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Last month, Twitter announced a number of new rules on how users and apps can automate tweets in an effort to cut down on spam and bots that spread propaganda. The company says that users using multiple accounts can “amplify or inflate the prominence of certain tweets,” and according to BuzzFeed , it has just banned a number of accounts that were known for mass-retweeting or for copying and stealing tweets from other users. BuzzFeed says that a number of accounts — such as @dory, @girlposts, and @ginah, some with “with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers” — violated the company’s new spam policies and have been suspended. A Twitter spokesperson pointed The Verge to new rules that the company rolled out in a broader effort... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2FvXXRK"

Elon Musk’s surprise SXSW talk this morning was a heavy and grave affair, full of discussion around all the ways humanity may be doomed in the future: from carbon in the atmosphere, World War III, and above all, runaway artificial intelligence. We have, many times, listened to Musk warn the public about these threats. That’s why the SpaceX and Tesla CEO thinks there is such a strong need to colonize Mars and maybe the Moon — as a safety net for humanity. But here at SXSW — a tech, culture, and marketing extravaganza where people are ostensibly excited about the future — Musk’s words provided a stark deviation from the overhyped prognostications about how tech will change the world for the better. In some ways, it also feels like Musk is... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2p1xrFS"

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Sony has made it a point to come to SXSW, the annual Austin-based tech and culture meet-up, every year with a warehouse full of weird gadgets, demos, games, and other interactive experiences. This year was no different, as Sony opened the doors yesterday on the Wow Factory, its name for the wide-ranging exhibit that blends art and technology borne from its experimental, Japan-based Future Lab program. The experiences in the Wow Factory tend to center on Sony’s display tech, specifically its advances in projectors that ultimately seem to have manifested as a pricey consumer product called the Xperia Touch . But Sony hasn’t stopped pushing the limits of the tech. The core premise is that with a mix of smart sensors that perform depth... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2p2f0Rr"

Sheldon County is a podcast that will never sound the same twice. Every time someone listens to it, they’ll begin by typing a random number into a website. This “seed” will set in motion a Rube Goldberg machine of calculation that will create characters, relationships, jealousies, betrayals, and maybe even a murder or two. These plot points will be turned into a text narrative, read aloud by a voice synthesizer, and then zipped up into an audio file. Each time it will be a unique version of Sheldon County ’s story. A podcast made just for you. That’s the dream anyway — the current execution still needs work. So far, only a few episodes of this procedurally generated podcast exist (you can listen to two below), and its creator, PhD... Continue reading… via The Verge - Tech Posts "http://ift.tt/2tEPJBy"