ByteDance would rather shut down TikTok than sell the company

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BIG TECH & STARTUPS

BYTEDANCE 'WOULD RATHER' TORPEDO TIKTOK THAN SELL IT OFF (2 MINUTE
READ) [5]

ByteDance would rather shut down TikTok than sell the company. The US
only provides a quarter of TikTok's global revenue and only represents
5% of ByteDance's daily active users across all of its media
platforms. The short deadline to sell would likely put downward
pressure on any potential sale price, making the option even less
appealing. Selling the company would mean divesting the algorithms
that power TikTok and its video recommendations, which raises more complications.

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Oracle has moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to offer its employees a
better lifestyle. Nashville pledged $175 million in incentives and the
state of Tennessee $65 million to help build the Oracle campus in
2021. There were no additional incentives from the city ahead of
Oracle's headquarters announcement. Oracle plans to get closer to the healthcare industry - the Nashville area's healthcare industry employs
more than 300,000 people and adds $68 billion to the Nashville
region's economy.

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THE ROBOTICS RENAISSANCE (13 MINUTE READ) [7]

Intelligent androids will be a part of industrial activities and
aspects of everyday life over the next decade. Modern AI models have
changed the game, allowing robots to learn from online text, images,
and videos. This article takes a look at the modern robotics industry, highlighting new technologies, current capabilities, potential
applications, major players in the space, and the impacts the
technology will have on society.

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SENSE AGAIN (9 MINUTE READ) [8]

Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's
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uplink a command and get a response. The spacecraft suddenly stopped transmitting intelligible data in November. Engineers eventually found
the issue, which was in the system responsible for packaging
engineering and scientific data for transmission to Earth. A single
chip responsible for storing a portion of memory stopped working,
probably due to either a cosmic ray hit or a failure of aging
hardware.

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INSIGHTS LEARNED FROM EXAMINING 2.4BN CONTAINERS (SPONSOR) [9]

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Download 10 Insights On Real-World Container Usage (PDF) from Datadog
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The crystalruby project allows writing and running Crystal methods
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the Ruby implementation the project uses contains a subtle mistake
that causes significantly more work than it needs to. Fixing this
mistake makes the Ruby code run faster than the 'crystalized' method.
Future advancements in the Ruby JIT may make these small tweaks
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MISCELLANEOUS

CORPORATE OPEN SOURCE IS DEAD (6 MINUTE READ) [12]

Startups and megacorps have used and abused open source to build up
billions in revenue over the past decade. Corporate Open Source has
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have shattered that trust with the developers who helped build them. Contributor License Agreements are a strategy employed by commercial
companies to subvert the open source social contract. Developers
should stay away from projects that require them and stick to open
source licenses that respect their freedom.

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The Federal Communications Commission has voted to reinstate net
neutrality, barring broadband providers from slowing or blocking
internet traffic to some sites while improving access to others. The
FCC had announced that it would pursue this as a policy goal in
September and there was no reason the Commission would vote against
it. The new net neutrality rules still have to weather challenges in
court, and depending on the outcome of the election, they may be
rolled back or legislated away. The rules still have to be published
in the Federal Register - and then there is another waiting period -
before they will take effect.

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QUICK LINKS

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tiny-gpu is a minimal GPU implementation in Verilog optimized for
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TSMC SAYS FIRST 1.6NM CHIPS COMING IN 2026 (5 MINUTE READ) [19]

TSMC's A16 process technology could deliver the first 1.6nm chips for customers by 2026.

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TLDR wrote to tldr@synchro.net <=-

BYTEDANCE 'WOULD RATHER' TORPEDO TIKTOK THAN SELL IT OFF (2 MINUTE
READ) [5]

ByteDance would rather shut down TikTok than sell the company. The US only provides a quarter of TikTok's global revenue and only represents
5% of ByteDance's daily active users across all of its media
platforms.

Didn't Trump try to sell it to Larry Ellison?

