Meta’s $1.3 Billion Fine Is a Strike Against Surveillance Capitalism

Meta’s $1.3 Billion Fine Is a Strike Against Surveillance Capitalism

Europe’s GDPR has just dealt its biggest hammer blow yet. Almost exactly five years since the continent’s strict data rules came into force, Meta has been hit with a colossal €1.2 billion fine ($1.3 billion) for sending data about hundreds of millions of Europeans to the United States, where weaker privacy rules open it up…

Autonomous Worlds Aim to Free Online Games From Corporate Control

Autonomous Worlds Aim to Free Online Games From Corporate Control

OPCraft was built to demonstrate blockchain-related features like that, and also to demonstrate a toolkit developed by 0xPARC’s Lattice for building on-chain games. Conventional videogames are often built using game engines such as Unreal Engine that speed up the work by handling lower-level details of the programming of 3D environments and other components. OPCraft was…

Twitter’s New CEO, Linda Yaccarino, Has a Fearsome To-Do List

Twitter’s New CEO, Linda Yaccarino, Has a Fearsome To-Do List

Some airlines have stopped offering customer service through Twitter because of the changes. Transit authorities and public health agencies paused auto-posting safety alerts until Twitter backed down on plans to make them pay the higher API fees. More confusion could be coming. Musk has said he will purge inactive accounts, potentially allowing the takeover of user…

Doctors Behind Mifepristone Ban Called ‘Christians’ a Top Threat

Doctors Behind Mifepristone Ban Called ‘Christians’ a Top Threat

In a declaration in federal court in 2021, Quentin Van Meter, the president of the American College of Pediatricians, described the organization as a “secular, scientific medical association,” whose “views are not religious as such.”  ACPeds has also targeted donors, physicians, and other clinicians based solely on their political leanings, documents show. The group maintains…

Gary Marcus Used to Call AI Stupid—Now He Calls It Dangerous

Gary Marcus Used to Call AI Stupid—Now He Calls It Dangerous

Back then–only months ago—Marcus’ quibbling was technical. But now that large language models have become a global phenomenon, his focus has shifted. The crux of Marcus’ new message is that the chatbots from OpenAI, Google, and others are dangerous entities whose powers will lead to a tsunami of misinformation, security bugs, and defamatory “hallucinations” that…