The European Union opened an investigation into Snap Inc. ’s social network and escalated a probe into a number of pornography platforms as the bloc ramps up efforts to protect children online. The Snapchat inquiry will look at how the platform verifies its users’ age, how it tackles grooming and criminal activities that target underage users, and how it removes content promoting drugs and other i...
The European Union opened an investigation into Snap Inc. ’s social network and escalated a probe into a number of pornography platforms as the bloc ramps up efforts to protect children online. The Snapchat inquiry will look at how the platform verifies its users’ age, how it tackles grooming and criminal activities that target underage users, and how it removes content promoting drugs and other illegal items, the EU’s executive branch said in a statement Thursday. In parallel, the European Commission said it will move forward with a previously announced investigation into pornography platforms PornHub , Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos. The second stage of the probe comes after the commission preliminarily found the companies broke the law for not effectively preventing minors from accessing their websites. The EU’s moves come as social media companies and other internet platforms are facing increasing pressure for allegedly harmful and addictive design around the world. In a landmark case in the US, Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc. were ordered by a jury to pay damages to a 20-year-old woman who claimed her addiction to social media caused her mental health struggles. The verdict in the US will “give a very clear message that online platforms have to take seriously the risks that they are posing,” the commission’s top technology official, Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen, said at a briefing about the investigations. The commission’s probes were brought forward under the Digital Services Act, or DSA, which is the EU’s content moderation rulebook binding online platforms to standards of risk-mitigation and transparency. Companies under investigation can offer commitments to address the commission’s grievances, or potentially face fines of as much as 6% of their annual global sales. The commission has opened over a dozen investigations into online platforms since the DSA came into force in 2022, but only one of them has resulted in a fine to date. In December...
Tesla, Inc. isn't struggling with awareness. It's struggling with perception. A new EV Intelligence Report shows Tesla has slipped to the bottom of the brand rankings, even as it remains one of the most recognized names in the space. The contrast is stark — and increasingly hard to ignore. Tesla: Category Leader To Perception Laggard The report doesn't mince words: "Tesla remains at the bottom of ...
Tesla, Inc. isn't struggling with awareness. It's struggling with perception. A new EV Intelligence Report shows Tesla has slipped to the bottom of the brand rankings, even as it remains one of the most recognized names in the space. The contrast is stark — and increasingly hard to ignore. Tesla: Category Leader To Perception Laggard The report doesn't mince words: "Tesla remains at the bottom of the pack," while "Toyota and Honda continue to lead on brand positivity and trust." That perception
In week four of Rhik Samadder’s diary, our resident AI skeptic turned to HolyGPT to ask the ultimate question of why we are here I remember my very first online search, back in 2001: “What is the meaning of life?” I remember clicking through to a mysterious minimal website that told me all points of consciousness were facets of the divine wishing to perceive itself. Continue reading...
In week four of Rhik Samadder’s diary, our resident AI skeptic turned to HolyGPT to ask the ultimate question of why we are here I remember my very first online search, back in 2001: “What is the meaning of life?” I remember clicking through to a mysterious minimal website that told me all points of consciousness were facets of the divine wishing to perceive itself. Continue reading...
The 1990s love tragedy starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes is a tonic and a delight Thirty years ago, Baz Luhrmann reinvented Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a gangbanger love tragedy of the present day, with Mexico City standing in for an imaginary urban place called Verona Beach. The result was a terrific success, more of a success, I suspect, than Luhrmann ever had again; it w...
The 1990s love tragedy starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes is a tonic and a delight Thirty years ago, Baz Luhrmann reinvented Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a gangbanger love tragedy of the present day, with Mexico City standing in for an imaginary urban place called Verona Beach. The result was a terrific success, more of a success, I suspect, than Luhrmann ever had again; it was irreverent and questioning in just the right way, a sunburst of energy, but instinctively respectful to the story, with Luhrmann cutting the original text with co-screenwriter Craig Pearce but not changing or modernising it. It is full of life, extravagantly joyful, then passionately sad, and its lurid 90s crime-chic design doesn’t look dated. And in this Romeo and Juliet, Luhrmann never suspended the forward momentum to indulge campy musical setpieces, perhaps because Shakespeare’s language is the music and the dance; the text keeps the interpretation grounded. The 21-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio, yet to have his massive breakthrough in Titanic (another story of starcrossed lovers), plays young Romeo Montague, whose family is locked into an unexplained Sicilian-style blood feud with the Capulet family. Romeo is a young idler and would-be poet, scribbling lines of verse into a notebook, and at this stage dreamily moping over a young woman called Rosaline, whose silent offstage existence is the play’s minor incidental mystery. (Brian Dennehy and Christina Pickles play his parents and they have much less of a role than the elder Capulets.) Continue reading...
