from the does-no-one-remember-being-a-teen? dept

The UK is moving forward with its efforts to ban social media for young people. Ahead of this week’s House of Lords debate on the topic, we’re getting you situated with a primer on what’s been happening and what it all means.

What was the last vote about? 

On 9 March, the House of Commons discussed amendments tabled by the House of Lords in the government’s flagship legislation, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. 

The House of Lords previously tabled an amendment to “prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users” of “all regulated user-to-user services,” to be implemented by “highly-effective age assurance measures,” which effectively banned under-16s from social media. When this proposal came before the House of Commons, MPs defeated it by 307 votes to 173. 

Instead, the Commons proposed its own amendment: enabling the Secretary of State to introduce provisions “requiring providers of specified internet services” to prevent access by children, under age 18 rather than 16, to specified internet services or to specified features; and to restrict access by children to specified internet services which ministers provide. 

Who does this give powers to?

The Commons proposal redirects power from the UK Parliament and the UK’s independent telecom regulator Ofcom to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, currently Liz Kendall, who will be able to restrict internet access for young people and determine what content is considered harmful…just because she can. The amendment also empowers the Secretary of State to limit VPN use for under 18s, as well as restrict access to addictive features and change the age of digital consent in the country; for example, preventing under-18s from playing games online after a certain time.  

Why is this a problem? 

This process is devoid of checks or accountability mechanisms as ministers will not be required to demonstrate specific harms to young people, which essentially unravels years-long efforts by Ofcom to assess online services according to their risks. And given the moment the UK is currently in, such as refusing to protect trans and LGBTQ+ communities and flaming hostile and racist discourses, it is not unlikely that we’ll see ministers start restricting content that they ideologically or morally feel opposed to, rather than because the content is harmful based, as established by evidence and assessed pursuant to established human rights principles. 

We know from other jurisdictions like the United States that legislation seeking to protect young people typically sweeps up a slew of broadly-defined topics. Some block access to websites that contain some “sexual material harmful to minors,” which has historically meant explicit sexual content. But some states are now defining the term more broadly so that “sexual material harmful to minors” could encompass anything like sex education; others simply list a variety of vaguely-defined harms. In either instance, this bill would enable ministers to target LGBTQ+ content online by pushing this behind an under-18s age gate, and this risk is especially clear given what we already know about platform content policies. 

How will this impact young people? 

The internet is an essential resource for young people (and adults) to access information, explore community, and find themselves. Beyond being spaces where people can share funny videos and engage with enjoyable content, social media enables young people to engage with the world in a way that transcends their in-person realm, as well as find information they may not feel safe to access offline, such as about family abuse or their sexuality. In severing this connection to people and information by banning social media, politicians are forcing millions of young people into a dark and censored world. 

How did each party vote? 

The initial push to ban under-16s from social media came from the Conservative Party, who have since accused the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer of “dither and delay” for not committing to the ban. The Liberal Democrats have also called this “not good enough.” The Labour Party itself is split, with 107 Labour Party MPs abstaining in the vote on the House of Lords amendment. 

But we know that the issue of young people’s online safety is a polarizing topic that politicians have—and will continue to—weaponize for public support, regardless of their actual intentions. This is why we will continue to urge policymakers and regulators to protect people’s rights and freedoms online at all moments, and not just take the easy route for a quick boost in the polls.

How does this bill connect to the Online Safety Act?

The draft Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that came from the Lords provided that any regulation pertaining to the well-being of young people on social media “must be treated as an enforceable requirement” with the Online Safety Act. The Commons amendment, however, starts out by inserting a new clause that amends the Online Safety Act. 

For more than six years, we’ve been calling on the UK government to pass better legislation around regulating the internet, and when the Online Safety Act passed we continued to advocate for the rights of people on the internet—including young people—as Ofcom implemented the legislation. This has been a protracted effort by civil society groups, technologists, tech companies, and others participating in Ofcom’s consultation process and urging the regulator to protect internet users in the UK.

The MPs amendment essentially rips this up. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall recently said that ministers intended to go further than the existing Online Safety Act because it was “never meant to be the end point, and we know parents still have serious concerns. That is why I am prepared to take further action.” But when this further action is empowering herself to make arbitrary decisions on content and access, and banning under-18s from social media, this causes much more harm than it solves. 

