Aug 30
Earlier this year, the Voyager 1 spacecraft—over 14 billion miles from Earth—started sending NASA some wacky data. Now, engineers with the space agency have identified and solved the issue, and no, it wasn’t aliens.
Aug 30
Jackson, Mississippi, Is Without Running Water For ‘Unknown Period Of Time’
Posted in: Today's ChiliHeavy rains and flooding caused pumps in the water treatment center of Mississippi’s capital city to fail, the mayor said.
Aug 30
Twitter planned to build an OnlyFans clone, but CSAM issues reportedly derailed the plan
Posted in: Today's ChiliTwitter discussed creating an OnlyFans clone to monetize the adult content that’s been prevalent on the platform for many years, but its inability to effectively detect and remove harmful sexual content put the brakes on that notion, according to a Verge investigation. A team Twitter put together to find out whether the company could pull off such a move determined this spring that “Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale.” The team’s findings were “part of a discussion, which ultimately led to us pause the workstream for the right reasons,” Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough said.
Twitter is said to have halted the Adult Content Monetization (ACM) project in May, not long after it agreed a $44 billion sale to Elon Musk — that deal is now up in the air. The company’s leadership team determined that it couldn’t move forward with ACM without enacting more health and safety measures.
The investigation (which you can read in full here) details warnings that Twitter researchers made in February 2021 about the company not doing enough to detect and remove harmful sexual content, such as Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The researchers are said to have informed the company that the enforcement system Twitter primarily uses, RedPanda, is “a legacy, unsupported tool” that is “by far one of the most fragile, inefficient and under-supported tools” it employs.
While the company has machine learning systems, those seemingly struggle to detect new instances of CSAM in tweets and livestreams. Twitter manually reports CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). However, the researchers noted that the labor-intensive process led to a backlog of cases and a delay in reporting CSAM to NCMEC. Rosborough told The Verge that since the researchers released their report last year, Twitter has significantly increased its investment in detecting CSAM and is hiring several specialists to tackle the issue.
“Twitter has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation,” Rosborough said. “We aggressively fight online child sexual abuse and have invested significantly in technology and tools to enforce our policy. Our dedicated teams work to stay ahead of bad-faith actors and to help ensure we’re protecting minors from harm — both on and offline.”
Advertisers may have bristled at the notion of Adult Content Monetization (even though porn is widespread on the platform), but the potential financial upside for Twitter was clear. OnlyFans expects to bring in $2.5 billion in revenue this year, which is about half of what Twitter generated in 2021. Twitter offers creators several ways to directlymonetize the large audiences many of them have built on the platform. Adding OnlyFans-style functions might have been a goldmine for adult content creators and the company. Broader issues have prevented the company from taking that step, despite the improvements it claims to have made over the last 18 months.
Engadget has contacted Twitter for comment.
Aug 30
Webb and Hubble telescopes join forces to capture multi-spectrum image of Phantom Galaxy
Posted in: Today's ChiliThe JWST has dazzled since it began sending images back to Earth, but sometimes even the most advanced space telescope ever needs a little help from a friend. On Monday, the European Space Agency released a new image of the Phantom Galaxy. Located approximately 32 million light years away from Earth, Messier 74 has been a favorite of astronomers ever since it was discovered in 1780 by Pierre Méchain.
What makes the above image of the Phantom Galaxy different from the ones you might have seen in the past is that it’s a composite. It incorporates visible and ultraviolet wavelengths captured by the Hubble Space Telescope with infrared light seen by James Webb Space Telescope. You can see the separate images the two captured below. Webb’s snap of M74 highlights all the gas and dust at the outer edge of the “grand design spiral” galaxy. The image also shows off the nuclear star cluster at its center.
NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope
Moreso than being a pretty image, this new view of the Phantom Galaxy is a testament to how much the Hubble Space Telescope has yet to give to the science community. The European Space Agency says Hubble’s observations of M74 revealed star formations known as “Hill” regions within the galaxy. You have to admit, that’s pretty good for a telescope that was only expected to stay operational for 15 years but has been going strong for 32 years. “By combining data from telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum, scientists can gain greater insight into astronomical objects than by using a single observatory – even one as powerful as Webb,” the ESA said.
Aug 30
Was the sight of the three cinematic Spider-Men recreating the much-beloved pointing meme from the classic 1967 Spider-Man cartoon responsible for Spider-Man: No Way Home’s massive success and $1.9 billion box office? No, absolutely not. But it was likely enough to make Iron Studios realize that people would very…
Aug 30
Washington and Massachusetts Mull Bans of New Gas-Powered Cars, Following California
Posted in: Today's Chili
Last week, California became the first state to officially announce the phase-out of gas-powered cars in order to significantly lower emissions by the middle of this century. Since then, officials in Washington state and Massachusetts have announced their own similar plans, also citing the need to lower emissions.
Aug 30
Android Won't Touch Truth Social Because the App Fails to Moderate Violent User Content
Posted in: Today's Chili
Even though it’s been months since Truth Social went on the market, Google has still not let the hoards of Trump supporters download their favorite former president’s app off its app store. Finally, the company has revealed that Truth has so far failed to come up with a content moderation policy that will satisfy the…
Aug 30
Meghan Markle Tells Mariah Carey About When She Was First Treated Like A ‘Black Woman’
Posted in: Today's Chili“Up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman,” the Duchess of Sussex said. “And things really shifted.”
Aug 30
Sony improved upon its already stellar WH-1000XM4 headphones earlier this year by introducing their follow-up, the WH-1000XM5. The new cans make nearly everything about the previous model ever so slightly better, putting them in a class of their own — and their $398 price tag reflects that. But now you can snag the XM5 for roughly $60 less than usual thanks to a one-day sale at Woot that brings the black model down to $340. That’s the best price we’ve seen since the headphones came out in May.
Sony did make some subtle changes to the design of the XM5. Compared to the XM4, the new headphones have a slimmed down headband and a more modern look overall. They only weigh slightly less than their predecessor, but they feel much lighter when you’re wearing them, which should make them even more comfortable to wear for hours on end.
Somehow, Sony managed to make sound quality and active noise cancellation even better on the XM5. The headphones have new 30mm carbon fiber drivers that handle audio, which is well-tuned for a wide variety of genres and has better depth and clarity. ANC has improved thanks to additional processors and a total of microphones that help detect noise and block it out. Overall, the XM5 does a better job of blocking out things like nearby voices and TV noise than its predecessor.
The XM5 work with Sony’s companion mobile app as well, which you can use do change settings and do things like enable multipoint connectivity, change voice assistants and more. As far as battery life goes, you’ll get roughly 30 hours before you’ll need to recharge them, and it’ll only take three minutes to get three hours of playback time. Make no mistake, the Sony’s WH-1000XM4 are still great headphones (which you can often find on sale as well), but the XM5 cans are the ones to get if you want all of the latest features and some of the best ANC you’ll find on over-ear headphones.
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