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Showing posts from February, 2024

Toyota Announces New Recall: Over 683,000 Vehicles Affected In A Week

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  The Japanese automaker said some Tacoma pickup trucks have a loose part that can separate from the  rear axle KEY FACTS The recall affects Toyota Tacoma trucks in the U.S. from the 2022 and 2023 model years, the company said in a  release . Welding debris left on the ends of the rear axles could cause some nuts to loosen over time before falling off, resulting in another part separating from the axle, according to Toyota, which said vehicle stability and brake performance could be affected if the part falls off. Toyota dealers will inspect the rear axle and retighten the loose nuts for free, while any damaged components will also be repaired or replaced without charge, the company said. Toyota customers will be notified about the issue through the mail by late April. Toyota declined to comment to Forbes about whether the issue has caused any crashes or injuries. KEY BACKGROUND Toyota has issued three other recalls in the last week. The Japanese automaker  recalled  nearly 280,000 Toy

Star Witness In Fani Willis Hearing Apparently Backtracks—Says He Was ‘Speculating’ About Relationship Start

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  Prosecutor Nathan Wade’s former law partner Terrence Bradley said he was “speculating” when he  previously said Wade’s relationship with Fulton County Attorney General Fani Willis began before she hired him to prosecute former President Donald Trump’s election interference case KEY FACTS Bradley—Wade’s former law partner and divorce attorney—took the stand at Willis’ disqualification case after Georgia Judge Scott McAfee ordered him to resume his testimony on topics not covered by attorney-client privilege. For one hour of his testimony, Bradley denied having knowledge of when Willis and Wade started dating, saying he did not “recall any specific dates.” Attorneys for Trump and his co-defendants in his Georgia election interference case have argued that Willis started dating Wade before she hired him to prosecute the former president’s racketeering case, though Willis had denied dating him before charges were brought in that case. In Tuesday’s testimony, Trump attorney Steven Sadow p

OpenAI Claims New York Times Hired Someone To ‘Hack’ ChatGPT For Copyright Lawsuit

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  A new filing accused the newspaper of using “deceptive prompts” to get ChatGPT to recreate  copyrighted works KEY FACTS OpenAI said in a court filing seeking to dismiss the Times’ lawsuit that the “third-party” person the Times allegedly hired was able to target and exploit a “bug” in ChatGPT, which the company stated it was “committed to addressing.” The company said ChatGPT “is not in any way a substitute for a subscription to the New York Times,” the chatbot cannot be used to “serve up Times articles at will” and that “normal people do not use OpenAI’s products in this way.” The filing claimed it took the Times “tens of thousands of attempts” to generate the newspaper’s copyrighted articles by using “deceptive prompts” that violate ChatGPT’s terms of use. The filing did not provide any further details on the “hired gun” that OpenAI accused the newspaper of hiring to produce the results, but said the truth about the person “will come out over the course of this case.” In a statemen

‘Dune: Part Two’ Could Bring Biggest Box Office Weekend So Far This Year, Report Says

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  Warner Bros. is projecting the “Dune” sequel will bring in $65 million, though others have predicted  far higher box office numbers KEY FACTS The second installation of the Frank Herbert novel could gross $170 million this weekend through $80 million in U.S. and Canada theaters and another $85 million to $90 elsewhere globally, Deadline  reported  Tuesday. Warner Bros. is projecting the film will open to $65 million in the U.S. and Canada,  according to  Deadline. If predictions about its domestic success are correct, “Dune: Part Two” could be the first movie to gross more than $50 million in its opening weekend since the October premiere of “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” BIG NUMBER $190 million. That’s how much “Dune: Part Two” cost to make,  according to  Variety. WHAT TO WATCH FOR “Dune Part Two” will be released in more than 4,000 theaters across the country Friday, according to Deadline. The premiere comes five months after the film was originally scheduled to be released but was  d

‘Road House’ Screenwriter Sues Amazon—Claims AI Replicated Actors’ Voices During Strike