Is the UK alone in pushing legislation like this? 

Sadly, no. Calls to ban social media access for young people have gained traction since Australia became the first country in the world to enforce one back in December. On 5 March, Indonesia announced a ban on social media and other “high-risk” online platforms for users under 16. A few days later, new measures came into effect in Brazil that restricts social media access for under-16s, who must now have their accounts linked to a legal guardian. Other countries like Spain and the Philippines have this year announced plans to ban social media for under-16s, with legislation currently pending to implement this.

What are the next steps?

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill returns to the House of Lords on 25 March for consideration of the new Commons amendments. The bill will only become law if both Houses agree to the final draft. 

We will continue to stand up against these proposals—not only to young people’ free expression rights, but also to safeguard the free flow of information that is vital to a democratic society. The issue of online safety is not solved through technology alone, especially not through a ban, and young people deserve a more intentional approach to protecting their safety and privacy online, not this lazy strategy that causes more harm than it solves. 

We encourage politicians in the UK to look into what is best, not what is easy, and explore less invasive approaches to protect all people from online harms. 

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: social media, social media ban, teens, uk

• AI data centers are producing extreme heat islands that extend miles beyond facilities
• Over 340 million people experience elevated temperatures due to hyperscale AI facilities
• Extreme temperature spikes of up to 16.4 °F have been recorded near data centers

The expansion of AI-driven data centers is having a more immediate environmental impact than previously understood, experts have warned.

A research team led by Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge claims these facilities, often sprawling over a million square feet, are not only consuming massive amounts of energy but also generate extreme local heating effects, known as heat islands.

Netflix is launching a new standalone app for kids’ games called Netflix Playground, the company announced on Monday. Netflix Playground is available as part of a Netflix subscription, and doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases.

Netflix says the app gives children access to an “ever-growing” library of games for kids. Netflix Playground is launching with titles featuring characters from popular kids’ shows.

The app, which is designed for children ages eight and under, is now available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand. It will roll out worldwide on April 28. The app is available on both iOS and Android.

It can be accessed offline without a mobile or Wi-Fi connection, which the company says makes it the “perfect companion for long airplane rides or grocery trips.”

For example, one game is titled “Playtime With Peppa Pig,” and sees players “jump into Peppa’s world with a collection of playful activities.” There’s also a “Sesame Street” game where players practice matching with memory cards or coordination with connect-the-dots. Other titles include “Let’s Color,” “Storybots,” “Bad Dinosaurs,” and more.

“We’re building a world where kids can not only watch their favorite stories, they can step inside them and interact with their favorite characters,” said John Derderian, Netflix Vice President of Animation Series + Kids & Family TV, in a press release. “We’re creating a seamless destination for discovery, learning, and play. Whether it’s reuniting with Hank and the ‘Trash Truck’ crew for new adventures or making a smoothie with ‘Peppa Pig,’ watching and playing on Netflix can be the fun and easiest part of every family’s day.”

Netflix first launched games in 2021 and had ambitious plans for the space, but has since dialed them back after its titles failed to gain traction. The streaming giant has also shut down several video game studios like Boss Fight, Spry Fox, and an AAA studio.

Late last year, Netflix forayed into TV gaming with a slate of new party titles meant to be played in groups, including TV versions of Tetris and Pictionary. The company has also said it will prioritize cloud gaming, but has noted that it’s still in the early stages of these plans.

New rumors have started the chatter of a new Galaxy Pro flagship phone once again, and this immediately makes sense to me—but it’s not for flattering reasons. Samsung may be adding a fourth Galaxy S27 model next year, with a “Pro” variant expected to sit right below the top-of-the-line S27 Ultra.

This model essentially bridges the gap between the standard and Ultra Galaxy phones with high-end features, minus the S Pen. Some of these premium features could include the S26 Ultra’s new Privacy Display feature.

All of this sounds smart on paper, but it also sounds like acceptance.

After spending time with the Galaxy S26, I have a recurring thought. This compact phone has a solid software experience, reliable cameras, and is generally easy to recommend as a base flagship. But “reliable” is no longer enough when these devices carry flagship pricing.

