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The House Oversight Committee announced this week that it has launched an investigation into a news-rating system that purportedly ranks which news outlets are trustworthy, with the focus of the probe surrounding whether the ratings group's contracts with federal agencies have an influence on what news it attempts to suppress. Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said Thursday his committee was investigating NewsGuard's impact "on protected First Amendment speech and its potential to serve as a non-transparent agent of censorship campaigns." In a letter to Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz , NewsGuard’s chief executive officers, Comer requested documents on the group's "business relationships with government entities, its adherence to its own policies intended to guard against appearances of bias, how it tries to avoid and manage potential conflicts of interest arising from its investors and other influences, and actions that may have the impact of delegitim...

Juli Clover / MacRumors : Apple added a Vocal Shortcuts accessibility feature in iOS 18 that lets users give Siri a new wake word, such as “hello, computer”   —  Apple in iOS 18 added a Vocal Shortcuts accessibility feature, and now that iOS 18 is available in a beta capacity, users have figured …

Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal : How Duolingo uses streaks and notifications to keep users coming back to the app; 5M of Duolingo's 30M+ DAUs have one year streaks and 70% have weeklong streaks   —  The learning app doesn't just teach languages.  It harnesses the power of streaks and hooks you with perfectly timed nudges.

The Supreme Court seemed to signal interest this week in taking up a challenge launched by Hawaii against big oil companies to hold them liable for climate change, and some Democrats are suggesting the high court is "captured" for the fossil fuel industry.  The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Justice Department to weigh in on a petition to hear a lawsuit brought by the City of Honolulu against major fuel companies including Sunoco, Exxon and Chevron , claiming the companies’ products cause greenhouse gas emissions and global warming without warning consumers about the risks.  The city employed a series of state laws like public nuisance and trespass measures and said the companies should pay billions to the state to abate the effects of climate change like weather events, sea level rise, heat waves, flooding and global warming generally.  The high court gave DOJ no deadline for the solicitor general’s input, but its request indicates a high likelihood the court want...

Reed Albergotti / Semafor : Sources: Mustafa Suleyman's presence at Microsoft is causing some awkwardness with OpenAI, as he looks at the algorithms behind models like GPT-4   —  The Scoop  —  OpenAI was founded, in large part, as an AI safety countermeasure to DeepMind, the AI company acquired by Google in 2014.

The Justice Department will not prosecute U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland over contempt, according to a letter sent from the agency to House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday.  The House voted Wednesday to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over audio of President Biden 's interview with special counsel Robert Hur. The vote came after months of digging by House Republicans to try to bring into public view as much material from the special counsel interview as possible. The story is breaking. Please check back for updates.

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters : Sources: the EU plans to charge Meta under the DMA, focusing on its pay or consent model where users pay a subscription for an ad-free Facebook and Instagram   —  Apple (AAPL.O) and Meta Platforms (META.O) will likely face charges for failing to comply with landmark EU rules aimed at reining …