Month: April 2023

Discord is launching an in-app soundboard

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Discord is officially introducing its own in-app soundboard that you can use in voice channels. With the soundboard, you’ll be able to play all sorts of sounds in voice channels to have some fun or troll a friend. The feature was previously an experiment available to a limited amount

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India amends its IT law to ban social media platforms from hosting “misleading” content about the government and requiring that they use its fact-check unit (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India amends its IT law to ban social media platforms from hosting “misleading” content about the government and requiring that they use its fact-check unit  —  India amended its IT law on Thursday to prohibit Facebook, Twitter and other social media firms from publishing …

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Sources say some Tesla staff privately shared sensitive videos recorded by customers’ car cameras between 2019 and 2022, including a child being hit by a car (Reuters)

Reuters: Sources say some Tesla staff privately shared sensitive videos recorded by customers’ car cameras between 2019 and 2022, including a child being hit by a car  —  Tesla Inc assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us.”

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US Census data: US chip imports rose 17% YoY to $4.86B in February 2023; Asia accounted for 83%, led by Malaysia at 20%, Taiwan at 15.1%, and Vietnam at 11.6% (Kevin Varley/Bloomberg)

Kevin Varley / Bloomberg: US Census data: US chip imports rose 17% YoY to $4.86B in February 2023; Asia accounted for 83%, led by Malaysia at 20%, Taiwan at 15.1%, and Vietnam at 11.6%  —  Thailand, Vietnam, India and Cambodia have emerged as early winners this year as semiconductor production begins to move away …

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The poop emoji: a legal history

Image: Mengxin Li / The Verge In July 2022, the world watched with bated breath as Twitter sued Elon Musk. No one knew whether the deal was going to happen or whether it had all been an elaborate troll to begin with. (The two weren’t mutually exclusive, either.) Billions of dollars and the fate of

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Sources: Chinese state-owned telecom companies are planning a $500M undersea fiber internet cable network linking Asia, the Middle East, and Europe (Joe Brock/Reuters)

Joe Brock / Reuters: Sources: Chinese state-owned telecom companies are planning a $500M undersea fiber internet cable network linking Asia, the Middle East, and Europe  —  Chinese state-owned telecom firms are developing a $500 million undersea fiber-optic internet cable network that would link Asia …

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A Mastodon user since 2018 details issues with the service despite decentralization’s promise, including little diversity, tone policing, and a weird atmosphere (Andy Bell)

Andy Bell: A Mastodon user since 2018 details issues with the service despite decentralization’s promise, including little diversity, tone policing, and a weird atmosphere  —  I first joined Mastodon in 2018 (even though my old profile says 2016?), so I’d say I’ve seen a lot of its evolution.

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Utah’s bills restricting kids’ social media use have galling civil-liberties concerns and hazy enforcement plans, and will likely face constitutional challenges (Jay Caspian Kang/New Yorker)

Jay Caspian Kang / New Yorker: Utah’s bills restricting kids’ social media use have galling civil-liberties concerns and hazy enforcement plans, and will likely face constitutional challenges  —  Most people seem to agree that something should be done to protect kids from what sure looks like an addictive product.

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