, told AFP in May that he was taking legal action against Facebook owner Meta about "scams" using his image. 
British doctor Hilary Jones even hired an investigator to track deepfakes that featured his likeness.
One video depicted Jones selling a false cure for high blood pressure -- as well as weed gummies -- on a UK TV show on which he regularly appears.
"Even if they're taken down, they just pop up the next day under a different name," Jones lamented in the BMJ.

'Game of cat and mouse'

Recent advances in AI have made the quality of deepfake images, audio and video far more convincing, explained French academic and AI expert Frederic Jurie.
"Today we have access to tens of billions of images, and we are able to build algorithms that can model everything that appears in the images and regenerate them. This is what we call generative AI," he said.
It is not just the likenesses of widely respected doctors being misused.
The appearance of controversial French researcher Didier Raoult -- who has been accused of spreading misleading information about Covid drugs -- has also been used in several deepfake videos. 
Australian naturopath Barbara O'Neill, who has been roundly condemned for claiming that baking soda can cure cancer, has been falsely depicted selling pills that "clean blood vessels" in TikTok videos.
Contacted by AFP, her husband Michael O'Neill deplored that "a lot of unethical people" were using his wife's name "to sell products that she does not recommend, and in some cases they are just outright scams".
Some fake videos spiral even further down the rabbit hole, falsely claiming that O'Neill died from a miracle oil sold on Amazon.
AI expert Adjer was not surprised that such controversial health figures were also falling victim to deepfakes. 
"They are highly trusted by people in circles that, let's say, are unorthodox or conspiratorial," he said.
The experts were not optimistic that newly developed AI detection tools were capable of fighting back against the onslaught of deepfakes.
"It's a game of cat and mouse," Jurie said. 
Rather than trying to find all the fake videos out there, he pointed to technology that can "guarantee that content has not been altered, such as for messaging, thanks to software that produces digital signatures like a certificate", he said.
bur-jp/dl/rox/smw

internet

Brazil judge seizes $3 million from Musk to pay X fines

  • His measures have fueled debate on freedom of expression and the limits of social networks both inside and outside of the country.
  • Brazil's Supreme Court said Friday that a judge has ordered the transfer of some $3 million from Elon Musk's companies to pay fines incurred by his social network X, which has been suspended in the country.
  • His measures have fueled debate on freedom of expression and the limits of social networks both inside and outside of the country.
Brazil's Supreme Court said Friday that a judge has ordered the transfer of some $3 million from Elon Musk's companies to pay fines incurred by his social network X, which has been suspended in the country.
Judge Alexandre de Moraes last month ordered X shut down in Brazil after Musk refused to remove dozens of right-wing accounts and then failed to name a new legal representative in the country as ordered.
A brief statement from the court said Moraes had "determined the transfer to state coffers of 18.35 million reais ($3.28 million) blocked in accounts" of X and the satellite internet firm Starlink, both owned by Musk.
Moraes has repeatedly clashed with the South African-born billionaire after making it his mission to crack down on disinformation.
He also froze the assets of X and Starlink, which has been operating in Brazil since 2022 -- especially in remote communities in the Amazon -- to ensure payment of fines imposed on X for its failure to follow court orders.
The social media platform formerly known as Twitter has more than 22 million users in Brazil.
Moraes also ordered that those using "technological subterfuges" such as virtual private networks (VPNs) to access the blocked site could be fined up to $9,000.
His measures have fueled debate on freedom of expression and the limits of social networks both inside and outside of the country.
Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hailed the ban, while his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro called Moraes a "dictator."
rsr/app/mar/fb/acb

