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Trisha Thadani / Washington Post : California regulators will decide on July 13 whether to allow 24/7 driverless cabs from Waymo and Cruise in SF, as city officials fume over a lack of control   —  To their dismay, local officials have no control over whatever the state decides  —  SAN FRANCISCO — On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon here …

Jay Peters / The Verge : The moderators of r/IAmA say they will no longer coordinate celebrity AMAs and Reddit “has all the funds they need to hire people” for tasks done by volunteers   —  The moderators of Reddit's IAmA community will no longer solicit and coordinate ask me anything (AMA) …

Andy Baio / Waxy.org : A developer says Twitter appears to be DDoSing itself due to a bug in Twitter's web app, which could be tied to Elon Musk's emergency blocks and rate limits   —  For the last two days, Elon Musk has claimed that Twitter is under attack from “several hundred organizations” who were conducting …

Jay Peters / The Verge : Bluesky says it is “temporarily” pausing new sign-ups to resolve performance issues caused by “record high-traffic”   —  / ‘We will temporarily be pausing Bluesky sign-ups while our team continues to resolve the existing performance issues.’

Poynter : Q&A with Yoel Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and safety, on the whirlwind first two weeks under Elon Musk, Twitter's content moderation approach, and more   —  Yoel Roth explains how moderation rules evolved at Twitter, the fight against harassment and why he no longer drives a Tesla

Manish Singh / TechCrunch : Elon Musk says verified Twitter accounts are temporarily limited to reading 6K posts/day, unverified 600, and new unverified 300, due to “extreme” data scraping   —  Twitter is putting limits to how many tweets its users can read as the Elon Musk-owned service suffers extended outage …

The U.S. Department of State released a damning formal evaluation of the United States' chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, placing blame on both the Trump and Biden administrations. The State Department conducted more than 150 interviews over a 90-day period to compile the report, which was publicized Friday. Notably, 13 American service members died in a suicide bombing at Kabul's airport during the controversial withdrawal, which concluded Aug. 30, 2021. The report found that both President Trump and President Biden had "insufficient senior-level consideration" of what could go wrong during a withdrawal. "The decisions of both President Trump and President Biden to end the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security," the report stated. "Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the AAR team found that during both administrations there was insu...

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security : Kazakhstan arrested Nikita Kislitsin, Group-IB's former head of network security, on June 22 for his alleged role in the LinkedIn and Dropbox hacks in 2012   —  Nikita Kislitsin, formerly the head of network security for one of Russia's top cybersecurity firms, was arrested last week in Kazakhstan …

Democratic lawmakers are lashing out after the Supreme Court on Friday struck down President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan that would have cost taxpayers an estimated $400 billion. In a 6-3 decision, the court held that current law does not allow the secretary of education to unilaterally wipe out debt without congressional approval. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, the state that first brought a lawsuit against the administration, said the high court's decision was "harmful" and "the result of a biased Supreme Court." "The Supreme Court’s extreme right-wing justices have repeatedly proven that they prioritize lining their own pockets with handouts from their billionaire besties over straightforward and legal student debt relief for millions of borrowers," Bush said in a statement Friday. BIDEN DOE ALLEGEDLY PLANNING 'WORKAROUNDS' IF SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN STUDENT LOAN HANDOUT She claimed Biden's plan is "completely l...

Richard Priday / Tom's Guide : Review of £749 Asus Zenfone 10: compact with a 5.9" display, good performance and battery life, but cameras are limited and only two years of software updates   —  Everything you need in a premium Android phone, in a surprisingly small frame  —  Tom's Guide Verdict … Why you can trust Tom's Guide?

The New York Times' 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones said wealthy White people on the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action, adding that Justice Clarence Thomas is "irrelevant here." "An elite, white majority determining after just 50 years of weak, half-hearted affirmative action efforts, that they are the ones to decide that enough has been done to address centuries of explicit racial exclusion against Black people is the most American ruling ever," Hannah-Jones tweeted following the historic Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action. "Let me make it simpler: Rich white people thinking THEY are the ones who get to say that society has done enough to mitigate that devastation of 350 years of explicit discrimination against Black people is the most American thing of all." "Was going to write an essay about it, but why even bother. (Also, Clarence Thomas is actually irrelevant here. So thanks but no thanks)," the "1...

