Technology

At the Federal Trade Commission's monopoly trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attempted what seemed like an artful dodge to avoid criticism that his company allegedly bought out rivals Instagram and WhatsApp to lock users into Meta's family of apps so they would never post about their personal lives anywhere else. He testified that people actually engage with social media less often these days to connect with loved ones, preferring instead to discover entertaining content on platforms to share in private messages with friends and family.

As Zuckerberg spins it, Meta no longer perceives much advantage in dominating the so-called personal social networking market where Facebook made its name and cemented what the FTC alleged is an illegal monopoly.

"Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over," a New Yorker headline said about this testimony in a report noting a Meta chart that seemed to back up Zuckerberg's words. That chart, shared at the trial, showed the "percent of time spent viewing content posted by 'friends'" had declined over the past two years, from 22 to 17 percent on Facebook and from 11 to 7 percent on Instagram.

Supposedly because of this trend, Zuckerberg testified that "it doesn't matter much" if someone's friends are on their preferred platform. Every platform has its own value as a discovery engine, Zuckerberg suggested. And Meta platforms increasingly compete on this new playing field against rivals like TikTok, Meta argued, while insisting that it's not so much focused on beating the FTC's flagged rivals in the connecting-friends-and-family business, Snap and MeWe.

But while Zuckerberg claims that hosting that kind of content doesn't move the needle much anymore, owning the biggest platforms that people use daily to connect with friends and family obviously still matters to Meta, MeWe founder Mark Weinstein told Ars. And Meta's own press releases seem to back that up.

This is an article about the AI bubble and Microsoft.

A quote that I think is relevant:

"The incentives behind effectively everything we do have been broken by decades of neoliberal thinking, where the idea of a company — an entity created to do a thing in exchange for money —has been drained of all meaning beyond the continued domination and extraction of everything around it, focusing heavily on short-term gains and growth at all costs. In doing so, the definition of a “good business” has changed from one that makes good products at a fair price to a sustainable and loyal market, to one that can display the most stock price growth from quarter to quarter."

This week, the company reportedly attempted to delay, derail, and manipulate reviews of its $299 GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, which would normally be its bestselling GPU of the generation. Nvidia has repeatedly and publicly said the budget 60-series cards are its most popular, and this year it reportedly tried to ensure it by withholding access and pressuring reviewers to paint them in the best light possible.

Here are the tactics that Nvidia reportedly just used to throw us off the 5060's true scent, as individually described by GamersNexus, VideoCardz, Hardware Unboxed, GameStar.de, Digital Foundry, and more:

• Nvidia decided to launch its RTX 5060 on May 19th, when most reviewers would be at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, rather than at their test beds at home.
• Even if reviewers already had a GPU in hand before then, Nvidia cut off most reviewers' ability to test the RTX 5060 before May 19th by refusing to provide drivers until the card went on sale. (Gaming GPUs don't really work without them.)
• And yet Nvidia allowed specific, cherry-picked reviewers to have early drivers anyhow if they agreed to a borderline unethical deal: they could only test five specific games, at 1080p resolution, with fixed graphics settings, against two weaker GPUs (the 3060 and 2060 Super) where the new card would be sure to win.
• In some cases, Nvidia threatened to withhold future access unless reviewers published apples-to-oranges benchmark charts showing how the RTX 5060's "fake frames" MFG tech can produce more frames than earlier GPUs without it.

Pocket will no longer be available after July 8, 2025.

You can continue using the app and browser extensions until this date. After July 8, Pocket will move into export-only mode. Users can export saves anytime until October 8, 2025, after which user data will be permanently deleted. Why is Pocket shutting down?

Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories worth reading. But the way people use the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs.

Archived copies of the article:

• archive.today
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• web.archive.org

Verizon announced its $20 billion deal for Frontier in September 2024, in the final months of the Biden administration. In last week's letter agreeing to end DEI practices, Verizon General Counsel Vandana Venkatesh wrote, "we recognize that the regulatory and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion ('DEI') has changed. The Supreme Court, the President's Executive Orders, and federal mandates require changes in the way companies approach DEI issues moving forward."

