Category: Technology

Meta asks judge to throw out antitrust case mid-trial

Meta has filed a motion for judgment on the antitrust case it’s currently fighting in court. The motion argues that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has failed to produce any evidence that Meta unlawfully monopolized part of the social networking market, something the government argues it did through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

The filing was submitted this evening, shortly after the FTC rested its case in a protracted trial before DC District Court Judge James Boasberg. “After five weeks of trial, it is clear that the FTC has failed to meet the legal standard required under antitrust law,” said Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro. “Regardless, we will present our case to show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram competes with TikTok (and YouTube and X and many other apps). The FTC spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars bringing a weak case with a market definition that ignores reality.”

A judgment on partial findings asks a judge to consider a case’s merits before it has been fully argued in court, attempting to speed its resolution. The trial is still currently scheduled to proceed, with Meta launching into its defense against the FTC’s …read more

TikTok will try to force teens to meditate after 10PM

TikTok will try to force teens to meditate after 10PM

TikTok recently began experimenting with an in-app meditation feature that encouraged teens to “wind down” after 10PM. Now, the company is making the feature official for all users and turning it on by default for all teens under the age of 18.

With the change, teens will hit a full-screen “guided meditation exercise” when attempting to scroll after 10PM. The prompt is apparently something you can opt to ignore, but teens who do will encounter a second “harder to dismiss” prompt. TikTok’s adult users will also be able to access the in-app meditations via the app’s screen time controls (the feature will not be on by default for adults).

The company notes that its initial tests of “Sleep Hours” were successful, with 98 percent of teens opting to keep the late-night meditation settings on. Previous attempts by TikTok to limit screen time have a somewhat different track record. Documents that surfaced as part of a lawsuit against the company showed that teens were spending about 107 minutes a day in the app even when screen time was set to a 60-minute limit.

Since then, TikTok has beefed up some of its safety features, including …read more

Tim Sweeney is mocking Apple for letting Fortnite fakes into the App Store

Epic Games has been waiting for Apple to approve Fortnite for the US iOS App Store for nearly a week, and now Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is using X to try and put pressure on Apple. On Thursday, he highlighted examples of Fortnite lookalikes that are currently on the App Store and made a direct appeal to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In one post, Sweeney included screenshots of the App Store listing for a game called Fort Battle Royale Epic Shoot. A screenshot in the app listing shows a game with Fortnite-inspired graphics, but it’s clear if you look closely that it isn’t the real Fortnite. “Hey @AppStore can we get the real Fortnite up pls?” Sweeney asked

Soon after, Sweeney said that Fort Battle Royale Epic Shoot had been taken down from the App Store but also highlighted another Fortnite clone, Epic Survival Battle Royale 3D. That app, as of this writing, is still available on the App Store. (Apple has something of a history of letting unofficial fakes of popular games slip onto the store.)

Meta’s ‘Behemoth’ Llama 4 model might still be months away

Meta’s ‘Behemoth’ Llama 4 model might still be months away

Last month, Meta hosted LlamaCon, its first ever generative AI conference. But while the event delivered some notable improvements for developers, it also felt a bit underwhelming considering how important AI is to the company. Now, we know a bit more about why, thanks to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.

According to the report, Meta had originally intended to release its “Behemoth” Llama 4 model at the April developer event, but later delayed its release to June. Now, it’s apparently been pushed back again, potentially until “fall or later.” Meta engineers are reportedly “struggling to significantly improve the capabilities” of the model that Mark Zuckerberg has called “the highest performing base model in the world.”

Meta has already released two smaller Llama 4 models, Scout and Maverick, and has also teased a fourth lightweight model that’s apparently nicknamed “Little Llama.” Meanwhile, the “Behemoth” model will have 288 billion active parameters and “outperforms GPT-4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.7, and Gemini 2.0 Pro on several STEM benchmarks,” the company said last month.

Meta has never given a firm timeline of when to expect the model. The company said last month …read more

TikTok will show teens guided meditation after 10PM

TikTok will interrupt teens’ feeds with guided meditation after 10PM. The platform has been testing the feature with a “wind down” prompt, but now it’ll show the notification with guided meditation by default to all users under 18.

TikTok’s wind-down prompt initially only played calming music to remind teens to take a break from the app at nighttime. It was also only shown to teens under 16. But now, the prompts will include meditation, too, and will be available to adults who toggle on “Sleep Hours” from the Screen Time settings page as well.

While testing its meditation feature, TikTok says it found 98 percent of users under 16 kept it on after trying it for the first time. Teens can ignore the initial 10PM reminder, but the app will display another full-screen prompt later that’s harder to dismiss.

TikTok has until June 19th to divest its US operations or face a ban, but that hasn’t stopped it from trying to address safety concerns. In March, TikTok also launched a Time Away tool that parents or caregivers can use to prevent their child from accessing the app at certain …read more

Doctors successfully treated a baby with the first ever personalized gene-editing therapy

Doctors successfully treated a baby with the first ever personalized gene-editing therapy

A team of doctors and scientists have successfully treated a rare genetic condition with the first-ever personalized gene-editing therapy. Results of the groundbreaking treatment have been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, with an accompanying editorial by a doctor who had previously overseen the FDA’s gene-therapy regulation efforts.

