Tag: iab-technology & computing

Arkansas governor signs sweeping bill imposing a minimum age limit for social media usage | CNN Business

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Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed a sweeping bill imposing a minimum age limit for social media usage, in the latest example of states taking more aggressive steps intended to protect teens online.

But even as Sanders signed the bill into law on Wednesday afternoon, the legislation appeared to contain vast loopholes and exemptions benefiting companies that lobbied on the bill and raising questions about how much of the industry it truly covers.

The legislation, known as the Social Media Safety Act and taking effect in September, is aimed at giving parents more control over their kids’ social media usage, according to lawmakers. It defines social media companies as any online forum that lets users create public profiles and interact with each other through digital content.

It requires companies that operate those services to verify the ages of all new users and, if the users are under 18 years old, to obtain a parent’s consent before allowing them to create an account. To perform the age checks, the law relies on third-party companies to verify users’ personal information, such as a driver’s license or photo ID.

“While social media can be a great tool and a wonderful resource, it can have a massive negative impact on our kids,” Sanders said at a press conference before signing the bill.

Utah finalized a similar law last month, raising concerns among some users and advocacy groups that the legislation could make user data less secure, internet access less private and infringe upon younger users’ basic rights.

The push by states to legislate on social media comes after years of mounting scrutiny of the industry and claims that it has harmed users’ well-being and mental health, particularly among teens.

Despite its seemingly universal scope, however, the new law, also known as SB396, includes numerous carveouts for certain types of digital services and, in some cases, individual companies. And although its sponsors have said the law is specifically meant to apply to certain platforms, including TikTok, parts of the legislative language appear to result in the exact opposite effect.

In the final days of negotiation over the bill, Arkansas lawmakers approved an amendment that created several categorical exemptions from the age verification requirements. Media companies that “exclusively” offer subscription content; social media platforms that permit users to “generate short video clips of dancing, voice overs, or other acts of entertainment”; and companies that “exclusively offer” video gaming-focused social networking features were exempted.

Another amendment carved out companies that sell cloud storage services, business cybersecurity services or educational technology and that simultaneously derive less than 25% of their total revenue from running a social media platform.

Sen. Tyler Dees, a lead co-sponsor of the legislation, explained in remarks on the Arkansas senate floor on April 6 that the exemptions and tweaks to the bill, some of which he said were made in consultation with Apple, Meta and Google, were intended to shield non-social media services from the bill’s age requirements and to focus attention on new accounts created by children, not existing adult accounts.

“There’s other services that Google offers … like cloud storage, et cetera,” Dees said. “So that’s really the intent of carving out — like LinkedIn, that is a social – I’m sorry, that is a business networking site, and so that’s the intent of those bills.”

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is apparently exempt from SB396 under a provision that carves out companies that provide “career development opportunities, including professional networking, job skills, learning certifications, and job posting and application services.”

Other lawmakers have questioned whether the legislation — which has now become law — exempts a giant of the social media industry: YouTube, whose auto-play features and algorithmic recommendation engine have been accused of promoting extremism and radicalizing viewers.

The confusion over YouTube appears to stem from the carveout for businesses that offer cloud storage and that make less than 25% of their revenue from social media.

What is unclear is whether YouTube is subject to SB396 because it is a distinct company within Google whose revenue comes almost entirely from operating a social media platform, or whether it is not covered because YouTube is a part of Google and Google is exempt because it derives only a small share of its revenues from YouTube.

In response to questions by CNN, Dees said SB396 targets platforms including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, but omitted any mention of Google and declined to answer whether YouTube specifically would be covered by the law.

“The purpose of this bill was to empower parents and protect kids from social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat,” Dees said in a statement. “We worked with stakeholders to ensure that email, text messaging, video streaming, and networking websites were not covered by the bill.”

In remarks at Wednesday’s bill signing, Sanders told reporters that Google and Amazon are exempted from the law, implying that YouTube will not be subject to the age verification requirements imposed on other major social media sites.

Meanwhile, Dees’ statement appeared to contradict the language in SB396 that purports to exempt any company that “allows a user to generate short video clips of dancing, voice overs, or other acts of entertainment in which the primary purpose is not educational or informative” — content that can be commonly found on TikTok, Snapchat and the other social media platforms Deese named.

According to Meta spokesperson, “We want teens to be safe online. We’ve developed more than 30 tools to support teens and families, including tools that let parents and teens work together to limit the amount of time teens spend on Instagram, and age-verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences.”

Meta “automatically set teens’ accounts to private when they join Instagram, we’ve further restricted the options advertisers have to reach teens, as well as the information we use to show ads to teens… and we don’t allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders,” according to the spokesperson, who added: “We’ll continue to work closely with experts, policymakers and parents on these important issues.”

