Archive for the ‘Elon Musk’ Category

Microsoft’s New Recall Feature Sparks Spying Concerns, Elon Musk Links It To ‘Black Mirror’ – NDTV

Microsoft announced the new feature on its blog. It will soo be added to Windows 11.

A video of Microsoft chief Satya Nadella in which he is describing a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tool has caught the attention of billionaire Elon Musk, who criticised the development saying he will turn this feature "off". In the now viral clip, Mr Nadella is talking about photographic memory feature called Recall that will "remember and understand everything you do on your computer by taking constant screenshots". As per a Microsoft blog, Recall will be added to the PCs in addition to Copilot, another AI-powered tool launched last year as a replacement to Microsoft's voice-assistant Cortana.

"It's not keyword search, it's semantic search over all your history. And it's not just about any document. We can recreate moments from the past essentially," said Mr Nadella.

The video has gone massively viral on X, amassing more than 16 million views. Among the users who responded on the new tool is entrepreneur Elon Musk.

"This is a Black Mirror episode. Definitely turning this "feature" off," Mr Musk said in his post. It is a reference to Netflix series 'Black Mirror' in which several individuals grapple with the manipulative effects of cutting edge technology in their personal lives and behaviours.

Other users too criticised the new tool, claiming it promotes spying.

"Yeah, no thanks. Don't need to pay Microsoft a monthly fee to spy on me," commented one user. "Bro they can't even get searching via the start menu right and we're supposed to believe this s*** will just work," said another.

"Remember back in the day where Windows would cache snapshots and they would fill the hard drive and crash everything and make it impossible to use the system?" said a third user.

Microsoft said Recall will store the data on a user's device. "Your snapshots are yours; they stay locally on your PC. You can delete individual snapshots, adjust and delete ranges of time in Settings, or pause at any point right from the icon in the System Tray on your Taskbar. You can also filter apps and websites from ever being saved. You are always in control with privacy you can trust."

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Microsoft's New Recall Feature Sparks Spying Concerns, Elon Musk Links It To 'Black Mirror' - NDTV

Twitter Is Finally Dead. Its X All the Way Down – WIRED

Like a venomous puss moth emerging from its hard cocoon, the social network formerly known as Twitter has fully metamorphosed into X.com.

Various elements of Twitter had already embraced the rebranding, and the company has been using X.com links since early April. But now the domain has flipped over entirely, marking the end of a tumultuous transition periodand erasing the last vestiges of the bird app.

We are letting you know that we are changing our URL, but your privacy and data protection settings remain the same, reads a message at the bottom of the X login and home pages.

The switchover has been a long time coming. X owner Elon Musk announced the shift from Twitter to X last July, a few months after he officially acquired the company. But the billionaire has for decades harbored a dream of creating an everything app by that name, and Twitter is his vessel.

The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140-character messages going back and forthlike birds tweetingbut now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video, Musk wrote on the newly redubbed X last summer. In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird.

Twitter under Musk has indeed added video and voice calls to its roster of features. It has also replatformed conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, fostered a welcoming environment for porn spam accounts, made an absolute hash out of verification, introduced a monetization system that encourages rampant engagement farming, gutted its trust and safety team, allowed a surge in hate speech on the platform, designated NPR as US state-affiliated media, removed news headlines entirely and then reintroduced them in a weird spot, kneecapped a bunch of fun bots and third-party apps by introducing wildly expensive API changes while giving blue-check verification to AI-generated chum, pivoted to video, introduced an AI model that will help you do crimes, and overseen a decline in usage of more than 20 percent in the US, according to app analytics firm SensorTower.

The entire financial world part remains a work in progress.

A sentimentalist may bemoan the death of Twitter, which for all its faults always had a capacity to delight and surprise. But remember that this transformation was inevitable. Musk first owned X.com in 1999, when he cofounded an online bank by that name; it would eventually merge with a competitor and become PayPal. He bought X.com back from PayPal in 2017, tweeting that it had great sentimental value. And he has seen Twitter as an opportunity to create X on Earth since before the acquisition was even completed, according to Musk biographer Walter Isaacson.

In the days leading up to his takeover of Twitter at the end of October 2022, Musks moods fluctuated wildly, Isaacson wrote in Elon Musk. He said that he would turn it into the combination of financial platform and social network he had envisioned 24 years earlier for X.com, and he added that he planned to rebrand it with that name, which he loved.

To put an even finer point on it, Musks tweet today announcing that all core systems are now on X.com featured the logo of the company he founded 25 years ago.

While X may never become the everything app of Musks dreams, its undeniably and indelibly a different place than the one he bought. Which in some ways makes this final transition all the more palatable. Whatever Elon Musks platform has become, its certainly not Twitter. Call it whatever you want.

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Twitter Is Finally Dead. Its X All the Way Down - WIRED

Elon Musk’s Starlink internet is going live in Indonesia – Quartz

Photo: Johannes P. Christo ( Reuters )

Starlink, the satellite internet company thats a subsidiary of Elon Musks SpaceX, is bringing internet access to the 17,000 islands of Indonesia.

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Musk traveled to the island of Bali on Sunday to officially launch the service, according to the AP. Exact details of the agreement between Starlink and the Indonesian government werent released, but the deal has an emphasis on improving internet speed and access to the countrys medical sector.

During a ceremony for the launch, Musk completed a speed test with health workers in the archipelagos most remote places.

This can make it really a lifesaver for remote medical clinics, and I think it could be a possibility for education as well, Musk told reporters.

Indonesias agreement with Starlink has been a long time coming. The country has been trying to get deals inked with SpaceX for years, as well as with Musks Tesla for battery investments.

