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The FCC sends letters to nine of the largest automakers, warns  about abusive partners with connected car apps to harass and track their victims

—  The Federal Communications Commission is concerned about abusive partners using connected car apps to harass and track their victims.

 

 

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:

 

Many modern cars are internet-connected and have apps that allow an owner to see a car’s location, turn it on remotely, honk its horn and even adjust the temperature. These apps for car control and tracking are designed for convenience, but a New York Times article last month detailed how they have been weaponized in abusive relationships, allowing for unwanted stalking and harassment.

 

PHOTO: The Federal Communications Commission sent letters to nine of the largest automakers, asking for more information about their connected car apps and whether the companies had processes in place to assist abuse victims.Credit…Mike Blake/Reuters

 

Domestic violence survivors and experts said car companies had not been responsive when asked to cut off abusers’ digital access to cars. Customer service agents at the car companies were unable to help when the abuser was the owner or co-owner of the vehicle, even when the victim had a restraining order or a legal judgment awarding her sole use of the car during divorce proceedings.

 

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission sent letters to nine of the largest automakers, including General Motors, Toyota, Ford Motor and Tesla, asking for more information about their connected car apps and whether the companies had processes in place to assist abuse victims.

 

“No survivor of domestic violence and abuse should have to choose between giving up their car and allowing themselves to be stalked and harmed by those who can access its data and connectivity,” Jessica Rosenworcel, the F.C.C. chairwoman, said in a statement. “We must do everything we can to help survivors stay safe. We need to work with auto and wireless industry leaders to find solutions.”

Chairwoman Rosenworcel wrote in the letters that the F.C.C. was responsible for enforcing the Safe Connections Act, a relatively new law that requires phone companies to separate a victim’s phone from a family plan shared with an abuser. To the extent that cars have become “smartphones on wheels,” automakers “may be ‘covered providers’” under the act, she wrote.

 

The agency also sent letters to the three largest wireless communications providers — Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile — about the role they play in providing connectivity to cars and whether they are complying with the law.

 

Thomas Kadri, a law professor at the University of Georgia who was an adviser on the Safe Connections Act, found it surprising that the law might apply to car manufacturers. But he said he hoped the letters would cause automakers to consider how connected car apps might be used for stalking and harassment.

 

“It’s not a niche or rare issue at the scale they are operating at,” he said.

 

The F.C.C. asked for responses to the letters by the end of the month.

 

 

 

— Techmeme

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Culture Digital - AI & Apps Education Lifestyle Technology

How the Internet adapts Google’s algorithms, such as SEO tricks, its many websites now with similar designs 

—  How the Internet reshaped itself around Google’s search algorithms — and into a world where websites look the same.

—  Animations by Richard Parry

 

 

Mia Sato / The Verge:

 

 

As the 14th season of Bravo’s Real Housewives of New York City came to a close this fall, I found myself on Reddit, reading rumors about the marriage and divorce timeline of one of the show’s stars. Redditors wanted more clues about a fishy relationship history to see if they could uncover a cheating scandal.

 

Were divorce papers public record in New York? I wondered. I did a quick Google search to find out.

 

The search results page was filled with my question’s exact words, repeated across site after site — websites for law firms, posts on forums, ads for creepy lookup tools — but the answer to my actual question was harder to find. At the top of the results page on my phone, Google offered two featured snippets of information quoting different websites. The first one: “Divorce records are not public in New York due to the sensitive nature of many divorce proceedings.” The second: “Due to the state’s underlying legislation regarding family law cases, each divorce is a matter of public record.”

 

Google bolded both snippets, but it wasn’t clear to me how they squared. I clicked on both.

 

The two law firm websites were part of an ecosystem I didn’t know existed until I accidentally went looking for it. Law firms across different fields — family law, personal injury, employment lawyers — have blogs full of keyword-addled articles being churned out at a surprisingly fast clip. The goal for firms is simple: be the top result to pop up on Google when someone is looking for legal help. The searcher might just end up hiring them.

 

Many of these blog posts are written by people like E., a self-employed content writer who juggles law firm clients that want Google-friendly content. E. does not have a legal background; they’re just a competent writer who can turn in clean copy. They trawl health department records, looking for nursing homes that get citations for neglect or other infractions. Then E. writes a blog post about it for a firm, making sure to include the name of the offender and the wrongdoing — keywords for which concerned patients or families will likely be searching. (E. requested anonymity so as to not jeopardize their employment).

 

“My bosses, they all don’t want anyone else to know that they use me or that we have the specific process that we have,” E. says. Their name is nowhere to be found, but their writing is often the first thing a searcher will see. The pages were made to be found by people like me.

 

Google controls around 90 percent of the search market, by some measures, so it’s too valuable a referral source to just leave up to luck. Search engine optimization — or SEO, the practice of tweaking content and websites to get Google to boost your visibility — is everywhere, including on the page you’re reading now. And once you see it or SEO-ify your own work, like E. has, it’s impossible not to notice.

 

Google’s outsized influence on how we find things has been 25 years in the making, and the people running businesses online have tried countless methods of getting Google to surface their content. Some business owners use generative AI to make Google-optimized blog postsso they can turn around and sell tchotchkes; brick-and-mortar businesses are picking funny names like “Thai Food Near Me” to try to game Google’s local search algorithm. An entire SEO industry has sprung up, dedicated to trying to understand (or outsmart) Google Search.