Spokespeople for Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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April 12, 2021
A foldable phone, new tablet and lots of AI: What Google unveiled at its big developer event | CNN Business

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Google on Wednesday unveiled its latest lineup of hardware products, including its first foldable phone and a new tablet, as well as plans to roll out new AI features to its search engine and productivity tools.

The updates, announced at its annual Google I/O developer conference, come as the company is simultaneously trying to push beyond its core advertising business with new devices while also racing to defend its search engine from the threat posed by a wave of new AI-powered tools.

In a sign of where Google’s focus currently lies, the company spent more than 90 minutes teasing a long list of new AI features before mentioning hardware updates.

Here’s what Google announced at the event.

Google became the latest tech company to unveil a foldable smartphone. Like other foldables, the $1799 Pixel Fold features a vertical hinge that can be opened to reveal a tablet-like display. But Google calls the Fold the thinnest foldable on the market.

“It took some clever engineering work redesigning components like our speakers, our battery and haptics,” said George Hwang, a product manager at Google, on a call ahead of the announcement. The company packed a Pixel phone into a less than 6 mm body – about two thirds of the thickness of its other Pixel phones.

The Pixel Fold is very much a phone first: when it’s unfolded, it opens up into a 7.6-inch screen, and moves on Google’s custom-built 180-degree hinge. That hinge mechanism is moved out entirely from under the display to improve its dust resistance and decrease the device’s overall thickness, according to the company.

The Google Fold includes features you’d find on a Pixel, such as long exposure, unblur, magic eraser, which lets users remove unwanted or distracting object. It also has Pixel Fold-specific tools such as dual-screen live translate, which lets a user communicate in another language with the help of fast audio and text translations on the outer screen.

Google said it optimized its top apps to take advantage of the larger screen but “there’s still work to be done” because “optimizing for a new foldable form factor takes time,” Hwang said. “It’s a process that we’re committed to and it requires steep investment with our developer partners across Android,” Hwang added.

Google is far from the first to embrace foldables, but it’s possible it waited to launch its own version until the technology became more advanced. Early versions of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, for example, had issues with the screen and most apps were not well optimized for the design.

But even now, the future for foldables remains uncertain. Most apps are still not optimized for foldable devices; prices remain very high; and Google’s chief rival, Apple, has yet to embrace the option.

Despite great consumer interest in foldable phones — and a resurgence in 90s-style flip phones among celebrities and TikTok influencers — the foldable market is relatively small, with Samsung dominating the category, followed by others including Motorola, Lenovo, Oppo, and Huawei. According to ABI Research, foldable and flexible displays made up about 0.7% of the smartphone market in 2021, and in 2022 expected to fall just shy of 2%.

The Pixel Fold will be available in the US, UK, Germany and Japan. The company said the device will start shipping next month.

On the surface, the 7a looks similar to the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, with the same pixel camera bar along the back. It comes with the typical advancements you’d expect to find with any smartphone upgrade – better display, advanced camera and longer-lasting battery. But the 7a now boasts a Tensor G2 processor and a TItan M2 security chip, which brings advanced processing and new artificial intelligence features. It also offers wireless charging for the first time on an A model.

The Pixel lineup has long been known for its cameras, and the 7a is no exception. It’s packed with upgrades, including a 64-megapixel main camera – the largest sensor on a Pixel A series to date, which will help with improved image quality, low light performance and other features. It also offers a new 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera for capturing even wider shots and a new 13-megapixel front camera. For the first time, each camera enables 4K video.

The 7a also supports many significant Pixel features, including unblur, magic eraser and an improved Night Sight that’s two times faster and sharper than its predecessor. It also allows users to capture long exposure and enhanced zoom.

The Pixel comes in several colors, including charcoal, snow, sea and coral, and starts at $499 via the Google Store on May 10.

The Pixel Series A line has long been aimed at the cost conscious who want good features at a reasonable price, but its reach is limited. Google sells between eight to 10 million of the Pixel devices each year, according to ABI Research.

“Generally, the smartphones were really meant for Google to showcase how software, and now AI capabilities, could be effectively optimized on hardware and improve the Android user experience,” said David McQueen, an analyst at ABI Research. “Google has purposely kept volume sales limited as it also has to be mindful of its relationship with other smartphone manufacturers that use the Android OS.”

While phones were a key focus at the event, Google also refreshed other parts of its hardware lineup.

Google introduced the Pixel Tablet, which is intended for use around the house, from turning off the lights off in the house to setting the thermostat without getting off the couch.

The tablet, which has rounded edges and corners, comes in three colors: porcelain, hazel and rose, and starts at $499. It will be available on June 20.

Under the hood, the 11-inch tablet is powered by Google’s Tensor G2 chips, which bring long-lasting battery life and AI features to the device. It also offers a front-facing camera, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a charging dock.

Google is also moving forward with plans to bring AI chat features to its core search engine amid a renewed arms race over the technology in Silicon Valley.

