Watch CBS News
#ChatGPT #introduces #parental #controls #teens
#Oakland #baseball #team #manager #step
YouTube creators whose accounts were banned for violating previous policies against COVID-19 and election misinformation will be given the chance to rejoin the platform, said Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company, on Tuesday.
In a letter submitted in response to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, attorneys for Alphabet said the decision to bring back banned accounts reflected the company’s commitment to free speech.
“No matter the political atmosphere, YouTube will continue to enable free expression on its platform, particularly as it relates to issues subject to political debate,” the letter read, noting that a number of accounts were kicked off the platform between 2023 and 2024 for violating misinformation rules that don’t exist anymore. Now, it said, “YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”
The company in its letter also said it “values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse” and added that YouTube “recognizes these creators are among those shaping today’s online consumption, landing ‘must-watch’ interviews, giving viewers the chance to hear directly from politicians, celebrities, business leaders, and more.”
The move is the latest in a cascade of content moderation rollbacks from tech companies, who cracked down on false information during the pandemic and after the 2020 election but have since faced pressure from President Trump and other conservatives who argue they unlawfully stifled right-wing voices in the process.
It comes as tech CEOs, including Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, have sought a closer relationship with the Republican president, including through high-dollar donations to his campaign and attending events in Washington.
YouTube in 2023 phased out its policy to remove content that falsely claims the 2020 election, or other past U.S. presidential elections, were marred by “widespread fraud, errors or glitches.” Claims of fraud in the 2020 election have been debunked.
The platform in 2024 also retired its standalone COVID-19 content restrictions, allowing various treatments for the disease to be discussed. COVID-19 misinformation now falls under YouTube’s broader medical misinformation policy.
Among the creators who have been banned from YouTube under the now-expired policies are prominent conservative influencers, including Dan Bongino, who now serves as deputy director of the FBI. For people who make money on social media, access to monetization on YouTube can be significant, earning them large sums through ad revenue.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and other congressional Republicans have pressured tech companies to reverse content moderation policies created under former President Joe Biden and accused Biden’s administration of unfairly wielding its power over the companies to chill lawful online speech.
In Tuesday’s letter, Alphabet’s lawyers said senior Biden administration officials “conducted repeated and sustained outreach” to coerce the company to remove pandemic-related YouTube videos that did not violate company policies.
“It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content, and the Company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds,” the letter said.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also accused the Biden administration of pressuring employees to inappropriately censor content during the COVID-19 pandemic. Elon Musk, the owner of the social platform X, has accused the FBI of illegally coercing Twitter before his tenure to suppress a story about Hunter Biden.
The Supreme Court last year sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.
Asked for more information about the reinstatement process, a spokesperson for YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
#YouTube #start #bringing #accounts #creators #banned #misinformation
Microsoft says it has stopped providing some of its cloud and AI services to Israel’s Ministry of Defense following a report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which alleged Israel used the services to conduct mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Guardian report, published in August in conjunction with Israeli outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call, claimed Israel’s military surveillance agency — called Unit 8200 — used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to store recordings of millions of cellphone calls made by Palestinians.
These calls could be played back by intelligence officers, and The Guardian cited three sources within Unit 8200 who said the database was used to help shape military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, and to prepare deadly airstrikes by helping with research and to identify bombing targets in Gaza.
One source told The Guardian that during the planning of an airstrike on an individual in a densely populated area of Gaza, officers would use the system to examine calls made by other people in the immediate vicinity.
Other sources told The Guardian that use of the data was initially focused on the West Bank, which Israel’s military controls.
“When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, that’s where they find the excuse,” one source told the British newspaper.
The Guardian reported that leaked Microsoft files suggested a large proportion of the sensitive data was potentially being stored in Microsoft data centers in Ireland and the Netherlands.
After the publication of its report, several sources told the newspaper that the repository of intercepted calls — as much as 8,000 terabytes of data — had been held in a Microsoft data center in the Netherlands, but within days of its report being published in early August, the data appeared to have been moved out of the country.