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Elon Musk's Starlink internet is going live in Indonesia - Quartz

Opinion | The Tesla Cybertruck Embodies All of Elon Musks Flaws – The New York Times

Some of the problems Tesla is facing including first-quarter profits that are down 9 percent from last year, stressful months for shareholders and layoffs of about a tenth of its work force are the result of factors affecting the electric vehicle industry as a whole. But many of Teslas troubles are unique to Tesla and the fact that its chief executive and co-founder, Elon Musk, is unique to the auto industry. Hes a Silicon Valley creature in a Detroit ecosystem who values innovation for its own sake, even at times when he could be more focused on safety and quality. His ethos and approach to running Tesla are embodied by his pet project, the Cybertruck.

Though it fits the technical definition of a truck (it has a bed), the vehicle looks more like an origami version of an El Camino. Mr. Musk suggested its stainless steel exterior might be bulletproof; some owners say it rusts.

Its not unusual for new car and truck models to have some flaws, but the Cybertruck, which has sold only about 4,000 units, was recalled recently because the accelerator had a sticking problem, which is sort of like a parachute having a gaping-hole-in-the-canopy problem. Some owners have reportedly gotten an alert that the vehicle may suddenly lose electrical power, steering and propulsion. And you may want to watch your fingers with the frunk (front trunk) and doors; they dont have industry standard sensors that can keep doors from snipping off someones digits. (The Cybertrucks lead engineer said the steel doesnt rust, and the company is working on the frunk issue.)

Tesla delayed the Cybertrucks release a few times in order, the company said, to fix design and manufacturing flaws, but Mr. Musks primary focus often appears to be the aesthetics of science fiction and the desire to be seen as edgy (perhaps literally so in the case of the Cybertruck, which is surprisingly devoid of curves for a machine that needs to be aerodynamic). This is a man who named his child X A-12, who rebranded Twitter as X and who endlessly engages in the performative subversion of posting antagonistic memes. Conventional automakers produce daring-looking concept cars, too, but theyre not made for mass production, and unlike the retro-futuristic Cybertruck, they are crafted with an eye toward what transport will look like in the future, not what the future looked like in the past.

Musks approach to innovation is in keeping with much of Silicon Valleys. The tech industry puts a cultural premium on shipping products to market quickly and worrying about the consequences of any unfinished work, harmful features or deficiencies after consumers complain or the company gets sued. Move fast and break things is intended as a battle cry against sclerotic institutions and norms, but sometimes things get broken that should have been protected, like consumer privacy and safety. Democracy, even.

The consequences may be negligible if the product is an entertainment app, but with cars and rockets, the stakes are terrifyingly high. Tesla gives the impression that it accepts certain risks as the price of innovation.

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Opinion | The Tesla Cybertruck Embodies All of Elon Musks Flaws - The New York Times

Elon Musk welcomes antisemite Nick Fuentes back to Twitter – The Jewish Chronicle

Antisemitic Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes has been allowed back onto Twitter/X after his account was suspended following a barrage of conspiratorial and anti-Jewish posts.

Anti-racism watchdog, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which describes Fuentes as a white supremacist leader who has united disparate groups within what was until recently known as the alt right, said on Friday morning: We are concerned that white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes may be officially welcomed back on X.

Musk replied to that post, saying the ADL is still fighting yesterdays battles, to which Fuentes argued: ADL lost, Patriots won.

X boss Elon Musk said on Thursday that Fuentess account will be reinstated, provided he does not violate the law, and let him be crushed by the comments and Community Notes. It is better to have anti whatever out in the open to be rebutted than grow simmering in the darkness.

Musk added, I cannot claim to be a defender of free speech, but then permanently ban someone who hasnt violated the law, no matter how much I disagree with what they say.

This will probably cause us to lose a lot of advertisers and makes me sad, but a principle is a principle, he said on the social media platform he bought in 2022 and renamed from Twitter.

When Fuentess account was reinstated on Saturday he tweeted, I look forward to reintroducing myself in my own words!

A notorious far-right commentator, Fuentes has advocated for the genocide of perfidious Jews and said in 2023, "they need to be given the death penalty, straight up."

The antisemite praised Hitler in 2023 as really f*cking cool. He added that this guys awesome, this guys cool.

He said, All I want is revenge against my enemies and a total Aryan victory. During a 2022 white nationalist conference, he favourably compared President Vladimir Putin to the Nazi leader: Now, [the media is] going and saying, Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler, as if that isnt a good thing.

Along with his antisemitism, Fuentes has said rape is not a big deal,

He gained further prominence when he joined the presidential campaign of antisemitic rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and had dinner with Ye and former President Donald Trump in 2022.

Fuentes was first banned from Twitter in 2021 for repeated violationsof the platforms policies on hateful content. Reddit, Spotify, TikTok and YouTube also banned him, and Fuentes blasted a concerted effort by leftists, conservative inc gatekeepers and silicon valley censors to silence him.

He was briefly returned to the platform by Musk in January 2023. The far-right commentator flooded his feed with antisemitic posts and was suspended again from X within the day.

Hate speech watchdogs have warned against extremists on social media and have advocated for deplatforming.

Speaking out against antisemitism on a recent trip to Auschwitz, Musk has repeatedly said he is committed to absolute free speech.

Fuentes thanked the X chief, tweeting, Thank you @elonmusk for reinstating my account and upholding your commitment to free speech.

The same day Musk said he would restore Fuentes he proposed a poll vote on deporting people who remove the American flag to fly another in its place. He has also previously threatened to sue the ADL, who have since praised him for saying he would ban two phrases common to pro-Palestinian protests decolonization, and from the river to the sea.

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Elon Musk welcomes antisemite Nick Fuentes back to Twitter - The Jewish Chronicle