The patient in this historic case was KJ, an infant born with CPS1 deficiency, which has about a 50 percent mortality rate within the first week. Patients that do survive can experience severe brain disease, mental and developmental delays, and potential liver transplants. His care team developed a personalized gene-editing treatment based on CRISPR, a technology for modifying human DNA.

The successful gene repair for KJ combined years’ worth of previous federally-funded medical research, including the discovery of CRISPR and human genome sequencing that allowed the mutation to be identified.

This approach to gene editing could potentially be used in the future to aid patients with other genetic disorders, such as sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease and muscular dystrophy. A pair of CRISPR-based drugs have already received FDA approval for sickle cell disease treatments, but there is still a …read more

X is once again selling checkmarks to US sanctioned groups, report says

X is once again selling checkmarks to US sanctioned groups, report says

X has once again been accepting payments from people associated with terrorist groups and other entities subject to US sanctions, according to a new report from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP). According to the report, X has not only accepted payments in exchange for its premium service, but in some cases has provided an “ID verified” badge.

The report once again questions whether X is complying with US sanctions that restrict companies’ ability to do business with individuals and entities that have been deemed a security threat. Last year, the TTP published a similar report that identified more than two dozen verified accounts that were affiliated with sanctioned groups, including leaders of Hezbollah and accounts associated with Houthis in Yemen. Many of those checkmarks were subsequently revoked, with X promising to “maintain a safe, secure and compliant platform.”

But some of those accounts simply “resubscribed” to X’s premium service or created fresh accounts, according to the report, which is based on research between November 2024 and April 2025. “TTP’s new investigation found an array of blue checkmark accounts for U.S.-sanctioned individuals and organizations, including several that appeared to simply re-subscribe to premium service or create new …read more

Here’s how the Sony WH-1000XM6 compare to the WH-1000XM5 and AirPods Max

Here’s how the Sony WH-1000XM6 compare to the WH-1000XM5 and AirPods Max

It’s been over two years since Sony had a new pair of headphones in its 1000X lineup, but the newly announced WH-1000XM6 seem worth the wait. From the outside, the new ANC headphones look similar to the streamlined WH-1000XM5 from 2022, with the only major change being the return of ear cups that rotate and fold flat. Inside, though, Sony’s packed in improvements that put the WH-1000XM6 ahead of the competition in terms of both sound quality and active noise cancellation.

That’s mostly thanks to the new QN3 processor on the inside, the addition of four new built-in microphones (from eight on the 1000XM5 to 12 on the 1000XM6) and an updated system for adapting ANC performance around fit and pressure. All three combine for noticeably better ANC. Those changes haven’t led to shorter battery life either — you’ll get the same 30 hours with ANC activated on the WH-1000XM6 that you were able to get on the WH-1000XM5.

The WH-1000XM6 is not only able to play spatial audio tracks like the WH-100XM5 and AirPods Max can, the headphones can also convert any stereo track you throw at it into 360-degree audio. For …read more

Love, Death, and Robots keeps a good thing going in volume 4

At its best, Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots creates the same feeling as picking up a collection of sci-fi short stories. You don’t always know what to expect, and not everything is brilliant, but you’re guaranteed to experience something interesting. That was especially true of volume 3 of the animated anthology, which offered nine shorts, all of which were excellent. The latest volume doesn’t quite hit the same heights, nor does it have a singular standout episode like “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” but it’s still a strong offering.

What volume 4 does do well – and it’s something that’s a strength of LDR as a whole – is offer a wide variety of tones and styles. There are still the dark, violent, and hyperreal episodes that are so closely associated with LDR, like “Spider Rose,” a follow-up to last season’s “Swarm,” which tells a cyberpunk story about a woman consumed with revenge who ends up finding it with the help of a very strange creature. There’s also “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur,” in which trained warriors fight to the death in front of rich dignitaries and royalty, all while racing on dinosaurs. In a strangely …read more

Apple’s CarPlay Ultra is finally here, if you have a new Aston Martin

Apple is officially rolling out the next generation of CarPlay — and it’s called CarPlay Ultra. The update is available with new Aston Martin vehicle orders in the US and Canada, but it will be rolling out to existing models with supported infotainment systems in the “coming weeks.” Carmakers like Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis are also working on adding CarPlay Ultra, according to Apple.

Apple first announced its next-gen CarPlay system in 2022, and said it would launch in 2024, but that didn’t pan out. It’s not clear when the system will come to other automakers that confirmed support at the time, like Porsche.

CarPlay Ultra also lets drivers use onscreen controls, physical buttons, or Siri to manage a car’s radio and climate. It also adds widgets “powered by the iPhone that perfectly fit the car’s screen or gauge cluster to provide information at a glance.“ CarPlay Ultra works with the iPhone 12 or newer with iOS 18.5 or later.

Apple says CarPlay Ultra builds upon the previous version of CarPlay by providing “information for all of the driver’s screens.” That includes real-time content and gauges in the instrument cluster, “with dynamic and beautiful options …read more