Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Meta accused by states of using features to lure children to Instagram and Facebook

Summary: Meta, the parent-company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has been sued by 33 US states for its alleged use of manipulative features to pull-in and hook young people on its services, despite knowing how addictive and harmful these services can be to that audience.

Context: This lawsuit has been compared to the lawsuits that hit Big Tobacco in the 1990s, in scale and ambition, and the general idea is that Meta—which has funded research into how its offerings impact young people, and thus knows how psychologically harmful and addictive those offerings can be to that demographic—has been intentionally amplifying the addictiveness of its products for profit, and should thus be legally forced to make changes to how it does things, and be fined; investigations that led to this lawsuit began several years ago, and some of the states involved have issued similar lawsuits against rival app TikTok; in a statement responding to the lawsuit, Meta expressed its disappointment.

—The New York Times

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China imposes export curbs on graphite

Summary: The Chinese government has announced new export controls on three grades of graphite, a material that’s used for all sorts of things, including the production of electric vehicle batteries.

Context: This is being seen as a counter-move against the US, which recently increased the scale and intensity of its technology-focused export-controls on China, and this is just the most recent control imposed by the Chinese government on relatively scarce minerals that are fundamental to the renewable energy transition, and which it controls the lion’s share of, globally; in July, China announced similar restrictions on gallium and germanium, and like the US’s restrictions on shipping some goods to China, these counter-restrictions allow Chinese companies to seek permission to sell such materials overseas—so they’re generally perceived to be means of demonstrating market leverage, rather than as an outright ban on all export activity.

—Financial Times

Blinken warned lawmakers Azerbaijan may invade Armenia in coming weeks

Summary: The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that there’s a chance Azerbaijan will invade neighboring Armenia sometime in the next few weeks, possibly aiming to carve out a corridor along Armenia’s southern border to connect the bulk of Azerbaijan with an enclave it controls on the other side of Armenia’s territory.

Context: The Azerbaijani military recently invaded the Nagorno-Karabakh region—a chunk of land within Azerbaijan’s borders that was predominantly Armenian and which had broken away and claimed independence, but which was forcibly reclaimed in September—and that success is being seen as a potential precursor to a more thorough invasion of Armenia, as the Azerbaijani government has been signaling they might be preparing for a larger military action, and Armenia’s traditional support from Russia has weakened in recent years.

—Politico

The US government’s borrowing costs have increased as the yield on US treasury bonds have increased (that yield is basically the amount of interest the government is committing to pay bondholders in exchange for lending the government money), and that’s led to a huge increase in interest payments, worrying even politicians who are typically ho-hum about the (increasing under both major parties’ leadership) federal deficit.

—Chartr

1,180

Number of qubits boasted by a quantum computer built by startup Atom Computing, up from 100 in their previous system..

This new computer is currently being tested by the company, which hopes to make it available to customers next year, and though the error rate for qubits is high, it’s hoped that this setup will allow users to run multiple instances of algorithms in parallel, making it more likely the computer will provide a correct answer.

Quantum computers work differently from traditional computers, making them slower at many typical computing tasks, but a lot faster at things that are borderline impossible on traditional computers, like complex math and codebreaking.

—Ars Technica

Trust Click

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