Samsung is reportedly raising its chipmaking prices by up to 20 percent

Samsung’s chip foundry clients will soon have to pay considerably more for the company’s services. According to Bloomberg, the tech giant is already in talks with its clients about charging around 15 to 20 percent more to manufacture their chips, depending on how sophisticated their products are. Samsung is only the latest company in the industry to raise its prices in an effort to keep up with the growing costs of procuring materials in the midst of the global supply chain crisis. 

Bloomberg says companies that need chips manufactured on legacy nodes would be facing the biggest price hike, which will be applied sometime in the second half of this year. Apparently, Samsung is already done negotiating with some of its clients, but it’s still currently in discussion with others. Samsung’s foundry business achieved its highest ever first quarter sales for the first three months of 2022. While the company is optimistic about its future, it’s also expecting the global component shortage to continue having an impact on its business. Manufacturing costs are rising by up to an average of 30 percent, as well, which means foundry businesses have to charge more to make a profit. Rival foundries like TSMC’s already raised prices by 20 percent last year and will charge even more in 2023. 

Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst Masahiro Wakasugi said: “This is an inevitable move for Samsung. Some customers may accept higher prices if they can get chips earlier than others.”

Seeing as Samsung has cutting-edge gear its competitors don’t have and other foundries are raising prices anyway, its clients will most likely agree to pay its new prices. And since the price hike affects the whole industry, we can likely expect to pay more for cars, smartphones, consoles and other devices in the future.

‘Dead Space’ remake arrives on January 27th, 2023

EA is releasing the remake of Dead Space on January 27th, 2023. Motive, the EA studio behind the game, made the announcement at the company’s Crafting the Tension Art Developer Livestream. The classic sci-fi horror survival game is being rebuilt from the ground up using EA’s Frostbite game engine and will be available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

The original Dead Space was released back in 2008 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC. Motive is upgrading its visuals and made its audio crisper for a more immersive experience on modern consoles. The studio remade all the in-game props, tools and environments for more modern hardware and platforms, and it used “dynamic, volumetric lighting with atmospheric and environmental VFX rendered in full-HDR” to capture the creepy atmosphere of the game.

In Dead Space, you play as engineer Isaac Clarke who’s on a routine mission to fix the mining starship USG Ishimura. What he didn’t know was the the ship’s crew had been slaughtered and infected, transforming them into creatures known as Necromorphs. To find his girlfriend who worked as a medical officer onboard, he has to fight these monsters while also grappling with his growing psychosis. 

In addition to announcing the remake’s release date, the Motive team has also given us a look at the development of the game in the livestream. You can see how they incorporated lighting changes and new elements in the video below:

Apple sends out invites for limited in-person WWDC 2022 event

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference will still mostly be virtual this year, but it will hold an in-person event for a limited number of people at Apple Park. Now, the tech giant has started sending out invites for the one-day special on June 6th, where attendees will be able to watch the keynote and State of the Union videos on-site. While Apple’s last two developer conferences were pure online experiences due to the pandemic, it doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s offering a hybrid experience this time when its corporate employees have already started working in the company’s offices again at least once a week. 

Members of the Apple Developer Program and Apple Developer Enterprise Program were given the chance to apply for invites from May 9th to May 11th. Apple said it will choose participants through a random selection process, and as you can see above, invitations aren’t transferrable. Chosen participants will have to RSVP by May 18th at 6PM PT/9PM ET, though, and their invite will be offered to another applicant if they fail to do so on time. 

Apple is expected to showcase iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, tvOS 16 and the next version of macOS during the conference. The company might also talk about its upcoming M2 chips that it’s reportedly testing on at least nine new Mac models. 

US lawmaker seeks to create a commission to oversee tech companies

US Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) wants to establish a federal watchdog that would focus on overseeing digital platforms and tech giants. The lawmaker has introduced the Digital Platform Commission Act (PDF) in Congress in hopes of establishing a five-person federal body appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. They would be experts in relevant fields, including computer science, software development and technology policy.

The commission would be in charge of assuring “the fairness and safety of algorithms on digital platforms” as well as promoting competition. It would also have the authority to conduct investigations, impose penalties and to set new rules, such as those that ensure moderation transparency and the protection of consumers. The commission would create requirements for regular public risk assessments on the distribution of harmful content on digital platforms, as well.