The company said it is introducing the next evolution of Google Search, which will use an AI-powered chatbot to answer questions “you never thought Search could answer” and to help get users the information they want quicker than ever.

With the update, the look and feel of Google Search results will be noticeably different. When users type a query into the main search bar, they will automatically see a pop-up an AI-generated response in addition to displaying traditional results.

Users can now sign up for the new Google Search, which will first launch in the United States, via the Google app or Chrome’s desktop browser. A limited number of users will have access to it in the weeks ahead, according to the company, before it scales upward.

Google is expanding access to its existing chatbot Bard, which operates outside the search engine and can help users do tasks such as outline and write essay drafts, plan a friend’s baby shower, and get lunch ideas based on what’s in the fridge.

The tool, which was previously available to early users via a waitlist only in the US, will soon be available for all users in 120 countries and 40 languages.

Google is also launching extensions for Bard from its own services, such as Gmail, Sheets and Docs, allowing users to ask questions and collaborate with the chatbot within the apps they’re using.

Google also announced PaLM 2, its latest large language model to rival ChatGPT-creator OpenAI’s GPT-4.

The move marks a big step forward for the technology that powers the company’s AI products and promises to be better at logic, common sense reasoning and mathematics. It can also generate specialized code in different programming languages.

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April 12, 2021
Montana governor bans TikTok | CNN Business

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Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill Wednesday banning TikTok in the state.

Gianforte tweeted that he has banned TikTok in Montana “to protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party,” officially making it the first state to ban the social media application.

The controversial law marks the furthest step yet by a state government to restrict TikTok over perceived security concerns and comes as some federal lawmakers have called for a national ban of TikTok. But it is expected to be challenged in court.

The bill, which will take effect in January, specifically names TikTok as its target, prohibiting the app from operating within state lines. The law also outlines potential fines of $10,000 per day for violators, including app stores found to host the social media application.

Last month, lawmakers in Montana’s House of Representatives voted 54-43 to pass the bill, known as SB419, sending it to Gianforte’s desk.

In a statement to CNN, TikTok said it would push to defend the rights of users in Montana.

“Governor Gianforte has signed a bill that infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok, a platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of people across the state. We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”

The law comes as TikTok faces growing criticism for its ties to China. TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance. Many US officials have expressed fears that the Chinese government could potentially access US data via TikTok for spying purposes, though there is so far no evidence that the Chinese government has ever accessed personal information of US-based TikTok users.

NetChoice, a technology trade group that includes TikTok as a member, called the Montana bill unconstitutional.

“The government may not block our ability to access constitutionally protected speech – whether it is in a newspaper, on a website or via an app. In implementing this law, Montana ignores the U.S. Constitution, due process and free speech by denying access to a website and apps their citizens want to use,” said Carl Szabo, NetChoice’s general counsel.

The ACLU also pushed back on the bill, releasing a statement saying that “with this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana legislature have trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information, and run their small business in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment.”

On Wednesday, Gianforte signed an additional bill that prohibits the use of any social media application “tied to foreign adversaries” on government devices, including ByteDance-owned CapCut and Lemon8, and Telegram Messenger, which was founded in Russia.

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April 12, 2021
Microsoft leaps into the AI regulation debate, calling for a new US agency and executive order | CNN Business

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Microsoft joined a sprawling global debate on the regulation of artificial intelligence Thursday, echoing calls for a new federal agency to control the technology’s development and urging the Biden administration to approve new restrictions on how the US government uses AI tools.

In a speech in Washington attended by multiple members of Congress and civil society groups, Microsoft President Brad Smith described AI regulation as the challenge of the 21st century, outlining a five-point plan for how democratic nations could address the risks of AI while promoting a liberal vision for the technology that could rival competing efforts from countries such as China.

The remarks highlight how one of the largest companies in the AI industry hopes to influence the fast-moving push by governments, particularly in Europe and the United States, to rein in AI before it causes major disruptions to society and the economy.

In a roughly hour-long appearance that was equal parts product pitch and policy proposal, Smith compared AI to the printing press and described how it could streamline policymaking and lawmakers’ constituent outreach, before calling for “the rule of law” to govern AI at every part of its lifecycle and supply chain.

Regulations should apply to everything from the data centers that train large language models to the end users such as banks, hospitals and others that may apply the technology toward making life-altering decisions, Smith said.

For decades, “the rule of law and a commitment to democracy has kept technology in its proper place,” Smith said. “We’ve done it before; we can do it again.”

In his remarks, Smith joined calls made last week by OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT and that Microsoft has invested billions in — for the creation of a new government regulator that can oversee a licensing system for cutting-edge AI development, combined with testing and safety standards as well as government-mandated disclosure rules.

Whether a new federal regulator is needed to police AI is quickly emerging as a focal point of the debate in Washington; opponents such as IBM have argued, including in an op-ed Thursday, that AI regulation should be baked into every existing federal agency because of their understanding of the sectors they oversee and how AI may be most likely to transform them.

