TikTok takes legal action against US, Sony ‘pulling PSVR2’s funding’
TikTok has launched a long-awaited legal fight to stop its Chinese owner being forced to sell the short video platform’s US operations, arguing it violates Americans’ rights to free speech. TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance were told in April they had until January next year to divest TikTok in the US or face the prospect of the app being banned in the country. Legislation, signed by President Joe Biden, gives the US government the power to demand such sales on national security grounds. Sky News
The US has announced plans to ban the sale of antivirus software made by Russian firm Kaspersky due to its alleged links to the Kremlin. Moscow’s influence over the company was found to pose a significant risk to US infrastructure and services, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said. She said that the US was compelled to take action due to Russia’s “capacity and… intent to collect and weaponise the personal information of Americans”. “Kaspersky will generally no longer be able to, among other activities, sell its software within the United States or provide updates to software already in use,” the Commerce Department said. BBC
While it perhaps won’t come as a huge surprise for those of you who’ve been following PSVR2’s trajectory, a report that claims that Sony has significantly cut funding for the headset. As part of a largely opinion-led piece, Android Central cites “anonymous sources” that say PlayStation is paring back production for its pricey peripheral, with only two first-party titles in development. To be totally honest, that’s two more games than we’d expected, as the Japanese giant has done very little with the device since Horizon Call of the Mountain deployed at launch. Push Square
Apple has released Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 and Final Cut Camera, the company announced on Thursday. Both apps were previously announced during the company’s iPad event in May. Apple also released updates for Final Cut Pro for Mac. The iPad version has been updated with capabilities that are designed to take advantage of the new iPad Pro with an M4 chip. Apple says the new chip enables up to 2x faster rendering and supports up to 4x more streams of ProRes RAW compared to the M1. TechCrunch
Pliny the Prompter says it typically takes him about 30 minutes to break the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence models. The pseudonymous hacker has manipulated Meta’s Llama 3 into sharing instructions for making napalm. He made Elon Musk’s Grok gush about Adolf Hitler. His own hacked version of OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o model, dubbed “Godmode GPT”, was banned by the start-up after it started advising on illegal activities. FT.com
Plusnet customers who use the broadband firm’s mobile phone service have just weeks left to either switch to another provider, or face losing their mobile number. In May, Plusnet, which is part of BT, confirmed it was closing its mobile phone division, as EE takes over as BT’s main mobile brand. For the tens of thousands of customers who relied on Plusnet’s sim-only mobile service, it is a case of switch now, or face losing their number. Guardian
Octopus Energy is set to hand the next UK government an early 3-billion-pound ($3.80 billion) windfall as it pledged to repay all the state support it received to take over collapsed energy supplier Bulb, the Financial Times reported on Friday. Octopus would reimburse the Treasury by September, meaning that the government will recover almost all the cost of temporarily nationalizing Bulb in 2021, the report said. Market Screener
