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Preparing Central Tech…
Big tech companies tend to make a lot of enemies — but there are none more powerful than the US government. Apple, Google, Amazon, and Meta are regularly called in front of Congress to fend off monopoly accusations — and lawmakers bring up bills to rein in the companies just as often. The Federal Trade Commission has taken a particularly central role, leading a lawsuit to sever Facebook and Instagram while blocking new acquisitions for Oculus and the company’s virtual reality wing. Like it or not, these regulatory fights will play a huge role in deciding the future of tech — and neither side is playing nice.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is worried about X Money, Elon Musk’s upcoming payment platform, and the risks it poses to consumers and the financial system. She’s probably right to worry, but the solution might have been in front of us the whole time:
GHollister:
Have you tried not using X Money? That is my plan, seems to be working ok.
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The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is choking off the world’s supply of fertilizer feedstock, triggering concerns about rising food prices and shortages.
After assailing Pope Leo XIV and calling him “WEAK on crime,” Donald Trump, a real US President, posted this AI-generated image of himself as some kind of Jesus, healing… Ethan Hawke?
After failing to get details about a user who said “TSA sucks and we all know it,” via a traditional court order, DHS is now dragging Reddit in front of a grand jury. The government has grown increasingly aggressive in its attempts to deal with online critics. Reddit has not said whether it plans to fight the subpoena, but according to The Intercept:
“Privacy is central to how Reddit operates, and we take our commitment to protecting that seriously,” the company said in a statement to The Intercept. “We do not voluntarily share information with any government, especially not on users exercising their rights to criticize the government or plan a protest.”
Federal Judge Michael Liburdi issued a temporary restraining order halting the state’s case against the prediction market. The CFTC has stepped in to stop Arizona and other states from attempting to supersede federal efforts to regulate prediction markets, but the Trump Administration has largely avoided actually regulating them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, according to Business Insider:
Since Donald Trump returned to office, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has become a paid advisor to Kalshi, and an investment firm he works for invested in Polymarket.
The truth favored the Iranian regime. AI slop carried its message better.
Attorneys who led trial teams against Live Nation, Google, and Apple are among the recent departures, following the DOJ’s Live Nation settlement, Bloomberg and Mlex report. David Dahlquist, who led the DOJ teams against Live Nation and for Google search remedies, announced he’d given notice at a Google hearing Wednesday.
According to the ruling, New Jersey regulators can’t ban Kalshi from allowing users in the state to bet on sporting events, as Reuters reports:
“A lower-court judge had sided with New York-based Kalshi and issued a preliminary injunction, prompting New Jersey to appeal. But a majority of the judges on the 3rd Circuit panel concluded the Commodity Exchange Act likely preempted state law.”
There are few things that Polymarket seems to think are too controversial to allow betting on. But apparently, the potential capture or death of an American service member is one of them. The prediction market is already facing pressure from several states and Democrats in Congress. According to CoinDesk:
A Polymarket spokesperson said the listing did not meet its integrity standards [and it was] removed shortly after it appeared. The company added that it is reviewing how the market passed internal safeguards.
The abrupt closure of a tuition-free private school founded by Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg’s wife, will dump extra students into a local school district, increasing expected enrollment by 20 percent.
Now there’s a $70 million bond measure up for votes to help deal with the influx. The text of the measure says the closure created “an immediate crisis” for the school district.
[San Francisco Chronicle]
Lawsuits against Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois accuse the states of violating the CFTC’s “exclusive regulatory authority” over prediction betting markets operated by companies like Kalshi and Polymarket. The CFTC claims the three states have attempted to “outlaw, regulate, or otherwise restrain” prediction betting as concerns grow over potential insider trading.
Viral posts about insider trading don’t have to be true to be valuable.
Twenty-four days after lying his face off to Joe Rogan and whining about government censorship, Zuckerberg “proactively reached out to a senior government official to let him know Meta was already taking action to remove content on behalf of that official’s government operation — including truthful information like the names of public servants working for the federal government.“ Siri, play my leitmotif.
Shortly upon returning to office, Trump terminated CBP One, an app the Biden administration used to streamline border processing, and revoked the status of 900,000 migrants who had used it to apply for temporary parole, sending them a mass email reading, “It is time for you to leave the United States.”
In terminating parole “without observing the process mandated by statute and by their own regulations,” US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs ruled, the administration “took action that was ‘not in accordance with law.’”
Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to try to limit states from regulating AI, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Monday with the new guardrails.
The right wing used to have a stranglehold on traditionally American iconography. Now the flag and the Constitution are symbols for the left.
Aptoide’s AppArena is now available in Japan as an Apple Store alternative. It comes after regulators required Apple and Google to support third-party app marketplaces and payment systems. AppArena features AI-assisted discovery of apps and games, cashback rewards, and 15-minute game trials.
According to “I Decompiled the White House’s New App,” the Android version has some odd choices for a government app that mostly shows content from the White House website.
That includes enabling location tracking and other monitoring via OneSignal’s analytics (which the company says are opt-in at the OS level), JavaScript loaded from some guy’s GitHub, an injected script to hide things like consent dialogs on pages users open in the app, and other hooks to non-government third-party services.
[Thereallo]
Organizers say over eight million took to the streets on Saturday, taking part in over 3,300 protests across the country. The October day of protest attracted over seven million people to 2,700-plus events. Instead of losing momentum, the No Kings movement showed that anger with President Trump continues to grow.
JD Vance is no stranger to, let’s say, unique takes on things. On a recent episode of noted plagiarist Benny Johnson’s podcast, Vance said he wants to get to the bottom of the whole UFO thing, adding, unprompted, “I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons.”
In an interview with the New York Times, Neal Mohan was asked about the platform’s responsibility for policing lies, conspiracy theories, and hate speech, but avoided addressing the questions in any substantive way. He wouldn’t even say whether it was wrong to suspend Trump following the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Each one of the channels on our platform, the New York Times channel, the Interview channel, you have the editorial standards that you live by and they are certainly different across the various channels. And our job is to have a set of rules and guidelines. Every channel will draw a different line in terms of what they think is appropriate.
[New York Times]