It could do with more robust political context, but this Spanish-made documentary is still a loving, insightful delve into rave’s lasting influence and lost-weekend logistics This Spanish documentary about the 80s and 90s rave revolution in the UK has a similar energy to the archetypal “4am guy”: eyes shining, gabbling non-sequiturs with strangely infectious enthusiasm. A pantheon of electronic mu...
It could do with more robust political context, but this Spanish-made documentary is still a loving, insightful delve into rave’s lasting influence and lost-weekend logistics This Spanish documentary about the 80s and 90s rave revolution in the UK has a similar energy to the archetypal “4am guy”: eyes shining, gabbling non-sequiturs with strangely infectious enthusiasm. A pantheon of electronic music greats – including Fabio, Orbital’s Hartnoll brothers, Slipmatt, Goldie and the Prodigy’s Leeroy Thornhill – step up to provide deep dancefloor testimony that, though it could be better structured, still manages copious insights. Director Eduardo Cubillo Blasco’s obvious interest in rave’s logistics – the artwork, promotion, booking and myriad other aspects – suggests he may have had a lost weekend or two himself. When it came to the early outdoor and warehouse parties, there was artful dodging aplenty: as well as decoy lorries to fool police, some organisers played on legal sophistries, arguing their events were not illegal, but unlicensed; while, by issuing tickets with stubs on for ravers to fill out with personal details, many gatherings tried to qualify as private members’ clubs. In terms of personnel, female DJs were scarce – but women originally dominated the bookings, until they were shunted aside when it became clear how lucrative rave was becoming. Continue reading...
Andy Ogles’ election victories in Tennessee are a product of an electoral system broken by gerrymandering Andy Ogles represents more Muslims than any other Tennessee congressman . Yet he has no interest in representing them. He doesn’t even want them in the country. “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” the third-term Republican wrote on Twitter/X last week. He’s proudly doubled down on his ...
Andy Ogles’ election victories in Tennessee are a product of an electoral system broken by gerrymandering Andy Ogles represents more Muslims than any other Tennessee congressman . Yet he has no interest in representing them. He doesn’t even want them in the country. “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” the third-term Republican wrote on Twitter/X last week. He’s proudly doubled down on his incendiary statement, which joins a long list of Islamophobic beliefs . During last year’s New York City mayoral campaign, Ogles called Zohran Mamdani “a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology”. The US naturalization system, he said, required “any alignments with communism or terrorist activities to be disclosed. I’m doubtful he disclosed them. If this is confirmed, put him on the first flight back to Uganda.” Continue reading...
Documents obtained by Guardian show company increased different fees to ‘offset revenue loss’ from FTC rule change Following a wave of regulations banning the surprise fees that appear at the end of a transaction, Ticketmaster stopped charging the extra few dollars it added to each order at checkout. Typically shared with the venue, the order processing fee was a boon to a global platform that sel...
Documents obtained by Guardian show company increased different fees to ‘offset revenue loss’ from FTC rule change Following a wave of regulations banning the surprise fees that appear at the end of a transaction, Ticketmaster stopped charging the extra few dollars it added to each order at checkout. Typically shared with the venue, the order processing fee was a boon to a global platform that sells hundreds of millions of tickets a year. But documents obtained by the Guardian show that while Ticketmaster eliminated this fee to comply with the rules, the company simply raised the cost of different fees in a number of its venues to ensure it didn’t lose money. Continue reading...
My eternally exiled father was dying and witnessing a siege on Gaza. Afterwards I could go home – but he couldn’t The last fight we ever had, my father and I, occurred on a night in May 2021 on the eve of his first chemo treatment. At this point in our story, I was a new mother, and he was a year and a half from his death. To treat his stage four prostate cancer, he had been given a series of expe...
