Its Technical

[ap215]

Governor Newsom signs bills to further strengthen California’s leadership in protecting children online

SACRAMENTO – Governor Newsom today signed new landmark legislation to further strengthen the state’s protections for children online and create safeguards for new and emerging technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI). The legislation adds required features for platforms and products such as age verification, protocols to address suicide and self-harm, warnings regarding social media and companion chatbots, and stronger penalties for those who profit from illegal deepfakes — helping to ensure children’s safety remains front and center.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/13/gover ... en-online/

[Number6]

Governor Newsom signs bills to further strengthen California’s leadership in protecting children online

SACRAMENTO – Governor Newsom today signed new landmark legislation to further strengthen the state’s protections for children online and create safeguards for new and emerging technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI). The legislation adds required features for platforms and products such as age verification, protocols to address suicide and self-harm, warnings regarding social media and companion chatbots, and stronger penalties for those who profit from illegal deepfakes — helping to ensure children’s safety remains front and center.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/10/13/gover ... en-online/

Conservatives will be up in arms because they'll see that as being anti-GOP (Group of Pedophiles).

[ZoWie]

BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c5y8k7k6v1rt

Amazon Web Services says it has fixed the underlying problem that has disrupted many of the world's biggest websites and apps, but a full recovery will take some more time

Snapchat, Duolingo, Zoom and Roblox were among the sites hit, as well as Lloyds and Halifax banks, the UK's National Rail and HMRC - what else has been impacted?

Platform outage monitor Downdetector says it has seen more than 6.5 million reports globally, affecting more than 1,000 companies

However, there have been "significant signs of recovery", AWS says, and most requests should now be succeeding

Internet has a lot of eggs in a very small number of corporate baskets. The potential for chaos is very high.

[ap215]

Judge sides with online publishers in Google ad tech antitrust case

A New York federal judge ruled in favor of online news publishers and advertisers who allege Google unlawfully monopolized the digital advertising market and diverted revenue that would have otherwise gone to news operations.

U.S. District Court Judge P. Kevin Castel granted partial summary judgement for Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain and owner of USA TODAY, the Daily Mail, digital media company Inform and a proposed class of smaller publishers, holding Google liable for illegally monopolizing its advertising placement technology business.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/20 ... 950042007/

[ap215]

Google and Epic Games reach settlement for antitrust lawsuit

Google and Epic Games have reached a settlement that would bring their years-long court battle to a close. The companies have filed a proposal in the federal court of San Francisco, asking US District Judge James Donato to approve a modified version of the order he originally imposed on Google when it lost the case. "Together with Epic Games we have filed a proposed set of changes to Android and Google Play that focus on expanding developer choice and flexibility, lowering fees, and encouraging more competition all while keeping users safe," said Sameer Samat, the President of Android Ecosystem at Google, on X.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney praised the proposal for "genuinely [doubling] down on Android's original vision as an open platform to streamline competing store installs globally, reduce service fees for developers on Google Play and enable third-party in-app and web payments." Epic Games sued Google in 2020, accusing it of an illegal monopoly on app distribution and in-app billing services for Android devices.

https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/googl ... 19374.html

[ap215]

Meta wins FTC antitrust trial that focused on WhatsApp, Instagram

Meta won its high-profile antitrust case against the Federal Trade Commission, which had accused the company of holding a monopoly in social networking.

In a memorandum opinion released Tuesday, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said the FTC failed to prove its argument. The case, initially filed by the FTC five years ago, centered on Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/18/meta-wi ... agram.html

[ap215]

This tech bro hopes Trump's boat bombings will bring big bucks

We sometimes forget that while super gross hyperconservative tech creep Peter Thiel founded Palantir Technologies, the data management/AI/surveillance juggernaut, it was co-founded and is currently run by super gross hyperconservative tech creep Alex Karp—and boy does Alex have Some Thoughts.

Have you been worried that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s gleeful bombing of civilian boats in international waters an illegal and unconstitutional war crime? Karp is too! His solution, however, is probably a bit different than yours, unless you are also a super gross hyperconservative tech creep.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1 ... medium=web

[ap215]

Netflix Wins the Warner Bros. Discovery Bidding War, Enters Exclusive Deal Talks

Warner Bros. Discovery is moving forward with exclusive deal talks with Netflix, TheWrap has learned.

