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U.S. Asks Court to Reverse Order Banning Airplane Mask Mandate to Combat COVID
The Justice Department on Tuesday asked an appeals court panel to reverse an April 2022 ruling that declared unlawful a government order requiring masks on airplanes, buses, trains, ridesharing services and at airports and other transportation hubs.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on the government’s appeal of a ruling by a U.S. district court judge in Florida that found the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lacked legal authority to issue a nationwide travel mask mandate to combat COVID-19.
The CDC issued the sweeping mask mandate in January 2021, days after Joe Biden became president.
Much of the arguments in the appeal focus on the CDC’s decision to put in place the requirements immediately rather than give the public a chance to comment on the mandate.
Michael Knowles Uncovers WEF’s Sinister Threat to Free Speech
The World Economic Forum has an innocuous name for a sinister new initiative designed to give radical globalist bureaucrats control over what people can say and see on social media, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles warned in an illuminating tweet thread Wednesday.
Called “Safety by Design,” the new scheme seeks to regulate social media by having prohibitions against “harmful” content built into the technology behind their platforms. But it looks like yet another bid by the Left to control speech it doesn’t like by deeming it dangerous, Knowles said.
“If you thought the Twitter Files were as bad as it gets for the ‘Trust & Safety’ of Big Tech merging with government, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Knowles tweeted.
Warning Issued Over ‘Dragon’s Breath’ Viral Video Trend
Indonesia is warning people against consuming liquid nitrogen after more than 20 children were harmed eating a street snack known as “dragon’s breath” that’s at the center of a dangerous new viral video trend.
The children suffered burns to their skin, severe stomach pains and food poisoning after consuming the colorful candies, according to Indonesia’s Ministry of Health, which is urging parents, teachers and local health authorities to be vigilant.
The candies are dipped in liquid nitrogen to create a vapor effect when eaten. They are popular with children, dozens of whom have uploaded clips to the short-form video app TikTok showing them blowing the fumes out of their mouths, noses and ears. One video showing the preparation of the snack by a street vendor has been viewed close to 10 million times.
Around 25 children have been hurt consuming the candies, including two who were hospitalized, said the ministry’s director general Maxi Rein Rondonuwu. No deaths have been reported.
Microsoft, Amazon and Other Tech Companies Have Laid off More Than 60,000 Employees in the Last Year
Microsoft said Wednesday that it’s letting go of 10,000 employees, which will reduce the company’s headcount by less than 5%. Amazon also began a fresh round of job cuts that are expected to eliminate more than 18,000 employees and become the largest workforce reduction in the e-retailer’s 28-year history.
Google parent company Alphabet had largely avoided layoffs until January when it cut 15% of employees from Verily, its health sciences division. Google itself has not undertaken any significant layoffs as of Jan. 18, but employees are increasingly growing worried that the ax may soon fall.
Facebook parent Meta announced its most significant round of layoffs ever in November. The company said it plans to eliminate 13% of its staff, which amounts to more than 11,000 employees.
Shortly after closing his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in late October, new owner Elon Musk cut around 3,700 Twitter employees, according to internal communications viewed by CNBC. That’s about half the staff. Since then, significantly more employees have quit after Musk changed some policies around working from home and wrote that he expected all employees to commit to a “hardcore” work environment.
Instagram Just Got an Update That Gives You More Control Over What You See in Your Feed
Instagram on Thursday launched a new set of features that helps you manage what you see in your feed and silence notifications.
The changes on Instagram, which include the option to hide posts containing any keywords users choose (such as “fitness” or “diets”), appear to seek to address concerns raised by policymakers about the platform’s impact on teens in the wake of internal documents shared by former Meta employee Frances Haugen.
The new settings include Quiet mode, which allows users to set a customized schedule to silence Instagram notifications and auto-respond to direct messages (DMs). The app will automatically prompt teens to enable quiet mode when they spend a “specific amount of time” browsing the app at night.
Instagram announced parental controls in 2021, but the platform is now taking steps to allow further control over user feeds — and to give parents more insight into their children’s Instagram habits.
TikTok Must Follow Coming EU Rules or Face Ban, Official Says
A top European Union official urged TikTok to comply with upcoming content rules or face a possible ban, a sharp change in tone from Brussels.
EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said it’s “not acceptable” that users of the platform can access “harmful and sometimes even life-threatening content” within seconds. He issued the statement after he held a video call with TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew on Thursday.
“With younger audiences comes greater responsibility,” Breton wrote. He also raised concerns that some employees of the Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. spied on journalists and that the company is transferring personal data outside of Europe.
Under the Digital Services Act, which companies must comply with by Sept. 1, large internet platforms will have to face a long list of content moderation rules or face fines of as much as 6% of their annual revenue or be banned in EU countries.
An AI Rival to ChatGPT Passed a University-Level Law and Economics Exam, and Did Better Than Many Humans, Professor Says
An AI which received funding from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried passed a university-level law and economics exam, according to a professor at Virginia’s George Mason University.
The AI, named Claude, was designed by AI safety and research firm Anthropic and was used by Alex Tabarrok to take a law and economics exam.
Claude received a “marginal pass” on a recent law and economics exam at George Mason University in Virginia, Tabarrok, an economics professor at the college wrote on the influential Marginal Revolution University blog, which he runs with fellow economist Tyler Cowen.
Tabarrok said the exam was graded blind and that he considered Claude “a competitor” and “improvement” to OpenAI’s GPT3, the tech underlying viral sensation ChatGPT.
Ireland’s WhatsApp Penalty Highlights EU Privacy Turmoil
Ireland fined WhatsApp for breaching strict European Union privacy rules in a case that has exposed divisions among EU watchdogs over how to regulate its parent company, Meta.
The chat app was ordered to pay 5.5 million euros ($5.9 million) Thursday by the Data Protection Commission for forcing users to allow personal data to be used to provide “service improvements and security” — but only after some of its European counterparts balked at its initial decision to let the company off.
In a related decision earlier this month that played out in a similar manner, the Irish watchdog hit Meta Platforms Inc. with $390 million in fines for forcing Facebook and Instagram users to agree to personalized ads based on their online activity.
In its final decision on the WhatsApp case, the commission also ordered the company to bring its data processing operations into compliance with EU privacy rules within six months.
