August 2024 – Page 93 – Tech News Feed

Reddit is down with a ‘try again later’ error message

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit is experiencing a widespread outage that’s impacting the entire site and subreddits. If you try and visit Reddit right now, you’ll be met with a “Server error. Try again later” message in a red banner at the top of the site. The same outage error can be found on subreddits and individual posts, too.
The status page for Reddit says the site is currently experiencing “degraded performance” and that engineers are “currently investigating this issue.” Reddit went down shortly after 4PM ET, and the latest status update was posted at 4:16PM ET.
This latest outage follows similar issues with Reddit in April, where users were met with the same “try again later” message after a back-end issue knocked Reddit completely offline. In recent months, Reddit has been fighting AI bots and striking deals with OpenAI, and the internet’s forum even went public with an initial $6.5 billion valuation.

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit is experiencing a widespread outage that’s impacting the entire site and subreddits. If you try and visit Reddit right now, you’ll be met with a “Server error. Try again later” message in a red banner at the top of the site. The same outage error can be found on subreddits and individual posts, too.

The status page for Reddit says the site is currently experiencing “degraded performance” and that engineers are “currently investigating this issue.” Reddit went down shortly after 4PM ET, and the latest status update was posted at 4:16PM ET.

This latest outage follows similar issues with Reddit in April, where users were met with the same “try again later” message after a back-end issue knocked Reddit completely offline. In recent months, Reddit has been fighting AI bots and striking deals with OpenAI, and the internet’s forum even went public with an initial $6.5 billion valuation.

What Is Post-Quantum Cryptography? – NIST

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Bluesky adds ‘anti-toxicity’ tools and aims to integrate ‘a Community Notes-like’ feature in the future

Bluesky on Wednesday introduced the ability to hide replies, as well as a way to detach your original post from someone’s quote post.
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Bluesky on Wednesday introduced the ability to hide replies, as well as a way to detach your original post from someone’s quote post.

AI company Midjourney teases hardware product in a new form factor

It hired a hardware chief who previously worked on Apple Vision Pro.

Responding to this meme image of a wizard with an orb from the I.C.E. book Middle-earth: Valar and Maiar, Midjourney’s founder joked that the new hardware form factor might be an orb. (credit: I.C.E.)

Midjourney, a company best known for its robust AI image-generation tool, has publicly announced that it’s “getting into hardware” and has invited job-seekers to apply to join its new hardware division.

The company shared the announcement on its official X account earlier today.

Midjourney founder David Holz previously worked at a hardware company; he was CTO of Leap Motion. A few months ago, he hired Ahmad Abbas, whom he worked with at Leap Motion. Abbas also worked at Apple for five years as a hardware manager working on the Vision Pro headset. His LinkedIn profile now lists his current title as “Head of Hardware, Midjourney.”

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Meta is accused of “bullying” the open-source community

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Court: Section 230 doesn’t shield TikTok from Blackout Challenge death suit

TikTok must face claim over For You Page recommending content that killed kids.

Enlarge (credit: Catherine McQueen | Moment)

An appeals court has revived a lawsuit against TikTok by reversing a lower court’s ruling that Section 230 immunity shielded the short video app from liability after a child died taking part in a dangerous “Blackout Challenge.”

Several kids died taking part in the “Blackout Challenge,” which Third Circuit Judge Patty Shwartz described in her opinion as encouraging users “to choke themselves with belts, purse strings, or anything similar until passing out.”

Because TikTok promoted the challenge in children’s feeds, Tawainna Anderson counted among mourning parents who attempted to sue TikTok in 2022. Ultimately, she was told that TikTok was not responsible for recommending the video that caused the death of her daughter Nylah.

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Telegram CEO Indicted in Paris Court

An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the arrest of Telegram CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov Saturday, the 39-year-old billionaire, Drov has been indicted on multiple charges after appearing in front of a Paris Court on Wednesday. He has been indicted on charges of Complicity in the administration of an online platform to enable an illicit transaction, by an organized gang. This charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $555,000.

He was also indicted on charges of refusal to communicate at the request of authorities; Complicity in the offenses in particular of making available without legitimate reason a program or data designed to an attack on an automated data processing system, organized gang dissemination of images of minors of a child pornography nature, drug trafficking, organized gang fraud, criminal conspiracy with a view to committing crimes or offenses; Laundering of crimes or offenses by organized games; Provision of cryptology services aimed at ensuring confidentiality functions without compliant declaration. Durov has been placed under judicial supervision with an obligation to provide a deposit of 5 million euros and he must report to the police station twice a week and is banned from leaving France. From earlier today: Telegram CEO Released By Police, Transferred To Court For Possible Indictment.

X pledges to fix AI chatbot after it spread misinformation about US election

X (formerly Twitter) users were fed misinformation about Vice President Kamala Harris.

Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has modified its Grok chatbot after calls from election officials in five US states to ensure the information it gives out is accurate.

The move comes after Grok falsely claimed the ballot deadline had passed in nine states, meaning the candidate options were set in stone for the November 2024 US Presidential election. This is particularly alarming considering this followed the announcement which confirmed President Joe Biden was halting his presidential bid, with Kamala Harris receving the Democratic nomination.

Grok has now been amended to direct users to the nonpartisan election information site Vote.gov in response to any related queries, which the protesting officials say is a “trustworthy resource”.

Grok election misinformation

The 2024 election cycle has been no stranger to misinformation so far, with AI-generated content taking the top spot for the driver of ‘fake news’.

One reason for this is Large Language Models (LLMs) are trained on an extensive amount of online data, with no process to filter out inaccurate information – essentially meaning they can learn facts that aren’t true.

The amendment has not stopped Grok from generating misleading images and using real people’s likeness in questionable ways upon request. Musk introduced the chatbot as ‘rebellious’ and boasted its ability to answer “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.”. Controversial examples of the AI’s creations include images of celebrities doing drugs and holding guns – it’s a real mystery that other chatbots reject these requests.

Grok is currently only available for X premium subscribers, but the images can be shared to anyone. The site continues to concern watchdog groups as hate speech and misinformation campaigns have thrived since Musk took over the platform in 2022.

Via AP News