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Spotify, the world’s leading music streaming platform, is facing intense criticism and boycott calls following CEO Daniel Ek’s announcement of a €600m ($702m) investment in Helsing, a German defence startup specialising in AI-powered combat drones and military software.
The move, announced on 17 June, has sparked widespread outrage from musicians, activists and social media users who accuse Ek of funnelling profits from music streaming into the military industry.
Many have started calling on users to cancel their subscriptions to the service.
“Finally cancelling my Spotify subscription – why am I paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago, while their CEO spends all my money on technofascist military fantasies?” said one user on X.
Google’s carbon emissions have soared by 51% since 2019 as artificial intelligence hampers the tech company’s efforts to go green.
While the corporation has invested in renewable energy and carbon removal technology, it has failed to curb its scope 3 emissions, which are those further down the supply chain, and are in large part influenced by a growth in datacentre capacity required to power artificial intelligence.
The company reported a 27% increase in year-on-year electricity consumption as it struggles to decarbonise as quickly as its energy needs increase.
Datacentres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers the ChatGPT chatbot. The International Energy Agency estimates that datacentres’ total electricity consumption could double from 2022 levels to 1,000TWh (terawatt hours) in 2026, approximately Japan’s level of electricity demand. AI will result in datacentres using 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030, according to calculations by the research firm SemiAnalysis.
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Not sure if this lawsuit is related to https://apnews.com/article/copyright-director-firing-government-trump-7ab99992a96131bce7de853b66feec68 but it is a bit eery
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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has won the backing of a judge in a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors, in the second legal victory for the US artificial intelligence industry this week.
The writers, who included Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, had argued that the Facebook owner had breached copyright law by using their books without permission to train its AI system.
The ruling follows a decision on Monday that Anthropic, another major player in the AI field, had not infringed authors’ copyright.
The US district judge Vince Chhabria, in San Francisco, said in his decision on the Meta case that the authors had not presented enough evidence that the technology company’s AI would dilute the market for their work to show that its conduct was illegal under US copyright law.
Did a quick check I think it is equal performance to Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2. Which is great for every day use. Not the fastest stuff but midrange.
Huawei still appears to be very expensive in the West though. Not sure if their in-house production is really driving price down as much as simply being independent
The Trump administration is collecting data on all Americans, and they are enlisting the data analysis company Palantir to do it.
The New York Times reports that President Trump has enlisted the firm, founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel, to carry out his March executive order instructing government agencies to share data with each other. The order has increased fears that the government is putting together a database to wield surveillance powers over the American public.
Since then, the administration has been very quiet about these efforts, increasing suspicion. Meanwhile, Palantir has taken more than $113 million in government spending since Trump took office, from both existing contracts and new ones with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. That number is expected to grow, especially given that the firm just won a new $795 million contract with the DOD last week.
Becker was consulted by the Tagesspiegel because of his affiliation with the Decoding Antisemitism project at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin, which he led from 2019 until 2025. With the help of a large language computing model, the project aims to create “an [AI] algorithm that will automatically recognize antisemitic statements in web comments . . . so that antisemitic posts can be removed more efficiently and accurately” by online platforms.
The dataset is divided into labels of differing forms of supposed antisemitisms such as “analogies with Nazism,” fascism, apartheid, or colonialism; calling Israel a racist or terrorist state; accusing it of genocide; referencing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS); giving Israel the sole blame for the plight of the Palestinians; applying double standards; and denying Israel’s right to exist.
On the topic of Palestine and Israel, the glossary seems to operate within a logic that sees emotional responses to a live-streamed genocide not as a human reaction but as an indicator of antisemitic beliefs.
In an interview with Israeli news outlet Mako, Becker suggests that social media providers are opening their doors and hearing concerns like his. This strongly suggests hopes to commercialize and implement its findings with online platforms. Five years after its inception, it appears that its conceptual framework and glossary have been overtaken by reality.