 

The relentless optimizing of pages, words, paragraphs, photos, and hundreds of other variables has led to a wasteland of capital-C Content that is competing for increasingly dwindling Google Search real estate as generative AI rears its head. You’ve seen it before: the awkward subheadings and text that repeats the same phrases a dozen times, the articles that say nothing but which are sprayed with links that in turn direct you to other meaningless pages. Much of the information we find on the web — and much of what’s produced for the web in the first place — is designed to get Google’s attention.

 

We often hear about the latest engagement hacks on other platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or X, formerly known as Twitter. But Google is consequential above all of these, acting essentially as the referee of the web. Yet deep knowledge of how its systems work is largely limited to industry publications and marketing firms — as users, we don’t get an explanation of why sites suddenly look different or how Google ranks one website above another. It just happens.

 

Bit by bit, the internet has been remade in Google’s image. And it’s humans — not machines — who have to deal with the consequences.

 

1. Site performance and accessibility

There’s an inherent contradiction in what Google promises is the best way to succeed on Search. Publicly, Google representatives like search liaison Danny Sullivan give a simple, almost quaint answer to business owners who want help: you just need to make great content for people, not Google’s robots.

 

At the same time, Google’s “SEO Starter Guide” is nearly 9,000 words long with dozens of links to additional material. There are several SEO industry publications, plus an untold number of scrappy blogs, marketing firms, and self-proclaimed SEO gurus promising to demystify Google’s black box algorithm. Small business owners must either learn how to do SEO or hire someone — even multiple people or special firms — to do it for them. It’s expensive, time consuming, and often confusing work, and failure to learn the ropes could mean trouble if your traffic begins to tank unexpectedly. Google executives like Sullivan often respond to the folk wisdom of the SEO industry with a six-word incantation meant to absolve them of the industry’s worst practices: that’s not what the guidelines say. It can feel like the guidelines are there to protect Google’s reputation, not actually help anyone get search traffic.

 

Optimizing pages for Google isn’t inherently a bad thing. Google uses its influence over the web to push for objectively good results, like fast-loading sites and accessibility features like alt text on images, which can help audiences understand what’s on a page if an image doesn’t load or if readers use assistive technology like screen readers. Google’s Core Web Vitals metric pushes down sites with certain kinds of intrusive ads or which have slow-loading ads that cause content on the page to shift around.

“[Google’s changes] did sort of homogenize the design of the internet.”

 

Perhaps Google’s most benevolent push has been toward a fast, mobile-first web that has forced small and large publishers alike to overhaul their publishing platforms. But even that effort has come with collateral damage — see the entire news industry reluctantly embracing Google’s AMP format — or in the case of smaller blogs, a flattening and whitewashing of web design across the board.

 

Valerie Stimac Bailey, a professional blogger of a decade, remembers in 2021 when Google began using a new metric to rank sites, called “page experience,” that emphasized giving readers a “delightful” web to browse. Passing Google’s Core Web Vitals tests became all the more important — Google would look at load times, interactivity, and whether visual elements would move around unexpectedly.

 

Bloggers like Stimac Bailey, along with an untold number of other site operators and web companies, saw the writing on the wall: Google might not like your old site, with its giant logos and custom fonts, or the ads that cause text to jump around. Companies like Mediavine, a popular ad-management company, released web design frameworks optimized for this new Google metric and Stimac Bailey, like many others, switched and redesigned her site. But she found the new theme “sterile,” she tells me, and it lacked customization options. It didn’t feel like part of her brand.

 

“I get that that probably was the impetus for a lot of people with really old, slow themes that were not handling mobile well to move to something that was faster for the world of the mobile-first indexing and internet,” Stimac Bailey says. “That was a good impact… but simultaneously, it did sort of homogenize the design of the internet.”

 

Stimac Bailey, who in the past published up to 11 blogs at a time, has experimented with different website themes. All eight of her current sites look nearly identical — her Alaska travel blog Valerie & Valise looks the same as Site School, a blog where she shares data-heavy analyses of how her portfolio of websites is performing.

 

“People spent a lot of money, and a lot of time, and a lot of heartache and stress and psychology redesigning websites,” Stimac Bailey says.

 

Taking Google’s advice on creating good, fast, accessible websites sounds nice in theory; why not do what the search engine prefers and help your readers in the process? Creators I spoke to acknowledged that changes sometimes benefit Google and readers alike. But the line between what’s good for the search algorithm and what’s good for audiences has become blurry over time, and in some cases, the two are treated essentially as the same thing.

 

2. Page design and structure of articles

The small, behind-the-scenes changes site operators deployed over the years have made browsing the web — especially on mobile — more frictionless and enjoyable. But Google’s preferences and systems don’t just guide how sites run: Search has also influenced how information looks and how audiences experience the internet. The project of optimizing your digital existence for Google doesn’t stop at page design. The content has to conform, too.

 

Take, for example, the question-based subheadings that are rampant on pages ranging from personal finance explainers to travel tips to annual event reminders. Sections like “When should I make IRA contributions?” or “What states are getting rid of Daylight Savings time?” will cascade down a page, presumably to help a reader scan for information. But subheadings are also a piece of information Google uses to understand what a page is about and to rank it in Search. Historically, subheadings have been an easy, fast way to juice content for maximum visibility.

 

Some bloggers and outlets scrape the “People Also Ask” panel on search results pages for ideas: the Google-curated section spits out strangely worded or oddly specific questions like, “What is the healthiest vegetable 2023?” and “What two vegetables can be eaten raw?”

 

Sean Bromilow, a food writer based in Canada, has reformatted his blog posts in hopes that Google will pick up his content for placement in these fields. On a page for cucamelons, he added an FAQ section featuring questions like, “How do you eat cucamelons?” and “Are cucamelons a GMO?”