The regular Galaxy S phones are where the problem is

Samsung’s own S26 comparison page shows the base S26 stuck at 25W charging, while the S26+ goes to 45W, and the Ultra got upgraded to 60W. The camera story lands the same way. Samsung’s Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ share the same 12MP ultrawide, 50MP wide, and 10MP telephoto setup, while the Ultra gets the far more ambitious 50MP ultrawide, 200MP main, and 50MP + 10MP telephoto mix.

So apart from the Ultra, the other two models feel like an afterthought, but an expensive four-digit flagship one at that. This is why a Galaxy S27 Pro could make the S27 lineup feel less lethargic and more energetic. Just like the base Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro and the base iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro, there could be a clear distinction in the intermediate model. Right now, the base and Plus models do just enough. The Ultra does everything.

The Galaxy S27 Pro needs to be a course correction, not a rebrand

But a Pro model only works if Samsung uses it to create a truly convincing middle. One with faster charging, stronger camera hardware, and a better reason to exist below the Ultra.

I think Samsung is definitely in need of this change. But the name alone won’t be enough. If Samsung wants the Pro phone to matter, it has to make this non-ultra Galaxy S phone feel like more than just a safe default and start making it feel worth the premium money again. Otherwise, the S27 Pro will just be another label slapped onto a lineup where all the excitement only lives at the top.

Google on Monday quietly released an offline-first dictation app called “Google AI Edge Eloquent” on iOS to take on the likes of Wispr Flow, SuperWhisper, Willow, and others.

The app is free to download, and once its Gemma-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) models are downloaded, you can start dictating on your phone. In the app, you can see the live transcription, and when you hit pause, the app automatically filters out filler words like “um” and “ah” and polishes the text.

Below the transcript are options like “Key points”, “Formal”, “Short”, and “Long” to transform the text.

You can also turn off the cloud mode to use local-only processing. (When cloud mode is on, the app uses cloud-based Gemini models for text cleanup.) The Google AI Edge Eloquent can import certain keywords, names, and jargon from your Gmail account, if desired. Plus, you can add your own custom words to the list.

The app displays the history of the transcription session and lets you search through all of them as well. It can show you words dictated in the last session, your word per minute speed, and the total number of words spoken.

“Google AI Edge Eloquent is an advanced dictation app engineered to bridge the gap between natural speech and professional, ready-to-use text. Unlike standard dictation software that transcribes stumbles and filler words verbatim, Eloquent utilizes AI to capture your intended meaning. It automatically edits out ‘ums,’ ‘uhs,’ and mid-sentence self-corrections, outputting clean, accurate prose,” the company’s App Store description reads.

While the app is currently only available on iOS, the App Store description references an Android version. (We have reached out to Google for more information, and will update the story if we hear back.)

According to the description, Eloquent offers “seamless Android integration,” where it can be set as users’ default keyboard for system-wide access across any text field. Plus, the app will be able to use the floating button feature, similar to the one Wispr Flow uses on Android, for easy access to transcription from anywhere.

AI-powered transcription apps are gaining popularity among users as speech-to-text models get better. With this experimental app, Google is joining the trend. If this test is successful, we could see improved transcription features across Android, too.

Enterprise AI programs rarely fail because of bad ideas. More often, they get stuck in ungoverned pilot mode and never reach production. At a recent VentureBeat event, technology leaders from MassMutual and Mass General Brigham explained how they avoided that trap — and what the results look like when discipline replaces sprawl.

At MassMutual, the results are concrete: 30% developer productivity gains, IT help desk resolution times reduced from 11 minutes to one, and customer service calls cut from 15 minutes to just one or two.

“We’re always starting with why do we care about this problem?” Sears Merritt, MassMutual’s head of enterprise technology and experience, said at the event. “If we solve the problem, how are we gonna know we solved it? And, how much value is associated with doing that?”

Defining metrics, establishing strong feedback loops

MassMutual, a 175-year-old company serving millions of policy owners and customers, has pushed AI into production across the business — customer support, IT, customer acquisition, underwriting, servicing, claims, and other areas.