Smith also called for President Joe Biden to develop and sign an executive order requiring federal agencies that procure AI tools to implement a risk management framework developed and published this year by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. That framework, which Congress first ordered with legislation in 2020, covers ways that companies can use AI responsibly and ethically.

Such an order would leverage the US government’s immense purchasing power to shape the AI industry and encourage the voluntary adoption of best practices, Smith said.

Microsoft itself plans to implement the NIST framework “across all of our services,” Smith added, a commitment he described as the direct outgrowth of a recent White House meeting with AI CEOs in Washington. Smith also pledged to publish an annual AI transparency report.

As part of Microsoft’s proposal, Smith said any new rules for AI should include revamped export controls tailor-made for the AI age to prevent the technology from being abused by sanctioned entities.

And, he said, the government should mandate redundant AI circuit breakers that would allow algorithms to be shut off by critical infrastructure providers or from within the data centers they depend on.

Smith’s remarks, and a related policy paper, come a week after Google released its own proposals calling for global cooperation and common standards for artificial intelligence.

“AI is too important not to regulate, and too important not to regulate well,” Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said in a blog post unveiling the company’s plan.

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April 12, 2021
The US Senate is working to get up to speed on AI basics ahead of any legislation | CNN Business

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CNN
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The US Senate is inching forward on a plan to regulate artificial intelligence, after months of seeing how ChatGPT and similar tools stand to supercharge — or disrupt— wide swaths of society.

But despite outlining broad contours of the plan, senators are still likely months away from introducing a comprehensive bill setting guardrails for the industry, let alone passing legislation and getting it signed into law. The deliberate pace of progress contrasts with the blistering speed with which companies and organizations have embraced generative AI, and the flood of investment into the industry.

The Senate’s plan calls for briefing lawmakers on the basic facts of artificial intelligence over the summer, before beginning to consider legislation in the following months, even as some senators have begun to pitch proposals.

The efforts reflect how, despite urgent calls by civil society groups and industry for guardrails on the technology, many lawmakers are still getting up to speed.

To help educate members, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday announced a series of three senators-only information sessions to take place in the coming weeks.

The closed-door briefings will cover topics ranging from AI’s current capabilities and competition in AI development to how US national security and defense agencies are already putting the technology to use. The latter session, Schumer said, will be the first-ever classified senators’ briefing on AI.

“The Senate must deepen our expertise in this pressing topic,” Schumer wrote in a letter to colleagues announcing the briefings. “AI is already changing our world, and experts have repeatedly told us that it will have a profound impact on everything from our national security to our classrooms to our workforce, including potentially significant job displacement.”

Schumer had earlier kicked off a high-level push for AI legislation in April, when he proposed shaping any eventual bill around four principles promoting transparency and democratic values.

The information sessions are expected to wrap up by the time Congress breaks for August recess, according to South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, one of three other senators Schumer has tapped to lead on a comprehensive AI bill.

By that point, Rounds told reporters Wednesday on the sidelines of a Washington conference, there may be “lots of different ideas floating” but not necessarily a bill to speak of.

Schumer, Rounds and the other leading lawmakers on the AI working group — New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich and Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young — haven’t settled on how to coordinate various legislative proposals yet.

Options include forming a select committee to craft a comprehensive AI bill, or “splitting out and having lots of different committees come up with different pieces of legislation,” Rounds said.

The AI hype has produced high-profile hearings and scattershot policy proposals. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, wowing lawmakers by asking for regulation and by giving a technical demonstration to enthralled members of the House the evening before.

Sen. Michael Bennet has introduced legislation to create a new federal agency with authority to regulate AI, for example. And on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley unveiled his own framework for AI legislation that called for letting Americans sue companies for harms created by AI models.

Rounds told reporters Schumer has not set a timeframe for coming up with AI legislation, adding that the current goal is to allow ideas to “melt for a while.”

But he predicted that with AI’s expected impact on many agencies and industries, it would be impossible not to foresee a wide-ranging and open legislative process reflecting input from many sources, akin to how the Senate crafts the annual spending package known as the National Defense Authorization Act.

“You bring in all of these ideas, and then you very quietly start to meld this bill together, kind of behind the scenes in a way,” he said. “You go through a committee process in which you deliver a bill that says this could pass, and then you allow other members to come in and offer their amendments to it as well. That has worked well year-in and year-out for the NDAA.”

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April 12, 2021
The Reddit blackout shows no signs of stopping | CNN Business

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A widespread Reddit blackout affecting some of the site’s largest communities has continued into its third day with no signs of stopping, as a number of groups on the site vowed to remain closed off indefinitely to protest changes to the platform’s data policies.

