Los Angeles Times1 day agoColumn: How tech is changing L.A. — and how L.A. is changing techverified_publisherLos Angeles Times - Brian MerchantIs tech OK? It’s not just the mass layoffs. It’s that, to an alien observer, many of the most hyped ideas emerging from America’s vaunted tech industry over the last few years would seem untethered from reality, if not outright unhinged. Facebook renamed itself Meta and pitched us the metaverse, …
Los Angeles Times4 days agoOp-Ed: The law that made the internet is under fire. Here’s how to reform itverified_publisherLos Angeles Times - Mark WeinsteinA Supreme Court case set for oral arguments on Feb. 21 could transform the web as we know it. The case was brought by the family of a woman killed in a 2015 Islamic State terrorist attack in Paris. The plaintiffs claimed that YouTube — which is owned by Google — knowingly permitted hundreds of …
Los Angeles TimesHow ‘crunch’ time and low pay are fueling a union drive among video game workersverified_publisherLos Angeles Times - Sarah ParviniFor months, Andrés Vásquez’s days working on the first-person shooter game “Doom” blended into one another. A quality assurance tester for id Software in Texas, he spent 10 hours a day sitting at a desk and “crunching” on the game with his colleagues, repeatedly playing through its map creation mode …
Los Angeles TimesColumn: The real aim of big tech’s layoffs: bringing workers to heelverified_publisherLos Angeles Times - Brian MerchantIn Silicon Valley, the new year began as the last one ended — with tens of thousands of tech workers losing their jobs. Just a few days into 2023, Amazon Chief Executive Andrew Jassy announced that there would be 18,000 layoffs across the company. Within weeks, Microsoft revealed it was slashing …
Los Angeles TimesTrump’s Facebook, Instagram accounts reinstated after two-year banverified_publisherLos Angeles Times - Jaimie DingFormer President Trump will be allowed back on Facebook and Instagram after a two-year ban for inciting violence during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Facebook parent Meta Platforms announced Tuesday. “The suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances,” Nick Clegg, …
Los Angeles TimesColumn: This artificial intelligence chatbot turns out to be a plagiarist — and an idiotverified_publisherLos Angeles Times - Michael HiltzikWe’ve all been trained by decades of science fiction to think of artificial intelligence as a threat to our working futures. The idea is: If an AI robot can do a job as well as a human — cheaper and with less interpersonal unruliness — who needs the human? The technology news site CNET tried to …