Israel’s military has intensified its use of explosive-laden robots in northern Gaza, causing widespread destruction, fear and civilian deaths, according to a report on Sunday by The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister outlet, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
The devices, often modified M113 armoured vehicles carrying around five tonnes of explosives, have been deployed particularly in the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia. Over the course of one week, five were detonated in Beit Lahia alone.
Unlike conventional strikes, these robots are remotely operated and can remain stationary for hours or days in front of homes, hospitals or residential blocks, creating prolonged periods of dread. Witnesses told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the explosions often result in devastation greater than typical airstrikes, destroying entire buildings and sending debris flying hundreds of metres.
Microsoft has quietly implemented a policy blocking employee emails containing the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” or “genocide” on its internal Exchange servers, according to No Azure for Apartheid, a group of pro-Palestine Microsoft employees. The automated filter, which silently prevents such emails from reaching recipients was first detected on Wednesday—just after Microsoft’s Build developer conference faced repeated disruptions by the activist group.
Microsoft has been rocked by internal dissent over its collaboration with the Israeli military and government amid the ongoing assault on Gaza. The company has faced disruptions to its events, including protests from employees over its provision of cloud services and other critical infrastructure used by the Israeli military.
Now, the company appears to be tightening its grip on internal discourse. The terms “Israel” and “P4lestine” do not trigger a block, the group said. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China is set to launch a new high-altitude unmanned aircraft capable of releasing up to 100 kamikaze drones simultaneously, in what military observers say could mark a significant advancement in drone warfare technology. The aircraft, named Jiu Tan, which translates to “high sky,” was developed by Shaanxi Unmanned Equipment Technology and is designed to enhance the operational reach of the Chinese air force.
The aircraft’s most notable capability is its ability to deploy large-scale drone swarms mid-flight, potentially overwhelming enemy defenses by sheer volume and unpredictability. State-released video footage simulated the dramatic visual of a synchronized UAV launch sequence.
Drone swarms offer strategic advantages in surveillance, intelligence gathering, and real-time reconnaissance, particularly in contested regions such as the Taiwan Strait. Analysts warn that such a capability could play a central role in a future conflict scenario between China and Taiwan.
In addition to drone launches, the Jiu Tan can also be equipped with cruise missiles and air-to-air weapons like the PL-12E, further expanding its offensive potential.
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok has blamed a “programming error” to explain why it said it was “sceptical” of the historical consensus that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, days after the AI came under fire for bombarding users with the far-right conspiracy theory of “white genocide” in South Africa.
Last week, Grok was asked to weigh in on the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust. It said: “Historical records, often cited by mainstream sources, claim around 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. However, I’m skeptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives.”
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has been frequently bringing up the concept of a “white genocide” in South Africa - even in unrelated conversations - and has said its creators instructed it to treat the concept as both real and racially driven.
When faced with unrelated questions on issues such as enterprise software and building scaffolding, Grok offered false and misleading answers.
As demonstrated by many on X, Grok has been consistently steering conversations towards the controversial topic of an alleged “white genocide” in South Africa, regardless of the original question, highlighting a growing tendency to shift focus to this narrative tied to Musk’s country of origin.
Trump imposed strict sanctions on the ICC, the highest criminal court in the world, after a panel of judges issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant in November.
One reason the the court has been hamstrung is that it relies heavily on contractors and non-governmental organisations. These businesses and groups have curtailed work on behalf of the court because they are concerned about being targeted by US authorities, according to current and former ICC staffers.
Microsoft, for example, cancelled Mr Khan's email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in the UK have been blocked.
Meta has banned a prominent Muslim news page on Instagram in India at the government’s request, the account’s founder said on Wednesday, denouncing the move as “censorship” as hostilities escalate between India and Pakistan.
Instagram users in India trying to access posts from the handle @Muslim – a page with 6.7 million followers – were met with a message stating: “Account not available in India. This is because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content.”v
There are two parallel image channels that dominate our daily visual consumption. In one, there are real pictures and footage of the world as it is: politics, sport, news and entertainment. In the other is AI slop, low-quality content with minimal human input. Some of it is banal and pointless – cartoonish images of celebrities, fantasy landscapes, anthropomorphised animals. And some is a sort of pornified display of women just simply … being, like a virtual girlfriend you cannot truly interact with. The range and scale of the content is staggering, and infiltrates everything from social media timelines to messages circulated on WhatsApp. The result is not just a blurring of reality, but a distortion of it.