As of Wednesday morning, more than 6,000 subreddits remained inaccessible and in private mode after what began as a two-day voluntary shutdown. The blackout includes popular forums such as r/aww, r/videos and r/music, each of which claims more than 25 million subscribers on the platform.

The extended protest highlights the commitment of some users, moderators and developers to a long-term standoff with Reddit’s management over a decision to begin charging steep fees for third-party data access to its platform.

Reddit didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The coming fees have provoked broad outrage because of their expected impact on independent apps and moderator tools that have grown up around Reddit and that many users view as a critical resource. Some of the largest third-party apps, such as Apollo and RIF, have said they cannot afford the fees and must shut down, effectively driving users to Reddit’s native app that has been widely panned as slow, buggy and inferior, particularly for users with disabilities.

In recent days, Reddit has said it would exempt some accessibility apps from the price changes and allow some third-party tools to continue operating through its application programming interface (API). But many moderators have called the announcements little more than a “microscopic” concession.

In response to allegations that Reddit is imposing the fees and forcing developers to shut down in a “profit-driven” move, Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said in a recent Q&A with users that Reddit will “continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive.”

“Unlike some of the [third-party] apps, we are not profitable,” Huffman said.

The tensions echo how Twitter, under its new owner Elon Musk, has prompted criticism with plans for its own paywall for data in a bid to develop new revenue sources and to shore up the company’s struggling finances. For Reddit, the stakes are also high to grow revenue, as the company reportedly looks to go public later this year.

Huffman reportedly dismissed the blackout in a leaked internal memo obtained by The Verge. According to the memo, Huffman described the protest as “among the noisiest we’ve seen” but insisted that “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well.”

“We absolutely must ship what we said we would,” Huffman reportedly wrote in the memo, in an apparent reference to the API changes. Huffman also reportedly predicted that some subreddits would end their protest after the initially scheduled two days.

As of Wednesday morning, many groups participating in the blackout had lifted their self-imposed restrictions. But even as some groups went public once more, others joined the protest.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter accused of failing to pay millions in employee bonuses after Musk takeover | CNN Business

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Twitter failed to pay out annual bonuses to staff after its acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk despite repeated assurances from executives in the lead-up to the deal closing that the company would do so, according to a new lawsuit filed on behalf of employees.

The lawsuit was filed in a San Francisco federal court on Tuesday by Mark Schobinger, who was a senior director of compensation at Twitter until he left the company late last month. The suit is seeking class action status for former and current Twitter employees who did not receive their 2022 bonus.

“We estimate about a couple thousand employees would have been eligible for the bonuses,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney representing Schobinger, said in a statement to CNN. “While I don’t have an exact number, we expect the amount owed is in the tens of millions.”

Twitter, which has cut much of is public relations team, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The complaint states that after it was announced that Musk was acquiring the social media company last April, “many employees raised concerns” over the fate of “their compensation and annual bonus” if and when the deal closed.

In the months leading up to Musk completing his acquisition of Twitter, company executives repeatedly promised employees that 2022 bonuses would be paid out at 50% of the target, according to the complaint. “The promise was repeated following Musk’s acquisition,” the complaint said.

Despite the promises, however, Twitter has yet to pay out bonuses, the lawsuit says. Schobinger left the company last month following “Twitter’s reneging on various promises it had made to employees, including its failure to pay promised bonuses,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal actions taken by former Twitter employees after Musk’s acquired the company and slashed 80% of the staff in an urgent bid to cut costs.

Liss-Riordan previously brought multiple proposed class action suits against Twitter, including on behalf of female employees and disabled employees. Another suit was filed by a group of former employees who accused Twitter of breach of contract because it allegedly failed to follow through on promises to allow remote work and provide consistent severance benefits after the acquisition.

Twitter has denied the breach of contract allegations in the lawsuit brought by former employees about remote work and severance. The proposed class action suits on behalf of female and disabled employees were dismissed by federal judges last month. The suits were later refiled.

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April 12, 2021
Apple is now worth $3 trillion, boosted by the Nasdaq’s best start in 40 years | CNN Business

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Apple’s stock ended trading Friday valued at $3 trillion, the only company ever to reach that milestone. It has been riding a Big Tech stock wave that has given the Nasdaq its best first half gain in 40 years.

Shares of Apple rose more than 2% Friday at a record $193.97. With 15.7 billion shares outstanding, that stock price pushed Apple to its historic market value.

Apple has been here once before: On January 3, 2022, Apple hit the $3 trillion mark during intraday trading, but it failed to close there.

The company’s stock closed Thursday at a record high share price for the third-straight day, but it merely budged 0.2% higher. Apple easily surpassed the $190.73 level it needed to break $3 trillion at Friday’s market open.

The sky-high valuation for the tech giant comes on the heels of its risky launch of the Apple Vision Pro earlier this month and a stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings report in May – even though sales and profit slumped.

