Year: 2024

Samsung reportedly shipped 60.1 million smartphone units worldwide in Q1, representing 20.8 percent of the global market share — and first place. Meanwhile, Apple shipped 50.1 million units for 17.3 percent of the market share. Both companies, however, saw a decrease from Q1 2023. Apple saw an almost 10 percent drop, while Samsung’s hit was less than one percent.

Apple nudged Samsung out briefly in 2023, but it’s back to business as usual. The IDC’s takeaway is that the world of smartphones is strengthening (what does that mean?), with a boost to higher-priced phones—true for both Samsung and Apple.

Xiaomi rounded out the top five brands with 40.8 million units, Transsion with 28.5 million units and OPPO with 25.2 million units shipped. Never heard of Transsion? It’s a global smartphone powerhouse based in China, responsible for phone brands including Tecno, Itel and Infinix.

— Mat Smith

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Keanu Reeves’ latest iconic role is Shadow the Hedgehog

Sonic 3 gets another actor.

Sega

Keanu Reeves will play the broody, tortured Shadow the Hedgehog. The antihero, both an arch-rival and an ally to Sonic, will be created by Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik after the events of Sonic 2. Whoa.

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Meta is shutting down Threads in Turkey

The social media app goes offline April 29.

Meta is shutting down Threads in Turkey on April 29 after an interim injunction from the Turkish Competition Authority (TCA) against automatic data sharing with Instagram. The TCA ruled that linking Threads and Instagram without user opt-in “will lead to irreparable harm” and that Meta “abused its dominant position” in the industry with the practice. This isn’t the first regulatory battle between Meta and Turkey. Back in 2022, the country fined Meta $18.6 million for sharing data across its apps.

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Watch a recycling machine shake apart old hard drives

Dismantling an HDD in as little as eight seconds.

Garner Products’ DiskMantler uses a mix of shock, harmonics and vibration to shake apart a hard drive. The process loosens screws and other fasteners to free up parts like circuit boards, drive assemblies, actuators and rare-earth magnets. The process reportedly takes between eight and 90 seconds for most hard drives and around two minutes for welded helium drives. Only a fifth or so of the planet’s e-waste is recycled at the moment, so anything that can improve that share would be welcome.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-samsung-is-once-again-shipping-the-most-phones-in-the-world-111511309.html?src=rss

Meta’s Oversight Board is once again taking on the social network’s rules for AI-generated content. The board has accepted two cases that deal with AI-made explicit images of public figures.

While Meta’s rules already prohibit nudity on Facebook and Instagram, the board said in a statement that it wants to address whether “Meta’s policies and its enforcement practices are effective at addressing explicit AI-generated imagery.” Sometimes referred to as “deepfake porn,” AI-generated images of female celebrities, politicians and other public figures has become an increasingly prominent form of online harassment and has drawn a wave of proposed regulation. With the two cases, the Oversight Board could push Meta to adopt new rules to address such harassment on its platform.

The Oversight Board said it’s not naming the two public figures at the center of each case in an effort to avoid further harassment, though it described the circumstances around each post.

One case involves an Instagram post showing an AI-generated image of a nude Indian woman that was posted by an account that “only shares AI- generated images of Indian women.” The post was reported to Meta but the report was closed after 48 hours because it wasn’t reviewed. The same user appealed that decision but the appeal was also closed and never reviewed. Meta eventually removed the post after the user appealed to the Oversight Board and the board agreed to take the case.

The second case involved a Facebook post in a group dedicated to AI art. The post in question showed “an AI-generated image of a nude woman with a man groping her breast.” The woman was meant to resemble “an American public figure” whose name was also in the caption of the post. The post was taken down automatically because it had been previously reported and Meta’s internal systems were able to match it to the prior post. The user appealed the decision to take it down but the appeal was “automatically closed.” The user then appealed to the Oversight Board, which agreed to consider the case.

In a statement, Oversight Board co-chair Helle Thorning-Schmidt said that the board took up the two cases from different countries in order to assess potential disparities in how Meta’s policies are enforced. “We know that Meta is quicker and more effective at moderating content in some markets and languages than others,” Thorning-Schmidt said. “By taking one case from the US and one from India, we want to look at whether Meta is protecting all women globally in a fair way.”

The Oversight Board is asking for public comment for the next two weeks and will publish its decision sometime in the next few weeks, along with policy recommendations for Meta. A similar process involving a misleadingly-edited video of Joe Biden recently resulted in Meta agreeing to label more AI-generated content on its platform.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-oversight-board-will-rule-on-ai-generated-sexual-images-100047138.html?src=rss