Vanessa Bryant To Donate Proceeds From Kobe Crash Photos Lawsuit To Charity
Vanessa Bryant plans to donate proceeds from the $16 million judgment she won Wednesday in a lawsuit against Los Angeles County to a foundation named for her husband Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna, … https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/vanessa-bryant-donate-proceeds-kobe-003316156.html
Queens motorist, 20, drove car straight into Long island home: cops
A Queens man was arrested after he allegedly plowed his car through a Long Island home early Thursday — wrecking the kitchen, cops said. …read more
https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/driver-20-from-queens-arrested-in-crash-that-wrecked-li-home-cops/
Ford Trucks in $1.7 Billion Verdict Weren’t Subject to Tougher Safety Rules
Auto regulators later applied stiffer roof-strength requirements to heavier trucks. Ford maintains the design was safe. …read more
How to microwave corn on the cob and other kernels of knowledge
When it comes to produce that is fresh, sweet, and tasty, it doesn’t get any better than sweet corn.
As a Stripe investor cuts the value of its stake, more evidence of fintech valuation pressure
News that T. Rowe Price cut the value of its stake in fintech giant Stripe is making headlines this week, the new data point coming in the wake of similar cuts by other investment houses regarding their ownership in late-stage startups.
However, while it is true that T. Rowe Price reduced the value of its stake in Stripe, part of its Global Technology Fund, the latest reduction in its worth is not unique. Not only has Fidelity also disclosed that it now values its Stripe shares at a discount to prior marks, but the latest T. Rowe Price news also comes after a similar cut in March.
Stripe is not under unique pressure; other fintech companies both public and private have seen their valuations reduced by revamped 409A valuations, new funding rounds, public offerings and a broader selloff in the stock market that has broadsided financial technology companies in many cases. (Recall that Stripe’s interval valuation declined earlier this summer.)
Twitter’s VP of engineering to depart for Meta amid cybersecurity concerns, Musk takeover
As Twitter navigates a grueling legal battle with Elon Musk and his plans to acquire the company, yet another executive is leaving, according to a report by Insider, which Twitter also confirmed.
Sandeep Pandey, the vice president of Engineering, is leaving Twitter after more than a decade to join Meta, formerly known as Facebook. Pandey joined the company back in 2012 and worked his way up from staff engineer to the VP role.
In an email to TechCrunch, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed Pandey was leaving the company and said his departure is natural given industry trends. Twitter emphasized it remains focused on managing the company effectively.
TechCrunch reached out to Meta but did not receive an immediate comment.
According to Insider, which first reported the move, Pandey will work on Meta’s AI and machine learning teams. The move is notable not only for its impact on Twitter, but also because Meta earlier this year said it would scale back hiring and cut its overhead. Additionally, the company posted its first-ever quarterly revenue decline during its second quarter and is facing an FTC lawsuit over an M&A deal in the VR space.
This isn’t the first time Twitter executives have left the company this year. Since Elon Musk announced a potential takeover, Katrina Lane, the former VP of Twitter service; Ilya Brown, VP of Health; and Max Schmeiser, head of data science, departed back in May. Twitter also fired Kayvon Beykpour, former head of product, and Bruce Falck, former head of product revenue, as the company attempted to reorganize.
Musk originally offered to purchase the company for $44 billion and later backed out of the deal, claiming the company lied about the number of spam accounts (aka “bots”) present on the platform.
Most recently, Twitter has come under scrutiny following privacy concerns. The former head of security, Peiter Zatko, this week accused the company of cybersecurity negligence ranging from flawed data protection to federal violation in a complaint filed with the FTC, SEC and Justice Department. The allegations were dismissed by Twitter saying they presented a false narrative.
Following the release of Zatko’s information, Ireland and France’s data protection authorities told TechCrunch they would be following up on the whistleblower’s complaint. The U.S. Senate will also hear testimony from Zatko about Twitter’s security failures on September 13, 2022.
In addition to the complaints this year, Twitter issued a hiring freeze in May and laid off close to 30% of its talent acquisition team two months later.
Meta and Twitter purge web of accounts spreading pro-US propaganda abroad
In the post-2016 U.S. election world, secretive online campaigns designed to influence global politics are nothing new. And while U.S. adversaries like Russia, Iran and China have been linked to government propaganda on major social media sites, there’s been little evidence to date of the U.S. and its allies leveraging the same techniques to shape international opinion, though it’s difficult to imagine they wouldn’t.