The Vision Pro, which will go on sale next year, impressed tech journalists who got an early preview of the augmented reality device. But it is entering a nascent market with little mainstream consumer adoption. Apple plans to charge a hefty $3,499 for its headset, which currently has limited apps and experiences, and requires users to stay tethered to a battery pack the size of an iPhone.

Apple’s

(AAPL) stock has skyrocketed 49% this year, boosted by a broader surge in Big Tech stocks as investors have jumped onto the AI bandwagon. Nvidia

(NVDA) leads the S&P 500 with a 190% jump this year, followed by Meta

(META) at 138%.

The Nasdaq grew by 31.7% in the first half of the year, notching its largest first half percentage gain since 1983.

This year’s stock market success for Apple comes in sharp contrast to 2022. At the start of 2023, Apple’s market cap fell below $2 trillion in trading for the first time since early 2021.

Wall Street ended the first half of 2023 on a positive note as the tech rally led markets to close higher for both the month and second quarter of the year.

The S&P 500 gained 6.5% in June, its best monthly performance since January. It also notched its third consecutive quarter of growth, up 8.3% in the second quarter. The S&P 500 is about 15.9% higher so far this year, its best half since 2019.

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April 12, 2021
China-based hackers breached US government email accounts, Microsoft and White House say | CNN Politics

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China-based hackers have breached email accounts at two-dozen organizations, including some United States government agencies, in an apparent spying campaign aimed at acquiring sensitive information, according to statements from Microsoft and the White House late Tuesday.

The full scope of the hack is being investigated, but US officials and Microsoft have been quietly scrambling in recent weeks to assess the impact of the hack, which targeted unclassified email systems, and contain the fallout.

The federal agency where the Chinese hackers were first detected was the State Department, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. The State Department then reported the suspicious activity to Microsoft, the person said.

The Department of Commerce, which has sanctioned Chinese telecom firms, was also breached. The hackers accessed Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s email account, one source familiar with the investigation told CNN. The Washington Post first reported on the access of the secretary’s account.

The Chinese hackers were detected targeting a small number of federal agencies and just a handful of officials’ email accounts at each agency in a hack aimed at specific officials, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

“Microsoft notified the (Commerce) Department of a compromise to Microsoft’s Office 365 system, and the Department took immediate action to respond,” a department spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.

The spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the targeting of Raimondo’s email account.

The hackers targeted email accounts at the House of Representatives, but it was unclear who was targeted and if the breach attempts were successful, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The breaches add to what is already one of the steepest cybersecurity challenges facing the Biden administration: limiting the ability of Beijing’s formidable hacking teams to access US government and corporate secrets.

“Last month, US government safeguards identified an intrusion in Microsoft’s cloud security, which affected unclassified systems,” National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said in a statement to CNN.

“Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerability in their cloud service,” Hodge said. “We continue to hold the procurement providers of the US Government to a high security threshold.”

The State Department “detected anomalous activity, took immediate steps to secure our systems, and will continue to closely monitor and quickly respond to any further activity,” a department spokesperson said on Wednesday.

US Capitol Police declined to comment, referring CNN to the FBI.

Hodge did not identify who was behind the hack, but Microsoft executives said in a blog post that the hackers were based in China and focused on espionage.

In response to the Microsoft and White House statements, the Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday accused Washington of conducting its own hacking operations.

US officials have consistently labeled China as the most advanced of US adversaries in cyberspace, a domain that has repeatedly been a source of bilateral tension in recent years. The FBI has said Beijing has a larger hacking program than all other governments combined.

China has routinely denied the allegations.

The hacking began in mid-May, when the China-based hackers used a stolen sign-in key to burrow their way into email accounts, according to Microsoft. The tech giant has since blocked the hackers from accessing customer emails using that technique, Microsoft said late Tuesday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in mid-June, but it was not immediately clear if the cyber-espionage campaign was connected to that high-stakes visit.

Some US officials credited the State Department with investing in more cyber-defense capabilities, allowing the agency to detect the suspicious activity earlier than in past advanced hacks.

The number of US organizations, public or private, impacted by the hacking campaign is in the “single digits,” a senior US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official told reporters on Wednesday.

“This appears to have been a very targeted, surgical campaign,” the official said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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April 12, 2021
Twitter’s rebrand is the next stage in Elon Musk’s vision for the company. But does anyone want it? | CNN Business

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Elon Musk’s move over the weekend to rebrand Twitter and replace its iconic bird logo with an X is just the latest step in his effort to make over the billionaire’s longtime favorite platform in his image.

When Musk bought Twitter late last year, he laid out a vision for an “everything” app called X, where users could communicate, shop, consume entertainment and more. Last June — prior to his takeover — Musk told Twitter employees that the platform should be more like China’s WeChat, where he said users “basically live on” the app because “it’s so usable and helpful to daily life.”