 

“I did that in direct response to Google’s [People Also Ask questions] that they introduced,” he says.

 

Some creators scrape the “People Also Ask” panel for story ideas

A Q&A format might often be the most effective way to write a story or share information — I’ve done stories in this format, too. But other times, question-based subheadings are harder to read, repeating the same phrases without adding anything substantial. Browse this article about gua sha, a massaging technique with roots in traditional Chinese medicine, and you’ll find headings including, “What is a gua sha,” “What are the benefits of a gua sha,” “How to find your gua sha,” and “How to use your gua sha.”

 

A table of contents, too, has become a common sight, appearing at the top of articles. On a post about animals to look out for in Alaska, for example, Stimac Bailey has 10 sections in the table of contents, each linking to the corresponding part of the blog post. Having a linked table of contents allows readers to skip to the part they most want to read, like if someone is strictly interested in seeing caribou.

 

But the table of contents sections also work as jump links on Google Search that appear below the headline and other metadata. Stimac Bailey gets a reasonable amount of traffic to her Pacific Coast Highway guide, not from searchers clicking the title but through people clicking on one of the jump links below. Some SEO strategists even debate whether bloggers should leave their table of contents expanded or collapsed for maximum SEO juice. Stimac Bailey keeps hers collapsed but recently heard from a person selling SEO services that your table of contents should be auto-expanded.

 

“At a certain point, I don’t care if it costs me time on site or it costs me ad views or costs me bounce rate or whatever it might be,” she says. “I like my site to look the way I want it to look, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

 

But many websites just do what they think Google wants or what’s being recommended by SEO experts, even if there’s no guarantee it will work. Google is both overbearing with manuals and withholding of clear answers. Give too much away, and everyone could game the system. In that void, creators and website operators throw things at the wall to see what sticks. And once they start designing their page for Google, it’s easy for their content to be fashioned for Google, too.

 

3. Keyword research and what content is made

For publishers handcuffed to Google Search traffic, there’s often no reason to produce content if people aren’t searching for it. So marketers, writers, and bloggers use a suite of keyword research tools to assess whether there’s enough interest to write the article or make the video in the first place. The result is that publishers end up producing a mountain of material, with Google keywords essentially acting like the assigning editor.

 

When Stimac Bailey writes for her London travel blog, for example, she strategically picks topics that the site will be able to rank highly for — keywords and topics that are too competitive get put on the backburner.

 

“[My writers and I] work on picking topics together, but we need them to be productive because not only am I [monetizing them], I’m paying people for their work, and I’m trying to pay very fairly for that work,” she says. “It’s like, ‘I gotta find these low-competition, high-volume, magic keywords.” For a popular destination like London, those magic keywords don’t really exist.

 

Catherine Cusick understands this tension well. Cusick worked in media for years — including in SEO — before creating the Self-Employed FAQin March. The subscription-driven business acts as a help guide for people who are new to self-employment or who simply have a specific question they can’t get an answer to elsewhere.

 

Most of Cusick’s answers to queries like “Do I need an accountant?” or “What are my healthcare options?” are behind a paywall, so she curates a small number of unlocked articles meant to give prospective customers a sampling of what she offers. These are what Cusick calls “SEO plays.”

 

For these articles, she is only targeting long-tail keywords — lengthier search terms that are often more specific and, as a result, have fewer people searching for them and are less competitive.

 

“The keyword search term that I am going for is, ‘How to pay yourself from a single member LLC.’ My game is entirely long-tail keywords,” she says. “I’m not even competing with ‘How to pay myself LLC.’ Like, that’s too high of a term for me, let alone something like ‘LLC.’”

 

Cusick wrestles with the disconnect between who her business is for — scared, uncertain people trying to make a living — and the SEO requirements she needs to fulfill. Time strategizing and reading technical manuals can feel like time “stolen” from making in-person connections and writing paywalled articles meant to help people through self-employment.

 

“I will need to have a different page for humans, and then another page that’s more of a directory that points humans who’ve arrived to the directory to other pages that will tell them a story,” she says. “The directory page can be structured in a way that makes search engine crawlers satisfied.” In Cusick’s view, we’re asking one piece of content to do too much: fulfill all the SEO requirements and do the careful, uninterrupted work of getting real answers to a reader.

 

I rewrote my prose over and over, but it didn’t seem to satisfy my robot grader

In an emailed statement, Google spokesperson Jennifer Kutz offered a dozen links to public documentation around search, along with generalities about keeping content “helpful” and “relevant.” All points underscored the company’s most common refrain: make content for human audiences.

 

“We’ve given longstanding guidance to create content that’s first and foremost helpful, and we work very hard to ensure that our ranking systems reward content designed for people first. Many sites perform well on Search simply by creating this helpful content, without undertaking extensive SEO efforts,” Kutz tells The Verge. “We continuously refine our ranking systems, and where we identify areas we can improve in ranking people-first content, we prioritize them. For more than a year, we’ve had focused efforts to show more content based on first-hand experience in Search, and to reduce content created solely for search engines, and this work continues.”

 

Kutz did not comment on my questions around specific strategies outlined in this piece, saying that giving granular guidance might make creators “lose sight” of the people-first guidance put forth by Google. Instead, the advice is for website operators to “ask themselves if [a tactic] would be helpful for someone visiting their site.”

 

But in order to be helpful to readers, website operators need people to visit their site in the first place. Fine-tuning content to match exact search terms is a common strategy that can entice users to click on a page that looks like it will answer their question. That doesn’t guarantee content will be better or even good — and sometimes, how users search can create an echo chamber of errors, oft-repeated misinformation, or poorly researched content.