A new genre of AI slop is rightwing political fantasy. There are entire YouTube videos of made-up scenarios in which Trump officials prevail against liberal forces. The White House account on X jumped on a trend of creating images in Studio Ghibli style and posted an image of a Dominican woman in tears as she is arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). AI political memefare has, in fact, gone global. Chinese AI videos mocking overweight US workers on assembly lines after the tariff announcement raised a question for, and response from, the White House spokesperson last week. The videos, she said, were made by those who “do not see the potential of the American worker”. And to prove how pervasive AI slop is, I had to triple-check that even that response was not itself quickly cobbled-together AI content fabricating another dunk on Trump’s enemies.
The impulse behind this politicisation of AI is not new; it is simply an extension of traditional propaganda. What is new is how democratised and ubiquitous it has become, and how it involves no real people or the physical constraints of real life, therefore providing an infinite number of fictional scenarios.
Palantir, the software company cofounded by Peter Thiel, is part of an effort by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to build a new “mega API” for accessing Internal Revenue Service records, IRS sources tell WIRED.
The Israeli military's usage of the company's cloud storage facilities in the first six months after 7 October 2023 was 60 percent more than the four months preceding it. Leaked documents show that the Israeli military's usage of Microsoft's AI products also ticked up in the same period.
The 25-year-old Aboussad, who worked in the AI division in which she was involved in converting speech to text, says she hadn't realised she "signed up to work on code that directly powers war crimes". This realisation spurred her into action.
She joined and began organising with the No Azure for Apartheid campaign, which was created in late 2023 by a group of Microsoft employees who wanted the company to end its contracts with Israel and uphold its own stated values.
Together with other employees, including a colleague, Vaniya Aggraval, Aboussad said that over the past several months, they tried to address their concerns through the proper channels.
They wrote to management, tried meeting with the CEO, and even sent questions to "Ask me anything" forums, only to be rebuffed and ignored.
When Israel cut aid and supplies and began bombarding Gaza again in mid-March, killing up to 100 children a day, both Aboussad and Agrawal decided they had had enough.
Immediately after their disruptions, Agarwal and Abbousad both sent a mass email to Microsoft colleagues explaining their actions. The emails, the duo said, were meant for those who were still purportedly in the dark about Microsoft's links to the Israeli military industrial complex.
Rumour has it that AMD could be working on a Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme variant of its next generation gaming handheld APU. If true, then that would make it the first full-fledged gaming handheld APU in the red chipmaker’s arsenal.
The rumour of the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme comes by way of Hoang Anh Phu, who posted a list opf the currently existing Ryzen Z2 portfolio, with the addition of the AI variant at the bottom of the list. Interestingly, there’s also mention of a Z2 A, although we haven’t a clue what that alludes to.
REDMOND, Washington — A pro-Palestinian protester interrupts the keynote event of Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebration, the latest backlash over the tech industry’s work to supply artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military.
The protest happens as Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman presents product updates and a long-term vision for the company’s AI assistant product, Copilot, to an audience that includes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer.
“Mustafa, shame on you,” shouts a woman in the audience. “You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military.”
The BDS National Committee (BNC) has decided to make Microsoft a “priority target” to pressure the company to end its support for Israel’s war effort, after revelations that its AI and cloud services have been heavily used in the genocidal assault, organizers told Drop Site News.
Two Microsoft employees fired for their activism, Abdo Mohamed and Hossam Nasr, played key roles in driving the BNC’s decision. The pair organized a vigil outside the company’s headquarters in 2024.