The vision for the rebrand may go all the way back to Musk’s creation of the original X.com in 1999, which Musk hoped would be an all-in-one financial platform and which eventually became PayPal.

Despite Musk’s longstanding ambitions — and the heightened stakes since he shelled out $44 billion to purchase the social network — ditching Twitter’s branding in service of a future super app is a significant risk.

Twitter still has a long way to go if Musk wants to build out the kind of services WeChat is known for — everything from ordering groceries and booking yoga classes to paying bills and chatting with friends. And that’s not to mention the financial and competitive challenges the company faces merely existing in its current form, let alone launching a massive expansion. It’s also not clear how much demand there is for such a super app outside of China, given that efforts by other platforms to simply sell users on added shopping features have been slow to take off.

“While Musk’s vision is to turn ‘X’ into an ‘everything app,’ this takes time, money, and people -— three things that the company no longer has,” Mike Proulx, research director and vice president at Forrester, said in an investor note. By ditching Twitter’s name, Proulx added, Musk “will have singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” leaving him to start fresh at a precarious time for the company.

The X branding has already started taking over Twitter.

Musk — who bought Twitter with a company called X Corp. — tweeted on Sunday that X.com now redirects to Twitter. (Musk reportedly bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017.)

On Sunday night, the new stylized X logo was projected onto the company’s headquarters. And by Monday, the bird logo had been replaced by an X on Twitter’s website. Musk even told followers that tweets should instead be called “x’s.”

On Sunday, CEO Linda Yaccarino seemed to confirm Musk’s vision for the company. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino said in a tweet.

Walter Isaacson, the legendary tech journalist who has been shadowing Musk to write his biography, tweeted on Sunday that Musk told him even before the Twitter acquisition that he wanted to use the social platform to fulfill his original, decades-old vision for X.com. “I am very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!” Musk texted Isaacson at 3:30 a.m. one morning last October, just ahead of his takeover, according to the writer.

On Monday, Musk explained the move in a tweet saying, “The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.”

“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk said. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context.”

(The rebrand also seems to be a continuation of a sort of obsession with the letter “X,” which also features in the name of one of Tesla’s cars, the Model X; the name of his rocket company, SpaceX; the name of his new artificial intelligence firm, xAI; and the name of two of his children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl.)

In recent weeks, Twitter has quietly begun its effort to build out a payments business called Twitter Payments — the company was granted money transmitter licenses in four US states since last month, including Arizona and Michigan. Musk has discussed his desire to promote longer videos on Twitter. And he’s tried to shift Twitter’s business model away from advertising by allowing users to pay for verification, a strategy that has resulted in some chaos but only a limited number of actual subscriptions.

Still, Musk faces obvious hurdles to turning Twitter into a fully-developed super app. Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has fired around 80% of its staff, scared away many of the advertisers that made up its core user base and frustrated many of its users with controversial policy decisions. And now, Twitter faces steep competition from Meta’s rival app Threads, which launched to stunning success, although its usage has petered off slightly in recent days.

Musk last week also said that Twitter still has negative cash flow because of a 50% decline in ad revenue.

Even if Musk does add new features to Twitter, many US tech platforms have struggled to succeed in imitating WeChat. Deloitte said in a report published last year that Western markets are unlikely to see “a single, dominant super-app like WeChat in the near term” because the services such apps would aim to bundle together, such as digital payments and ride hailing, already “have too many well-established players.”

A 2019 effort by the social media giant then known as Facebook to create its own digital currency and payments system that the company said would make it easier to buy things online officially flopped last year following intense regulatory scrutiny. And both TikTok and Instagram have reportedly scaled back their ambitions to incorporate e-commerce onto their platforms after their shopping features failed to gain significant traction with users.

And until Musk rolls out significant changes to the platform, observers of the company say ditching Twitter’s well-known brand is a risky move.

“To rebrand without significant new features seems like a desperate attempt for attention,” especially in the wake of Meta’s launch of Threads, said Joshua White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University. “This is akin to buying Coke and changing the bottle and name without changing the formula — likely a mistake.”

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April 12, 2021
Hot box detectors didn’t stop the East Palestine derailment. Research shows another technology might have | CNN

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A failing, flaming wheel bearing doomed the rail car that derailed and created a catastrophe in East Palestine earlier this month, but researchers have offered a solution to the faulty detectors that experts say could have averted the disaster unfolding in the small Ohio town.

These wayside hot box detectors, stationed on rail tracks every 20 miles or so, use infrared sensors to record the temperatures of railroad bearings as trains pass by. If they sense an overheated bearing, the detectors trigger an alarm, which notifies the train crew they should stop and inspect the rail car for a potential failure.

So why did these detectors miss a bearing failure before the catastrophe?

An investigation into hot box detectors published in 2019 and funded by the Department of Transportation found that one “major shortcoming” of these detectors is that they can’t distinguish between healthy and defective bearings, and temperature alone is not a good indicator of bearing health.