Verizon's letter said that because of the "changing landscape," the firm "has been evaluating its DEI-related programs, HR processes, supplier programs, training programs and materials, and other initiatives." Among other changes, Verizon said it "will no longer have a team or any individual roles focused on DEI" and will reassign DEI-focused employees to "HR talent objectives."

"Verizon recognizes that some DEI policies and practices could be associated with discrimination," the letter said.

T-Mobile sent a similar letter to Carr on March 27, saying it "is fully committed to identifying and rooting out any policies and practices that enable such discrimination, whether in fulfillment of DEI or any other purpose," and is thus "conducting a comprehensive review of its DEI policies, programs, and activities." One day later, the FCC approved a T-Mobile joint venture to acquire fiber provider Lumos.

With the Verizon and T-Mobile deals approved, Carr has another opportunity to make demands on a major telecom company. On Friday, Charter announced a $34.5 billion merger with Cox that would make it the largest home Internet provider in the US, passing Comcast. Several Charter and Cox programs could be on the chopping block because of Carr's animosity toward diversity initiatives.

This is just insanity. The problem with ISPs is not "there's too much competition."

What's the endgame here? We just go back to Ma Bell, but this time with internet?

For Palestinians living in the West Bank, stepping onto the roads of the territory occupied by Israel is a daily journey of resilience.

With movement shackled by a complex web of Israeli checkpoints and barriers, homegrown mapping solutions have become their lifelines. These digital networks help Palestinians reach work, schools, and hospitals as blockades have continued to increase since the latest Israel-Gaza war started in October 2023.

Apps such as Doroob Navigator and Azmeh, which crowdsource traffic data and information about road closures, guide them through the numerous obstacles they face in their commutes. The situation has worsened dramatically in recent months. Simple trips that once took 45 minutes now stretch beyond three hours, with some routes completely sealed, commuters say.

Before the war, the UN counted about 565 obstacles across the West Bank. Today, the app Azmeh, Arabic for traffic jams, tracks more than 800 checkpoints and barriers based on updates from its 60,000-plus users, one of the developers of the app told Rest of World on condition of anonymity, fearing Israeli reprisal. In October and November of 2023, 8,000 Palestinians installed the Azmeh app every single day, the person said.

After 2,5 years of intensive research and programming efforts, the entire Openwebsearch.eu project team is excited to grant access to its pilot of the first-ever federated pan-European Open Web Index (OWI).

From June onward, commercial and scientific development teams of any size as well as interested individuals are welcome to access and make use of almost a petabyte (and growing) of open web data under a general research license or – upon request – under a designated commercial license as well.

Given that the European Commission has launched the InvestAI initiative to mobilize €200 billion of investment in artificial intelligence, the Open Web Index comes with perfect timing.

The OpenWebSearch.eu consortium actively calls early adopters to pioneer innovative projects surrounding vertical web search, argumentative search, LLM applications including RAG and more.

“The OWI symbolizes a first step towards true European digital sovereignty and is a fundamental step in paving the way for a comprehensive open European AI landscape.“ says Community Manager Ursula Gmelch and further:

“Our goal behind this initial pilot phase is to onboard a range of projects from diverse domains to get early feedback in. We look forward to users confirming the quality and value in current functionalities and/or helping us pivot in such ways that real market demands can be met and further expanded upon.“

An official kick-off event will be hosted on 6 June from 10 am to 12 am CEST via Zoom.

Registration to the event is open under the following link:

https://cscfi.zoom.us/meeting/register/eATIpDQ5TZidh4Jzkim6FQ#/registration

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TL;DR: If you want to customize Firefox using Enterprise Polices, you can create customized policies via the handy Enterprise Policy Generator. You can also browse a collection of policies I created, available for download.

This is one of those Asianometry posts that goes way deep into the weeds, but if you've passing knowledge of semiconductor production processes, it should be accessible.

I found it fascinating and basically knew nothing about these latest issues and solutions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34927504

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