The committee is asking all those who have taken its pledge to take three concrete steps
1. Cancel your Xbox Game Pass subscription
2. Boycott Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Call of Duty—flagship videogame franchises owned by Microsoft
3. Boycott all Microsoft Gaming products, including Xbox-branded consoles, headsets, accessories, and all games published by Microsoft-owned publishing labels (such as Xbox Game Studios, Activision, Bethesda and Blizzard)
Muslim marriage app Salams has come under fire after users highlighted that it was acquired by the Match Group, with many accusing its CEO, Spencer Rascoff, of being ‘pro-Israel’.
Dozens of people on social media sites such as X and Reddit have called for Muslims to boycott the app, after a post from Rascoff’s LinkedIn page appeared to show support for Israeli soldiers.
Rascoff, who has worked for Match Group since March 2024, wrote a post on LinkedIn stating: "Proud to support Ohana co-founders Jacob Ian Halbert and Ezra Gershanok’s campaign to help cover rent bills for Israeli soldiers fighting overseas."
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toThe IDF soldiers do not have to apply for Google and pass the Google application entrance exam.
Also the acquisition can happen for a far higher amount than the company’s true worth. Thus sending a lot of Google money to Israel.
It is very doubtable Wiz is worth what Google is paying.
Similar to how AIPAC works, the IDF spies goal is not to make money, but to invest other people’s money into Israel.
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toNot every “conspiracy” is fiction. Anyone paying attention the last two years cannot deny that the pro-Israel positions these companies hold are completely nonsensical.
The flowchart in Pauls article is pretty representative how Israeli spies use their position to redirect funds to Israeli companies, which then get acquired and given prominent roles in American companies and VC. Which then send more funds to Israel. Etc etc.
AIPAC is also an amazing example of a few hundred million in Israeli bribes to politicians is sending billions of taxpayer dollars back to Israel.
But besides politics it is extremely visible in news organizations:
And tech organizations:
Revealed: The Former Israeli Spies Working in Top Jobs at Google, Facebook and Microsoft
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toPaul Biggar made a great summary about how these “acquisitions” serve to get Israeli spies into American tech companies. Those spies then use their powers for Israel.
Google employees and human rights groups have raised concerns about the tech giant’s purchase of an Israeli start-up in an unprecedented $32bn deal.
Google on Tuesday announced the all-cash acquisition of Wiz, an Israeli cloud security firm which was founded by former members of Unit 8200, an elite Israeli army cyber-espionage and surveillance unit.
The deal comes with the Google already facing internal and external pressure over its controversial Project Nimbus contract, through which along with Amazon it provides cloud computing and AI services to the Israeli government and military.
A spokesperson for No Tech for Apartheid, a coalition of Google and Amazon workers campaigning against the companies' involvement with Israel, said Google was "playing with fire" by buying Wiz.
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer BYD has introduced a new charging platform that claims to reduce charging times to match the refuelling speed of petrol vehicles. The company also announced plans to build a network of fast-charging stations across China, marking a significant shift in its approach to EV infrastructure. The company’s founder, Wang Chuanfu, unveiled the ‘Super e-Platform’ at an event streamed from BYD’s headquarters in Shenzhen on Monday, as reported by Reuters.
BYD 1,000 kW charging speeds and infra plans
The new platform boasts peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts (kW), allowing EVs to gain 400 km (249 miles) of range in just five minutes.
This is double the speed of Tesla’s latest Superchargers, which currently offer a maximum of 500 kW. The innovation aims to tackle one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption – charging time.
The company also announced its intention to build more than 4,000 ultra-fast charging stations across China to complement the new platform. However, BYD has not disclosed a specific timeline for the project or the amount it plans to invest.
The charging platform will initially be available in two upcoming BYD models – the Han L sedan and the Tang L SUV – priced from 270,000 yuan (around $37,400). These vehicles will be built on BYD’s e-Platform 3.0, which integrates multiple EV technologies, including:
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP's) national internet censor just announced that all AI-generated content will be required to have labels that are explicitly seen or heard by its audience and embedded in metadata. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) just released the transcript for the media questions and answers (akin to an FAQ) on its Measures for the Identification of Artificial Intelligence Generated and Synthetic Content [machine translated]. We saw the first signs of this policy move last September when the CAC's draft plans emerged.