Merritt said his team follows the scientific method, beginning with a hypothesis and testing whether it has an outcome that will tangibly drive the business forward. Some ideas are great, but they may be “intractable in the business” due to factors like lack of data or access, or regulatory constraint.

“We won’t go any further with an idea until we get crystal clear on how we’re going to measure, and how we’re going to define success.”

Ultimately, it’s up to different departments and leaders to define what quality means: Choose a metric and define the minimum level of quality before a tool is placed into the hands of teams and partners.

That starting point creates a quick feedback loop. “The things that we find slow us down is where there isn’t shared clarity on what outcome we’re trying to achieve,” which can lead to confusion and constant re-adjusting, said Merritt. “We don’t go to production until there is a business partner that says, ‘Yes, that works.’”

His team is strategic about evaluating emerging tools, and “extremely rigorous” when testing and measuring what “good” means. For instance, they perform trust scoring to lower hallucination rates, establish thresholds and evaluation criteria, and monitor for feature and output drift.

Merritt also operates with a no-commitment policy — meaning the company doesn’t lock itself into using a particular model. It has what he calls an “incredibly heterogeneous” technology environment combining best of breed models alongside mainframes running on COBOL. That flexibility isn’t accidental. His team built common service layers, microservices and APIs that sit between the AI layer and everything underneath — so when a better model comes along, swapping it in doesn’t mean starting over.

Because, Merritt explained, “the best of breed today might be the worst of breed tomorrow, and we don’t want to set ourselves up to fall behind.”

Weeding instead of letting a thousand flowers bloom

Mass General Brigham (MGB), for its part, took more of a spray and pray approach — at first.

Around 15,000 researchers in the not-for-profit health system have been using AI, ML, and deep learning for the last 10 to 15 years, CTO Nallan “Sri” Sriraman said at the same VB event.

But last year, he made a bold choice: His team shut down a sprawl of non-governed AI pilots. Initially, “we did follow the thousand flowers bloom [methodology], but we didn’t have a thousand flowers, we had probably a few tens of flowers trying to bloom,” he said.

Like Merritt’s team at MassMutual, MGB pivoted to a more holistic view, examining why they were developing certain tools for specific departments of workflows. They questioned what capabilities they wanted and needed and what investment those required.

Sriraman’s team also spoke with their primary platform providers — Epic, Workday, ServiceNow, Microsoft — about their roadmaps. This was a “pivotal moment,” he noted, as they realized they were building in-house tools that vendors were already providing (or were planning to roll out).

As Sriraman put it: “Why are we building it ourselves? We are already on the platform. It is going to be in the workflow. Leverage it.”

That said, the marketplace is still nascent, which can make for difficult decisions. “The analogy I will give is when you ask six blind men to touch an elephant and say, what does this elephant look like?” Sriraman said. “You’re gonna get six different answers.”

There’s nothing wrong with that, he noted; it’s just that everybody is discovering and experimenting as the landscape keeps shifting.

Instead of a wild West environment, Sriraman’s team distributes Microsoft Copilot to users across the business, and uses a “small landing zone” where they can safely test more sophisticated products and control token use.

They also began “consciously embedding AI champions“ across business groups. “This is kind of a reverse of letting a thousand flowers bloom, carefully planting and nourishing,” Sriraman said.

Observability is another big consideration; he describes real-time dashboards that manage model drift and safety and allow IT teams to govern AI “a little more pragmatically.” Health monitoring is critical with AI systems, he noted, and his team has established principles and policies around AI use, not to mention least access privileges.

In clinical settings, the guardrails are absolute: AI systems never issue the final decision. “There’s always going to be a doctor or a physician assistant in the loop to close the decision,” Sriraman said. He cited radiology report generation as one area where AI is used heavily, but where a radiologist always signs off.

Sriraman was clear: “Thou shall not do this: Don’t show PHI [protected health information] in Perplexity. As simple as that, right?”

And, importantly, there must be safety mechanisms in place. “We need a big red button, kill it,” Sriraman emphasized. “We don’t put anything in the operational setting without that.”

