Mike Masnick, who founded Techdirt in 1998, writes for an influential audience of lawmakers, C.E.O.s and activists. Somehow, he’s still an optimist about the promise of technology.
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Aided by A.I. Language Models, Google’s Robots Are Getting Smart
Our sneak peek into Google’s new robotics model, RT-2, which melds artificial intelligence technology with robots.
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Google’s RT-2 AI model brings us one step closer to WALL-E
Enlarge / A Google robot controlled by RT-2. (credit: Google) On Friday, Google DeepMind announced Robotic Transformer 2 (RT-2), a “first-of-its-kind” vision-language-action (VLA) model that uses data scraped from the Internet to enable better robotic control through plain language commands. The ultimate goal is to create general-purpose robots that can navigate human environments, similar to...
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Android malware steals user credentials using optical character recognition
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Security researchers have unearthed a rare malware find: malicious Android apps that use optical character recognition to steal credentials displayed on phone screens. The malware, dubbed CherryBlos by researchers from security firm Trend Micro, has been embedded into at least four Android apps available outside of Google Play, specifically on sites...
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Most of the 100 million people who signed up for Threads stopped using it
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto) Meta’s new Twitter competitor, Threads, is looking for ways to keep users interested after more than half of the people who signed up for the text-based platform stopped actively using the app, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees in a company town hall yesterday. Threads launched on July 5...
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(BPRW) Brands Unite to Support Great Futures for America’s Youth During Back-to-School Season
(Black PR Wire) ATLANTA–(BUSINESS WIRE)– As young people are heading back to school, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the nation’s largest youth development organization, is proud to announce support from over ten partners who are uniting t…
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Facebook’s Algorithm Is ‘Influential’ but Doesn’t Necessarily Change Beliefs, Researchers Say
In four new studies, researchers found complicated results from experiments on Facebook’s and Instagram’s algorithms, suggesting there was no silver bullet to fixing the platforms.
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What Happened When 15 of Twitter’s Top Celebrities Joined Threads
We examined the daily activity of Ellen DeGeneres, Wiz Khalifa, Selena Gomez and others among Twitter’s most-followed to deduce if Threads has staying power.
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Elon Musk’s Quixotic Quest to Turn X Into an ‘Everything App’
Mr. Musk, the owner of Twitter, is the latest Silicon Valley mogul to pursue an all-in-one app, the kind that has thrived in Asia but not elsewhere.
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Researchers Poke Holes in Safety Controls of ChatGPT and Other Chatbots
A new report indicates that the guardrails for widely used chatbots can be thwarted, leading to an increasingly unpredictable environment for the technology.