James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Spotify says its new audiobook service in the US is ‘just the beginning’
Spotify Inc. launched its audiobook service today in the U.S., which might give Amazon.com Inc. something to think about. In a blog post today, the company said it has known for a long time that there is unlimited potential for audio, so launching an audiobooks service was the next natural step. It admitted that audiobooks ...
Pentagon asks for an audit of pro-US social media psyops operations
The Pentagon has begun an audit relating to how its discreet psychological operations personnel engage in information warfare on U.S. on social media platforms. Like the Russian Internet Research Agency, IRA, such operators infiltrate social media platforms in an effort to sway the minds of Americans and people in other nations to support U.S. foreign ...
California signs new bill into law that strengthens online protection for children
California Governor Gavin Newsom today signed the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a law designed to protect younger people as they navigate the minefield of social media and other online services. The bill, named AB 2273, had unsurprisingly met with some resistance from certain factions of the tech industry, but in August this year, it ...
An anti-metaverse mail bomber targeted a US university VR lab
Law enforcement officials are currently investigating what looks like a mail bomb attack after a person was injured Tuesday night while opening a package at a virtual reality center at Northeastern University in Boston. The employee, who works at the VR center, suffered lacerations to his hands, but no other parts of his body. Initial ...
Antitrust case against Google will go ahead without Facebook collusion claim
A federal judge today ruled that an antitrust case against Google LLC led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will proceed, although the judge said the allegation that Google had unfairly colluded with Meta Platforms Inc. in 2018 will be dismissed. The lawsuit, brought by Paxton and 16 other states, accuses Google of using its ...
VMware settles with SEC for $8M over allegedly misleading investors
Cloud computing firm VMware Inc. said today that it has reached an $8 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over a charge of misleading investors by not being clear about its financial performance. The investigation by the SEC related to the company’s backlog disclosures for its 2019 and 2020 fiscal years. It ...
Judge tells Elon Musk he can’t have a trial delay but he can add whistleblower claims
A Delaware court told Elon Musk earlier today that he will be facing off with Twitter Inc. on Oct. 17, despite Musk’s lawyers trying to get a delay in the proceedings in the upcoming trial. In April, Twitter accepted Musk’s offer to acquire the company for $44 billion, but ever since then, there has been ...
YouTube explains how it’s going to tackle misinformation during the 2022 US midterms
Google LLC-owned YouTube expects misinformation to arrive on the platform during the 2022 U.S. midterms, but it says it has a plan to limit the damage. The obvious move will be to try to promote news coming from sources that have a good track record in terms of reliability. The company says its algorithm in ...
Twitter prepares to introduce its new editing feature – carefully
Twitter Inc. said today that the editing feature that people have been screaming out for forever is coming to the platform, but not for everyone right now. The company said it will be available only to Twitter Blue subscribers in one not-yet-decided country, coming sometime at the end of this month. Why it has taken ...
Investigation finds disturbing self-harm content trend on Twitter
A report released today reveals that there has been a huge increase in the number of posts that appear on Twitter Inc. relating to young people harming themselves. The investigation, undertaken by the independent research organization the Network Contagion Research Institute, NCRI, said that since October last year there has been a 500% increase in ...