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer : YouTube is running a test globally that limits ad block users to three videos, giving them the option to turn off ad blockers or subscribe to YouTube Premium   —  YouTube is currently running what it describes as a “small experiment globally,” warning users to toggle off their ad blockers …

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas dismantled his colleague Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's "race-infused world view" as part of the Supreme Court's decision Thursday to outlaw race considerations – also known as affirmative action – in the college admissions process. Thomas, the second black justice to sit on the bench, sided with the 6-3 majority ruling Thursday saying the court's decision "sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes." Thomas wrote a concurring opinion "to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution " and to "clarify that all forms of discrimination based on race—including so-called affirmative action—are prohibited under the Constitution; and to emphasize the pernicious effects of all such discrimination." In doing so, Thomas slammed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's di...

Bloomberg : Filing: Fidelity refiles for a spot bitcoin ETF with the US SEC, following similar applications from BlackRock, Invesco, WisdomTree, Valkyrie, and others   —  Fidelity Investments is the latest financial services heavyweight to throw its name into the race to offer the first US exchange-traded fund investing in Bitcoin.

Voters in Wisconsin are torn on who to support in the GOP race for president, with former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis neck and neck in the hotly contested White House race, a recently released poll shows. The Marquette University Law School Poll , which was conducted from June 8 to June 13 and released Wednesday, shows Trump narrowly leading DeSantis 31% to 30%, well within the poll's margin of error of +/-4.3 percentage points. Following DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence picked up six percent support in the poll, South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott received five percent support, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley received three percent support, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy picked up three percent support. TRUMP LEAD GROWS IN NH, WHILE DESANTIS LOSES GROUND AND NEW CANDIDATES SEE INCREASE IN SUPPORT Asked who they would vote for if the only two options in the Republican presidential primary were DeSantis and Trump, respondents to the su...

Andrew Brust / The New Stack : Databricks announces LakehouseIQ, which lets companies use natural language to search and query their data, new tools for its Lakehouse AI platform, and more   —  We review Databricks' announcements at Data and AI Summit, and how they counter yesterday's Snowflake Summit reveals.

Former Republican Senator Lowell P. Weicker passed away at the age of 92 on Wednesday. Weicker, who also served as governor of Connecticut from 1991 to 1995, passed away at a hospital in Middletown after a short illness, according to a family statement. The Republican was first elected to Connecticut's General Assembly in 1962. He was later elected to the U.S. Senate, serving from 1971 to 1989. Weicker served on the Senate’s special committee on Watergate in 1973. Weicker was one of three Republicans represented on the seven-person committee. BIDEN STANDS BY CALLING XI A ‘DICTATOR’ AFTER COMMENT ANGERS CHINA A brash politician, Weicker did not shy away from criticizing President Richard Nixon. "More and more, events were making it clear that the Nixon White House was a cauldron of corruption," Weicker wrote in his memoir, "Maverick: A Life in Politics". "And even as disclosures kept coming, more and more national leaders were acting as though noth...

Carl Franzen / VentureBeat : New York-based Slang.ai, which offers an AI-powered phone answering service for restaurants and retailers, raised a $20M Series A led by Homebrew   —  Slang.ai, an AI-powered phone answering product for the restaurant industry founded by two former Spotify data scientists …

The Biden White House has repeatedly claimed they are the "most transparent administration in American history," but a Fox News Digital review found that the visitor logs from the beginning of the Biden administration through February 2023 have not included any of Hunter Biden’s White House visits or extended stays. Fox News Digital reviewed several articles to piece together Hunter Biden’s whereabouts during his dad’s administration and found that he has visited the White House over a dozen times through February 2023, the month accounted for in the most recent batch of visitor logs released last month. A majority of the White House visits that Fox News Digital found were from 2022, which include the annual egg roll, Medal of Freedom ceremony, France State Dinner on the South Lawn, Christmas tree lighting, his daughter’s wedding, among others. However, they are all absent from the visitor logs, including what appear to be extended stays at the White House. While many of...