award

Backside breathing and pigeon bombers studies win Ig Nobel prizes

BY DANIEL LAWLER

  • - Homing pigeon missiles - The peace Ig Nobel went to the late US psychologist B.F. Skinner, for putting trained pigeons in the nose of missiles to guide them during World War II.  Project Pigeon was called off in 1944 despite a seemingly successful test on a target in New Jersey. 
  • Mammals that can breathe through their backsides, homing pigeons that can guide missiles and sober worms that outpace drunk ones: these are some of the strange scientific discoveries that won this year's Ig Nobels, the quirky alternative to the Nobel prizes.
  • - Homing pigeon missiles - The peace Ig Nobel went to the late US psychologist B.F. Skinner, for putting trained pigeons in the nose of missiles to guide them during World War II.  Project Pigeon was called off in 1944 despite a seemingly successful test on a target in New Jersey. 
Mammals that can breathe through their backsides, homing pigeons that can guide missiles and sober worms that outpace drunk ones: these are some of the strange scientific discoveries that won this year's Ig Nobels, the quirky alternative to the Nobel prizes.
The annual awards "for achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think", were handed out at a rowdy ceremony at MIT in the United States on Thursday evening.
Here are the 10 winners of the 34th edition, held a month before the real Nobel prizes. 

Bad breath

The physiology prize went to Japanese and US researchers for discovering that many mammals can breathe through their anuses in emergencies. 
They were inspired by loach fishes, which are capable of "intestinal air breathing", according to their 2021 study.
This can also be done by mice, pigs and rats, the researchers found, suggesting that guts could be repurposed as an "accessory breathing organ".
They even suggested this could be a way to deliver emergency oxygen to patients when there is a ventilator shortage, such as during the Covid pandemic.

Homing pigeon missiles

The peace Ig Nobel went to the late US psychologist B.F. Skinner, for putting trained pigeons in the nose of missiles to guide them during World War II. 
Project Pigeon was called off in 1944 despite a seemingly successful test on a target in New Jersey. 
"Call it a crackpot idea if you will; it is one in which I have never lost faith," Skinner wrote in 1960.

Plastic plant envy

The botany prize was awarded for research which found that some real plants imitate the shapes of nearby plastic plants.
Prize-winner Felipe Yamashita of Germany's Bonn University said their hypothesis is that the Boquila plant they studied "has some sort of eye that can see".
"How they do that, we have no idea," he said to laughter at the ceremony. 
"I need a job," he added.

Flip off

The probability prize was awarded to researchers who tossed 350,757 coins.
Inspired by a magician, the researchers found that the side facing upwards before being flipped won around 50.8 percent of the time. 
Over 81 work days' worth of flipping, the team had to employ massage guns to soothe sore shoulders.
Lead researcher Frantisek Bartos told AFP the team was excited to become Ig Nobel laureates.
"Although it's a 'parody' prize, it is very nice to have your research highlighted," he said. "And hopefully it amuses and maybe even inspires a new generation of scientists."

The true key to longevity

The demography prize was awarded for detective work which discovered that many of the people famous for living the longest happened to live in places with "lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping," the Ig Nobel website said.
Australian researcher Saul Justin Newman read out a poem at the ceremony which concluded that the real way to longevity is to "move where birth certificates are rare, teach your kids pension fraud and start lying". 

Drunk worm race

The chemistry prize went to a team which used a complex analysis called chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms.
The researchers demonstrated the study by re-enacting a race on stage between a sober worm that had been dyed red, and a blue worm they got drunk. 
The sober worm won.

Out of this whorl

The anatomy prize went to a team of French and Chilean researchers which found that the hair whorls of most people swirl clockwise -- however in the southern hemisphere, counter-clockwise whorls are more common. 

Make placebos hurt

The medicine Ig Nobel went to European researchers who demonstrated that fake medicine which causes painful side effects can work better than fake medicine that does not. 

Dead fish swimming

The physics prize was awarded to US-based scientist James Liao for "demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout".
"I discovered that a live fish moves more than a dead fish," Liao said as he accepted the prize.