This regulation takes effect on September 1, 2025, and will compel all service providers (i.e., AI LLMs) to “add explicit labels to generated and synthesized content.” The directive includes all types of data: text, images, videos, audio, and even virtual scenes. Aside from that, it also orders app stores to verify whether the apps they host follow the regulations.
Users will still be able to ask for unlabeled AI-generated content for “social concerns and industrial needs.” However, the generating app must reiterate this requirement to the user and also log the information to make it easier to trace. The responsibility of adding the AI-generated label and metadata falls on the shoulders of this end-user person or entity.
Google’s Gemma 3 LLMs, the new iteration in its already existing portfolio of lightweight Gemma LLMs, come in four variants: 1 billion parameters, 4 billion parameters, 12 billion parameters and 27 billion parameters. These LLMs, Google says, allow AI developers to choose the best model for their available hardware and performance when developing AI applications.
The Gemma 3 LLMs are designed to run quickly and directly on devices ranging from workstations to laptops and smartphones. For example, to run a Gemma 3 LLM on a device with a GPU or a TensorFlow processor, a larger model can be used than for a smartphone processor. The latter then uses a smaller model.
According to the tech giant, the new Gemma 3 LLMs’ performance is very high, surpassing that of OpenAI’s Llama-40B, DeepSeek-V3, and o3-mini, according to benchmarks. However, they still have to beat DeepSeek R1.
HP, along with other printer brands, is infamous for issuing firmware updates that brick already-purchased printers that have tried to use third-party ink. In a new form of frustration, HP is now being accused of issuing a firmware update that broke customers’ laser printers—even though the devices are loaded with HP-brand toner.
The firmware update in question is version 20250209, which HP issued on March 4 for its LaserJet MFP M232-M237 models. Per HP, the update includes “security updates,” a “regulatory requirement update,” “general improvements and bug fixes,” and fixes for IPP Everywhere. Looking back to older updates’ fixes and changes, which the new update includes, doesn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. The older updates mention things like “fixed print quality to ensure borders are not cropped for certain document types,” and “improved firmware update and cartridge rejection experiences.” But there’s no mention of changes to how the printers use or read toner.
However, users have been reporting sudden problems using HP-brand toner in their M232–M237 series printers since their devices updated to 20250209. Users on HP’s support forum say they see Error Code 11 and the hardware’s toner light flashing when trying to print. Some said they’ve cleaned the contacts and reinstalled their toner but still can't print.
A robotic private spacecraft designed to provide crucial data for returning humans to the moon toppled over as it landed on the lunar surface, bringing an immediate and premature end to the mission, its operators said on Friday.
Athena, a probe launched by the Texas-based company Intuitive Machines (IM) last month, touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site near the moon’s south pole on Thursday. Initially at least, it was generating some power and sending information to Earth as engineers worked to make sense of data showing an “incorrect attitude”.
On Friday, however, IM declared Athena dead.
“With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge,” it said in a statement confirming that the 15ft (4.6 meter) spacecraft was on its side.
The joint investigation with Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call has found Unit 8200 trained the AI model to understand spoken Arabic using large volumes of telephone conversations and text messages, obtained through its extensive surveillance of the occupied territories.
According to sources familiar with the project, the unit began building the model to create a sophisticated chatbot-like tool capable of answering questions about people it is monitoring and providing insights into the massive volumes of surveillance data it collects.
“We tried to create the largest dataset possible [and] collect all the data the state of Israel has ever had in Arabic,” the former official, Chaked Roger Joseph Sayedoff, told an audience at a military AI conference in Tel Aviv last year. The model, he said, required “psychotic amounts” of data.
TikTok is to be investigated by the UK’s data protection watchdog, which is looking into whether social media algorithms are serving up inappropriate or harmful content to children.
Growing concerns over how social media platforms are using data generated by children’s online activity have prompted the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to launch an investigation into the Chinese platform, along with the forum site Reddit and the image-sharing site Imgur.
It will look at how TikTok uses the personal information of 13- to 17-year-olds to deliver content recommendations to them, and also examine Reddit and Imgur’s use of age assurance measures, such as how they estimate or verify a child’s age, which can then be used to tailor their experience on the platform.
