TikTok is taking its fight against the Trump administration to the courts, saying it will file a legal challenge Monday against the government’s order to ban the video app effective mid-September. TikTok alleges that President Trump’s executive order is “not rooted in bona fide national security concerns,” according to excerpts of the complaint the company detailed in a blog post. It also alleges the U.S. government did not conduct a fair process in deciding that the app needed to be banned in the country and that its Chinese owner ByteDance must divest its assets in the United States.
Moore’s Law, the observation that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every 24 months, has taken a beating as progress miniaturizing circuitry falters. But chip giant Intel has plotted a course to keep the idea alive with a plan to pack 50 times as many transistors onto processors than is possible today.
WHEN LAW ENFORCEMENT arrested three alleged young hackers in the US and the UK last month, the story of the worst-known hack of Twitter’s systems seemed to have drawn to a tidy close. But in fact, the technique that allowed hackers to take control of the accounts of Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and dozens of others is still in use against a broad array of victims, in a series of attacks that began well before Twitter’s blowup, and in recent weeks has escalated into a full-blown crime wave.
TikTok is right in the jaws of a thorny situation with the U.S. Government regarding its ownership, but it’s sending a clear message today that it is not sitting on its heels with big deals. Yesterday, it announced a deal with UnitedMasters to allow artists on TikTok to distribute their songs directly to streaming services and other partners directly.
According to Twitch’s Terms of Service, you have to be 13 to stream on the platform. But a WIRED investigation turned up dozens of Twitch accounts seemingly operated by children under that age, including another girl who admitted to being 11. In their videos, which crop up every few minutes under Twitch’s Just Chatting section, apparent children livestream themselves talking while playing games like Fortnite, performing dances popular on TikTok, or sitting at home and communicating with a small number of viewers. WIRED has viewed several messages from viewers to these apparent children containing inappropriate comments, questions, or demands, and identified some accounts that follow multiple apparent children.
Content creators and platforms battling for audiences will be happy to know that consumers are willing to crown multiple champions. According to a special Streaming Wars edition of the Nielsen Total Audience Report, which serves as the industry’s premiere source of media truth across platforms, people and devices, consumers in OTT-capable homes are spending nearly one-fifth (19%) of their TV time streaming content, be it through ad-supported or paid subscription models. That’s a hefty amount of the already large media diet of audiences today, especially considering that the medium has only existed for a relatively short period of time. Not to mention, it’s a prime opportunity to easily reach consumers in the digital age, using interfaces that feel familiar and comfortable to them.
Does time spent using digital technology and social media have an adverse effect on mental health, especially that of adolescents? Here, two scientists discuss the question, and how digital devices might be used to improve well-being.
Fifteen years ago this week, Google Maps launched on the web. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Google Maps transformed both the way we think about maps and the way we move around in the world. Over time, the application has evolved from a fairly static online representation of an atlas to a GPS-powered navigation tool to a platform for reviews—and, of course, for ads.
According to Apple, wearables accounted for as much as $10 billion of their most recent quarterly sales, up from $7.3 billion the previous year, with AirPods and AirPods Pro leading the charge. Apple doesn’t break out separate numbers for each of its wearable product lines, but Tim Cooke confirmed that the company is having trouble meeting demand for the Pro, due to the appeal of its smart, noise-canceling features. For comparison, wearables have now passed the entire Mac product line as a contributor to Apple’s topline numbers. Some analysts are predicting it will soon be a $100 billion-business—roughly the size of General Motors.
At more than $150 billion in annual revenue, the global game industry is now more than twice the combined size of the worldwide film box office ($42.5 billion in 2019) and the planet’s recorded music business ($19.1 billion in 2018, including streaming). Roughly 2.5 billion people play games, even if many don’t think of themselves as “gamers” (yes, Candy Crush counts). Big tech has taken notice. Over the last few years, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have each joined Microsoft in making gaming a strategic priority. In 2020, games will become even more important to their bottom lines.