Scaredy cat on cow

The biology prize went to the late US-based researchers Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen for a particularly strange experiment in 1941.
They exploded a paper bag next to a cat that was standing on the back of a cow, to "explore how and when cows spew their milk".
dl/fg

counterfeit

Italy busts ring trafficking retro video games from China

  • "Around 12,000 consoles on which more than 47 million pirated video games were illegally stored were seized, for an estimated value of more than 47.5 million euros ($52.5 million)," Alessandro Langella, head of the economic crime unit for Turin's financial police, told AFP. The figure includes the value of the consoles and hundreds of licenses for the pirated programs.
  • Italy's financial police said Friday they have dismantled a ring trafficking counterfeit vintage video game consoles from China containing some of the most popular titles of the 1980s and 90s.
  • "Around 12,000 consoles on which more than 47 million pirated video games were illegally stored were seized, for an estimated value of more than 47.5 million euros ($52.5 million)," Alessandro Langella, head of the economic crime unit for Turin's financial police, told AFP. The figure includes the value of the consoles and hundreds of licenses for the pirated programs.
Italy's financial police said Friday they have dismantled a ring trafficking counterfeit vintage video game consoles from China containing some of the most popular titles of the 1980s and 90s.
"Around 12,000 consoles on which more than 47 million pirated video games were illegally stored were seized, for an estimated value of more than 47.5 million euros ($52.5 million)," Alessandro Langella, head of the economic crime unit for Turin's financial police, told AFP.
The figure includes the value of the consoles and hundreds of licenses for the pirated programs.
The games included Mario Bros., Street Fighter and Star Wars, and the consoles imitated Nintendo, Sega and Atari franchises in particular.
Games from the 1980s and 1990s are enjoying a resurgence as part of the so-called "retrogaming" trend, "which is experiencing a phase of strong popularity and commercial expansion," Langella said.
The consoles, which did not meet European technical and safety standards, were imported from China to be sold in specialised stores or online, on sites such as Amazon, which helped the police with their investigation.
Police arrested nine Italians who are being charged with trading in counterfeited goods and risk up to eight years in prison.
gab/ide/giv

technology

Musk brands Australia 'fascists' after move to fine tech giants

  • "Fascists," Musk posted on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. 
  • Tech mogul Elon Musk has likened the Australian government to "fascists", attacking proposed laws that would fine social media giants for failing to stem the spread of misinformation.
  • "Fascists," Musk posted on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. 
Tech mogul Elon Musk has likened the Australian government to "fascists", attacking proposed laws that would fine social media giants for failing to stem the spread of misinformation.
Australia introduced a "combating misinformation" bill on Thursday, which includes sweeping powers to fine tech giants up to five percent of their yearly turnover for breaching online safety obligations.
"Fascists," Musk posted on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. 
Musk's salvo threatened to rekindle his long-running spat with the Australian government.
"Elon Musk has had more positions on free speech than the Kama Sutra," said Government Services Minister Bill Shorten. 
"When it's in his commercial interests, he is the champion of free speech. And when he doesn't like it, he's going to shut it all down," Shorten told Australian broadcaster Channel Nine. 
Australia's online watchdog took Musk's company to court earlier this year, alleging it had failed to remove "extremely violent" videos that showed a Sydney preacher being stabbed.
But it abruptly dropped its attempt to force a global takedown order on X after Musk scored a legal victory in a preliminary hearing, a move he celebrated as a free speech triumph.
Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety commissioner and a former Twitter employee, has said Musk's takeover coincided with a rise in "toxicity and hate" on the platform.
Musk, a self-described "free speech absolutist", has clashed with politicians and digital rights groups worldwide, including in the European Union, which could decide within months to take action against X with possible fines.
In Brazil, where X has effectively been suspended after it ignored a series of court directives, Musk has responded by blasting the judge as an "evil dictator cosplaying as a judge".
Australia has been at the forefront of global efforts to regulate social media platforms.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled plans earlier this week to ban children from social media until they are at least 14 years old.
sft/djw/lb