David Heaney / UploadVR : Report: Google canceled its “Iris” AR glasses project earlier in 2023 and is now focused on creating AR software platforms to license to headset manufacturers   —  Google reportedly killed its glasses hardware project.  —  Business Insider's Hugh Langley cites …

FIRST ON FOX: The Republican chairman of the House Committee on Small Business is accusing the Small Business Administration (SBA) of failing to protect coronavirus loan programs from fraud after a government report found that the agency disbursed over $200 billion in possibly fraudulent COVID-19 loans, nearly double that which was previously expected. The Small Business Administration Office of the Inspector General said in its report on COVID-19 pandemic loan fraud on Tuesday that the agency disbursed more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent PPP loans and Economic Injury Disaster Loans during the pandemic. In total, the SBA's Office of the Inspector General said there were 4.5 million potentially fraudulent loans and grants from pandemic loan programs. The Office of the Inspector General said the SBA "did not have an established strong internal control environment for approving and disbursing program funds," adding that "there was an insufficient barr...

Issie Lapowsky / Fast Company : SCOTUS 7-2 ruling: for alleged cyberstalkers' words to be “true threats”, a court must prove a person recklessly disregarded that the words were seen as threats   —  The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that in order to find someone guilty of making a “true threat” …

Former President Donald Trump insists that he did "nothing wrong" as he reacted to a leaked recording of him apparently discussing what he described as "highly confidential" documents in his possession post-presidency. Trump, the commanding front-runner in the latest GOP presidential nomination polls as he runs a third straight time for the White House, argued in a Fox News Digital interview on Tuesday that "this is just another hoax." "I would say election interference more than anything else. It’s a disgrace that they can do it," Trump said. "Everything was fine. We did nothing wrong and everybody knows it." Trump was indicted and arraigned this month for his alleged improper retention of classified records. He pleaded not guilty in federal court to criminal charges that he illegally retained national security records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, following the end of his term in office and that he obstructed fe...

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch : TikTok launches the TikTok Creative Challenge, which lets US-based creators with 50K+ followers submit video ads for brands and make money based on performance   —  TikTok is introducing a new way for creators to earn money on its platform.  The company announced on Tuesday that it's launching the …

President Joe Biden is scheduled to ramp up his reelection campaign this week amid bombshell whistleblower allegations about a federal probe into the president's son, Hunter. Biden has three campaign receptions scheduled: Tuesday in Chevy Chase, Maryland; Wednesday in Chicago; and Thursday in New York City. The president has done five other campaign receptions since he announced his bid for reelection on April 25 – four of which were in a two-day stretch last week in California. BIDEN GIVES FIRST REMARKS ON RUSSIA-WAGNER GROUP FACE-OFF, DENIES US INVOLVEMENT The spike in campaign events comes amid whistleblower allegations that Biden 's Justice Department limited aspects of its investigation into Hunter Biden. One specific allegation is that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf "interjected" and said she did not want to investigate the identity of the "big guy" Hunter Biden referred to in texts as a recipient of a percentage of one of his Chinese business ...

James Vincent / The Verge : AI is killing the web with spam sites, article-churning “AI editors”, “AI-generated junk” in places like Etsy and Reddit, exhausting forum moderators, and more   —  In recent months, the signs and portents have been accumulating with increasing speed.  Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links.

The Biden administration on Monday said it doesn't know Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's whereabouts, including which country he is in, following his short-lived rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin.   State Department spokesman Matt Miller confirmed as much during a news briefing, adding that it was a "new thing to see President Putin's leadership directly challenged" amid Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.   Prigozhin shocked the world this weekend when he turned his private military group against Russian forces, while taking control of Russian military bases. He relented on Saturday after Belarus held negotiations between the two sides. The Kremlin said it made a deal in which the mercenary chief will move to Belarus and he and his soldiers will receive amnesty.  WHAT DOES PUTIN'S STANDOFF WITH WAGNER MERCENARY GROUP MEAN FOR RUSSIA? "I don't have any assessment about his location," Miller said of Prigozhin. "This ...

