The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Oct. 3 that Kim Kardashian settled an allegation that she promoted “a crypto asset security offered and sold by EthereumMax without disclosing the payment [of $250,000] she received for the promotion
Alphabet’s Google on Monday said it shut down the Google Translate service in mainland China, citing low usage. It marks the end of one of Google’s last remaining products in the world’s second-largest economy. Google has a very limited presence in China these days after it pulled its search engine from the market in 2010 with local players including Baidu and Tencent coming to dominate the internet landscape.
California famously “banned” the private sale of new internal combustion powered vehicles by 2035. Now, the climate-conscious state seems like it’s making moves to follow up that act with another, much more consequential move — one that could ban diesel trucks by 2040!
Alice is a prototype all-electric commuter plane that took off for the first time yesterday. It could become the first all-new, all- electric commercial airplane if it's approved by the FAA. The nine-passenger commuter plane could be ready for commercial use by 2027.
Google Colaboratory, the company's Python code-writing service, is introducing a pay-as-a-you-go plan. Paid Colab users will be able to buy access to compute in the form of ‘compute units,’ starting at $9.99 for 100 units. Google says the move won’t affect the free-of-charge Colab tier, which remains in its current form.
A new study found that Bitcoin's climate damages are 8.75 times greater than gold. The study authors estimated the network’s overall electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. They applied estimates of the social cost of carbon to translate those CO2 emissions into dollar damages.
NASA and SpaceX will study ways to use SpaceX's Dragon capsule to boost the Hubble Space Telescope's orbit. The six-month study will examine ways to dock with and raise the telescope's orbit, which would extend its useful life. The Hubble Space telescope has been a workhorse cosmic observatory for astronomers since its launch in 1990.
Meta announces Make-A-Video, an AI-powered video generator that can create novel video content from text or image prompts. The tool builds off existing work with text-to-image synthesis used with image generators like OpenAI's DALL-E. It can also make variations of existing videos, though it's not yet available for public use.
Adobe announces updates to its Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements photo and video editing software. Photoshop Elements 2023 and Premiere elements 2023 focus on improving audio track selection and adding artistic effects to videos. They also add AI-powered features, including auto reframing and ‘smart’ trimming, and new web and mobile companion apps.
Amazon is spending nearly $1 billion boosting wages for hourly workers in the US. The increase will take the starting wage for most front-line warehouse and transportation employees to over $19 per hour. Pay in fulfilment and elsewhere will rise to $16 an hour. The company's minimum wage will remain at $15 per hour, as it has in the past. Amazon is also expanding its "Anytime Pay" program to all employees.
Doreen Bogdan-Martin is the first woman to be elected as secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union. She will succeed Houlin Zhao, who has been in the role since 2014. The ITU is the main technology agency within the UN. It was founded in 1865 to manage the first international telegraph networks.
The Facial Recognition Act would require law enforcement to get a judge-authorized warrant before using facial recognition. The bill would also require police to purge databases of photos of children who were subsequently released without charge. The use of facial recognition has grown in recent years, despite fears that the technology is flawed and discriminatory.