Tech News – Page 70 – by Arlin Schaffel

‘GTA VI’ Has Already Sparked a Bizarre Moral Panic Fit For Our Age

The GTA franchise is the perfect fodder for a moral panic. It’s massively popular, violent, and garishly stupid. The series has long courted controversy, and the panic accompanying each entry says something about the era in which it occurs. It’s early days, but I see two overlapping strains of panic hitting the GTA VI discourse. The first is that the game will lead players astray into a life of pornography, crime, and sloth.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3we8x/gta-vi-has-already-sparked-a-bizarre-moral-panic-fit-for-our-age

Instagram and Facebook cross messaging is coming to an end

“A few years ago, we introduced a new Messenger experience in Instagram DMs which enabled people to message and call a FB account (Messenger) from an Instagram account and vice versa,” spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said. “Starting in mid-December, we will begin removing this feature. However, people can continue to message and call their contacts on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger.”
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/5/23988879/instagram-facebook-meta-cross-platform-messaging-discontinued-mid-december-2023

The Cybertruck Is a Disappointment Even to Cybertruck Superfans

When the Cybertruck was first announced in 2019, Musk said it would have up to 500 miles of range and start at $40,000, both of which were huge promised improvements over any available or forthcoming competitor. Instead, the Cybertruck base model has half that range—250 miles—and starts at $60,990, or $20,000 more than people expected.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a35ed/the-cybertruck-is-a-disappointment-even-to-cybertruck-superfans

Google and Canada reach deal to avert news ban over Online News Act

The agreement announced on Wednesday requires Google pay C$100m (£58m, $74m) annually, indexed to inflation, to news outlets. The statement said that Google would pay a "single collective" which would distribute the funds to eligible news agencies "based on the number of full-time equivalent journalists engaged by those businesses".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67571027

Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers

According to a second person involved in the creation of the Sports Illustrated content who also asked to be kept anonymous, that's because it's not just the authors' headshots that are AI-generated. At least some of the articles themselves, they said, were churned out using AI as well. After we reached out with questions to the magazine's publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated's site without explanation.
https://futurism.com/sports-illustrated-ai-generated-writers

Mass layoffs reportedly hit Marvel Snap publisher Nuverse

Parent company ByteDance is ‘restructuring’ its gaming subsidiary following a recent review, with employees being given until December to keep working on unreleased titles. ByteDance is reportedly looking to rid itself of the gaming titles it’s already launched under Nuverse, such as Marvel Snap and Crystal of Atlan, and informed employees on Monday that they must stop working on unreleased games by December.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/27/23977673/bytedance-nuverse-gaming-layoffs-restructure