This week, for the first time, social networks in partnership with social analytics research group Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory have surfaced a pro-U.S. influence campaign, operating across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media apps. Both Meta and Twitter stopped short of attributing the activity to any specific government or organization, with Twitter listing the campaign’s “presumptive countries of origin” as the U.S. and the U.K. while Meta identified the U.S. as the “country of origin” for the activity.
The network of accounts sought to influence public opinion in Asia and the Middle East by promoting pro-Western viewpoints in those regions, including criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The accounts sometimes linked to news stories from U.S.-funded media outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other websites with financial ties to the U.S. military.
“We believe this activity represents the most extensive case of covert pro-Western [influence operations] on social media to be reviewed and analyzed by open-source researchers to date,” Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory wrote in the paper analyzing the activity.
Like online influence campaigns with origins elsewhere, this operation also relied on fake personas sporting AI-generated faces made with a technique known as GANs (generative adversarial networks). These artificially generated faces are used to evade detection, but because their visual signatures often end up with small anomalies, GANs can sometimes be easily detected. Using the fake personas, the influence campaign posed as independent journalists, using short videos, memes, hashtag campaigns and petitions to drive its messaging.
In spite of its multipronged approach, the campaign wasn’t able to get much traction, with most posts and tweets only picking up a “handful” of likes or interactions. Less than a fifth of the fake accounts accrued more than 1,000 followers, though two of the more popular accounts linked to the campaign explicitly claimed connections to the U.S. military.
According to the researchers, most of the accounts began operating in 2019, though a small group targeting Afghanistan began posting on Twitter in late 2017. Out of the fake accounts, some activity continued until July 2022 on Facebook and Instagram.
The wing of the influence campaign focused on Central Asia operated across Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube and two Russia-specific social platforms. Accounts targeting Russian-speaking users in the region pushed narratives that praised U.S. aid and criticized Russian foreign policy and China’s domestic treatment of Muslim minority communities.
Another cluster of accounts and pages concentrated on spreading pro-Western ideas in the Persian language, at times promoting …read more
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/25/meta-and-twitter-graphika-us-influence-campaign/
2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV begins production in Alabama
Mercedes-Benz began production of its first battery-electric SUV for the U.S. market on Thursday, fronting a movement expected to bring auto manufacturing onshore over the next decade.
The 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV will be made at the automaker’s plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, using batteries supplied by a battery factory it opened nearby in Bibb County in April.
Spurred by inflation, geopolitical conflict and volatile supply for materials, global automakers have begun large-scale efforts to move operations to the U.S. The Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress this month intends to turbocharge the growth by providing manufacturers with $40 billion in tax credits and requiring that EVs eligible for tax credits be made with more American-made parts.
So far, car companies and suppliers have announced more than $38 billion in investment through 2026 to boost battery production in the U.S., according to AlixPartners. Major projects include Panasonic’s $4 billion battery plant in Kansas, which is slated to be one of the largest lithium-ion battery factories in the world, and Hyundai’s $5.5 billion EV and battery manufacturing facility in Georgia.
The five-passenger EQS SUV is based on Mercedes’ largest utility vehicle, the GLS, and underpinned by the same modular architecture used for Mercedes’ EQS flagship and EQE midsize sedans. Using a common platform allows the automaker to scale operations quickly.
An optional third row boosts the SUV’s seating capacity to seven, making the EQS SUV one of the largest fully electric utility vehicles in the popular full-size utility vehicle category. It features the MBUX Hyperscreen, a three-screen system that merges under scratch-resistant glass to appear as a single, 56-inch display.
The SUV will come in two flavors: the 335-horsepower EQS 450+ base model and a high-performance EQS 580 4MATIC version that achieves 536 horsepower. It can travel more than 372 miles on a full battery charge, according to WLTP estimates.
Pricing has not been announced.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/25/2023-mercedes-benz-eqs-suv-begins-production-in-alabama/
Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Refunds Borrowers Who Paid During Pause
Borrowers can request a refund by calling their loan servicer directly. …read more
How Taiwan is countering Chinese disinformation
As China ramps up its fake news campaign, the Taiwanese are finding ways to fight back. They’ve formed unique alliances with their government and are working to restore public trust. …read more