U.S. DOJ Sues Apple Alleging The Company Blocked Competitors From Accessing iPhone Features



The U.S. accused Apple of monopolizing the smartphone market in a landmark antitrust lawsuit that threatens to disrupt the tech giant’s business model and how millions of consumers use their iPhones, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Justice Department, 15 states and the District of Columbia sued Apple on Thursday, alleging the tech giant makes it difficult for competitors to integrate with the iPhone, ultimately raising prices for consumers. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in New Jersey, said that Apple tries to keep users from switching to devices on outside operating systems, such as Android smartphones.

Apple “has maintained its power, not because of its superiority, but because of its unlawful exclusionary behavior,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press event. 

The tech company controls more than 65% of the U.S. smartphone market, Garland said.

Apple said it plans to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.

“This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. “If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple — where hardware, software, and services intersect.”

CNBC reported the Department of Justice sued Apple on Thursday, saying its iPhone ecosystem is a monopoly that drove its “astronomical valuation” at the expense of consumers, developers and rival phone makers.

According to CNBC, the government has not ruled out breaking up one of the largest companies in the world, with a Justice Department official saying on a briefing call that structural relief was on the table if the U.S. were to win.

The lawsuit claims Apple’s anti-competitive practices extend beyond the iPhone and Apple Watch businesses, citing Apple’s advertising, browser, FaceTime and news offerings.

“Each step in Apple’s course of conduct built and reinforced the moat around its smartphone monopoly,” according to the suit, filed by the DOJ and 16 attorneys general in New Jersey federal court.

TechCrunch reported the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple filed on Thursday cites the iPhone maker’s battle against Beeper, the app that aimed to bring iMessage to Android users. 

Beeper gave up on its mission after Apple blocked the app’s efforts late last year. The DOJ referenced the dispute in its lawsuit as an example of Apple controlling “the behavior and innovation of third parties in order to insulate itself from competition.”

In my opinion, there appears to be a chance that the U.S. Department of Justice could impose some penalties on Apple. I think this lawsuit could potentially take a long time to sort out.


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Intel To Receive $8.5b In US Funding For High-End Chip Manufacturing



Intel will receive $8.5 billion in direct funding and $11 billion in loans from the US government to expand its capacity to make high-end chips, as it seeks to reinvent itself as a national champion in the sector and compete with the likes of Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung, Financial Times reported.

US President Joe Biden will travel to Intel’s site in Chandler, Arizona, on Wednesday to announce the package, which will go towards building new facilities for the company in the south-western state, as well as Ohio, New Mexico and Oregon.

The government funding for chip manufacturing, which was passed in Congress in 2022, is part of Biden’s sweeping agenda to revitalize domestic manufacturing in areas ranging from clean energy to semiconductors and steel.

Intel has already committed to investing $100 billion in chip manufacturing over the next five years. It had said it expected to further benefit from the US Treasury tax credits that would allow it to write off up to 25 per cent of that investment.

The $8.5 billion will be distributed in tranches, subject to Intel reaching certain “milestones”, senior White House officials said. They expect the funding to lead 30,000 jobs in the chip sector.

CNBC reported the White House said Intel has been awarded up to $8.5 billion in CHIPS Act funding, as the Biden administration ramps up its efforts to bring semiconductor manufacturing to U.S. soil. 

Intel could receive an additional $11 billion in loans from the CHIPS and Science Act, which was passed in 2022. The awards will be announced by President Joe Biden in Arizona on Wednesday.

The money will help “leading-edge semiconductors made in the United States” keep “America in the driver’s seat of innovation,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, said in a call with reporters. Intel and the White House said their agreement is nonbinding and preliminary and could change.

Intel said it would spend its CHIPS Act funds on fabs and research centers in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico and Oregon. The company previously announced plans to spend $100 billion on U.S. programs and facilities. Intel has announced a plan to catch up in leading-edge manufacturing by 2026.

Intel’s Ohio fab will cost more than $20 billion and Intel said it is expected to start production in 2027 or 2028. Intel is also expanding manufacturing operations in Arizona and New Mexico. Intel says the projects will create jobs for 20,000 people in fab construction and 10,000 people in chip manufacturing.

In my opinion, this could potentially result in Intel hiring a lot of people who want to work for the company. This probably couldn’t have been done without the use of the CHIPS Act. 

 


Threads Is Rolling Out Trending Topics To All Users In The US



Threads, the Twitter-like app from Instagram, is rolling out its “trending now” feature widely to all users in the U.S. The official rollout comes a month after the app started testing the feature with a select number of users in the country. Trending topics are available on the search page and in the app’s For You Feed, TechCrunch reported.

In a Threads post, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the official launch and noted that the company sees it as “an easy way to see what others are talking about on Threads.”

The launch of trending topics will bring Threads more in-line with X, as it will allow users to find timely conversations that are taking place on the social network. Up until now, Threads has been lacking a real-time sense of community, and the introduction of trending topics could help remedy this as it lets you get an idea of what people are currently discussing outside of what you see in your own feeds.

According to TechCrunch, the feature is somewhat limited, as Threads only displays five trending topics at a time, while X shows you multiple. It’s possible that Threads may be limiting the number of trending topics to prevent issues around safety and spam.

Gizmodo reported Thread users in the United States will finally be able to see what topics are trending on the app, a longhand staple feature of Twitter, according to a post from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday. The “Trending Now” page appears under the search bar on Threads.

“Trending now is rolling out to the US today so you can see what people are talking about on Threads,” said Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Threads.

According to Gizmodo, Meta tested a trending page on Threads earlier this year called “Today’s Topics.” It appears the company shifted the name of the page to a more familiar name. The “Trending” page has been a staple of Twitter, Threads’ competitor, for years and it’s been highly cited as a missing feature of the Threads platform.