“We have found evidence that supports elements of The Guardian’s reporting. This evidence includes information relating to IMOD consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services,” Microsoft said in a statement Thursday, without elaborating on what the evidence showed.
Microsoft said it had informed the Israeli Ministry of Defense that it would be halting and disabling its use of some specific subscriptions and services.
“We have reviewed this decision with IMOD and the steps we are taking to ensure compliance with our terms of service, focused on ensuring our services are not used for mass surveillance of civilians,” Microsoft said.
Intelligence sources told The Guardian that Unit 8200 planned to transfer the data from Microsoft’s servers to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Neither the Israel Defense Forces nor Amazon replied to The Guardian’s request for comment.
CBS News asked both the IDF and Amazon for comment on the report of a possible transfer of the data to Amazon’s servers but did not receive a reply by time of publication.
Microsoft said its current review is still ongoing.
It follows an initial review by the American tech giant, triggered by an earlier Guardian report about how the IDF’s use of Microsoft’s Azure and AI services surged during its Gaza offensive, in which the company said it had found “no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.”
#Microsoft #blocks #Israels #services #review #mass #surveillance #Palestinians
HSBC on Thursday announced it has successfully used quantum computing in a trial to optimize bond trading, making it the first in the world to prove the value of the powerful emerging technology in the financial services industry.
Working with IBM, the bank used a combination of classical computing and the tech giant’s Heron quantum processor to deliver a 34% improvement in algorithmic bond price predictions, HSBC said in a statement shared Tuesday.
Philip Intallura, HSBC’s group head of quantum technologies, called the trial a “ground-breaking world-first.” He expanded on the technology in a company video included in the announcement, saying the improvement in trade predictions ultimately means “increased margins and greater liquidity.”
The trial was intended to test how quantum computers could optimize requests in over-the-counter markets, where financial assets are traded without a centralized exchange or broker serving as the intermediary. Using IBM’s latest generation of quantum computers, the companies were able to estimate how likely a trade was to be a filled at a quoted price with far more accuracy than standard methods of using classical computers alone, according to the announcement.
“This is something that we do thousands of times a day already and that’s estimating the likelihood of winning a trade,” Josh Freeland, global head of algo credit trading at HSBC, said in the same video.
Technology has long been intertwined in Wall Street trading. Automation systems used to assist traders were installed at the New York Stock Exchange in the 1950s. Two decades later came the first rumblings of algorithmic trading — using computers programs to automatically execute trades. About two thirds of all trades were conducted using computers by 2009, Deutsche Bank research shows.
In its trial results, HSBC found that the addition of quantum computing techniques showed an improvement over classical computing alone in responding to the “highly complex nature” of factors involved in algorithmic trades.
“IBM Heron was able to augment classical computing workflows to better unravel hidden pricing signals in noisy market data than standard, classical-only approaches in use by HSBC, resulting in strong improvements in the bond trading process,” HSBC said in its announcement.
According to HSBC, the trial represents the first empirical evidence that quantum computers can be used to solve practical problems in the field of algorithmic bond trading.
“We have great confidence we are on the cusp of a new frontier of computing in financial services, rather than something that is far away in the future,” Intallura said HSBC’s statement.
What is quantum computing?
Quantum computing, a new field of computer science and engineering, relies on quantum mechanics to solve problems and process information across finance, logistics, cybersecurity and more.
Amazon, Google, IBM, Intel and Microsoft and have all invested in the technology.
According to IBM, while the technology is still developing, it will soon surpass classical supercomputers in terms of speed and its ability to tackle complex problems.
The technology company said what could take classical computers thousands of years, could take quantum computing mere minutes or hours to solve.
#HSBC #quantum #computing #improve #bond #trading #worldfirst
The Secret Service has disrupted a sprawling telecommunications network in the New York Tri-State Area that investigators say posed a serious potential disruption to New York’s telecom systems and a possible threat to the United Nations General Assembly meetings this week.