 

One instance of errors multiplying sticks out to Bromilow, the food writer. For a while, he says that Google was returning a litany of incorrect information about Ethiopian cardamom, or korarima. Though black cardamom and korarima look similar, their flavors are not. Websites and writers — and by extension, Google results — were confusing the ingredients. At one point, Bromilow says the first picture on Google Images was of the wrong plant.

 

“If people are searching the wrong thing because that’s what they’ve been given, how do you return a result to them that explains that they’re incorrect, while also being found by them?” Bromilow says. “You don’t want to reinforce the mistake, right? It’s really weird and complicated.”

 

That Ethiopian recipes are being translated from Amharic to English also brings a host of problems: how should Bromilow spell the names of dishes? Should he use whatever spelling people are searching for the most? A post on savory pancakes sums it up, in which the Canadian Bromilow explains why he’s opted to omit the “u” in savoury: “The choice, while it breaks my maple-syrup filled heart, is obvious — savory is searched for more often, and using that spelling is more likely to [get] a recipe noticed by the all-powerful and oft-mysterious search engine algorithms.”

 

To understand what pure SEO-optimized writing looks like, I put my recent story about Google-optimized local businesses through an SEO tool called Semrush that’s reportedly used by 10 million people.

 

Among its suggestions: write a longer headline; split a six-sentence paragraph up because it’s “too long”; and replace “too complex” words like “invariably,” “notoriety,” and “modification.” Dozens of sentences were flagged as being confusing (I disagree) — and it really hated em dashes. I rewrote my prose over and over, but it didn’t seem to satisfy my robot grader. I finally chose one thought per sentence, broke up paragraphs, and replaced words with suggested keywords to get rid of the red dots signaling problems.

 

The result feels like an AI summary of my story — at any moment, a paragraph could start with “In conclusion…” or “The next thing to consider is…” The nuance, voice, and unexpected twists and turns have been snuffed out. I’m sure some people would prefer this uncomplicated, beat-by-beat version of the story, but it’s gone from being a story written by a real person to a clinical, stiff series of sentences.

 

Now imagine thousands of website operators all using this same plug-in to rewrite content. No wonder people feel like the answers are increasingly robotic and say nothing.

 

 

Read more

 

 

— Techmeme

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Culture Entertainment News Lifestyle Perspectives

Jimmy Kimmel calls Aaron Rodgers a ‘Karen’ over Epstein list comments: A ‘hamster-brained man’ who is ‘too arrogant to know how ignorant he is’

Jimmy Kimmel addressed his recent feud with New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers during his first monologue of the year on Monday night, calling him “Karen Rodgers” for suggesting that Kimmel’s name would appear on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s client list.

 

During an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Jan. 2, Rodgers said that “there’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, really hoping that doesn’t come out.” In response, Kimmel took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to dismiss the claim and even threatened legal action, writing: “Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”

 

After confirming that he has never met Epstein or been on his “plane or island or anything, ever,” Kimmel said that Rodgers was probably just trying to get back at him for previously roasting him on “Live!”

 

“Either he actually believes my name was going to be on Epstein’s list, which is insane, or the more likely scenario is he doesn’t actually believe that, he just said it because he’s mad at me for making fun of his top knot and his lies about being vaccinated,” Kimmel said. “He’s particularly upset, I think, because I made fun of the fact that he floated this wacko idea that the UFO sightings that were in the news in February were being reported to distract us from the Epstein list.”

 

After playing said clip of Kimmel poking fun at Rodgers over his conspiracy theory, the host said that it “might be time” for the athlete to “revisit that concussion protocol.”

 

“Aaron Rodgers has a very high opinion of himself. Because he had success on the football field, he believes himself to be an extraordinary being. He genuinely thinks that because God gave him the ability to throw a ball, he’s smarter than everyone else. The idea that his brain is just average is unfathomable to him,” Kimmel continued.

 

“We learned during COVID, somehow he knows more about science than scientists. A guy who went to community college, then got into Cal on a football scholarship and didn’t graduate. Someone who never spent a minute studying the human body, is an expert in the field of immunology. He put on a magic helmet, and that G made him a genius. Aaron got two As on his report card, they were both in the word ‘Aaron,’ OK? Can you imagine that this hamster-brained man thinks he knows what the government is up to because he’s a quarterback doing research on YouTube and listening to podcasts?”

 

Although Kimmel thinks Rodgers “is too arrogant to know how ignorant he is,” he said that if the footballer apologized, he would accept it.

 

“But I bet he won’t,” Kimmel said. “If he does, you know what I’ll do? I’ll accept his apology and move on, but he probably won’t do that.”

 

A representative for Rodgers did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.

 

Kimmel ended his monologue by directing some heat at former President Donald Trump.

 

“By the way, if you’re looking for someone who actually was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, who called him a terrific guy and bragged about his affinity for younger women, I have very good news for you, Epstein hunters,” Kimmel said as a clip of Trump and Epstein chatting played. “I found one for you!”

 

Watch Kimmel’s full monologue below.

 

 

— Variety

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Business Culture Entertainment News International & World Lifestyle Perspectives

Sao Paulo industry driver Spcine builds ties with Africa for film production

With the exception of Nigeria’s Nollywood, which produces an average of 2,500 films a year, Africa’s “potential as a film powerhouse remains largely untapped” despite great strides in production, according to a Unesco report.

