Tech

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Meta says it has taken “further measures” to prevent EU-based users from accessing Instagram’s Threads, including blocking access through VPNs  —  After multiple EU-based users complained about not being able to access Instagram’s Threads app through VPN, Meta confirmed that it is blocking such efforts.

Just weeks after a third of the US population was hit with air-quality alerts thanks to smoke from climate-change-fueled fires in Canada, 100 million Americans are now under heat alerts. A cap of extra-hot air, known as a heat dome, has settled over the West and South, pushing temperatures relentlessly higher.  The map below shows excessive heat warnings in purple …

Taylan Bilgic / Bloomberg: Turkey’s top court upholds a law restricting companies’ ad spend and customer data use if their sales exceed given limits, in a blow to Alibaba’s unit Trendyol  —  Turkey’s top court upheld a law tightening regulation on e-commerce companies in a blow to Trendyol, the market-leading local unit …

Notifications come through to your phone or smartwatch swiftly. The rich alerts on Android are the absolute best because you get a small close up of the person and can expand the notification to see a few frames of the video. With the iPhone, you must touch and hold the notification to see the subject highlighted. That’s usually enough to …

Tim Copeland / The Block: Multichain ceases operations after the crypto bridging protocol’s CEO Zhaojun and his sister, who held ~$220M of user assets, were detained by Chinese police  —  – Multichain confirmed its CEO has been detained in China.  — It said the CEO’s sister moved $220 million of funds …

Are you watching the new season of the Apple TV+ series Foundation and thinking, “Wow, space looks cool. I wish it really was like that”? You’re in luck—it very well could be. Foundation showrunner David S. Goyer says his adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction series honed its cosmic details with Kevin Hand, a scientist who works at NASA’s Jet …

Comment on this storyComment For years Meta’s role as an arbiter of speech has placed it in a political hot seat: Conservatives charge it with politically motivated censorship, while liberals contend leaving harmful content online fuels its spread. But with the launch of its buzzy new Twitter alternative, Threads, Meta sees an opportunity to excise itself from the debate by …

Reuters: Sources and a document: India told Netflix, Disney, and other streaming services to consider an independent panel to review content ahead of its release  —  – India has been strictly regulating streaming platforms  — Wants expert panel for age ratings, content review

Kim Kardashian’s newest range of products, launched in late 2022—post SKIMS shapewear, post SKKN facewear—is a menacing set of raw concrete forms for storing bathroom products: a gray tissue box, Q-tip tin, wastebasket. Dry, brutal, and mysterious, the items look like you hired one of Gary Larson’s cavemen to decorate your vanity with found objects. “Having the concrete material and …

Comment on this storyComment This was Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Oh.) big chance to expose Lina Khan, the Democratic chair of the Federal Trade Commission, as a partisan hack whose “obsession” with Twitter and Elon Musk has driven her to flout norms and ethics as part of a “targeted harassment” campaign against the tech billionaire. Jordan, the chair of the House …