U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that Musk’s lawsuit was retaliatory in nature.

X issued a statement indicating its intention to appeal the decision.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, welcomed the judge’s decision as an affirmation of his organization’s efforts to hold social media companies accountable for their actions.

Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer representing CCDH, said the ruling underscores Musk’s inability to manipulate legal processes to his advantage.

Musk’s statements on social media have also drawn criticism, including his endorsement of an anti-Semitic post on X in November 2023.

The judge’s decision is a blow to the world’s third-richest man, who has long portrayed himself as a defender of free speech.

Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has faced plenty of criticism for firing employees who monitored for misinformation, as well as from civil rights groups for allowing posts with harmful and offensive content on the platform.

The idea dates back to when the social platform had its old, familiar Twitter name and is part of Elon Musk’s plan to turn Twitter (now X) into “the app for everything”.

“Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes,” the updated policy reads.

Biometric data can be extracted from both the identity card and the image for matching purposes.

“This will additionally help us tie, for those that choose, an account to a real person by processing their government issued ID. This will also help X fight impersonation attempts and make the platform more secure”, X said in a statement, TechCrunch reported.

Although X hasn’t specified what it means by biometric information, it is usually used to describe a person’s physical characteristics, such as their face or fingerprints. X also hasn’t provided any details about how it plans to collect it.

Last month, ex. Twitter was named in a proposed class action alleging that the company improperly captured, stored and used Illinois residents’ biometric data, including facial scans, without consent.

“We may collect and use your personal information (such as your employment history, educational history, employment preferences, skills and abilities, job search activity and engagement, and so on) to recommend potential jobs for you, to share with potential employers when you apply for a job, to enable employers to find potential candidates, and to show you more relevant advertising,” the updated policy reads.

Perhaps this would largely reassure users and even make people like the idea of collecting this type of data. But is there something deeper behind this? It remains to be seen.

In the meantime, some interesting facts about biometrics:
Did you know that since ancient times, different nations have used biometrics for recognition and identification. In Babylon, China, Japan, Assyria, etc. fingerprints were used in making commercial transactions, marriage and other contracts.

And more…
The first attempt at a biometric relatively new identification system was created by Edward. Р. Henry and Francis Guilton included a fingerprint identification method, and the method itself was called – “fingerprint copy”. Interestingly, it was introduced first in India in 1876 and then in England in 1901, and within a few years was successfully integrated in almost all countries of the world.

It’s been so long since Meta cut Messenger out of Facebook’s mobile app. Almost nine years later, Meta is ready to bring them back together.

“We’re testing the ability for people to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app, and you’ll see us expand that testing soon. Ultimately, we want to make it easy and convenient for people to connect and share, whether in the Messenger app or directly on Facebook.”

, wrote Facebook head Tom Allison.

When Meta removed Messenger from Facebook’s app in 2014, they stated that “our goal is to focus our Messenger development efforts on making it the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate mobile messaging experiences on Facebook”, Engadget wrote on the topic.

It’s unclear if Meta has any plans to bring messaging back to Facebook’s version for mobile browsers. In 2016, the company began pushing mobile web users to the Messenger app. In any case, it will be easier for users to use one less app.

Meta made the announcement in an oddly shaped blog post about Facebook’s focus areas for 2023. The post is meant to reassure people that “Facebook is not dead, nor dying”, as it now has more than 2 billion users.

The main reason why Meta is bringing messaging back to the Facebook app is “to make it easier for people to share what they find on Facebook, via messaging, when, where and how it fits their needs, without having to switch to another app,” Allison wrote. TikTok enables users to share videos they come across with their friends via built-in direct messages. So on the one hand, Meta is reversing direction and returning to an older way of working, but on the other, it’s emulating a competitor again.

Status is a popular way to share ephemeral updates with friends and close contacts on WhatsApp. They disappear after 24 hours and can include photos, videos, GIFs, text and more. Like your private chats and calls, your WhatsApp status is protected with end-to-end encryption so you can share privately and securely.