 

PHOTO – AFRIFF, Africa International Film Festival (Courtesy of Spcine)

 

Brazil’s Spcine, the city of São Paulo’s film-TV body, is hoping to change the status quo. Since it launched the country’s first international film incentive policy in 2019, Spcine has played a vital role in fostering the Brazilian audiovisual industry worldwide. In 2020, it spearheaded a strategy to strengthen ties with the African continent, particularly in markets with the strongest growth potential, led by Nigeria and South Africa.

 

The move makes sense, given that Brazil is home to the largest black population outside of Africa and the third-largest in the world, with over 79 million Afro-descendants.

 

In 2022, Spcine participated in key audiovisual events in Africa, particularly the Pan-African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO) in Burkina Faso and in Nigeria where it took part in targeted meetings and visits, seeking to close business deals and strategic partnerships with distribution and production studios, training institutes, film schools and festival heads.

 

More recently, Spcine sent a delegation to the Durban FilmMart in South Africa, held between July 20 and 30, 2023, which highlights the foundations of the African film industry.

 

It was here that Spcine formalized its commitment, signing a co-production pact with South Africa that entails an investment of $20,000 per project (est. 95,000 Reales), which will cover comprehensive support for four projects, two led by South African producers and the other two from São Paulo-based producers.

 

The call for projects is expected to be posted by the first semester of 2024, said Spcine president, Viviane Ferreira, who highlighted the Audiovisual Professional Meetings: São Paulo – South Africa which assembled creatives and execs from the São Paulo and the South African industries online so they could pitch their projects to each other. “It was four days of meetings with a matchmaking session, and we made a catalogue with everyone who was interested in collaborating with São Paulo and vice versa,” she said.

 

According to Spcine, several key factors drive further cooperation between Brazil and Africa:

 

  1. Nigeria is the only other country that boasts a black population exceeding that of Brazil. This connection, rooted in the African diaspora, offers fertile ground for collaborative ventures and cultural exchanges.
  2. The film and audiovisual industry in Africa wield considerable influence, contributing an estimated $5 billion to the GDP and supporting approximately 5 million jobs, as per Unesco estimates. The future holds promise, with the potential to generate 20 million jobs and contribute $20 billion to the collective GDP of the continent.
  3. Numerous media outlets indicate that by the end of this century, an anticipated 442 million Portuguese speakers will inhabit the world. Presently, Brazil leads with 215.8 million speakers, but projections suggest that the growth of Lusophony will be spearheaded by nations such as Angola and Mozambique. The anticipated population surge in these countries hints at Africa potentially emerging as the premier Lusophone consumer market for audiovisual content, surpassing even Brazil.
  4. Forecasts for Nigeria point towards its ascent as a global powerhouse by 2100, propelled by the expansion of its working-age population. This demographic surge is anticipated to fuel rapid economic growth, advancing the country from the 23rd position in the 2017 world GDP ranking to the 9th position. This transformation, both economically and demographically, reveals strategic opportunities for collaborative ventures and investments in the audiovisual sector between Brazil and Nigeria.

 

In further initiatives, as a direct outcome of Spcine’s visit to Lagos in March 2023, a São Paulo – Nigeria 2023 Meeting backed by Brazilian Content and organized in partnership with The Production Collective of Nigeria has furthered business partnerships between between Brazil and Nigeria. Discussed at a virtual meeting were co-productions, licensing of original content, and provision of production services.

 

Spcine also attended African International Film Festival (AFRIFF) over Nov. 5-10.

 

It took part in two panels – International Cinematic Collaboration Opportunities with Nigerian Filmmakers, and Spcine in Conversations with Nollywood – and backed a networking event and Brazil x Nigeria Speed Dating Sessions, where Nigerian producers presented projects.

 

 

PHOTO – Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival Courtesy of Spcine

 

 

 

— Variety

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Business Culture Digital - AI & Apps International & World Lifestyle Regulations & Security Technology

 Apple appeals EU’s DMA designation of App Stores as a single service, iOS interoperability, and iMessage NIICS designation 

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:

 

 

—  Apple (AAPL.O) has challenged EU tech rules designating its five App Stores as a single core platform service subject to onerous obligations, saying that EU regulators have misinterpreted and misapplied the new legislation that took effect last May.

 

The company also disputed the characterisation of its operating system iOS as an important gateway for business users to reach end users and the interoperability obligation that goes with that label.

 

(PHOTO: Apple logo is seen on the Apple store at The Marche Saint Germain in Paris, France July 15, 2020. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights)

 

The iPhone maker challenged the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in November last year but did not provide details.

The European Commission made “material factual errors, in concluding that the applicant’s five App Stores are a single core platform service,” Apple said in its plea to the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe’s second-highest.

The company in its argument to the EU competition enforcer said it operates five App Stores on iPhones, iPads, Mac computers, Apple TVs and Apple Watches, with each designed to distribute apps for a specific operating system and Apple device.

DMA requirements that would affect Apple include allowing third parties to inter-operate with its own services and letting business users promote their offers and conclude contracts with their customers outside its platform.

Apple’s lawsuit also took issue with the Commission’s designation of its messaging service iMessage as a number-independent interpersonal communications service (NIICS) that prompted an EU investigation into whether it should comply with DMA rules.

The company contends that iMessage is not a NIICS as it is not a fee-based service and it does not monetise it via the sale of hardware devices nor via the processing of personal data.

