This week the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on House Administration convened an unusually well-attended hearing with a panel of government technology leaders from an alphabet soup of congressional agencies, including the Library of Congress (LOC), Government Publishing Office (GPO), Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the House Chief Administrative Office (CAO). The purpose of this gathering of the acronyms: to discuss how AI could make Congress govern more effectively.
Next month, in EU member states, third-party app stores will appear on the iPhone for the first time in the device’s history. The change was prompted by the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is designed to ensure that there’s more competition in the tech industry by forcing giants such as Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon to open up some of their platforms so that smaller companies can better compete. In Apple’s case, the DMA mandates
Back in July 2007, I got my hands on the hottest tech product of the day: the original iPhone with 4GB of storage. It cost $499. Stupidly, I opened and used mine. I say “stupidly” because almost exactly 16 years later an original, unopened iPhone with 4GB of storage sold at auction for $190,373.
Now, 17 years later, do I have a chance at redemption? Could the latest first-generation Apple device, the Vision Pro, which went on sale to the public yesterday, appreciate in
Spotify Technology announced a new multiyear deal with comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday, in a bid to tap into the popularity of his show to drive its advertising revenue.
The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which debuted in 2009, has been an exclusive offering on the music-streaming platform since 2020, with the company touting it as the most-listened-to podcast globally.
Spotify also said it will soon make Joe Rogan’s show available on other platforms, such
Overnight, TikTok video feeds started going silent—not as some sort of weird Charlie Chaplin homage, but because Universal Music Group did, as previously threatened, pull its expansive song catalog, igniting a “Mute-pocalypse” where videos featuring music by many of the industry’s biggest names (Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Lana Del Rey, Bad Bunny, Britney Spears, Drake, Post Malone, Fleetwood Mac) were suddenly flagged for copyright infringement.
The reason
The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI late last year over the tech company’s use of the newspaper’s journalism to train its large language model (LLM) represented a major move in unprecedented times. It also could portend a shift in the Big Tech/content creator relationship—one that was fraught to begin with and might now turn increasingly litigious. At the heart of the suit is the question of data, and whether the companies behind LLMs can claim ȁ
This year, something unusually dark is happening in an industry that is, by design, quite used to handling bad news. In a strong economy, with unemployment near a 50-year low, virtually every single part of the news business—digital media, local news, TV, print, podcasts, and documentaries—is laying off people at the same time. Audiences for news are shrinking. Thousands of journalists are losing jobs.
In conversations I’ve had recently, with both execs and work
From healthcare to Hollywood, the emergence of artificial intelligence has dominated the conversation in almost every industry in the past year. Another area where AI is becoming more prominent? The death industry.
The idea is that after a loved one dies, you can use AI to “speak” with them—and if it feels like something right out of Black Mirror, that’s because it kind of is. In a 2013 episode of the sci-fi series, a widow copes with the sudden death of
Snapchat owner Snap has initiated a battery recall for its Pixy Flying Camera. The company began selling the selfie-taking mini drone in April 2022 to much fanfare but withdrew the device from sale just months later during a broader ad slump at Snap. Now it seems the product is truly done since the batteries of all the existing units are being recalled and not replaced. Here’s what you need to know.
- What’s the recall about? According to the recall
Last June, when Apple streamed the unveiling of its Apple Vision Pro “spatial computing headset” during its WWDC conference, a special guest was part of the festivities: Disney CEO Bob Iger. His appearance wasn’t exactly a shocker. After all, the two companies have had a famously friendly relationship for many years. Moreover, Disney prides itself on being an early adopter of new technologies—a trait dating to its earliest days, when Walt Disney himself was quick t