Ultimately, while agentic AI is a transformative technology, the enterprise approach to it doesn’t have to be dramatically different. “There is nothing new about this,” Sriraman said. “You can replace the word BPM [business process management] from the ’90s and 2000s with AI. The same concepts apply.”

Three YouTube channels have banded together and filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, as first spotted by MacRumors. According to the lawsuit, the creators behind h3h3 Productions, MrShortGameGolf and Golfholics have accused Apple of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by scraping copyrighted videos on YouTube to train its AI models.

While the YouTubers’ videos are available to watch on the platform, the lawsuit alleged that Apple illegally circumvented the “controlled streaming architecture” that regular users are limited to. The creators claimed that Apple’s video scraping was used to train its generative AI products, adding that the tech giant’s “massive financial success would not have been possible without the video content created” by the YouTubers. MacRumors noted that these YouTube channels have also filed similar lawsuits against other tech companies, including Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance and Snap.

It’s not the first time a company’s alleged AI training methods have gotten them in legal trouble. OpenAI and Microsoft were both accused of using copyrighted articles from the NYTimes to train its AI chatbots. Similarly, Perplexity was recently sued by Reddit and Encyclopedia Britannica for alleged copyright and trademark infringements. Last year, Apple was also named in a separate class action lawsuit from two neuroscience professors who claimed their copyrighted works were used without permission. We reached out to Apple for comment and will update the story when we hear back.

from the what-would-jesus-bomb dept

Before we get into this, let’s set the scene a little:

The latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 20-26, 2026, finds that most White evangelicals (69%) approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president. And a majority (58%) say they support all or most of his plans and policies.

Let that sink in for a bit. The operative term here is probably “white,” but Trump has been embraced by the evangelical community, despite his being about as far removed from the ideals of Christianity as their arch-nemesis, trans people the Devil. (And let’s not forget I’m talking about the ideals, which are often preached but rarely practiced.)

Here’s how Trump handled Easter morning, one of the holiest (no pun intended) holidays observed by the people most likely to support him no matter what:

In Trump’s own words, at 5:03 am on Easter Sunday:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Now, I have to admit that when I first read this, I thought Trump was announcing some new celebration of US infrastructure before derailing his own train of thought. But it’s definitely not that.

It’s the other thing… which turns out to be Trump announcing planned war crimes. Again.

Both sides have threatened and hit civilian targets like oil fields and desalination plants critical for drinking water. Iran’s U.N. mission on social media called Trump’s threat “clear evidence of intent to commit war crime.”

Iran’s military joint command warned of stepped-up retaliatory attacks on regional oil and civilian infrastructure if the U.S. and Israel attack such targets there, according to state television.

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The laws of armed conflict allow attacks on civilian infrastructure only if the military advantage outweighs the civilian harm, legal scholars say. It’s considered a high bar to clear, and causing excessive suffering to civilians can constitute a war crime.

While it looks like both sides in this war are willing to strike civilian infrastructure, the United States should be trying to take the high road (the one without war crimes). And if it can’t be bothered to do that, the administration should — at the very least — try to keep the president from publicly saying we’re going to commit war crimes.

But, alas, there’s no one willing to stop him. Pete Hegseth is definitely relishing his unearned role as the Secretary of Defense (“Back to the Stone Age.”) And he appears to be firing anyone who disagrees with things like drone-killing people in international waters and, you know, engaging in war crimes.

Both Trump and Hegseth have publicly claimed they’re doing God’s work by going to war with Iran, something that has been echoed by the same demographic detailed in the Pew Research survey.

Shamefully, they won’t see a drop in support despite Trump threatening war crimes, dropping an F-bomb, and promising to send people halfway around the world to hell, as if he were a god himself. And that’s a damning indictment of an entire segment of Americans who choose to treat their religion as a weapon and want the world to be remade in their own image — something they often accuse Muslims of doing. The irony is lost on them, along with the man they’ve chosen to treat as God’s appointed leader.

We’ve had a lot of low points as a nation, but usually we’ve at least tried to improve. That’s no longer the case. We’re under the rule of people who debase and abuse the nation they claim to love. Happy Fuckin’ Easter, you crazy bastards. Welcome to Hell.

Filed Under: evil, iran war, pete hegseth, trump administration, war crimes

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