 

Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Andrew Heavens

— Techmeme

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Culture Digital - AI & Apps Entertainment News Lifestyle

Streaming Hot: Here’s how to watch every ‘Real Housewives’ city and series online

From the shocking season of ‘Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ to the glamour of Beverly Hills, here’s how to stream the Bravo reality show online

 

 

Every Bravo-holic has their “Real Housewives” city of choice, but the most loyal devotees don’t play favorites. Lukas Gage from “The White Lotus” said in a recent interview that they’re “all beautiful in different ways” after being asked which series is his favorite.

 

According to Gage, New Jersey is “unhinged;” New York is “classy;” Beverly Beverly Hills is the “O.G.”

 

“Real Housewives” fans also know that different cities will usher in high levels of drama every year. Salt Lake City, for example, has quickly delivered some of the most entertainment value in its four short seasons of existence. The 90-minute episode that sees Jen Shah go on the run as the police show up to arrest her might have been one of the best episodes of TV all year (the former reality star has now been sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for fraud). Now, the season four finale has left viewers stunned and desperate to know more.

 

You can watch now watch “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” finale (and binge all four seasons) on Peacock. The NBCUniversal streaming site lets you catch up on the Bravo drama and watch “Housewives” live on TV or replay episodes of the reality show on-demand from just $5.99 a month.

 

You can also watch Bravo and the “Housewives” shows live on TV without cable through DirecTV Stream. The streaming service has a 5-day free trialthat you can use to stream the show online free.

 

Right now, four out of the eight “Real Housewives” series are currently on air: Salt Lake City, Miami, Beverly Hills and Potomac. “Vanderpump Rules” and Peacock’s “The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip,” the only show featuring Housewives from multiple series, are also set to release new episodes.

 

While all of the new episodes are broadcast on Bravo, cable-cutters can access the new episodes as they come out on live TV streaming services such as Fubo TV, DirecTV Stream, Sling TV and Hulu + Live TV. Hulu and Peacock‘s expansive libraries even have cancelled series such as D.C and and Dallas, while Peacock exclusively rebooted “The Real Housewives of Miami” when it was cancelled in 2011 after three seasons.

 

Below, check out all the best ways to stream every “Real Housewives” city online, include free trial offers to take advantage of to watch the “Real Housewives” online for free.

 

Access more than 85 top channels, including Bravo, with Hulu’s Live TV plan, which costs $69.99/month. In addition to live sports, news and cable networks, you can also access the streamer’s entire ad-supported Hulu streaming library, which also includes previous seasons of “Real Housewives” favorites such as New Jersey, Potomac and Beverly Hills. Plus, Hulu + Live TV is now also bundled with Disney+ and ESPN+, saving you nearly $15/month from subscribing to each service individually.

 

 

 

— Variety

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Art & Life Culture International & World Lifestyle

Mammootty, Mohanlal, Gippy Grewal, Tovino Thomas lead India’s Yoodlee Films’ 2024 slate

India’s Yoodlee Films has unveiled a star-studded 2024 release slate across languages. Malayalam-language cinema superstar Mammootty, who had a phenomenal 2023 with critical and commercial hits “Kannur Squad” and “Kaathal – The Core,” headlines “Bazooka.”

 

Directed by debutant Deeno Dennis, the film is a game thriller, a category not often explored in Indian cinema. The cast also includes actor-directors Gautham Vasudev Menon and V.K. Prakash, Siddharth Bharathan and Shine Tom Chacko. The Malayalam-language film is scheduled for release in early 2024.

 

Mohanlal, Malayalam-language cinema’s other superstar, leads action-drama-fantasy “Malaikottai Vaaliban.” Written by P.S. Rafeeque, the film is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Lijo Jose Pellissery, whose credits include “Jallikattu,” “Amen,” “Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam” and “Churuli.” The Malayalam-language film is due to release on Thursday, Jan. 25, ahead of the Jan. 26 Republic Day holiday, ensuring a long box office weekend.

 

Punjabi-language cinema superstar Gippy Grewal headlines “Warning 2,” the second part of what is planned as an action franchise, directed by Amar Hundal. The cast also includes Prince Kanwaljit Singh, Jasmin Bhasin, Rahul Dev and Raghveer Boli in major roles. Produced by Yoodlee Films and Humble Motion Pictures, the Punjabi-language film is scheduled for a Feb. 2 release.

 

Produced by Yoodlee Films and Theatre of Dreams, Malayalam-language investigative thriller “Anweshippin Kandethum” features Tovino Thomas in the lead portraying a cop. The film is from debutant director Darwin Kuriakose and written by Jinu Abraham. The cast also includes seasoned Malayalam cinema actors Siddique, Indrans, Jaffer Idukki, Harisree Ashokan and Alencier. The film is due Feb. 9.

 

Another Punjabi-language sequel, comedy-drama “Ni Main Sass Kutni 2,” written and directed by Mohit Banwait, depicts the complex relationship between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law as well as the clash of values within joint families. The cast of 2022’s “Ni Main Sass Kutni,” including Anita Devgan, Gurpreet Ghuggi, Karamjit Anmol, Tanvi Nagi, Mehtab Virk, Nirmal Rishi, Harby Sangha, Nisha Bano and Akshita Sharma, return for the sequel. The film is due to release on March 1.

 

Set up in 2017, Yoodlee Films is the film division of Saregama India, India’s oldest music label. It has produced more than 30 titles so far. Its first film, Devashish Makhija’s “Ajji,” played at the Busan, Rotterdam and Gothenburg festivals.

 

 

 

— Variety (EXCLUSIVE) 

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Culture Government International & World News Now! Politics Regulations & Security Technology

Critics and tech firms worry UK’s Investigatory Powers Bill,  surveillance law undermines user privacy

—  Despite the protestations of industry and campaigners, ministers are whisking a new bill through parliament.