WBD has selected Netflix after the streaming giant offered $30 a share for the studio and streaming assets, according to two people familiar with the deal talks. The deal also includes a $5 billion break-up fee to match the terms that Paramount added with its bid.

https://www.thewrap.com/netflix-wins-th ... eal-talks/

[ZoWie]

Interesting how discussion of tech has become largely indistinguishable from discussion of upper class financial machinations. Kind of the same thing that happened to the entertainment business.

[ap215]

The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year

Jensen Huang needs a moment.

The CEO of Nvidia enters a cavernous ­studio at the company’s Bay Area headquarters and hunches over a table, his head bowed.

https://time.com/7339685/person-of-the- ... rchitects/

[ZoWie]

We needed a comprehensive global program to discover and implement ways to deal with the adverse consequences of industrialization.

We got a class war followed by the automation of thought itself.

This is not satisfactory.

[ZoWie]

Apparently I'm not the only one tired of getting LLM chat instead of my links when I search for something.

BIG reaction to Firefox announcing its impending morph into "A modern AI browser." Nearly all of it is negative. Firefox had been getting new users who were bailing from Chrome and all its Google AI and backdoor shit, now the net is melting down with "Et tu, Mozilla?" type rants.

It's a THING. #1 topic on BlueSky. All negative.

I suppose I'll check into Waterfox.

Will this industry finally make me hate computers?

[Number6]

Waymo cars stopped during the San Fransisco blackout.

A massive power outage in San Francisco over the weekend led Waymo self-driving taxis to stop working around the city.

Videos posted to social media showed Waymo robotaxis halted in the middle of city streets and intersections with their hazard lights flashing, as traffic jams grew and drivers zigzagged around the stopped cars.

Waymo initially paused all service in the Bay Area following the outage, but has since resumed its operations, a spokesperson said in a statement.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36zdxl41jro

[ZoWie]

Yup. The Nooz in LA has gotten in almost as big a lather about this as they have regarding the "cataclysmic" rain storm that might even dump FIVE WHOLE INCHES FIVE COUNT 'EM FIVE on LA.

The Fire Department had already put the burn areas on standby for evacuation. An apocalyptic Christmas just got more apocalyptic, if you watch the Nooz. The Weather Channel is telling people how to fill sandbags (there's a trick to it).

I've declared a TV Nooz moratorium until afternoon of 12/25. They alternate between what drumpf has done to make America great again, and speculation on whether there still will be a Los Angeles standing on 12/26. If those get dull, they tell us that people are traveling. They stand in front of empty counters at LAX and talk about the mobs at the airport. They're really big on the Waymo cars in SF. They predict something worse here. They run 8 month old stand-ups of chaos at the Waymo lot in Santa Monica as if they were breaking news.

And they called the movies the fantasy factory..............................

[Number6]

Yup. The Nooz in LA has gotten in almost as big a lather about this as they have regarding the "cataclysmic" rain storm that might even dump FIVE WHOLE INCHES FIVE COUNT 'EM FIVE on LA.

The Fire Department had already put the burn areas on standby for evacuation. An apocalyptic Christmas just got more apocalyptic, if you watch the Nooz. The Weather Channel is telling people how to fill sandbags (there's a trick to it).

I've declared a TV Nooz moratorium until afternoon of 12/25. They alternate between what drumpf has done to make America great again, and speculation on whether there still will be a Los Angeles standing on 12/26. If those get dull, they tell us that people are traveling. They stand in front of empty counters at LAX and talk about the mobs at the airport. They're really big on the Waymo cars in SF. They predict something worse here. They run 8 month old stand-ups of chaos at the Waymo lot in Santa Monica as if they were breaking news.

And they called the movies the fantasy factory..............................

Considering Southern California is a desert which mean we don't get much rain, whenever a big rain storm comes they go all out on it. I don't blame them since most people wouldn't be prepared for the rain storms without the media. If the storm was only dumping a half-inch of rain that wouldn't be much of a news item. However, the storm that's hitting Southern California is expected to dump 5.5 inches of rain over LA in the next couple of days. LA averages about 12 inches of rain a year so having just less than half that amount falling in a short period of time is worth the media hype.