Under the commission, a “Code Council” comprised of technologists and public interest experts will conjure up standards and policies that could be implemented. In addition, the commission will establish a research office with 20 dedicated employees to conduct internal research and coordinate with outside academics and experts. 

As mentioned in the legislation’s announcement, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are in charge of overseeing digital platforms today. Bennett argues, however, that they lack the expert staff and tech-oriented culture necessary for robust oversight. 

The Washington Post reports that Bennett’s motivation was his personal experience viewing disinformation as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as seeing how social media has affected his children. As the publication notes, though, it remains to be seen whether the legislation would be approved by the Senate, where Democrats have a 50-50 majority.

Facebook Pay will soon become Meta Pay

Meta started renaming its products after the company switched its name: The Oculus Quest and Facebook Portal devices, for instance, are now known as the Meta Quest and Meta Portal. It’s only natural for the company to also plan the future of its payments experience as it continues to expand into the metaverse, and that includes a name change for it. Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s head of fintech services, has revealed in a longer post about the metaverse that the company is soon renaming Facebook Pay to Meta Pay. 

Kasriel said that Meta is “in the very early stages of scoping out what a single wallet experience might look like.” While it has no concrete plans yet, Meta is looking into how you can prove who you are and how you can carry that identity into different metaverse experiences. The company is also examining how you can store and bring your digital goods wherever you go in the metaverse and how you can pay friends and businesses easily with your chosen payment method.

Kasriel oversees the company’s financial division, which includes the Novi crypto wallet. Former Facebook exec David Marcus spent years trying to get Novi off the ground, but the wallet launched without support for the Diem cryptocurrency that he co-founded. In the end, Marcus stepped down in 2021 and Kasriel renamed the division as Meta Financial Technologies when he took over. 

Facebook’s name change signified a new era for the company that’s now pinning its future on virtual reality and the metaverse. It hasn’t been smooth sailing for the internet giant, though. In 2021, Meta’s Reality Labs division that serves as home to its hardware and metaverse initiatives lost $10 billion and will hire fewer employees this year as a result. More recently, Reutersreported that the division will be axing some of its projects and postponing others, because it could no longer afford some of the initiatives it originally planned. 

Warner Bros. Discovery and BT are forming a massive sports TV business

Warner Bros. Discovery will soon be operating a massive sports programming platform for the UK and Ireland. The merged WarnerMedia and Discovery company already owns the Eurosport network, and now it’s also making BT Sport its wholly owned subsidiary. This joint venture will bring together the sports programming of Eurosport and BT, which include the UEFA leagues, the Premier League, Premiership Rugby, UFC, the Olympic Games, tennis Grand Slams such as the Australian Open and Roland-Garros, as well as cycling tours such as Tour de France. 

Sports streaming service DAZN was on the cusp of acquiring BT Sport for $800 million back in February, but BT Group ultimately decided on going on a 50:50 joint venture with Warner Bros. Discovery. Initially, Eurosport and BT Sport will retain separate brands, but they will be brought together under a single brand in the future. The BT Group will receive £93 million ($113.3 million) within three years following the transaction completion and up to £540 million ($658 million) of additional payment based on how the business performs during the earn-out period. 

While the joint sports venture is set to become a massive competition for Sky Sports, it will enter a new agreement with Sky for the distribution of their combined sports programming beyond 2030. BT TV and BT Sport subscribers will also also get access to the discovery+ streaming service, which serves as home to Eurosport’s live and on-demand videos in the UK and Ireland. 

Texas law that allows users to sue social networks for censorship is now in effect

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals has put a controversial Texan law that allows users to sue social media companies back into effect. As Houston Public Media notes, Texas introduced HB 20 last year after high-profile conservatives, including Donald Trump, were blocked on social media websites. A federal judge put HB 20 under temporary injunction in December, but that injunction has now been paused. 

Under the law, users will be able to sue large social media platforms with more than 50 million active monthly users such as Facebook and Twitter if they believe they were banned for their political views. HB 20 also prohibits social networks from removing or restricting content based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person.” 

Trade industry groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) managed to secure an injunction against the law last year. They argued that HB 20 would lead to the spread of misinformation and hate speech on social networks and that it also violates the websites’ First Amendment rights. The federal judge overseeing the case agreed that social networks have the right to moderate content under the First Amendment and also said that parts of the law are “prohibitively vague.”