 

 

Laurie Clarke / Politico:

 

 

LONDON — The U.K. already has some of the most far-reaching surveillance laws in the democratic world. Now it’s rushing to beef them up even further — and tech firms are spooked.

 

Britain’s government wants to build on its landmark Investigatory Powers Act, a controversial piece of legislation dubbed the “snooper’s charter” by critics when introduced back in 2016.

 

PHOTO: The new legislation is triggering fresh alarm among both industry execs and privacy campaigners | Scott Barbour/Getty Images

 

That law — introduced in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass state surveillance — attempted to introduce more accountability into the U.K. intelligence agencies’ sprawling snooping regime by formalizing wide-ranging powers to intercept emails, texts, web history and more.

 

Now new legislation is triggering a fresh outcry among both industry execs and privacy campaigners — who say it could hobble efforts to protect user privacy.

 

Industry body TechUK has written to Home Secretary James Cleverly airing its complaints. The group’s letter warns that the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill threatens technological innovation; undermines the sovereignty of other nations; and could unleash dire consequences if it sets off a domino effect overseas.

 

Tech companies are most concerned by a change that would allow the Home Office to issue notices preventing them from making technical updates that might impede information-sharing with U.K. intelligence agencies.

 

TechUK argues that, combined with pre-existing powers, the changes would “grant a de facto power to indefinitely veto companies from making changes to their products and services offered in the U.K.”

 

“Using this power, the government could prevent the implementation of new end-to-end encryption, or stop developers from patching vulnerabilities in code that the government or their partners would like to exploit,” Meredith Whittaker, president of secure messaging app Signal, told POLITICO when the bill was first unveiled.

 

The Home Office, Britain’s interior ministry, remains adamant it’s a technical and procedural set of tweaks. Home Office Minister Andrew Sharpe said at the bill’s committee stage in the House of Lords that the law was “not going to … ban end-to-end encryption or introduce a veto power for the secretary of state … contrary to what some are incorrectly speculating.”

 

“We have always been clear that we support technological innovation and private and secure communications technologies, including end-to-end encryption,” a government spokesperson said. “But this cannot come at a cost to public safety, and it is critical that decisions are taken by those with democratic accountability.”

 

Encryption threat

Despite the protestations of industry and campaigners, the British government is whisking the bill through parliament at breakneck speed — risking the ire of lawmakers.

 

Ministers have so far blocked efforts to refine the bill in the House of Lords, the U.K.’s upper chamber. But there are more opportunities to contest the legislation coming and industry is already making appeals to MPs in the hopes of paring it back in the House of Commons.

 

PHOTO: Some companies including Apple have threatened to pull their services from the UK if asked to undermine encryption under Britain’s laws | Feline Lim/Getty Images

 

“We stress the critical need for adequate time to thoroughly discuss these changes, highlighting that rigorous scrutiny is essential given the international precedent they will set and their very serious impacts,” the TechUK letter states.

 

The backdrop to the row is the fraught debate on encryption that unfolded during the passage of the earlier Online Safety Act, which companies and campaigners argued could compel companies to break encryption in the name of online safety.

 

The bill ultimately said that the government can call for the implementation of this technology when it’s “technically feasible” and simultaneously preserves privacy.

 

Apple, WhatsApp and Signal have threatened to pull their services from the U.K. if asked to undermine encryption under U.K. laws.

 

Since the Online Safety Act passed in November, Meta announced that it had begun its rollout of end-to-end encryption on its Messenger service.

 

In response, Cleverly issued a statement saying he was “disappointed” that the company had gone ahead with the move despite repeated government warnings that it would make identifying child abusers on the platform more difficult.

 

Critics see a pincer movement. “Taken together, it appears that the Online Safety Bill’s Clause 122 is intended to undermine existing encryption, while the updates to the IPA are intended to block further rollouts of encryption,” said Whittaker.

Beyond encryption

In addition to the notice regime, rights campaigners are worried that the bill allows for the more permissive use of bulk data where there are “low or no” expectations of privacy, for wide-ranging purposes including training AI models.

 

Lib Dem peer Christopher Fox argued in the House of Lords that this “creates an essentially new and essentially undefined category of information” which marks “a departure from existing privacy law,” notably the Data Protection Act.

 

Director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, Silkie Carlo, also has issues with the newly invented category. With CCTV footage or social media posts for example, people may not have an expectation of privacy, “[but] that’s not the point, the point is that that data taken together and processed in a certain way, can be incredibly intrusive.”

 

Big Brother Watch is also concerned about how the bill deals with internet connection records — i.e. web logs for individuals for the last 12 months. These can currently be obtained by agencies when specific criteria is known, like the person of interest’s identity. Changes to the bill would broaden this for the purpose of “target discovery,” which Big Brother Watch characterizes as “generalized surveillance.”

 

Members of the House of Lords are also worried about the bill’s proposal to expand the number of people who can sanction spying on parliamentarians themselves. Right now, this requires the PM’s sign-off, but under the bill, the PM would be able to designate deputies for when he is not “available.” The change was inspired by the period in which former PM Boris Johnson was incapacitated with COVID-19.

 

PHOTO: The bill will return to the House of Lords on January 23, before heading to the House of Commons to be debated by MPs | Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images

“The purpose of this bill is to give the intelligence agencies a bit of extra agility at the margins, where the existing Rolls Royce regime is proving a bit clunky and bureaucratic,” argues David Anderson, crossbench peer and author of a review that served as a blueprint for the bill. “If you start throwing in too many safeguards, you will negate that purpose, and you will not solve the problem that bill is addressing.”

