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US House Judiciary subpoenas Big Tech CEOs over free speech

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US House Judiciary subpoenas Big Tech CEOs over free speech

US House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Wednesday subpoenaed the chief executives of Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O), Apple (AAPL.O), Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms (META.O), and Microsoft (MSFT.O) for documents and communications relating to free-speech issues.

Jordan and other conservatives accused the companies of suppressing conservative speech during the Trump administration, and expanded that accusation to include colluding with the Biden administration once he won the White House. The White House and major tech companies have rejected the allegation.

“These subpoenas are the first step in holding Big Tech accountable,” Jordan’s office said in a statement.

Microsoft and Meta said that they had already begun producing documents. Microsoft said it was “engaged with the Committee, and committed to working in good faith.” None of the other three companies responded to a request for comment.

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The subpoenas, sent to Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Andy Jassy of Amazon.com, Tim Cook of Apple, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, demand documents and communications related to alleged collusion between the government and the companies to stifle free speech.

Jordan set a March 23 deadline to turn over documents.

Republicans who took control of the House of Representatives in January after narrowly winning control in the November elections have made questions about Big Tech a top focus and created a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

Last week, the panel held its first hearing into Republican claims that the Justice Department and FBI show anti-conservative bias, a move made following the FBI’s discovery of hundreds of classified documents at Republican former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort.

Jordan wrote related letters to the companies in December, making similar demands to big tech but this was when the House was in Democratic hands and before he became chair. Jordan’s office said that the companies did not adequately comply.

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Apple CEO says looking into possibility of building manufacturing facility in Indonesia

Apple CEO says looking into possibility of building manufacturing facility in Indonesia

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Apple CEO says looking into possibility of building manufacturing facility in Indonesia

Apple Inc will look into the possibility of building a manufacturing facility in Indonesia, its CEO said on Wednesday after meeting President Joko Widodo.

Apple CEO Tim Cook arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday, after visiting Vietnam. He met with Jokowi, as the president popularly known, and will be inaugurating an academy for Apple developers on the island of Bali.

“We talked about the president’s desire to see manufacturing in the country, and it is something that we will look at,” Cook told reporters after the meeting. 

Apple has based much of its key manufacturing of iPads, AirPods and Apple Watches in Vietnam and suppliers for MacBooks are also investing in the country.

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Apple has no manufacturing facilities in Indonesia but has established four Apple Developer Academies.

Indonesia has a huge tech-savvy population, making the Southeast Asian nation a key target market for tech-related investment.

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TikTok quizzed by EU on TikTok Lite launch in France, Spain

TikTok quizzed by EU on TikTok Lite launch in France, Spain

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TikTok quizzed by EU on TikTok Lite launch in France, Spain

ByteDance’s TikTok has been given 24 hours to provide a risk assessment on its new app TikTok Lite launched this month in France and Spain on concerns of its potential impact on children and users’ mental health, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

The move by EU industry chief Thierry Breton under EU tech rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) comes two months after he opened an investigation into TikTok over possible DSA breaches. 

The landmark DSA requires companies to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on their platforms, with fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover for violations.

The Commission on Wednesday said it had sent a request for information to TikTok, asking for more details on the risk assessment the social media company should have done before deploying TikTok Lite in the 27-country European Union.

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“This concerns the potential impact of the new ‘Task and Reward Lite’ programme on the protection of minors, as well as on the mental health of users, in particular in relation to the potential stimulation of addictive behaviour,” the EU executive said in a document seen by Reuters.

“TikTok must provide the risk assessment for TikTok Lite in 24 hours and the other requested information by 26 April 2024, after which the Commission will analyse TikTok’s reply, and then assess next steps.”

The Commission also asked for details on measures the company has put in place to mitigate systemic risks.

TikTok Lite, an app with a new functionality aimed at users aged 18+, was launched in France and Spain this month.

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SiTime introduces chip aimed at saving power in AI data centers

SiTime introduces chip aimed at saving power in AI data centers

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SiTime introduces chip aimed at saving power in AI data centers

SiTime (SITM.O) on Wednesday introduced a chip that it says is designed to help data centers built for artificial intelligence applications run more efficiently.

SiTime makes what are known as timing chips, whose job is set a steady beat for all the parts of a computer and keep them running together in sync, like a conductor in an orchestra directing multiple groups of instruments. The company says its new line of chips, called Chorus, can do so with 10 times more precision than older styles of timing chips.

SiTime CEO Rajesh Vashist said the company aims to help customers save electricity with that precision. SiTime’s chips themselves require less than a watt of power, but powerful AI chips such as Nvidia’s (NVDA.O) require more than 1,000 watts of power.

With a more precise clock to keep all the elements of a computer in sync, parts of the machine can be turned off for a few milliseconds at a time when they are not in use. Over the multiple years a power-hungry data center server might be in use, it can generate energy savings, though the amount will depend on how SiTime’s chips are used.

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“We deliver timing that they can rely on so that they can wake up their products and bring data more efficiently to them, rather than just running more often,” Vashist said in an interview.

SiTime said the chips will be available in the second half of this year.

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