In the largest seizure of its kind, the U.S. Secret Service announced Tuesday that the agency found active SIM farms at abandoned apartment buildings located at more than five sites. In total, law enforcement discovered 300 SIM servers – over 100,000 SIM cards – enabling encrypted, anonymous communication and capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute. Officials say the servers were so powerful they could have disabled cell phone towers and launched distributed denial of services attacks with the ability to block emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch.
“This network had the potential to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City,” U.S. Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Matt McCool said in a video released by the agency.
An official briefed on the investigation told reporters that this week, the sophisticated network “could text message the entire country within 12 minutes,” later adding, “This was well organized and well funded.”
Telephonic threats to multiple senior U.S. officials this past spring – including multiple people protected by the Secret Service – first triggered the investigation, but officials say the network was seized within the last three weeks.
“We cannot share which officials were targeted out of concerns for their privacy, but as the forensics investigation continues, we do expect that we will find more targeted officials once we get through that data,” McCool said.
Early analysis shows the network was used for communication between foreign governments and individuals known to U.S. law enforcement, including members of known organized crime gangs, drug cartels and human trafficking rings, according to multiple officials briefed on the investigation. The U.S. Secret Service says it is combing through the more than 100,000 SIM cards in an ongoing, exhaustive forensic analysis.
“Each SIM basically has the equivalent data of a cell phone. So we’re working through every call, every text, every search made on those SIM cards,” an official told CBS News, adding, “Early analysis indicates that this network was used for communication between foreign governments and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement here in the U.S.”
The equipment was found within 35 miles of the United Nations in New York, ahead of the U.N. General Assembly. Investigators also found 80 grams of cocaine, illegal firearms, plus computers and phones.
“This isn’t a group of people in a basement playing a video game and trying to play a prank,” one official said. “This was well organized and well funded.”
“The timing, the location, the proximity of this network had the potential to impact the U.N. and that was clear and something that we had to consider,” added McCool.
The investigation was launched by a new division within the U.S. Secret Service established by Director Sean Curran and dubbed the “Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit,” in conjunction with Homeland Security Investigations.
“These devices no longer pose any threat to New York,” an official said. “We’ve taken care of and dismantled that threat…There is currently no credible threat against the UN.”
Still, another official added that “it would be unwise to assume” there aren’t other such networks in the U.S.
The investigation remains ongoing, according to the U.S. Secret Service. There have been no arrests yet, but officials said, “there could be arrests down the road,” adding that “from an operational perspective, we want those behind the network to know that the Secret Service is aware and that we’re kind of coming for them.”
Homeland Security Investigations is leading the criminal investigation into individuals involved in coordinating this large scheme, while the U.S. Secret Service is running down threats tied back to its protectees, according to multiple U.S. officials.
In a statement released by the U.S. Secret Service, the agency also thanked the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the NYPD, as well as other state and local law enforcement partners, for providing technical advice and assistance.
#U.S #Secret #Service #disrupts #telecom #network #threatened #NYC #U.N #General #Assembly
Robot umpires are getting called up to the big leagues next season.
Major League Baseball’s 11-man competition committee on Tuesday approved use of the Automated Ball/Strike System in the major leagues in 2026.
Human plate umpires will still call balls and strikes, but teams can challenge two calls per game and get additional appeals in extra innings. Challenges must be made by a pitcher, catcher or batter — signaled by tapping their helmet or cap — and a team retains its challenge if successful. Reviews will be shown as digital graphics on outfield videoboards.
Adding the robot umps is likely to cut down on ejections. MLB said 61.5% of ejections among players, managers and coaches last year were related to balls and strikes, as were 60.3% this season through Sunday. The figures include ejections for derogatory comments, throwing equipment while protesting calls and inappropriate conduct.
Big league umpires call roughly 94% of pitches correctly, according to UmpScorecards.