 

Anderson proposed the changes relating to spying on MPs and peers are necessary “if the prime minister has got COVID, or if they’re in a foreign country where they have no access to secure communications.”

 

This could even apply in cases where there’s a conflict of interest because spies want to snoop on the PM’s relatives or the PM himself, he added.

 

Amendments proposed by peers at the committee stage were uniformly rejected by the government.

 

The bill will return to the House of Lords for the next stage of the legislative process on January 23, before heading to the House of Commons to be debated by MPs.

 

“Our overarching concern is that the significance of the proposed changes to the notices regime are presented by the Home Office as minor adjustments and as such are being downplayed,” reads the TechUK letter.

 

“What we’re seeing across these different bills is a continual edging further towards … turning private tech companies into arms of a surveillance state,” says Carlo.

 

 

 

— Techmeme

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For its year of achievements, NJHMFA honored as statewide leader by NJBIZ

TRENTON, N.J. —  The New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (NJHMFA) has been honored as a 2023 Leader in Real Estate, Construction, and Design by NJBIZ.

This recognition joins many awards the Agency won in 2023 for its work on promoting affordable and mixed-income housing construction and economic development across New Jersey.

This most recent award recognized NJHMFA’s role in making high-quality, accessible, affordable housing construction possible through its financing capacity, innovative programs, and collaborative partnerships. Since 2021, NJHMFA has undergone a record expansion of the Agency’s core multifamily programs, which now produce more than $1.3 billion in annual construction.

“NJHMFA is committed to ensuring that New Jersey residents have access to high-quality affordable housing near the schools, jobs, transportation, services, and other amenities that their households require,” said Executive Director Melanie R. Walter. “We are honored that NJBIZ has recognized our successful efforts to provide these housing opportunities by naming us as a Leader in Real Estate, Construction, and Design for 2023.”

Among the projects that were cited as part of NJBIZ’s recognition are Hinchliffe Residences and Barclay Place. Both projects, which opened in the summer of 2023, are examples of how NJHMFA financing can help municipalities further their planning, growth, and housing goals, while simultaneously creating a thriving inclusive community for all who live there.

Hinchliffe Residences was a key component of the long-awaited redevelopment and revitalization of Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson. Hinchliffe Residences reflects and embraces the unique architecture and history of the adjacent Hinchliffe Stadium, one of the only four standing stadiums that once hosted Negro League baseball games. This development seamlessly integrates historical essence with modern planning elements, including affordable senior housing, a daycare, and a new parking deck. The project is the state’s largest-ever historic preservation project and a key piece of the city’s future. The Hinchliffe redevelopment has received a 2023 Smart Growth Award from NJ Future, the 2023 Outstanding Implementation Award from the New Jersey Chapter of the American Planning Association, and the 2023 Governor’s Excellence Award for Innovative Economic Development.

The Barclay Place development is the first completed project financed through the NJHMFA’s Hospital Partnership Subsidy Program. This program, serves as a national model, with other states now replicating the way NJHMFA leverages hospitals’ status as anchor institutions to improve community health outcomes through the creation of affordable and supportive housing. NJHMFA, Saint Joseph University Medical Center, NJCDC, NJCC, and other partners received a 2023 Smart Growth Award from NJ Future, the 2023 Project of the Year Award from the Supportive Housing Association of New Jersey, and the 2023 Governor’s Excellence Award for Housing Development for this remarkable supportive housing community.

Other projects that have received recognition in 2023 include the Gordon H. Mansfield Veteran’s Community in Tinton Falls, NJ, a 70-unit community for military veterans that won the NAA Excellence Award for New Construction Community of the Year; One Thompson Place in Dover, which received a 2023 Smart Growth Award; and Freedom Village at Hamilton Woods, which was cited as part of the NJBIZ award. Other landmark projects in the development pipeline include Hospital Partnership Subsidy Program projects in Newark and Camden, and 28 Walnut in Madison, which was among the first projects to receive Affordable Housing Production Fund Support.

About Us: The New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (NJHMFA) advances the quality of life for residents of and communities throughout New Jersey by investing in, financing, and facilitating access to affordable rental housing and homeownership opportunities for low and moderate-income families, older adults, and individuals with specialized housing needs. To learn more about NJHMFA, visit: https://NJHousing.gov/

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Business Economics Lifestyle Regulations & Security Technology

Filing: Fidelity marks down the value of its X stake,  from 33% in May 2023 to ~28% of the $44B that Elon Musk paid 

Dan Primack / Axios:

 

 

—  Fidelity has again marked down the value of its shares in X Holdings, which the mutual fund giant helped Elon Musk buy for $44 billion when the company was known as Twitter.

 

By the numbers: Fidelity believes that X is worth 71.5% less than at the time of purchase, according to a new disclosure that runs through the end of November 2023 (Fidelity revalues private shares on a one-month lag).

 

  • This includes a 10.7% cut during November, during which time Musk told boycotting X advertisers to “go f**k yourself” during an on-stage interview with the New York Times.
  • In terms of publicly traded comps, Meta stock rose 4.9% in November while Snap shares climbed 38.2%.

 

The big picture: Fidelity began marking down its Twitter shares the first month after Musk’s buyout. It increased the share value or kept it stable for a few months earlier in 2023.

 

Behind the scenes: Fidelity doesn’t necessarily have much, if any, inside information on X’s financial performance, despite being a shareholder in the privately held business. Other shareholders may value their X stock differently.

 

 

— Techmeme