News

A new report by a social media watchdog group details how steroid content is exploding in some TikTok communities, promoting dangerous and illegal substances and unattainable body image ideals for boys and young men. In the last three years, U.S. users have watched over 580 million videos tagged with hashtags …

On Wednesday, Reddit announced it was updating its privacy settings in an effort to standardize ad personalization and account visibility controls. Specifically, it’s doing away with the option to disable ad personalization based on users’ Reddit behavior. Unnamed “select countries” will still have the option to opt out, the company …

Data meshes have been discussed for some time. Data can be accessed without first being moved to a data lake, which is a large-scale central repository, or a data warehouse, which is an enterprise system used for analyzing data from a variety of sources. Big names in the industry like …

On Wednesday, Adobe released Photoshop for the web to everyone subscribed to a paid Adobe Creative Cloud plan. Firefly-powered AI tools like generative fill and generative expand are now available in the web beta after almost two years of development. The firm claimed that the web-based toolbar’s tools are organized …

While API access may be the norm for the most popular language models, open models (in the broadest sense of the term) are increasingly in demand. French artificial intelligence startup Mistral, which raised a sizable seed round in June, has just released its first model, which it claims outperforms others …

After being detained upon arrival at a U.S. airport, having his phone searched, and being ordered to testify before a grand jury, only to have prosecutors backtrack and drop the investigation, a U.S. security researcher is warning of a chilling effect. After returning from a trip to Japan on September …

What is a Surface event without Panos Panay? Microsoft answered the existential question at a NYC Windows event today. After longtime division head Panay’s abrupt departure earlier this week, CEO Satya Nadella took the stage and unleashed the big guns. Hardware—specifically the Surface Laptop Go 3 and Studio 2—was the …

Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, is shutting down its Circle feature, which allowed users to share posts with a select group. The social network mimicked Instagram’s “Close Friends” feature. Users can no longer add people to their circle after October 31, according to the company. X will deprecate Circles on …

Microsoft’s restructured acquisition of Activision is being considered by the UK’s competition watchdog. In an update on its ongoing assessment today, it said the deal “makes important changes that substantially address the concerns it set out in relation to the original transaction earlier this year”. The Competition and Markets Authority …

Meta-owned Twitter rival Threads now allows account switching without logging out. The social networking app announced Thursday that users can swap accounts on its mobile apps by long pressing the bottom right profile icon. After the long press, tap “Add profile” to create a new profile. Switching between work and …