Threads Goes Live in Europe
On December 14, Zuckerberg posted on the Threads platform to announce that it is now live in Europe. When accessed from EU countries, Threads can be viewed without registering and logging in, but an Instagram account is still required to actually post or interact with content.Threads has not been supported for use in EU countries since it went live in July in more than 100 countries and territories, and has even proactively used technology to block European users. This is largely in response to compliance requirements in the EU’s Digital Marketplace Act, which comes into force next year; Meta is subject to specific obligations as it is defined as a ‘gatekeeper’ under the Act.
On the 15th, Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted on Threads about the platform’s plans to advance Fediverse support. All public accounts on Threads will reportedly be able to be followed on other Fediverse sites through the ActivityPub protocol, but no decision has been made on whether this will be the default setting for accounts.Thread also plans to allow users of the platform to follow accounts on other platforms, display replies from other platforms on Thread, and allow users to retain followers when migrating to other platforms. platforms, as well as allow users to retain followers when migrating to other platforms. These features will be rolled out in phases.
ByteDance’s Account Deactivated by OpenAI
According to Surfing News and other reports, on December 16, The Verge reported based on internal documents obtained that ByteDance had secretly used OpenAI’s technology to develop its own large language model, and at various stages of the project, codenamed Project Seed, it used the OpenAI APIs on Azure for training and evaluation of the model, and frequently hit the maximum limit of the APIs. maximum limits of the API were frequently exceeded. The report also said that the employees in question were aware that this practice violated the OpenAI usage policy, and referred to “data desensitization” in internal Lark conversations. A few months ago, however, Byte ordered the team to stop using GPT-generated text at “any stage of model development.
In the wake of the report, OpenAI said that ByteDance’s API usage was minimal, but that it had suspended its account and was investigating further. If a violation of the usage policy is found, the account will be required to be corrected or shut down. Microsoft restated its policy for the Azure OpenAI service in the statement, but did not comment on the facts of the report or the follow-up.
In this regard, ByteDance’s spokesperson told The Verge on the 16th that GPT-generated data was used to annotate models early in the development of Project Seed and was removed from Byte Jump’s training data around the middle of this year, and that GPT is only used in products and features in markets outside of China, while Beanbag is based on self-developed models and is only available in China.
The relevant person in charge of ByteDance responded to PENGPING News on the 17th that only at the beginning of the year did some engineers use the OpenAI service for experimental project research on smaller models; with the company’s introduction of the GPT API call specification check in April, this practice has been stopped; in September, there was another round of internal checking and further standardization measures; and there will be a comprehensive check in the next few days to ensure strict compliance with the terms of use of the service. The terms of use of the service in question will be fully checked again in the coming days to ensure strict compliance with the terms of use.
Historically, there have been differing views on OpenAI’s policy of prohibiting the use of its services to train competitive models. Those in favor argue that OpenAI has made a significant upfront investment in training models, and that it is improper to use its services to “shortcut” them. The opposing view is that OpenAI’s training process benefited from an unsuspecting external environment for AI training at the time, and that preventing other companies from calling on its models is tantamount to establishing a de facto monopoly since the same scale of training data is no longer readily available for subsequent models.
Studios Reinvigorate Licensing to Netflix to Recoup Funds
According to the New York Times, producers such as Disney and HBO have drastically reduced their content licenses to Netflix over the past few years in order to promote their own streaming services; however, faced with massive debt and weak revenues from these new services, these companies have recently softened their stance of resistance to Netflix and have reopened their content libraries to recoup much-needed funds.
For example, a number of Warner Bros. films have recently appeared on Netflix, including Superman: Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Wonder Woman; and HBO has opened up licenses for episodes of Six Feet Under, Band of Brothers, and War in the Pacific. In the following months, Disney-owned content such as This Day of Ours, Romancing Mom and Dad, Prison Break, and The Good Samaritan, as well as Warner-owned content such as Sheldon Jr. and Dune, will also join or return to Netflix.
In response, executives at Paramount, HBO, and others have acknowledged that the motivation for doing so is high profitability and satisfaction with the collections so far. According to Netflix, licensed content contributed 45% of the views on its platform in the first half of the year. A large subscriber base and recommendation algorithms have also boosted the performance of older content on Netflix. On the other hand, Netflix still says it doesn’t have any plans to license its original series.
App Store to Support Discounts for Co-Subscriptions
On December 15, Apple posted a notice on its developer website that it will support “conditional” pricing for subscriptions on the App Store: if a user has already purchased another specified subscription, they can get a special discount on the new subscription. The two subscriptions could be offered by different developers. For example, using this feature, magazine A could offer a discount to subscribers of magazine B. The App Store would provide a showcase for such joint discounts. Apple says the feature is in testing and will provide more details in January.
Nothing Phone
Dylan Roussel revealed key specs of the Nothing Phone 2a handset via Twitter and showed a demo animation. The tweet claims that the Nothing Phone 2a, model number A142, is powered by MediaTek’s Tenguet 7200 SoC ([email protected] + [email protected]; Mali-G610 MP4) with a system of 3 Glyph light bar elements on the back. According to previous information, the Nothing Phone 2a features a 6.7-inch 120Hz screen, a 50-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, a 4,920mAh battery, and Android 14 from the factory, and is expected to be announced at the MWC 2024 event.
