As TikTok ban heads to court, ByteDance’s Lemon8 surges

image via techcrunch.com
image via techcrunch.com

As TikTok heads to court on Monday to argue against a U.S. ban, parent company ByteDance’s newer social app, Lemon8, is once again surging to the top of the App Store in the U.S. The push is due, in part, to increased advertising. Described by TikTok influencers as a cross between Pinterest and Instagram — or more recently, as “Pinterest on steroids” — the app had previously appeared in the App Store’s top charts when a TikTok ban was being discussed by U.S. lawmakers.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/as-tiktok-ban-heads-to-court-bytedances-lemon8-surges/

Flappy Bird’s creator disavows ‘official’ new version of the game

image via techcrunch.com
image via techcrunch.com

A decade after the wildly popular game Flappy Bird disappeared, an organization calling itself the Flappy Bird Foundation announced plans to “re-hatch the official Flappy Bird® game.” But this morning, the game’s creator, Dong Nguyen, posted a characteristically terse comment stating that he has nothing to do with the revival and that he “did not sell anything.” He added, “I also don’t support crypto.”

https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/15/flappy-birds-creator-disavows-official-new-version-of-the-game/

Meta fed its AI on almost everything you’ve posted publicly since 2007

image via theverge.com
image via theverge.com

Meta has acknowledged that all text and photos that adult Facebook and Instagram users have publicly published since 2007 have been fed into its artificial intelligence models.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/12/24242789/meta-training-ai-models-facebook-instagram-photo-post-data

Huawei’s $2,800 trifold phone is a real thing it wants people to hold and use

image via arstechnica.com
image via arstechnica.com

“It’s a piece of work that everyone has thought of but never managed to create,” Richard Yu, Huawei’s consumer group chairman, said during the Mate XT livestream unveiling. “I have always had a dream to put our tablet in my pocket, and we did it.”

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/forget-everything-huawei-is-doing-two-folds-on-the-mate-xt-ultimate/

YouTube starts showing ads when you pause a video on TV

image c/o 9to5google.com
image c/o 9to5google.com

Back in May 2024, Google announced that YouTube would be getting some new ad formats on TVs, including a format that would place ads on screen whenever the video was left paused. There was no timeline given for when this format would start rolling out, but it appears to be showing up for some users now.

https://9to5google.com/2024/09/11/youtube-pause-ad-tv-update/