ABS, which utilizes Hawk-Eye cameras, has been tested in the minor leagues since 2019. The independent Atlantic League trialed the system at its 2019 All-Star Game and MLB installed the technology for that year’s Arizona Fall League of top prospects. The ABS was tried at eight of nine ballparks of the Low-A Southeast League in 2021, then moved up to Triple-A in 2022.
In 2019, Fred DeJesus became the first umpire in a regular-season game to use ABS. He remembers the first pitch he tested – it was a strike – and how he was hesitant about the new technology at first.
“Initially, it was like, no way, we’re not doing this. I spent way too much money trying to learn the craft of calling balls and strikes,” he told CBS News in 2021.
At Triple-A at the start of the 2023 season, half the games used the robots for ball/strike calls and half had a human making decisions subject to appeals by teams to the ABS.
MLB switched Triple-A to an all-challenge system on June 26, 2024, then used the challenge system this year at 13 spring training ballparks hosting 19 teams for a total of 288 exhibition games. Teams won 52.2% of their ball/strike challenges (617 of 1,182) challenges.
At Triple-A this season, the average challenges per game increased to 4.2 from 3.9 through Sunday and the success rate dropped to 49.5% from 50.6%. Defenses were successful in 53.7% of challenges this year and offenses in 45%.
ABS was used in this year’s All-Star Game as well and has generally received positive reviews, CBS Sports reported. Four of five challenges of plate umpire Dan Iassogna’s calls were successful in July.
Teams in Triple-A do not get additional challenges in extra innings. However, the proposal approved by the MLB on Tuesday included a provision granting teams one additional challenge each inning if they don’t have challenges remaining.
MLB has experimented with different shapes and interpretations of the strike zone with ABS, including versions that were three-dimensional. Currently, it calls strikes solely based on where the ball crosses the midpoint of the plate, 8.5 inches from the front and the back. The top of the strike zone is 53.5% of batter height and the bottom 27%.
This will be MLB’s first major rule change since sweeping adjustments in 2024. Those included a pitch clock, restrictions on defensive shifts, pitcher disengagements such as pickoff attempts and larger bases.
The challenge system introduces ABS without eliminating pitch framing, a subtle art where catchers use their body and glove to try making borderline pitches look like strikes. Framing has become a critical skill for big league catchers. While there was concern that full-blown ABS would make some strong defensive catchers obsolete, not everyone considers the skill a good thing.
“The idea that people get paid for cheating, for stealing strikes, for moving a pitch that’s not a strike into the zone to fool the official and make it a strike is beyond my comprehension,” former manager Bobby Valentine said.
Texas manager Bruce Bochy, a big league catcher from 1978-87, maintained old-school umpires such as Bruce Froemming and Billy Williams never would have accepted pitch framing. He said they would have told him: “‘If you do that again, you’ll never get a strike.’ I’m cutting out some words.”
Management officials on the competition committee include Seattle chairman John Stanton, St. Louis CEO Bill DeWitt Jr., San Francisco chairman Greg Johnson, Colorado CEO Dick Monfort, Toronto CEO Mark Shapiro and Boston chairman Tom Werner.
Players include Arizona’s Corbin Burnes and Zac Gallen, Detroit’s Casey Mize, Seattle’s Cal Raleigh and the New York Yankees’ Austin Slater, with the Chicago Cubs’ Ian Happ at Detroit’s Casey Mize as alternates. The union representatives make their decisions based on input from players on the 30 teams.
Bill Miller is the umpire representative.
The competition committee can unilaterally implement on-field rule changes with 45 days’ notice to the MLB Players Association, according to CBS Sports.
#MLB #approves #robot #umpires #part #challenge #system #season
#WIRED #global #editorial #director #techs #growing #political #power #Trump
Amazon faces a court hearing in Seattle this week to face allegations by federal regulators that the e-commerce giant duped customers into signing up for its Prime membership while also making it difficult for them to cancel their subscriptions.
