Tech

SpaceX received its first U.S. Space Force contract for Starshield, its defense-focused Starlink satellite internet service. The one-year contract can reach $70 million, a U.S. Air Force representative told Bloomberg. “The contract provides for Starshield end-to-end service via the Starlink constellation, user terminals, ancillary equipment, network management and other related …

On Thursday, Fortnite maker Epic Games laid off 16% of its workforce, affecting 870 people. The company also divested Bandcamp, an online audio distribution platform it acquired last year, and spun off most of SuperAwesome, a kid-safe technology developer it acquired in 2020. Layoffs were first reported by Bloomberg. Epic …

On Thursday, the EEOC sued Tesla for tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees and retaliating against those who opposed it. Tesla faces multiple racial bias lawsuits from the federal agency that enforces civil rights laws. Tesla was sued by the California Civil Rights Department in 2022 …

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 …

In a 10-year strategic partnership, autonomous trucking startup Waabi will provide billions of miles of driverless capacity to Uber Freight. Waabi’s test fleet will begin commercial pilots with Uber Freight shippers between Dallas and Houston this week. Waabi will eventually switch to a Driver-as-a-Service model where carriers buy trucks with …