Choose a private audience
Every status a user shares may not always be appropriate for all the contacts on their list. The company provides the flexibility to update the privacy settings of each status so that you can choose who sees the status each time it is updated. The most recent audience selection will be saved and used by default for the next status.

Status reactions
Added status reactions to provide a quick and easy way to respond to status updates from everyone in close contacts. This was the number 1 feature users wanted after Reactions launched last year. Now one can quickly reply to any status by swiping up and tapping one of the eight emoji. Of course, you can still reply to a status with a text, voice message, stickers and more.

Status profile rings for new updates
With the new status profile ring, you’ll never miss a status from a loved one. This ring will be present around each contact’s profile picture when they share a status update. It will be visible in chat lists, group participant lists, and contact information.

Views of connections in status
Now when a link is posted to your status, you will automatically see a visual preview of the link’s content, just like when you send a message. The previews make statuses look better, and also give contacts a better idea of what the link is before they click.

These updates have started rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

In addition to this, WhatsApp is upgrading statuses by allowing status reactions, just as the company launched message reactions last year.

After nearly 20 years, Facebook continues to grow. The social network now has 2 billion daily active users, Meta reported along with its fourth-quarter earnings. The report marks the first time Facebook, which increased its user count by 16 million last quarter, has reached 2 billion daily users.

While Facebook isn’t the first Meta-owned platform to reach 2 billion daily users – WhatsApp recently surpassed 2 billion DAUs – it shows that the company’s biggest source of ad revenue is still growing, even as Meta has made significant cuts to its business in recent months. CEO Mark Zuckerberg alluded to the company’s recent restructuring, which resulted in the elimination of more than 11,000 jobs, saying in a statement that “our management theme for 2023 is ‘The Year of Efficiency,'” Engadget wrote on the topic.

But even though Meta’s revenue shrank over the past year, the company’s $32.2 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 was still slightly better than expected, despite declining 4% from last year.

On the call with analysts, Zuckerberg suggested that Meta will continue to make cuts as it prioritizes efficiency.

“We’re going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren’t being executed or maybe aren’t as important anymore.”

he said. The CEO also said that generative artificial intelligence will be a priority for Meta in the coming year.

Meta also continues to lose huge amounts of money on its metaverse investments. Reality Labs, the division that oversees its VR, AR and metaverse projects, lost $4.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 and nearly $14 billion for the full year, Meta said. and the company once again confirmed that it expects to lose even more money from Reality Labs next year.

While losses from Reality Labs contributed to Meta’s revenue slowdown last year, Zuckerberg also said he believes the company is in the midst of a “pretty rapid phase change” compared to years past.

Twitter needs every penny. With millions of dollars in allegedly unpaid rent and bills, plus $13 billion owed to the lenders who financed its takeover, there’s “a lot more work to do” if the company wants to avoid bankruptcy, Musk said last month, Wired wrote on the subject.

Twitter recently auctioned off about $1.5 million worth of furniture and equipment from its San Francisco headquarters, including odds and ends like keyboards and USB keys. But the company has left shiny assets worth tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars gathering dust in the homes of its former employees.

Some people fired or laid off by Musk are perplexed as to why Twitter hasn’t bothered to collect their company laptops, the latest problem in a takeover characterized by botched product launches, abrupt policy changes and delayed payrolls.

Eric Fronhofer, a California software engineer fired in November after confronting Musk via Twitter, says he hasn’t heard a word about bringing back his company’s 2021 Apple MacBook Pro M1 laptop. “It’s still sitting in the closet,” he says. Like the laptops of thousands of remote Twitter employees Musk has fired or let resign since early November, his has been digitally locked, rendering it useless.

Restored versions of his model can still be bought for about $1,000, and new ones are twice as expensive. Fronhofer feels no obligation to Musk and is in no hurry to return the machine. “I’m happy to let it sit there and be a brick,” he says.

Some former Twitter employees have told co-workers they sent the equipment back after approaching the company about prepaid shipping boxes. Others within the past few days have received generic emails asking them to fill out a “Twitter Device Collection Survey,” many say. But four of the five who have spoken to WIRED have not received the email themselves and are still eyeing Musk’s property.