BEIJING/SHANGHAI, March 4 (Reuters) - China plans to issue guidance to encourage the use of open-source RISC-V chips nationwide for the first time, two sources briefed on the matter said, as Beijing accelerates efforts to curb the country's dependence on Western-owned technology.
The policy guidance on boosting the use of RISC-V chips could be released as soon as this month, although the final date could change, the sources said.
In China, state entities and research institutes have eagerly embraced RISC-V in recent years, seeing it as geopolitically neutral. Chinese chip designers are attracted by its lower costs, but the government has yet to mention it in policy.
In 2023, Reuters reported that some U.S. lawmakers were putting pressure on the Biden administration to restrict American companies from working on the technology over concerns that Beijing was exploiting its open-source nature to advance its own semiconductor industry.
Five Microsoft employees were removed during a company town hall meeting after staging a protest against the company’s contracts supplying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services to the Israeli occupation military.
The demonstration took place on Monday, following an Associated Press (AP) investigation that revealed Microsoft and OpenAI’s advanced AI models had been utilised by the Israeli occupation military to select bombing targets in recent attacks against Gaza and Lebanon.
This week at the Munich Security Conference, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, played “I’ve got a secret.” It’s a game national security officialdom loves to play, slyly claiming authority ‘if they could only tell you what they know.’
It is in that vein that Warner spilled the beans on what he called the “real story” behind the law that could still ban TikTok.
“I want to see if you're going to tell the real story,” a grinning Warner said, addressing former congressman Mike Gallagher, and now a Palantir executive who, along with Warner, first introduced the bill that claimed that TikTok was a national security threat, a claim still relevant given the app’s uncertain future.
Gallagher described how the national security bill was dead until Hamas’ attack on Israel, which brought the legislation back to life. As Gallagher
> “So we had a bipartisan consensus. We had the executive branch, but the bill was still dead until October 7th. And people started to see a bunch of anti-Semitic content on the platform and our bill had legs again.”
Gambling companies are covertly tracking visitors to their websites and sending their data to Facebook’s parent company without consent in an apparent breach of data protection laws.
The information is then being used by Facebook’s owner, Meta, to profile people as gamblers and flood them with ads for casinos and betting sites, the Observer can reveal. A hidden tracking tool embedded in dozens of UK gambling websites has been extracting visitors’ data – including details of the webpages they view and the buttons they click – and sharing it with the social media company.
By law, data should only be used and shared for marketing purposes, with explicit permission obtained from users on the websites in which the tools are embedded. But testing by the Observer of 150 gambling sites – including virtual casinos, sports betting sites and online bingo – found widespread breaches of the rules.
The PlayStation Network (PSN) is down, depriving online gamers around the world from accessing weekend events.
The outage began in the UK at about midnight on Friday.
About 71,000 gamers reported the outage to PlayStation’s website. Many users can no longer access online gaming lobbies, the PlayStation Store or their online accounts.
The PSN runs a model that costs £13.49 a month, £39.99 for three months or £119.99 for 12 months for its premium subscription. Many gamers have pointed to these costs when complaining to Sony.
Facial recognition of criminals are among applications for AI to be deployed by the new Belgian government after Vanessa Matz was sworn in on Monday as the first federal minister to be tasked with digitalisation, AI and privacy.
The former member of the centrist party Les Engagés in the French-speaking parliament in Belgium will have a broad portfolio which also includes oversight over public companies and the civil service.
The government plan specifically mentions use of AI tools by the law enforcement authorities and police.
This week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to cancel the visas of college students who protest in support of Palestine, opening the path to their deportation. A small company called Stellar Defense & Cyber Intelligence is ready to help by deploying AI technology to identify anonymous, masked pro-Palestinian protestors, through a campaign it refers to as “Operation Wrath of Zion.”