The case, announced by the Federal Trade Commission in 2023, centers on claims that Amazon engaged in what the agency said amounted to a “years-long effort” to trick millions of customers into automatically renewing their Prime subscriptions, specifically by using user-interface designs that were “manipulative, coercive or deceptive.”
When it announced legal action against Amazon two years ago, the FTC said consumers who used Amazon to make purchases were presented with numerous options to subscribe to Prime, but that it was less clear how to buy an item without signing up for a membership. In some cases, the button for Amazon users to complete their purchase did not clearly indicate that they were also agreeing to enroll in Prime, according to regulators.
The government’s lawsuit also alleges that Amazon obfuscated the process to cancel a Prime subscription by forcing customers to jump through several hoops to end their membership.
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment on the case.
Amazon denies that its practices misled consumers. An Amazon spokesperson said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch on Monday that “neither Amazon nor the individual defendants did anything wrong.”
“We remain confident that the facts will show these executives acted properly and we always put customers first,” the spokesperson added.
Jury selection in the trial is scheduled to begin Monday, followed by opening arguments and possible witness testimony on Tuesday. The trial, which is being held at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, is expected to last up to four weeks. The outcome will be decided by a the jury.
Prime members, who pay $14.99 monthly or $139 a year, get free shipping on certain items, faster delivery times and access to Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming service, among other benefits.
In a separate suit, the FTC has also accused Amazon of engaging in illegal behavior that allows it to inflate prices and suppress competition from rivals in violation of antitrust laws. Amazon denies that its practices reduce competition and hurt consumers.
#Amazon #faces #trial #week #duped #people #enrolling #Prime #membership
Emeline Lakrout, a busy New Yorker with a knack for running, rock climbing and swimming, doesn’t let being legally blind stop her from living an active lifestyle.
Despite being declared blind at 8 years old, Lakrout has taken on challenges, such as running the New York City Marathon and joining the U.S. National Paraclimbing Team. A new piece of technology — Meta’s AI glasses — is her latest tool to help her stay savvy and adaptable on a daily basis.
“The glasses make my life easier,” said the 27 year old. “They make things faster and they make me able to do more in the day because it’s just quicker and easier to do things and I feel less tired at the end of the day.”
Meta originally designed the glasses for users to stream video on the go and interact with the world around them using AI. The newest iteration of the technology was unveiled last week and includes the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 glasses and a new model of smart Oakley glasses aimed at sports enthusiasts.
Members of the blind community have found new ways to use the technology.
Users are able to connect their glasses to the “Be My Eyes” app which connects blind and visually impaired users with volunteers to assist with recognizing objects and managing everyday tasks in real time. Such activities may include going through mail, or helping individuals grocery shop.
The new AI glasses also use optical character recognition, or OCR, which can recognize and read aloud text for users on menus, receipts and mail. For Lakrout, having access to text-based information like signs in a subway station or on street corners is what makes AI technology useful. She says Meta’s AI glasses are bringing blind communities one step closer to accessing this information.
The glasses, however, are work in progress says Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind.
“(They) work well for some things, doesn’t work well in other situations,” he said.
Lakrout discovered this for herself. When she tried the glasses on in a restaurant, they read the menu to her perfectly but couldn’t tell her the price for a specific item on second prompt. When using some of the AI-powered features, the glasses’ battery died, and so she regularly had to keep them in their case to charge.
More importantly, Riccobono said, is that Meta has “taken an interest in working with blind people to make the technology better, make it more accurate, make it more meaningful to the experience of blind people.”
Lakrout and Riccobono both agree that AI technology and Meta’s glasses are a useful step in enhancing the blind and visually impaired community’s independence. But in the end, the glasses do not “replace the need for human capacity,” Riccobo said. “So we need to teach blind people and we still need to make sure that blind people develop the skills that blind people need to be successful.”
#Metas #glasses #independence #blind #community