Month: August 2024

Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at Tesla's "Cyber Rodeo" on April 7, 2022, in Austin, Texas. (credit: Getty Images | AFP/Suzanne Cordeiro)

A federal judge in Texas yesterday ruled that Elon Musk's X Corp. can continue its lawsuit against Media Matters for America. US District Judge Reed O'Connor of the Northern District of Texas, who recently refused to recuse himself from the case despite having purchased Tesla stock, denied Media Matters' motion to dismiss.

X Corp. sued Media Matters after the nonprofit watchdog group published research on ads being placed next to pro-Nazi content on X, formerly Twitter. X's lawsuit also names reporter Eric Hananoki and Media Matters President Angelo Carusone as defendants.

Because of O'Connor's ruling, X can move ahead with its claims of tortious interference with contract, business disparagement, and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage. A jury trial is scheduled to begin on April 7, 2025.

Enlarge / "You'll never be bored again" is one of the more fitting slogans attached to Tumblr. (credit: Getty Images)

Once-great social media and blogging platform Tumblr has gone through a number of big changes in recent years, and another one is right around the corner. Parent company Automattic says it is migrating all Tumblr blogs—more than half a billion in number—to the WordPress back end.

In a blog post announcing the initiative this week, Automattic is careful to note that it doesn't want anything about the front-end user experience of Tumblr to change. We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and its current product direction. We’re not changing that," a rep wrote.

In terms of user experience, the two blogging platforms have very different emphases. WordPress is meant to be powerful, customizable, and extensible to serve a variety of needs, while Tumblr is meant to streamline the experience to be something like a middle ground between operating a WordPress blog and using something like X or Threads.

Enlarge / A recall notice is posted next to Boar's Head meats that are displayed at a Safeway store on July 31, 2024, in San Rafael, California. (credit: Getty | Justin Sullivan)

Federal inspections found 69 violations—many grisly—at the Boar's Head meat facility at the center of a deadly, nationwide Listeria outbreak that has now killed nine people, sickened and hospitalized a total of 57 across 18 states, and spurred the nationwide recall of more than 7 million pounds of meat.

The Jarratt, Virginia-based facility had repeated problems with mold, water leaks, dirty equipment and rooms, meat debris stuck on walls and equipment, various bugs, and, at one point, puddles of blood on the floor, according to inspection reports from the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Services. The reports were obtained by CBS News through a Freedom of Information Act Request. In all, the reports outline 69 violations just between the dates of August 1, 2023, and August 2, 2024.

The findings in the reports reveal the perfect conditions for the company's meat to become contaminated with the germ behind the deadly outbreak, Listeria monocytogenes. This is a hardy germ that is ubiquitous in the environment, including in soil and water, and it spreads among people via the fecal-oral route. In healthy people, it usually only causes gastrointestinal infections. But for older people, newborns, and the immunocompromised, it can cause a life-threatening invasive infection with a fatality rate of around 17 percent. It's also a significant danger to pregnant people, causing miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, and life-threatening infections in newborns.

Enlarge / Generative AI Alexa asked to make a taco poem. (credit: Amazon News/YouTube)

The previously announced generative AI version of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant “will be powered primarily by Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence models," Reuters reported today. This comes after challenges with using proprietary models, according to the publication, which cited five anonymous people “with direct knowledge of the Alexa strategy.”

Amazon demoed a generative AI version of Alexa in September 2023 and touted it as being more advanced, conversational, and capable, including the ability to do multiple smart home tasks with simpler commands. Gen AI Alexa is expected to come with a subscription fee, as Alexa has reportedly lost Amazon tens of billions of dollars throughout the years. Earlier reports said the updated voice assistant would arrive in June, but Amazon still hasn’t confirmed an official release date.

Now, Reuters is reporting that Amazon will no longer use its own large language models as the new Alexa's primary driver. Early versions of gen AI Alexa based on Amazon’s own AI models “struggled for words, sometimes taking six or seven seconds to acknowledge a prompt and reply,” Reuters said, citing one of its sources. Without specifying versions or features used, Reuters' sources said Claude outperformed proprietary software.

Enlarge / The feeling when you know your ball is just gonna get buried in there is so satisfying! (credit: Red Nexus Games)

Remember Peggle? If you were lucky enough to play this deceptively deep pachinko-meets-bagatelle game in the late '00s, you know how addictive and entrancing it could be to just watch a bouncing ball ricochet off brightly colored pegs.

While developer Popcap released a few sequels and spinoffs in the years after Peggle's 2007 release, the series has largely languished since Popcap's acquisition by EA in 2011. Today, the only actively supported version of the game is Peggle Blast, a smartphone port that dumbs down the gameplay with frequent pushes to spend real money on needed items, à la Candy Crush and its ilk.

A few other games have tried to capture the old Peggle ball-bouncing magic in the last decade, most notably the excellent but sometimes overwhelming Roundguard. But Peglin—which launched out of an extended Steam early access period and also saw a Nintendo Switch release this week—is my new favorite take on the concept, combining Peggle's addictive ball-bouncing with just the right mix of roguelike randomization and RPG-style progression.