Twitter running major brands’ ads with extremist tweets—until they get flagged

Enlarge (credit: Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu Agency) After the US Department of Health and Human Services realized its promoted tweet about updated COVID vaccines was appearing on Twitter pages of white nationalist accounts, the agency told The Washington Post it promptly moved to remove the ads from Twitter. But their promoted tweets weren’t…

Andreessen Horowitz leads $43M Series A for Setpoint, which aims to be the ‘Stripe for credit’

Setpoint, a startup that has built software to help other companies close loan transactions faster, has raised $43 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The raise comes just six months after Austin, Texas-based Setpoint closed a $5.5 million seed round and $150 million in securitization. Serial entrepreneurs Ben Rubenstein, Stuart…

Apple launches end-to-end encryption for iCloud data

Apple today launched Advanced Data Protection, a new, optional end-to-end encryption scheme that prevents data in a customer’s iCloud from being decrypted on an “untrusted” device. Concretely, Advanced Data Protection would keep most of an iCloud account’s data secure even in the event that Apple was hacked, and — as a Wall Street Journal piece…

Apple changes AirDrop security for all with iOS 16.2 after backlash over restrictions in China

Apple is clamping down on AirDrop privacy settings for all its users with the iOS 16.2 update, after backlash its recent restrictions impacting the feature’s use in China. In November, reports circulated that Apple had begun limiting the use of AirDrop in China as the country was facing widespread protests over the Chinese government’s “zero Covid”…

‘Alice, Darling’ trailer: It’s tears and fears with this new psychological thriller

Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) returns to the big screen, this time starring as Alice in the psychological thriller Alice, Darling. From director Mary Nighy, the tense trailer features a nervous Alice trapped between a rock and a hard place: Lying to her abusive boyfriend, Simon, or skipping out on a dear…

Intel Sapphire Rapids chips confirmed to be supercharging your next workstation

Intel Sapphire Rapids chips are now officially set to be coming to workstations, the company has confirmed. Pencilled in for release at some point in 2023, “Sapphire Rapids” is the code name for the latest and greatest iteration of Intel’s CPUs, which are otherwise known as 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The chip giant…

An AI-focused film festival is coming to New York in February

One of the companies behind text-to-image AI system Stable Diffusion is hosting a film festival exclusively for shorts that were made with AI. Organizers of Runway ML’s AI Film Festival are accepting films with a runtime of between one and 10 minutes that either include AI-generated content or were pieced together with AI-powered editing techniques….