The site has a lineup of more than 30 podcasts, including “The Bill Simmons Podcast” and “The Rewatchables.” It publishes original articles daily and houses a video network, a film production division and a book imprint. Last year, Mr. Simmons told The Wall Street Journal that the site was profitable. In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Simmons said he believed that “Spotify can take us to another level.”
In addition to announcing the agreement to buy The Ringer, Spotify reported a 29 percent rise in paid subscribers for its audiostreaming services in the fourth quarter of 2019, to 124 million, giving it a significant lead over its main rival, Apple. The company, which has its headquarters in Stockholm, has been moving away from its identity as a music-streaming service. Last year it acquired three podcast companies, including Gimlet Media, the maker of the podcasts “Crimetown” and “Reply All.”
YouTube generated nearly $5 billion in ad revenue in the last three months, Google revealed today as part of parent company Alphabet’s fourth quarter earnings report. This is the first report under newly instated Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who took over as the chief executive of the entire company late last year after co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped back from day-to-day duties and promoted Pichai, formerly Google CEO, to the top spot. The announcement marks the first time in YouTube’s nearly 15 years as a Google-owned platform, since Google bought the website in 2006 for $1.65 billion, that the company has revealed how much money YouTube-hosted ads contribute to the search giant’s bottom line.
There is something both thrilling and reassuring in following the story of a star who rises, falls, and then rises anew. It’s a narrative template recognizable to even the most casual viewer of documentary shows such as VH1’s “Behind the Music” or the E! network’s “True Hollywood Story.” Just last week, both Taylor Swift and Jessica Simpson—Swift in her new feature-length documentary, “Miss Americana,” and Simpson in her new memoir, “Open Book”—revealed their struggles with, and triumphs over, personal demons: an eating disorder in the case of the former, an addiction to alcohol and pills in the case of the latter.
Here’s your evidence based sex ed TikTok for the day….let’s spread reliable info. ✌️ pic.twitter.com/nTHJyxUTum
— Mama Doctor Jones | Danielle Jones, MD (@MamaDoctorJones) January 14, 2020
Although medical professionals have long taken to social media to share healthy messages or promote their work, TikTok poses a new set of challenges, even for the internet adept. Popular posts on the app tend to be short, musical and humorous, complicating the task of physicians hoping to share nuanced lessons on health issues like vaping, coronavirus, nutrition and things you shouldn’t dip in soy sauce. And some physicians who are using the platform to spread credible information have found themselves the targets of harassment.
“Fake” artists are impersonators who steal music from real, hard-working artists and upload the tracks on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music under false names through unsuspecting distributors. This is nothing new, as these impersonators have been making millions of dollars in royalties, stolen from their rightful owners.
When Twitter suddenly announced it was shutting down Vine in 2016, fans immediately started campaigning to bring the beloved short-form video app back. Dom Hofmann, one of the original cofounders, has been working on doing just that for years. After a few stops and starts, his new app Byte finally launched last week. It already has 1.3 million downloads, according to Sensor Tower. It also appears to have learned some lessons from Vine’s demise, but that won’t necessarily be enough for another social video app to survive in 2020.
In the 1990s, web browsers like Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer competed bitterly to offer the snazziest new features and attract users. Today, the browser landscape looks totally different. For one thing, Chrome now dominates, controlling around two-thirds of the market on both desktop and mobile. Even more radical, though, is the recent competitive focus on privacy, a welcome change for anyone who’s gotten sick of creepy ad tracking and data mismanagement. But as browsers increasingly diverge in their approaches, it’s clear that not all privacy protections are created equal.
Seven years ago, MIT debuted a landmark project, which allowed everyday people to photograph and rate their streets like a Hot or Not for cities. It was a powerful showcase of how crowdsourcing opinions from citizens could help quantify a city’s appeal and, in theory, help urban designers plan better cities.
Less than a decade later, artificial intelligence is taking this idea so much further. FaceLift is a new AI system developed by Nokia Bell Labs Cambridge that allows scientists and urban planners to use a crowd’s aggregated sensibility to actually redesign the look of city streets. FaceLift AI can take any Google Street View scene and beautify it instantly—but at what cost?
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