Stellar is the maker of NesherAI, a bespoke facial-recognition tool which it claims is capable of deanonymizing pro-Palestinian protestors. The name “Nesher” is Hebrew for “eagle,” the symbol for both NesherAI and the Terror Watch Agency, the brand under which it operates. Their slogan on social media is, “The Eagle listens, The Eagle watches, The Eagle knows.”
In December, The Times of Israel reported that Betar had worked with pro-Israel U.S. lawmakers including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Fetterman (D-PA) on plans to round up “suspects” in anticipation of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Ross Glick, the executive director of Betar US, told the paper the purpose of Betar’s use of facial recognition was to “give the Trump team a head start.” While Glick stressed that Betar supports free speech, he added that “if a foreign student is here on a visa, they don’t have the same rights as others to protest or promote anti-Zionist narratives.”
On Wednesday, Betar did just as Glick said. “Join us at the jihad rally as we assist @ICEgov in deportation efforts,” the U.S. branch of Betar posted on the social media platform X. Hawila’s Terror Watch Agency reposted Betar’s statement.
NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - U.S. TikTok users who once saw the app as a haven for free speech say they see signs of censorship after the platform, which is owned by China's ByteDance, was revived by an executive order from President Donald Trump.
"Our policies and algorithms did not change over the weekend," TikTok said in a statement to Reuters. "We are working hard to restore our U.S. operations back to normal and expect some temporary instability as we restore our services, which could impact TikTok features or users' access to the app."
But some users said they now see more content moderation, like limited search results, as well as warnings about misinformation and prompts for users to check their sources.
Some claimed TikTok was striking comments that used phrases like "Free Palestine" and "Free Luigi," a reference to Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing a UnitedHealth executive, which had been previously allowed. TikTok said it does not allow content that promotes violent or hateful individuals on the platform.
FORSMARK, Sweden, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Sweden started building a final storage facility for spent nuclear fuel on Wednesday, only the second such site in the world, where highly radioactive waste will be stored for 100,000 years.
How to store deadly radioactive waste until it is safe is a question that has dogged the nuclear industry since commercial reactors began operating in the 1950s.
Finland is the only country close to completing a permanent storage site.
TikTok is reportedly planning a total shutdown of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app when the law requiring a ban or sale of the app takes effect on Sunday.
The roughly 170 million US users who try to access the app will be greeted with a pop-up message directing them to a website with details about the ban, according to the Information.
Users will also be given the option of downloading their data from the app, sources familiar with the plan told the outlet.
WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Scientists have detected emanating from the nucleus of a galaxy relatively close to our Milky Way flashes of X-rays gradually increasing in frequency that seem to be coming from a white dwarf - a highly compact stellar ember - with a death wish.
The observations made using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton orbiting X-ray telescope appear to show a white dwarf nearing the point of no return - called the event horizon - as it orbits the galaxy's supermassive black hole, according to the researchers.
"It is probably the closest object we've ever observed orbiting around a supermassive black hole. This is extremely close to the black hole's event horizon," said Megan Masterson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral student in physics and lead author of the study that was presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Maryland this week and will be published in the journal Nature.
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, fears of a renewed ISIS insurgency have intensified. MintPress News has uncovered that, despite Meta’s previously strict policies on banning terrorism-related content, ISIS-linked accounts have been posting freely on its platforms.
Although Meta previously removed 26 million pieces of terrorism-related content—an impressive 99% of such material on its platform—MintPress News has revealed that content supporting ISIS, often referred to by its pejorative epithet ‘Daesh’ in the Arab world, is now flourishing on the platform. Many of these accounts are based in regions of Syria historically known as strongholds for the extremist group.
A series of seemingly pro-ISIS accounts have emerged, concentrated in areas such as Binish, Sarmeen, Jarablous, Manbij, Palmyra and Deir Ezzor—regions historically known as strongholds for the terrorist group. New accounts appear daily, with some prominently displaying ISIS flags as their profile pictures.
These accounts frequently post speeches by ISIS leaders, which remain active on the platform and often garner hundreds of likes and comments. These include videos of the group’s fighters parading with weapons in the back of SUVs, attracting significant attention and interaction on the platform.
And hire a ton of temporary H1B visa workers without rights.