Files from Tom Li
Elon Musk joins Twitter’s board of directors, Apple is being sued over payment schedule, and the U.S. government establishes a new cyber bureau.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Wednesday, April 6, and I’m your host, Samira Balsara.
Hot on the heels of his big Twitter share purchase, Elon Musk has now joined Twitter’s board of directors. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said that the company spoke to Musk about the position in recent weeks. Agrawal praised Musk for his objective stance on the platform and said that it’s exactly what the board needs. When Elon Musk became the largest shareholder of Twitter on Monday, some worried that Musk would use his position and influence to bend the rules, and the recent move to the board further reinforces that belief. But in a statement to the Verge, Twitter said that it will not give special treatment to Musk despite his new position. Moreover, Musk will not be allowed to purchase more than 15 per cent of Twitter’s shares.
Apple is being sued again, this time by an ex-employee who alleged that the company broke an employment agreement. The class action lawsuit claimed that the company broke New York employment policy by paying its employees bi-weekly instead of weekly. In New York, manual labourers are required to be paid weekly unless the company obtains authorization for another arrangement. The filer, Raven Ramos, was supposedly harmed without weekly pay because she was “temporarily deprived of money owed to her,” and that she “lost time value of that money.” The class action lawsuit covers at least 100 members with the total claims being more than $5 million.
The U.S. government has launched a new cyber bureau to tackle thorny cybersecurity issues, like national security challenges, economic opportunities, and digital policy. The Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy will be staffed by 100 government employees, and will be led by a Senate-confirmed ambassador. It will consist of three policy units: international Cyberspace Security, International Information and Communications Policy, and Digital Freedom. There are already plans to grow the new bureau next year as it’s looking to request funding to support more employees.
A new AI created by MIT researchers can generate a portrait based on voice alone. The algorithm called Speech2Face, only needs a three second audio snippet to produce a result. The research paper says that the models are trained by analyzing millions of videos on YouTube and the web. The model learns the audio-visual correlations to mash together an image. Given the limited data, the generated faces are a hit and miss, but even its potential is unnerving.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Samira Balsara.