James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Meta says Donald Trump can return to Facebook and Instagram – if he behaves himself
Meta Platforms Inc. surprised many people today when it announced that former President Trump could be back on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks. After the chaos on Capitol Hill in January 2021 and the fact that Trump (pictured) had used social media to air his views on what he said was a rigged ...
Twitter whistleblower tells Congress and FTC that a major security problem hasn’t gone away under Elon Musk
Twitter Inc. has a new whistleblower who has told Congress and the Federal Trade Commission that engineers at the company still have the use of a controversial tool that gives them godlike powers over content. According to The Washington Post, which first reported the story today, the whistleblower is saying that a program called “GodMode” ...
Details emerge on why Apple’s new mixed reality headset won’t come cheap
Apple’s long-awaited mixed reality headset should be coming out sometime in the next few months, according to reports today that added a few more details about what we might see in the company’s first big release since the Apple Watch in 2015. It seems almost certain now that the headset will be called the Apple ...
Netflix’s Reed Hastings exits co-CEO position
Reed Hastings, the co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Netflix Inc., today announced that he’s stepping down from his position but will stay on as the company’s executive chairman after 25 years in charge. The former Marine, who had spent some time in Africa with the Peace Corps and was later snubbed by the Massachusetts ...
Amazon hit with fine from OSHA for unsafe working conditions at its warehouses
The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced today that it had found various safety hazards at three warehouses belonging to Amazon.com Inc. Investigators for the OSHA said they inspected three sites at Deltona, Florida; Waukegan, Illinois; and New Windsor, New York. At all three, there were what it called “ergonomic hazards” in breach ...
Meta’s Oversight Board pushes for new nudity rules after accusing company of trans discrimination
Meta Platforms Inc.’s Oversight Board said today that it believes it’s time for Meta to change the rules regarding its adult nudity and sexual content policies. It’s not the first time the board, which polices Meta’s decisions on moderation, has asked for sweeping changes. This time the board says Meta, the parent company of Facebook ...
Ride-hailing giant Didi gets greenlight to sign up more users as China eases tech crackdown
After 18 months in the dark, the Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc. has been told by the powers that be in China that it can now start signing up new users again. Didi was just one victim in the tech milieu in China that was part of a Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on tech, ...
Congress rejects US Army’s request for $400 million to buy Microsoft’s HoloLens goggles
Congress has said no to a request from the U.S. Army for about $400 million to buy 6,900 pairs of goggles based on Microsoft Corp.’s HoloLens headset technology, it was first reported today by Bloomberg. When Microsoft unveiled its augmented reality headset in 2015, it made quite a splash, heralded as the technology that was ...
President Biden calls for political unity in clamping down on Big Tech abuses
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece today, President Joe Biden didn’t mince his words when he said Democrats and Republicans need to come together to create legislation that tackles some of the more pressing issues regarding America’s tech giants. Biden (pictured) opened the missive by saying he was proud of what technology companies in the ...
Microsoft unveils VALL-E, a text-to-speech AI that can mimic a voice from seconds of audio
Microsoft Corp. today provided a peek at a text-to-speech artificial intelligence tool that can apparently simulate a voice after listening to just three seconds of an audio sample. The company said its tool, VALL-E, can keep the emotional tone of the speaker for the rest of the message while also simulating the acoustics of the ...