Meta launched Threads last summer, and it blew up in popularity with 49 million users in the first two days. Then all the hype faded away as many of those millions who signed up for the platform when it was first released just stopped using it. Since then, Meta continued to add new feature such as a web browser version, a retweet-like feature called reposts, and even an edit button. These features have made Threads a popular app once again, and Meta said last month that there are more users now than at launch.

Engadget reported Meta is finally providing a bit of visibility into what kinds of conversations are happening on its Twitter competitor, Threads. The service is rolling out its “trending now” feature to all US users, Mark Zuckerberg said in a post.

For now, the feature is still fairly limited. Threads only shows five trending topics at any one time, which is likely an attempt to keep the list relatively curated and avoid some of the issues that have plagued the feature on Twitter and now X.

In my opinion, it is probably good that Threads is attempting to provide users with new features while also curating what goes into trending topics. That might help keep the Meta’s social media alive for a while.


Vid2Pod: Transform YouTube Playlists into a Podcast! #1731



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YouTube Now Requires Creators To Label Videos Made With AI



Starting Monday, YouTube creators will be required to label when realistic-looking videos were made using artificial intelligence, part of a broader effort by the company to be transparent about content that could otherwise confuse or mislead users, CNN reported.

When a user uploads a video to the site, they will see a checklist asking if their content makes a real person say or do something they didn’t do, alters footage of a real place or event, or depicts a realistic-looking scene that didn’t actually occur.

According to CNN, The disclosure is meant to help prevent users from being confused by synthetic content amid a proliferation of new, consumer-facing generative AI tools that make it quick and easy to create compelling text, images, video and audio that can often be hard to distinguish from the real thing. 

Online safety experts have raised alarms that the proliferation of AI-generated content could confuse and mislead users across the internet, especially ahead of elections in the United States and elsewhere in 2024.

YouTube creators will be required to identify when their videos contain AI-generated or otherwise manipulated content that appears realistic — so that YouTube can attach a label for viewers — and could face consequences if they repeatedly fail to add the disclosure.

YouTube posted “How we’re helping creators disclose altered or synthetic content” From the post:

Generative AI is transforming the ways creators express themselves — from storyboarding ideas to experimenting with tools that enhance creative process. But viewers increasingly want more transparency about whether the content they’re seeing is altered or synthetic.

That’s why today we’re introducing a new tool in Creator Studio requiring creators to disclose to viewers when realistic content — content a viewer could easily mistake for a real person, place, or event — is made with altered or synthetic media, including generative AI.

The new label is meant to strengthen transparency with viewers and build trust between creators and their audience. Some examples of content that require disclosure include:

Using the likeness of a realistic person: Digitally altering content to replace the face of one individual with another’s or synthetically generating a person’s voice to narrate a video.

Altering footage of real events of places: Such as making it appear as if a real building caught fire, or altering a real cityscape to make it appear different than reality.

Generating realistic scenes: Showing a realistic depiction of fictional major events, like a tornado moving toward a real town.

Engadget reported that YouTube says it might apply labels to a video if a creator hasn’t done so, “especially if the altered or synthetic content has the potential to confuse or mislead people.” The team notes it wants to give creators some time to get used to the new rules, YouTube will likely penalize those who persistently flout the policy by not including a label when it should be.

In my opinion, it sounds like YouTube is intending to make the distinction between real-world videos and videos that include AI generated ones. That might be frustrating for some creators, but will be useful for preventing people from confusing reality with AI manipulated content.


The FTC Is Probing Reddit’s AI Licensing Deals



The Federal Trade Commission is looking into Reddit’s AI licensing deals, the company disclosed in paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which is in the midst of its Initial Public Offering, said that the regulator notified Reddit officials that it “intended to request information and documents” about the company’s AI deals, Engadget reported.

According to Engadget, it’s not clear why the FTC is probing Reddit’s relatively new licensing business, but it seems to be in the early stages of its inquiry. “On March 14, 2024, we received a letter from the FTC advising us that the FTC’s staff is conducting a non-public inquiry focused on our sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content with third parties to train AI models,” Reddit wrote in a filing. “Given the novel nature of these technologies and commercial arrangements, we are not surprised that the FTC has expressed interest in this area. We do not believe that we have engaged in any unfair or deceptive trade practice.”

CNBC reported that Reddit said on Friday that the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to the company about its data-licensing business related to the training of artificial intelligence systems.

According to CNBC, the 19-year-old company has filed to sell shares in it’s IPO at $31 to $34 each of an offering that would value the business at close to $6.5 billion. Reddit is trying to hit the public market during a historically slow period for tech IPOs. There hasn’t been a notable venture-backed tech debut since Instacart and Klaviyo in September. Before that, the market had been largely shuttered since late 2021.

Reddit’s revenue rose 20% last year to $804 million. About 98% of its sales came from advertising. The remaining 2% includes data licensing.

The Hill reported the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is probing Reddit’s plan to let artificial intelligence (AI) firms to utilize user-generated content to train their software, according to the social media company’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing Friday.

The inquiry comes just days before Reddit is slated to complete its initial public offering, after filing for it last month.

According to The Hill, Reddit announced in February that it would allow Google to train its AI models. The deal was announced in February, is worth $60 billion and would let Google use its data application programming interface (API).

Axios reported Reddit isn’t the only company receiving these so-called “hold letters,” according to a former FTC official who spoke with Axios on background.

According to Axios, this suggests that the commission is trying to get a handle on a rapidly changing industry and how that could affect both competition and consumer data privacy. It does not mean a formal investigation will be launched into Reddit or any other company.

In my opinion, it sounds like the FTC is very interested in what Reddit wants to do with the sale, licensing, or sharing of user-generated content to train AI models. I’m not sure that’s something the FTC will allow.