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  Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the "Road House" remake.  KEY FACTS The lawsuit, filed in California by R. Lance Hill, alleges Amazon refused to acknowledge the date in which the copyright of “Road House” should have reverted to him, instead choosing to move forward with production of the remake of the movie, which is based on Hill’s screenplay. The lawsuit says in 2021, Hill requested the copyright of the screenplay revert back to him on Nov. 11, 2023—nearly 40 years after he transferred the copyright to production company United Artists. Amazon allegedly attempted to complete the “Road House” remake one day before the copyright would return to Hill, resorting to the use of artificial intelligence during last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike to replicate actors’ voices and speed up production. Hill further alleges Amazon used AI during the strike knowing it violated collective bargaining agreements of SAG-AFTRA and the Director’s Guild of America, which Amazon signed off on. The Jake Gyll

Biden Flips The Script On Age Concerns By Highlighting Trump’s Gaffes

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  President Joe Biden talks with host Seth Meyers on February 26, 2024.  KEY FACTS Biden played along with NBC’s Seth Meyers when the “Late Night” host quipped that he had “classified information” revealing the president’s age (81), to which Biden responded: “Who the hell told you that? That’s classified!” The president then took a jab at Trump, 77, for appearing to refer to his wife, Melania Trump, as “Mercedes” during  a speech  at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend (though Trump’s campaign said he was referring to Mercedes Schlapp, a political commentator and wife of American Conservative Union chair and former White House staffer Matt Schlapp). “He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name,” Biden told Meyers. Biden’s campaign has also hit Trump for verbal missteps on social media in recent months, including Tuesday, when the Biden-Harris HQ account published  a clip  of Trump making a confusing statement about waterfalls, faucets and

Nintendo Sues Developers Of Yuzu Switch Emulator, Alleging ‘Piracy At A Colossal Scale’

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  The lawsuit against Yuzu was filed Monday KEY FACTS Yuzu, which allows users to play Switch games on other platforms like Windows PC, turns computing devices into “tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted works,” according to the filing. Specifically, Nintendo accused Yuzu of unlawfully bypassing layers of Nintendo Switch encryption to allow for games to be played on other platforms, arguing that without such decryption, users can’t play unauthorized copies of games on PCs or Android devices. Nintendo claimed the lead developer of Yuzu—known online as “Bunnei”—has publicly acknowledged Yuzu’s website gives instructions to users teaching them how to hack their Nintendo Switch consoles and how to make unauthorized copies of Nintendo video games. Nintendo is asking for $2,500 for every violation of the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as $150,000 for each copyright violatio

Trump Will Pay More Than $111,000 Per Day As He Appeals Fraud Ruling

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  Former President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower on February 15 in New York City. KEY FACTS Judge Arthur Engoron  ordered  Trump and companies he controls to pay $354.9 million as part of the civil fraud case—accusing Trump and his associates of misstating valuations on financial statements for personal gain—which is made up of three separate penalties for $168 million, $126.8 million and $60 million. By the time Engoron’s formal judgment was entered on Feb. 23, Trump actually owed $454.2 million, which includes a nine percent interest rate that Engoron ruled started accruing on the fines in March 2019, May 2022 and June 2023, respectively—adding $99 million to Trump’s total. While the interest before the judgment was entered accrued at a rate of $87,502 per day, the interest is now going up by $111,984 per day, according to the New York attorney general’s office, which is nine percent of the full $454.2 million that includes pre-judgment interest. The nine percent rate means Trump w

Trump Defeats Haley In Michigan Republican Primary—On Track To Clinch Nomination Next Month

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  Former President Donald Trump speaks in Columbia, South Carolina. Trump  led  former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley 65.6%-30.2% with about 9% of statewide votes counted as of about 9:10 p.m. ET, shortly after the Associated Press called the race for him. Prior to Tuesday’s primary, Trump had won 110 total delegates after beating Haley, his only remaining competitor in the race, in the first four contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Michigan awards 55 GOP delegates: 16 proportionally to candidates who win at least 12.5% of the statewide vote, while the 39 others are awarded proportionally to candidates in each of the 13 congressional districts or to the candidate who wins the majority of the votes in a congressional district. Trump’s campaign estimates he could exceed the 1,215-delegate threshold needed to clinch the Republican nomination as soon as March 12, when Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Washington hold their primaries. TANGENT President Joe Biden won