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp condemned two neo-Nazi demonstrations that took place outside synagogues in Macon and near Atlanta on Friday and Saturday. "There is absolutely no place for this hate and antisemitism in our state. I share in the outrage over this shameful act and stand with Georgians everywhere in condemning it," the Republican tweeted Sunday morning. "We remain vigilant in the face of these disgusting acts of bigotry." A group of about a dozen neo-Nazi extremists -- waving swastika flags and displaying antisemitic propaganda -- gathered in front of an East Cobb synagogue, about 20 miles from Atlanta during services Saturday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. VA. BOARD MEMBER BRAGS ABOUT USING TAXPAYERS' $3B FOR 'MUSLIM POWER,' PUSHING PALESTINIAN AGENDA IN SCHOOLS County officials identified "these individuals as part of a small group that travel around the country in order to spread their hateful message," the Chabad of...

Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk : FTX bankruptcy team says the exchange owed customers ~$8.7B after commingling and misusing their deposits, and ~$7B in liquid assets have been recovered so far   —  Commingling and misuse of customer and corporate funds occurred from the inception of FTX, says current CEO John J. Ray III.

New York Times : As the use of AI-generated ads in political campaigns increases, lawmakers, political consultants, and election researchers push for creating new guardrails   —  Gaps in campaign rules allow politicians to spread images and messaging generated by increasingly powerful artificial intelligence technology.

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeted a video Sunday of himself doing push-ups shirtless in jeans one day after Twitter erupted over a viral video of him bench pressing. "Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden!" Kennedy tweeted. Fitness gurus and conservative activists praised Kennedy for his physical abilities and imposing physique after the video of his bench pressing skills went viral. "This video should INSPIRE all men," Jason Helmes, a fitness coach and owner of Anyman fitness, tweeted. "RFK looks like a tank." Kennedy is running in the Democratic primary against President Biden. He has delivered his message largely across podcast platforms, most notably the Joe Rogan Experience.  The White House did not respond to a request for comment. WHY YOUTUBE SAYS IT REMOVED A ROBERT F KENNEDY JR INTERVIEW "suddenly i want to vote for rfk," Ashley St. Claire of the Babylon Bee tweeted. "Sol Brah," a heal...

The White House received backlash Saturday after it was reported that Hunter Biden was accompanying his father to Camp David amid bombshell whistleblower allegations of political corruption, along with recently pleading guilty to federal tax charges and agreeing to plea deal on a felony gun charge. The House Ways and Means Committee revealed on Thursday its interview with an IRS whistleblower last month who shared a WhatsApp message from 2017 where Hunter Biden allegedly told a Chinese business associate he and his father would ensure "you will regret not following my direction."  "I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled," Hunter Biden told Henry Zhao, the director of Harvest Fund Management, in the message provided by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley. "And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the...

Former President Donald Trump continues to lead as the GOP frontrunner after being indicted on federal charges in early June, however, nearly half of GOP voters surveyed are skeptical over whether he should continue to lead the Republican Party, according to a new poll. A new NBC poll shows a majority of Republican voters would vote for Trump in the Republican primary, with 51% listing him as their number one choice. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came in second with 22% of the votes and former Vice President Mike Pence coming in third with 7%.  These new numbers come in comparison to how the candidates fared with GOP voters back in April shortly after Trump was indicted in New York in connection to hush-money payments made in 2016. 46% of Republican voters supported Trump then and 31% said they were backing DeSantis.  After pleading not guilty to 37 federal charges related to his handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in June, a combined total of 77% of...

Chinese officials reportedly pressed Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Washington’s stance regarding the upcoming 2024 elections in Taiwan during his trip to Beijing last week.  Though Blinken maintained that the Biden administration would keep an even-handed stance and does not support any meddling, Chinese officials sought to induce Washington’s cooperation against Vice President Lai Ching-te, considered by Beijing as a member of the "pro-independence" wing, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. Lai, the presidential candidate of the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is considered more aggressive in advocating for Taiwanese independence compared to current President Tsai Ing-wen. Tsai cannot seek re-election due to term limits.  According to the Journal, sources said Chinese officials said when then-President George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office next to then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in 2003, he cautioned then-Taiwan president and DPP leader Chen Shui...

Reed Albergotti / Semafor : Q&A with AWS Product VP Matt Wood on the generative AI boom, the escalating AI battle between tech giants, curating the best models for AWS, and more   —  Matt Wood, vice president of product for Amazon Web Services, is at the tip of the spear of Amazon's response in the escalating AI battle between the tech giants.