Techlife News #579

A top European Union official warned Elon Musk this week that Twitter needs to beef up measures to protect users from hate speech, misinformation and other harmful content to avoid violating new rules that threaten tech giants with big fines or even a ban in the 27-nation bloc. Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for digital policy, told the billionaire Tesla CEO that the social media platform will have to significantly increase efforts to comply with the new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, set to take effect next year. The two held a video call to discuss Twitter’s preparedness for the law, which will require tech companies to better police their platforms for material that, for instance, promotes terrorism, child sexual abuse, hate speech and commercial scams. It’s part of a new…

The streaming services Netflix and Hulu are not video service providers that would have to pay local governments in Ohio the same fees levied on cable operators, the state Supreme Court ruled in a case similar to lawsuits filed by hundreds of other municipalities nationally. At issue in Ohio is the state’s 2007 Video Service Authorization law, which directed the state Commerce Department to determine what entities must obtain permission to physically install cables and wires in a public right-of-way. Companies that are deemed video service providers must pay a fee to local governments under that law. Officials with Maple Heights in suburban Cleveland contended that streaming services are subject to the fee because their content is delivered via the internet over cables and wires. The Supreme Court said in its ruling that…

Amazon said it had its biggest ever Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend, aided by a record number of consumers looking for deals online amid high inflation. The e-commerce company does not typically share how much it earns during its sales events and did not disclose its overall revenue from the weekend. It said in a news release independent businesses that sell on its site generated more than $1 billion in sales. A record 196.7 million people shopped in stores and online during the five-day shopping period that stretched from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, 17 million more compared to last year, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group. It said consumers also spent an average of $325 during the weekend on holiday-related purchases, up from $301 last year. Though higher prices on products…

GivingTuesday raised a record $3.1 billion in 24 hours for charitable causes in the U.S. earlier this week, as the event that started as a hashtag in 2012 celebrated its 10th anniversary and its status as a staple of fundraising for nonprofits, the group’s leader said Wednesday. Despite the difficult economic year that many households have experienced, with inflation in the costs of basic goods, gas and housing, people were still willing to give, said GivingTuesday CEO Asha Curran. “That’s really what we saw yesterday,” she told The Associated Press. “That whatever it is that people are experiencing, they were as generous as they had the capacity to be.” GivingTuesday estimated that giving increased about 15% from 2021’s $2.7 billion, outpacing inflation. Donations were tallied using an array of data sources that includes…

The Federal Reserve will push rates higher than previously expected and keep them there for an extended period, Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday in remarks likely intended to underscore the Fed’s single-minded focus on combating stubborn inflation. Yet in a speech at the Brookings Institution, Powell also signaled that the Fed may increase its key interest rate by a half-point at its December meeting, a smaller boost after four straight three-quarter point hikes. Rate increases could then fall to a more traditional quarter-point size at its February and March meetings, based on previous Fed forecasts. Powell said the Fed is seeking to increase its benchmark rate by enough to slow the economy, hiring, and wage growth, but not so much as to send the U.S. into recession. It has lifted the rate six…

The eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano has temporarily knocked off power to the world’s premier station that measures heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but officials say it won’t be a problem. There are hundreds of other carbon dioxide monitoring sites across the globe. The federal government is looking for a temporary alternate site on the Hawaiian island and is contemplating flying a generator to the Mauna Loa observatory to get its power back so it can take measurements again, said officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Monitoring Lab in Colorado that operates the station. The Hawaiian station goes back to 1958 and is the main site for the famous Keeling Curve that shows rising carbon dioxide levels from burning of coal, oil and natural gas that tracks…