The latest change was made on Thursday, when Twitter told its employees that the company’s office buildings would be temporarily closed. The measures went into effect immediately after the employee warning. The media outlet’s office is expected to be closed until today, with normal operations resuming from tomorrow.

The announcement comes after a large number of employees quit, in the wake of new owner Elon Musk calling for them to work overtime or leave.

Hundreds of Twitter employees are believed to have decided to quit working for the company after Elon Musk set a deadline on Thursday for employees to accept new working conditions.

After Musk fired half of the employees, including people on the board of directors, and ruthlessly changed the company’s work ethic, many employees voiced their displeasure.

Blue hearts and hello emojis flooded Twitter and internal chats on Thursday for the second time in two weeks as fired Twitter employees said goodbye to the platform.

Among those who left was Tess Rinearson, who was tasked with building Twitter’s cryptocurrency team. Rinearson tweeted the “Blue Heart” and “Greetings” emojis.

In an apparent provocation to Musk’s call for employees to be “hardcore,” the bios on the Twitter profiles of several departing engineers changed to the words “softcore engineers” and “ex-hardcore engineers.”

The reason for all of this is European regulations which are meant to place restrictions on the way EU citizen data gets transferred to the U.S.

However, European politicians don’t seem to be worried about that.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck and French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire made their statements soon after Meta’s announcement.

AppleInsider reports that at an event in Paris Habeck admitted that after having been hacked he stopped using Facebook and Twitter and life has been fantastic to him for the last fours years. Le Maire on the other hand said:

“I can confirm that life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook.”

He also thinks digital giants must understand that the European continent will resist and affirm its sovereignty.

CNBC however, reports that Meta’s spokesperson announced that the company has no such plans at that moment and it has no intention of withdrawing from the European market.

The integrations are the first between Microsoft’s workstream collaboration tool and Workplace, which has more than 7 million paid subscribers.

The new integrations provide two functions. First, a Workplace app for Teams can be pinned to the Teams side navigation bar or added as a tab to provide access to the Workplace newsfeed within the app. Workplace content can be marked as “important” by Teams admins to draw users’ attention to certain information. Individual users will also be able to pull content from a Workplace group into a Teams channel to highlight to colleagues, as well as react to Workplace posts directly from Teams. The video integration, that is due in early 2022, will let users view a Teams video call from Workplace and comment in real-time. Presenters in Teams will be able to monitor view engagement and reactions in both apps simultaneously.

Photo Credits: Microsoft

According to Angela Ashenden, a principal analyst, the integrations should be of particular benefit to Workplace customers who see the app as their central employee communications solution but use Teams for day-to-day productivity. The integrations make a lot of sense for Meta since they help push information from Workplace to users where they tend to spend the bulk of their time. Ashenden commented:

“By surfacing the newsfeed in Teams, Workplace can continue to reach those employees, while allowing comms and HR leaders to retain control over the communications and employee engagement platform strategy.”

Ashenden also added that while the integrations help connect the two platforms, users of both Teams and Workplace still face challenges which can create confusion for employees.

The global introduction to iOS 15 unleashes a cycle during which iPhone users learn new features coming to their devices, followed by the tech giant’s fall release of a brand new iPhone model. So, here’s everything we know about the software update so far.

What is the iOS 15 release date?

No firm date yet, but Apple typically releases its latest version of iOS in the fall, which happens to coincide with the launch of a new iPhone. Traditionally, Apple has held an event in September to unveil the new iPhone, although last year the company pushed its event to October.

What devices will run iOS 15?

We’ll know more in June, but don’t be surprised if some of those older models of iPhone are no longer compatible. Currently, iOS 14 runs on smartphones dating all the way back to the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus (which also happened to be the last iPhone models with a headphone jack). If you own a 6s or 6s Plus (or maybe even a 7), your phone may be out of the loop.

What new features are coming to iOS 15?

It was reported that Apple is working on an upgrade to notifications where users can better tailor what types they receive based on their status. For example, users could adjust what notifications stream if they’re driving or sleeping, said the report.

Apple is also working on an update to iMessage to act more like a social network, although it’s early in development.