So, why not just geolock the US from the app and let the US government
look foolish and piss off their constituents?

People will feel like they're all hax0rish by sideloading TikTok and
using VPN to access it.

What's really going on here is that we want the algorithms. It's not
about personal data safety.



... SURELY NOT EVERYONE WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
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Re: TikTok threatens shutdown ", FCC passes net neutrality ", the robotics
By: poindexter FORTRAN to TLDR on Fri Apr 26 2024 06:47 am

What's really going on here is that we want the algorithms. It's not
about personal data safety.

The ones that recommend what video to watch next? :)

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BYTEDANCE 'WOULD RATHER' TORPEDO TIKTOK THAN SELL IT OFF (2 MINUTE
READ) [5]

ByteDance would rather shut down TikTok than sell the company. The US
only provides a quarter of TikTok's global revenue and only represents
5% of ByteDance's daily active users across all of its media
platforms. The short deadline to sell would likely put downward
pressure on any potential sale price, making the option even less
appealing. Selling the company would mean divesting the algorithms
that power TikTok and its video recommendations, which raises more complications.

Those complications being that whoever got them would find out what all
they've been up to. PBS did a special about some of the things their algorithms have been known to do (like shadowbanning minorities and the
elderly -- something that ByteDance does because the CCP wants it that way)
and exposed how the folks at Tik Tok USA apparently had no idea that the software was even doing that -- which should make you wonder what else it
might be doing that they have no idea about.

Other social media giants may do similar things but, unlike ByteDance, they
are not beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. I am not certain why that doesn't bother some people like it should.


* SLMR 2.1a * One good turn gets all the blankets.
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Re: TikTok threatens shutdown ", FCC passes net neutrality ", the robotics
By: phigan to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Apr 27 2024 01:49 am

What's really going on here is that we want the algorithms. It's not about
personal data safety.

The ones that recommend what video to watch next? :)

Yes, they're scary good. Imagine hooking predictive shopping into that algorithm. Build an ecommerce cite, you swipe on clothes, give it some personal information and they send you a bunch of clothes with a return label for the ones you don't want.
---
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Re: TikTok threatens shutdown
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Sat Apr 27 2024 10:14 am

Other social media giants may do similar things but, unlike ByteDance, they are not beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. I am not certain why that doesn't bother some people like it should.

Really, why is it surprising or bothersome? These are just private companies. They're not utilities, even, or any kind of necessity, or anything beyond entertainment bullshit. IMO they should be able to do whatever the hell they want (obviously within local laws). You don't have to use their service.
I know I don't :).

---
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Yes, they're scary good. Imagine hooking predictive shopping into that algorith
. Build an ecommerce cite, you swipe on clothes, give it some personal informat
on and they send you a bunch of clothes with a return label for the ones you do
't want.

Amazon currently predicts and suggests other products based on your buying habits, although they don't go so far as to send them to you unordered.

For that matter, your cell phone hears conversations and then the next time
you use social media you will see advertising for whatever products you discussed.

I don't think they need Tik Tok's algorithm that badly.


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Other social media giants may do similar things but, unlike ByteDance, they
are not beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. I am not certain why that
doesn't bother some people like it should.

Really, why is it surprising or bothersome? These are just private companies. They're not utilities, even, or any kind of necessity, or anything beyond entertainment bullshit. IMO they should be able to do whatever the hell they want (obviously within local laws). You don't have to use their service.
I know I don't :).

They are not all private companies. ByteDance, parent of Tik Tok, is owned
in part by the Chinese Communist Party. All Chinese companies are, and
they all must do as they are told by the party or someone else will be put in charge of them.

A few years back, the big Tik Tok challenges here were eating Tide pods and some other potentially deadly stunt (forget what it was now). Who is to
say that the CCP hadn't set the algorithm to make sure that plenty of those videos were shown here?

I *don't* use their service, but a whole lot of younger people do.


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