health

US clears way for hearing aid feature in new Apple AirPods Pro

  • Apple touted the AirPods Pro 2 hearing aid feature as the first of its kind.
  • Apple on Thursday got a green light from US regulators to add a feature that would let upcoming AirPods Pro ear pieces be used as hearing aids, potentially disrupting that market.
  • Apple touted the AirPods Pro 2 hearing aid feature as the first of its kind.
Apple on Thursday got a green light from US regulators to add a feature that would let upcoming AirPods Pro ear pieces be used as hearing aids, potentially disrupting that market.
Early this week the company added AirPods Pro 2 to its lineup, touting a pending software upgrade that will let people test their hearing and then get personally-tuned assistance listening to what is around them or stream online.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday authorized the hearing aid feature for the new Apple devices, noting that a study showed users found them as beneficial as professionally fitted ones.
"Hearing loss is a significant public health issue impacting millions of Americans," said FDA acting director Michelle Tarver.
Tarver contended that authorization of AirPods Pro 2 hearing aid software "advances the availability, accessibility and acceptability of hearing support for adults with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss."
AirPods Pro 2 are priced at $249, considerably lower than the average price of clinical-grade hearing aids.
The hearing aid feature is designed to work with iPhones or iPads, though, meaning those interested will need to invest in Apple mobile devices.
Along with the new feature, Apple introduced the ability to use AirPods Pro 2, along with iPhones or iPads, to test their hearing and create a hearing profile stored privately in an Apple Health app.
"Hearing health is an essential part of our overall wellbeing, yet it can often be overlooked," Apple vice president of health doctor Sumbul Desai said in a release.
"We're thrilled to provide breakthrough software features with AirPods Pro that put users' hearing health front and center, bringing new ways to help test for and receive assistance for hearing loss."
More than 30 million US adults report some degree of hearing loss, causes of which include aging and being exposed to loud noises, according to the FDA.
Using results of the hearing test, the software turns AirPods Pro 2 into a clinical-grade hearing aid, according to Apple.
The user's personalized hearing profile is then "automatically applied to music, movies, games, and phone calls across their devices without needing to adjust any settings," Apple said.
Typical hearing aids don't adapt specifically for streamed content or phone calls.
Apple touted the AirPods Pro 2 hearing aid feature as the first of its kind.
The iPhone maker plans to make the hearing testing and aid features available in more than 100 countries in the coming months, pending authorization from relevent health authorities.
la-gc/mlm

Microsoft

Microsoft cutting more jobs from its gaming unit

  • Microsoft in January said it was laying off 1,900 people, or eight percent of staff, from its gaming division as it consolidated the buyout of Activision Blizzard.
  • Microsoft is cutting about 650 more positions from its gaming unit as it continues to tighten its belt following the blockbuster buyout of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard.
  • Microsoft in January said it was laying off 1,900 people, or eight percent of staff, from its gaming division as it consolidated the buyout of Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft is cutting about 650 more positions from its gaming unit as it continues to tighten its belt following the blockbuster buyout of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard.
The elimination of mostly corporate and support roles across Microsoft Gaming is intended to "organize our business for long-term success" in the aftermath of the $69 billion acquisition, unit chief Phil Spencer told employees in a memo viewed by AFP.
"Today is one of the challenging days," Spencer said in the memo. "I know that going through more changes like this is hard."
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) labor union, which includes members in the video game industry, called the layoffs "extremely disappointing," coming on the heels of Sony Interactive Entertainment subsidiary Bungie announcing 220 layoffs in July.
"Heartless layoffs like these have become all too common," World of Warcraft senior producer and CWA member Samuel Cooper said in a release by the labor organizers.
Microsoft in January said it was laying off 1,900 people, or eight percent of staff, from its gaming division as it consolidated the buyout of Activision Blizzard.
Spencer told employees at the time that Microsoft and Activision were committed to finding a "sustainable cost structure" to grow the gaming business, which employed 22,000 people and includes the Xbox division.
"Together, we've set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we're all aligned on the best opportunities for growth," he added in a memo at the time.
Microsoft launched its takeover in January 2022, an acquisition that made it the world's third-largest gaming company by revenue. 
No games or devices are being cancelled, nor are any studios being closed as part of the "adjustments" made at Microsoft's gaming unit on Thursday, according to Spencer.
Layoffs have become common in the video game industry, with Sony PlayStation early this year announcing it was laying off eight percent of its global workforce.
Calling it "sad news," PlayStation chief Jim Ryan said that the reduction would affect 900 people across the globe, including video game-making studios.
The company's PlayStation London studio, which was founded in 2002 and specialized in virtual reality gaming projects, was being closed in its entirety, the company said.
In all, last year the tech industry lost some 260,000 jobs according to layoffs.fyi, a California-based website that tracks the sector.
So far this year, layoffs are at 136,360, the site showed, from 435 tech companies.
gc/bjt