My eternally exiled father was dying and witnessing a siege on Gaza. Afterwards I could go home – but he couldn’t The last fight we ever had, my father and I, occurred on a night in May 2021 on the eve of his first chemo treatment. At this point in our story, I was a new mother, and he was a year and a half from his death. To treat his stage four prostate cancer, he had been given a series of experimental hormone treatments, which had put him in a sort of male menopause and which had just begun to fail. This last fight of ours also happened to fall right in the middle of that previous siege of Gaza (before the more recent one none of us will ever forget), which itself resulted in the destruction of 40 schools and four hospitals. That night in May, we were in the rented ranch house in Arizona, the one with the broken dishwasher and the blue pool slide that had not been functional for decades, the house with its view of the sky and faint hint of the McDowell mountains. Though my father had lived in Palestine, Syria, Kuwait and Italy, he had fled to the Sonoran Desert after going bankrupt in New York in the early 1990s and loved the dramatic landscapes of the west with a fealty he had for nowhere else. Whereas I missed New York like a lover. I felt unmoored, restless. Exiled. Continue reading...
Clear Secure has seen jump in new sign-ups amid the partial government shutdown as TSA workers go unpaid Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox As travelers continue to face sprawling security lines across the US, one company is thriving amid the ongoing chaos. Clear Secure, a biometric firm that allows travelers to bypass Transportation Security Administrati...
Clear Secure has seen jump in new sign-ups amid the partial government shutdown as TSA workers go unpaid Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox As travelers continue to face sprawling security lines across the US, one company is thriving amid the ongoing chaos. Clear Secure, a biometric firm that allows travelers to bypass Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lines at more than 60 airports in the US, has reportedly seen a jump in new sign-ups this month amid the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown. Continue reading...
Oil is used to power the supply chain, from machines that manufacture a cell phone to diesel that powers a truck Fertilizer. Phones and laptops. Flights. These are just some of the products made from or powered by crucial materials that ship through the strait of Hormuz, which still remains effectively closed due to the US-Israel war on Iran. As the war approaches its fifth week, global oil shorta...
Oil is used to power the supply chain, from machines that manufacture a cell phone to diesel that powers a truck Fertilizer. Phones and laptops. Flights. These are just some of the products made from or powered by crucial materials that ship through the strait of Hormuz, which still remains effectively closed due to the US-Israel war on Iran. As the war approaches its fifth week, global oil shortages are forcing countries to take severe measures to save their reserves as Iran continues to block oil shipments. Continue reading...
A high-level probe in Nepal holds former prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli and other senior government officials responsible for criminal negligence over the shootings in last year’s deadly youth uprising that killed 76 people, as the leak of the crucial report to a local publication has triggered criticisms due to its sensitive nature. The committee, led by former judge Gauri Bahadur Karki, has reco...
A high-level probe in Nepal holds former prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli and other senior government officials responsible for criminal negligence over the shootings in last year’s deadly youth uprising that killed 76 people, as the leak of the crucial report to a local publication has triggered criticisms due to its sensitive nature. The committee, led by former judge Gauri Bahadur Karki, has recommended investigation and prosecution of Oli, his home minister Ramesh Lekhak, and former Inspector...
Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Thursday for taking bribes and misusing political donations, dealing a heavy blow to the opposition party he built. Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in 2019 and finished last in a three-way race for the island’s top political job in 2024, did not plead guilty, according to Taiwanese media reports. The TPP is the th...
Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Thursday for taking bribes and misusing political donations, dealing a heavy blow to the opposition party he built. Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in 2019 and finished last in a three-way race for the island’s top political job in 2024, did not plead guilty, according to Taiwanese media reports. The TPP is the third-biggest party in Taiwanese politics and has been in talks with the larger Kuomintang (KMT) to...
Signal AI, a global leader in AI-driven reputation and risk intelligence, announces its acquisition of Memo, the world's first and only platform providing readership data directly from publishers. Memo currently serves the world's leading Fortune 500 customers, including Google, Pepsi, Walmart, Keurig Dr. Pepper, and PayPal.
Signal AI, a global leader in AI-driven reputation and risk intelligence, announces its acquisition of Memo, the world's first and only platform providing readership data directly from publishers. Memo currently serves the world's leading Fortune 500 customers, including Google, Pepsi, Walmart, Keurig Dr. Pepper, and PayPal.