Myspace wants to sell you a feed without an algorithm. Brussels is about to make that mandatory anyway.
Myspace wants to sell you a feed without an algorithm. Brussels is about to make that mandatory anyway.

The Vanderhook brothers, whose company Viant Technology owns Myspace, have confirmed they intend to relaunch the platform. They made the announcement in a documentary titled Myspace, which premiered at Hot Docs in Toronto and also features co-founder C…

Hong Kong educators want a social media ban for under-16s. The government says it has no plans to legislate.
Hong Kong educators want a social media ban for under-16s. The government says it has no plans to legislate.

Hong Kong educators and a lawmaker are urging the city to ban children under 16 from social media, calling addiction “the biggest problem facing education.” At a panel discussion this week, Lilian Chan Lui Ling-yee, honorary president of the Yan Oi Ass…

China’s new AI bottleneck isn’t chips. It’s running out of Chinese-language training data.
China’s new AI bottleneck isn’t chips. It’s running out of Chinese-language training data.

China’s AI race has a new constraint, and it is not chips. The country is running out of high-quality Chinese-language training data. While US export controls on advanced semiconductors have dominated the debate over China’s AI capabilities, Chinese ex…

South Africa wants to ban companies from moving stablecoins abroad. Individuals keep their allowance.
South Africa wants to ban companies from moving stablecoins abroad. Individuals keep their allowance.

South Africa has proposed banning corporate cross-border stablecoin transactions, in draft rules released jointly by the Reserve Bank and National Treasury. It is one of the most aggressive attempts by any emerging economy to force borderless digital t…

OpenAI is slowing down its next model over ‘critical’ cyber risk
OpenAI is slowing down its next model over ‘critical’ cyber risk

OpenAI tested Astra, one of its upcoming models, over the past few days. In a post on Friday, it said the results were strong enough that it “cannot rule out” critical cyber capabilities. So it is pausing some internal work on the model and scaling up …

The US wants Chinese optics out of its AI data centres. Amazon and Microsoft pay first.
The US wants Chinese optics out of its AI data centres. Amazon and Microsoft pay first.

China’s two biggest optical module makers took a beating on Wednesday. Zhongji Innolight fell as much as 16%, according to the South China Morning Post. Bloomberg put the intraday drop at 14%. Eoptolink Technology slid with it. The trigger was a Reuter…

TikTok kept a safety fix from 15 million US users “by design,” a sealed document shows. One was a teenager who died.
TikTok kept a safety fix from 15 million US users “by design,” a sealed document shows. One was a teenager who died.

In 2021, TikTok changed its algorithm to stop users being flooded with harmful content. But it did not give the safer version to everyone. It held 10% of US users on the old version, about 15 million people at the time. It wanted to test whether the sa…

An AI agent faked identities to plant malware. The same day, OpenAI disclosed two more of its models escaping tests.
An AI agent faked identities to plant malware. The same day, OpenAI disclosed two more of its models escaping tests.

An AI agent researched real developers, invented fake identities, and used them to pressure a human into approving malware. It was the most alarming case the UK’s AI Security Institute found in a safety test. “This is the first time we have seen risks …

Chinese carriers were pushed out of US networks. A House report says they never left
Chinese carriers were pushed out of US networks. A House report says they never left

The Salt Typhoon hack that breached America’s biggest phone carriers had a back door hiding in plain sight. A bipartisan House report has a blunt finding. Three Chinese state-owned carriers, pushed out of the US years ago, never fully left. Their lefto…

Palantir holds £670m of UK contracts. In 2024 it paid £2m in corporation tax.
Palantir holds £670m of UK contracts. In 2024 it paid £2m in corporation tax.

Palantir is having a remarkable week. Its shares jumped almost 30% on Tuesday. Chief executive Alex Karp forecast revenue nearly doubling to $8bn this year, and called demand “otherworldly”. In the same week, a report found it pays almost nothing in ta…