Good morning! This is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
📡 SpaceX unveils Starlink Mini
🛡️ US bans Kaspersky antivirus over Russia links
🤷♂️ Nearly half of Dell workers opt for full-time remote work, even though it means no promotions
❌ New York bans ‘addictive feeds’ for teens
📈 Huawei devices near a billion in use
📸 Meta is tagging real photos as ‘Made with AI,’ say photographers
🎁 + 8 other news you might like
🔮 + 4 handpicked research papers and tools
📡 SpaceX unveils Starlink MiniLINK
SpaceX's new Starlink Mini brings internet access to backpackers, adding to its existing service for boats, planes, vanlifers, Amazonian villages, and rural homes in over 75 countries.
The compact Starlink Mini, about the size of a thick laptop and weighing just 2.43 pounds, integrates a Wi-Fi router and delivers speeds over 100Mbps using between 20-40W of power.
In the US, the Mini kit costs $599 with an additional $30 monthly fee for the Mini Roam service, providing up to 50GB of mobile data, and is also available in several Latin American countries without data caps.
🛡️ US bans Kaspersky antivirus over Russia linksLINK
President Biden's administration has banned the sale and updates of Kaspersky Lab products in the United States, citing the company as a national security threat.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced that from July 20, new US customers can't buy Kaspersky software, and existing users will be blocked from receiving software updates after September 29.
The ban follows a Commerce Department investigation, which concluded that Kaspersky's products could potentially be exploited by the Russian government to gather and misuse American citizens' and businesses' sensitive information.
🤷♂️ Nearly half of Dell workers opt for full-time remote work, even though it means no promotionsLINK
Nearly half of Dell employees have chosen to work remotely full-time, despite the lack of promotions and opportunities to change roles within the company.
Dell's internal data, seen by Business Insider, confirms that around 50% of its workforce prefers the flexibility and personal benefits of permanent remote work over career advancement.
The main reasons for this preference include spending more time with family, avoiding commuting costs, and maintaining a better work/life balance, even if it means limited career progression.
❌ New York bans ‘addictive feeds’ for teensLINK
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed two bills to protect minors from social media harms, requiring parental consent for "addictive feeds" and limiting data collection on children without consent.
The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the New York Child Data Protection Act aim to safeguard the mental health of kids and teens by regulating recommendation algorithms and data usage.
The new legislation follows a broader trend of states enacting laws to protect children online, as federal proposals like the Kids Online Safety Act remain pending and face opposition.
📈 Huawei devices near a billion in useLINK
Huawei is approaching one billion active devices, highlighting significant market growth and intensifying competition with Apple in China.
Huawei's Mate 60 Pro contributed to a 72% increase in premium smartphone sales, boosting profits and capturing market share from Apple and other local competitors.
The company plans to launch the Mate 70 with HarmonyOS Next later this year, further distancing itself from Google’s Android and enhancing its ecosystem of devices beyond smartphones.
📸 Meta is tagging real photos as ‘Made with AI,’ say photographersLINK
Meta began labeling photos created with AI tools on its social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, but has mistakenly tagged some real photos with the “Made with AI” label.
Photographers, including former White House photographer Pete Souza, have complained about their genuine images being incorrectly labeled, often due to minor edits using tools that trigger Meta's algorithm.
While some support Meta's labeling strategy for transparency, there is confusion as the label does not differentiate between AI-generated and AI-edited photos, making it hard for users to discern the extent of AI usage.
Other news you might like
OpenAI CTO says AI could reach PhD level in certain fields in 18 months.LINK
TikTok confirms it offered US government a 'kill switch'.LINK
SoftBank’s Son aims to create ‘super’ AI in new investment drive.LINK
YouTube is canceling Premium subscriptions bought using spoofed locations.LINK
Microsoft makes Copilot less useful on new Copilot Plus PCs.LINK
Amazon’s new AI-powered Alexa might cost up to $10 per month.LINK
Sierra’s new benchmark reveals how well AI agents perform at real work.LINK
New medical LLM, PathChat 2, can talk to pathologists about tumors, offer diagnoses.LINK
Latest research and tools
June-VA: a local voice assistant that utilizes Ollama for language understanding, Hugging Face Transformers for speech recognition, and Coqui TTS for speech synthesis, offering privacy-conscious, flexible voice interaction without relying on external server data processing.LINK
Bomb Jack display hardware: an enhanced recreation of the original arcade game's video display system, allowing adjustments to background colors and implementing additional features not found in the original design, aimed at boosting graphical capabilities on retro systems.LINK
Awesome Frontend Resources: a collection of tutorials, tools, libraries, and assets designed to aid in frontend development, offering structured pathways for beginners through to advanced learners in various technologies including iOS, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and more.LINK
There are no particles, there are only fields (2012): the paper argues that what we consider to be particles are actually manifestations of quantum fields.LINK
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