Remember, back in the 70s when LA had big storms people living in the hills would unroll large sheets of plastic on the slopes to prevent the rain from saturating the hills causing hill slides.

[ZoWie]

People did used to put out those huge plastic sheets. I've seen far worse rain storms than this one. It'll be hard to beat the one when I was a kid and we woke up with a mud hill where our back yard had been. Another 20 feet and you wouldn't be reading this.

It's just that the shootings and throat-cuttings and our "president" had already put a damper on this Christmas, and now with five inches predicted in 3 days, that just about does it for this year.

Also I've been running Windy, a free download that I highly recommend, and it's crunching data from 3 prediction models, all of them showing a true real genuine atmospheric river/ pineapple express/ whatever you call it at your house.

I hope no one around here still thinks climate change is liberal propaganda. I won't listen to that whopper any more.

[ap215]

New York to require social media platforms to display mental health warnings

Dec 26 (Reuters) - Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users’ mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday.

"Keeping New Yorkers safe has been my top priority since taking office, and that includes protecting our kids from the potential harms of social media features that encourage excessive use," Hochul said in a statement.

https://archive.ph/20251226184616/https ... 0-1401.218

[ZoWie]

Good idea, but I doubt most people will read them.

[ap215]

Disney to pay $10 million over alleged children’s privacy violations

The Department of Justice said Disney will pay the government $10 million after allegedly violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. A federal judge on Tuesday approved a settlement between Disney and the Federal Trade Commission.

Federal prosecutors said Disney failed to properly label its YouTube content as directed to children. All YouTube content creators are required to indicate whether videos are intended for children. Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, YouTube cannot collect data on videos intended for children.

https://www.scrippsnews.com/business/co ... violations

[ap215]

Like you said it before Z anything The GOP touches it turns into shit Neal Mohan and anyone from The GOP in YouTube need to be replaced

YouTube relaxes monetization guidelines for some controversial topics

YouTube is updating its advertiser-friendly content guidelines to allow more videos on controversial issues to earn full ad revenue, as long as they’re dramatized or discussed in a non-graphic manner. These controversial topics include self-harm, abortion, suicide, and domestic and sexual abuse. YouTube notes that content on child abuse or eating disorders will remain ineligible for full monetization.

YouTube announced the change this week in a video on its Creator Insider channel.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/16/youtu ... um=organic

[ap215]

FTC plans to appeal Meta monopoly decision

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Tuesday that it plans to appeal a November ruling finding that Meta did not have a monopoly over personal social networking.

The agency, which sued the Facebook parent in 2020, suffered a key loss late last year when a federal judge determined the tech giant competes in a broader market with companies like TikTok and YouTube.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5 ... /?tbref=hp

[ap215]

Larry Ellison's leadership wrecking TikTok has officially begun

Newsom probing TikTok over alleged suppression of anti-Trump content

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday he's launching a probe into allegations that TikTok censored content critical of President Trump.

The Democrat, one of Mr. Trump's most vocal critics, said on social media, "It's time to investigate. I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... ocialshare

[ap215]

Tech giants head to landmark US trial over social media addiction claims

For the first time, a huge group of parents, teens and school districts is taking on the world’s most powerful social media companies in open court, accusing the tech giants of intentionally designing their products to be addictive. The blockbuster legal proceedings may see multiple CEOs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, face harsh questioning.

A long-awaited series of trials kicks off in Los Angeles superior court on Tuesday, in which hundreds of US families will allege that Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube’s platforms harm children. Once young people are hooked, the plaintiffs allege, they fall prey to depression, eating disorders, self-harm and other mental health issues. Approximately 1,600 plaintiffs are included in the proceedings, involving more than 350 families and 250 school districts.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ok-youtube

[ap215]

ABC’s ‘The View’ facing FCC investigation in ‘equal time’ crackdown

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reportedly launched an investigation into ABC’s “The View.”

“Fake News is not getting a free pass anymore,” an unnamed FCC source told Fox News on Friday.

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2026/02/07 ... n-1620845/

[ZoWie]

This is a joke, right? You can't get through a newscast without hearing everything that the president has to say, but now they want to suppress what opponents say in campaign appearances?

The FCC should stick to licensing radio transmitters. That process has become so bureaucratic that you need a communications lawyer to renew existing licenses. The system is broken and nobody cares.