In a hearing for the appeal filed by Texas, the state’s lawyers argued that social media platforms are “modern-day public squares.” That means they can be required to host content that they deem objectionable and are banned from censoring certain viewpoints. The 5th Circuit judges sided with Texas, with one even telling the trade groups during the hearing that social networks like Twitter are not websites but “internet providers” instead.

NetChoice counsel Chris Marchese called HB 20 “an assault on the First Amendment” and “constitutionally rotten from top to bottom” on Twitter. The trade groups plan to appeal immediately, but for now, HB 20 is fully in effect. 

A federal court blocked a similar law in Florida last year after the judge ruled that it violates Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that shields online platforms from liability for what their users’ post. Florida also appealed that decision, which will be decided by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Human rights organizations ask Zoom to scrap its emotion tracking AI in open letter

Digital rights non-profit Fight for the Future and 27 human rights organizations have written an open letter to Zoom, asking the company not to continue exploring the use of AI that can analyze emotions in its video conferencing platform. The groups wrote the letter in response to a Protocol report that said Zoom is actively researching how to incorporate emotion AI into its product in the future. It’s part of a larger piece examining how companies have started using artificial intelligence to detect the emotional state of a potential client during sales calls. 

The pandemic made video conferences a lot more common around the world. Sales people have been finding it hard to gauge how receptive potential clients are to their products and services, though, without the capability to read their body language through the screen. Companies have started using technology that have the ability to analyze people’s moods during calls as a result, and Protocol said Zoom has plans to provide the same service. 

Fight for the Future and the other human rights orgs are hoping their call would pressure Zoom to abandon its plans. They called the technology “discriminatory, manipulative, potentially dangerous and based on assumptions that all people use the same facial expressions, voice patterns, and body language.” 

The groups also pointed out that the technology is inherently biased and racist, just like facial recognition. By incorporating the feature, Zoom would be discriminating against certain ethnicities and people with disabilities, they said. In addition, it could be used to punish students or workers if they displayed the wrong emotion. In 2021, a project led by University of Cambridge professor Alexa Hagerty showed the limits of emotion recognition AIs and how easy it is to fool them. Previous studies also showed that emotion recognition programs fail the racial bias test and struggle to read Black faces.

The group ended the letter by mentioning Zoom’s decision to cancel the rollout of face-tracking features and calling this another opportunity to do what’s right by its users. They’re now asking Zoom to commit to not implementing emotion AI in its product by May 20th, 2022.

Facebook faces lawsuit in Kenya over poor working conditions for moderators

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is facing another lawsuit filed by one of is former content moderators. According to The Washington Post, this one is filed by Daniel Motaung, who’s accusing the company and San Francisco subcontractor Sama of human trafficking Africans to work in exploitative and unsafe working conditions in Kenya. The lawsuit alleges that Sama targets poor people across the region, including those from Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda, with misleading job ads. They were reportedly never told that they’d be working as Facebook moderators and would have to view disturbing content as part of the job. 

Motaung said the first video he watched was of someone being beheaded and that he was fired after six months on the job for trying to spearhead workers’ unionization efforts. A Time report looking into the working conditions of the office where Motaung worked revealed that several employees suffered from mental trauma due to to their jobs. Sama, which positions itself as an “ethical AI” company providing “dignified digital work” to people in places like Nairobi, has on-site counselors. Workers generally distrusted the counselors, though, and Sama reportedly rejected counselors’ advice to let workers take wellness breaks throughout the day anyway. 

As for Motaung, he said in the lawsuit that his job was traumatizing and that he now has a fear of death. “I had potential. When I went to Kenya, I went to Kenya because I wanted to change my life. I wanted to change the life of my family. I came out a different person, a person who has been destroyed,” he noted. The lawsuit also mentioned how Motaung was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement and how he was paid less than promised — 40,000 Kenyan shillings or around $350. The report by Time said employees left in droves due to the poor pay and working conditions. 

Harrowing stories of Facebook moderators having to watch traumatizing videos and working in poor conditions aren’t new and come from all over the world, including the US. In fact, the company agreed to pay its US content moderators part of a class action lawsuit $52 million back in 2020. Those who were diagnosed with psychological conditions related to their work got a payout of up to $50,000.

Meta’s Nairobi office told The Post that it requires its “partners to provide industry-leading pay, benefits and support.” It added: “We also encourage content reviewers to raise issues when they become aware of them and regularly conduct independent audits to ensure our partners are meeting the high standards we expect of them.”