“Temperature is reactive in nature, meaning by the time you’re sensing a high temperature in a bearing, it’s too late, the bearing is already in its final stages of failure,” Constantine Tarawneh, director of the University Transportation Center for Railways Safety (UTCRS) and lead investigator of the study, told CNN.

As part of the investigation, the UTCRS researchers developed a new system to better detect a bearing issue long before a catastrophic failure. The key: measuring the bearing’s vibration in addition to its temperature and load.

The vibration of a failing bearing, Tarawneh says, often begins intensifying thousands of miles before a catastrophic failure. So his team created sensors that can be placed on board each rail car, near the bearing, to continuously monitor its vibration throughout its travels.

“If you put an accelerometer on a bearing and you’re monitoring the vibration levels, the minute a defect happens in the bearing, the accelerometer will sense an increase in vibration, and that could be, in many cases, up to 100,000 miles before the bearing actually fails,” he said.

Tarawneh, who argues the technology should be federally mandated, says had it been on board Norfolk Southern’s line it would have prevented the derailment in East Palestine.

“It would have detected the problem months before this happened,” he said. “There wouldn’t have been a derailment.”

A preliminary report from the East Palestine derailment, released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board, found hot box sensors detected that a wheel bearing was heating up miles before it eventually failed and caused the train to derail. But the detectors didn’t alert the crew until it was too late.

The bearing, according to the report, was 38 degrees above ambient temperature when it passed through a hot box 30 miles outside East Palestine. No alert went out, the NTSB said.

Ten miles later, the next hot box detected that the bearing had reached 103 degrees above ambient. Video of the train recorded in that area shows sparks and flames around the rail car. Still, no alert went to the crew.

It wasn’t until a further 20 miles down the tracks, as the train reached East Palestine, that a hot box detector recorded the bearing’s temperature at 253 degrees above ambient and sent an alarm message instructing the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle, the report said.

The crew slowed the train, the report added, leading to an automatic emergency brake application. After the train stopped, the crew observed the derailment.

The reason those first two hot box readings didn’t trigger an alert, the report said, is because Norfolk Southern’s policy is to only stop and inspect a bearing after it has reached 170 degrees above ambient temperature. The NTSB is planning to review Norfolk Southern’s use of wayside hot box detectors, including spacing and the temperature threshold that determines when crews are alerted.

“Had there been a detector earlier, that derailment may not have occurred,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy at a Thursday press conference.

In a statement responding to the NTSB report, Norfolk Southern stressed that its hot box detectors were operating as designed, and that those detectors trigger an alarm at a temperature threshold that is “among the lowest in the rail industry.” CNN has reached out to Norfolk Southern for comment on vibration sensor technology.

Hot box detectors are unregulated, so companies like Norfolk Southern can turn them on and off at their own discretion and choose the temperature threshold at which crews receive an alert.

There are several causes for overheated roller bearings, including fatigue cracking, water damage, mechanical damaging, a loose bearing or a wheel defect, according to the NTSB, and the agency says they’re investigating what caused the failure in East Palestine.

“Roller bearings fail, but it is absolutely critical for problems to be identified and addressed early so these aren’t run until failure,” Homendy said. “You cannot wait until they’ve failed. Problems need to be identified early, so something catastrophic like this does not occur again.”

Hum Industrial Technology, a rail car telematics company, has licensed the vibration sensor technology created by Tarawneh and his team. And it has launched pilot programs with several rail companies. But at this point, those sensors are on very few trains operating in the United States, which Tarawneh largely blames on the cost of retrofitting and monitoring cars and what he sees as companies prioritizing profit.

It’s not clear exactly what it would cost to retrofit every train car in operation with sensors today, but Hum Industrial Technology stressed that it would cost less to put a sensor on a bearing than to replace a bearing.

“They see it as, well, why should we do it if it’s not mandated?” Tarawneh said. “It’s like a lot of people are saying, ‘well, I’m willing to take the risk. It’s not that many derailments per year.’”

But Steve Ditmeyer, a former Federal Railroad Administration official, says equipping every rail car with on board sensors may not be financially feasible.

“What they’re proposing will work, but it’s very, very expensive,” Ditmeyer told CNN. “And one does have to take cost into consideration.”

It would take more than 12 million on board sensors, according to Tarawneh, to fully equip the roughly 1.6 million rail cars in service across North America.

Ditmeyer says railroads should invest more heavily in wayside acoustic bearing detectors, which sit along the tracks – much like hot box detectors – and monitor the sound of passing trains. They listen for noise that indicates a bearing failure well before a potential catastrophe.

As of 2019, only 39 acoustic bearing detectors were in use across North America compared to more than 6,000 hot box detectors, according to a 2019 DOT report.

“They are the only way that I can think of that would have prevented the accident by having caught a failing bearing earlier,” Ditmeyer said.

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December 31, 1969