health

US says new Apple AirPods can be hearing aids

BY GLENN CHAPMAN

  • Along with the new feature, the AirPods Pro 2, used with iPhones or iPads, will be able to test hearing and create a user's hearing profile stored privately in an Apple Health app.
  • Apple on Thursday got a green light from US regulators to add a feature that would let upcoming AirPods Pro ear pieces be used as hearing aids, potentially disrupting that market.
  • Along with the new feature, the AirPods Pro 2, used with iPhones or iPads, will be able to test hearing and create a user's hearing profile stored privately in an Apple Health app.
Apple on Thursday got a green light from US regulators to add a feature that would let upcoming AirPods Pro ear pieces be used as hearing aids, potentially disrupting that market.
Earlier this week the company added AirPods Pro 2 to its lineup, touting a pending software upgrade that will let people test their hearing and then get assisted listening for everyday life as well as streaming online.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday authorized the hearing aid feature for the devices, noting that a study showed users found them as beneficial as professionally fitted ones.
"Hearing loss is a significant public health issue impacting millions of Americans," said FDA acting director Michelle Tarver.
Apple's software "advances the availability, accessibility and acceptability of hearing support for adults with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss," Tarver added.
AirPods Pro 2 are priced at $249, considerably lower than the average price of clinical-grade hearing aids, but those interested will need to adopt Apple's devices.
Along with the new feature, the AirPods Pro 2, used with iPhones or iPads, will be able to test hearing and create a user's hearing profile stored privately in an Apple Health app.
The test takes about five minutes, with users tapping an iPhone or iPad screen when they hear tones at various volumes and frequencies.
The results are then used to calibrate the hearing aid.
That profile is also "automatically applied to music, movies, games, and phone calls across their devices without needing to adjust any settings," Apple said.
Typical hearing aids don't adapt specifically for streamed content or phone calls.
"Hearing health is an essential part of our overall wellbeing, yet it can often be overlooked," Apple vice president of health doctor Sumbul Desai said in a release.
Apple said that research indicates more than a billion people worldwide live with mild to moderate hearing loss.
"We are very excited about the new announcement by Apple," Hearing Loss Association of America executive director Barbara Kelley told AFP.
"The fact that a product that millions of people already own will offer hearing help and protection is a big step forward."
The iPhone maker plans to make the features available in more than 100 countries in the coming months, pending authorization from relevent health authorities.

Hearts and minds

Apple has steadily been integrating health and fitness features into its products.
Apple Watch can remind people when to take medicine; warn of harmful noise levels, or detect an irregular heart rhythm that should be checked.
It can also let women know when they are likely ovulating.
A new version of Apple Watch announced this week adds the ability to detect sleep apnea, a dangerous condition in which breathing stops intermittently while sleeping.
An Apple Health App collects data then uses machine learning to mine it for insights, keeping information on devices, according to the tech titan.
Health metrics offered by Apple include heart and respiration rates; blood glucose, and how well one sleeps.
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