Family sues AI chatbot over 14yo son's suicide

A mum in the USA is suing Character.ai, "alleging negligence, wrongful death and deceptive trade practices" because the app "marketed to children abused and preyed on my son, manipulating him into taking his own life". 14 year old Sewell Setzer III "become enthralled with a chatbot built by Character.ai that he nicknamed Daenerys Targaryen, a character in Game of Thrones. He texted the bot dozens of times a day from his phone and spent hours alone in his room talking to it". His mum "accuses Character.ai of creating a product that exacerbated her son's depression, which she says was already the result of overuse of the startup's product". At one point, the chatbot "asked Setzer if he had devised a plan for killing himself" and Setzer "admitted that he had but that he did not know if it would succeed or cause him great pain". The bot responded "that's not a reason not to go through with it". This New York Times article has a bit more detail on the conversations they had.

iOS 18.2 beta is interesting

Apple released a beta of iOS 18.2 to developers this week, giving us our first look at a version of iOS that implements the big changes the EU demanded. Stuff like being able to select 3rd party web browsers that are not simply wrappers for WebKit/Safari, the ability to delete all the bundled apps including Camera, Photos, Messages and the App Store, plus being able to select default apps for for stuff like email, messages and so on. Bad news is that Australia doesn't get those features except for the ability to change some of the default apps. A feature Australia, and only Australia right now, gets, is for kids to report messages to Apple that iOS detects nudity in and Apple can then "take action" on the user that sent it, including reporting it to police - a feature eSafety has been demanding for a while, so they'll be happy. Finally, Apple's Marketing SVP Greg Joswiak posted on X, "Mac your calendars! We have an exciting week of announcements ahead, starting on Monday morning. Stay tuned...". Stay tuned I will.

Russians banned from contributing to Linux kernel due to sanctions

A bunch of Russian-based Linux developers were booted out of contributing to kernel development by Linus Torvalds this week. There was a bit of drama about it, but Linus made clear that it's because of various global sanctions against Russia due to it's invasion and terrorism of Ukraine. He didn't go into detail because "I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers. I'm also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them". It sucks as there's a lot of Russians doing good work on the Linux kernel that have nothing to do with Putin's bullshit, so we are worse off without their contributions. Unfortunately, it looks like a similar thing might happen with Chinese contributions to the Linux kernel sooner or later as the USA and its allies ramp up their Sinophobia.

Possible big tech levy, tech still treats women like 2nd class citizens, CBA fined for spamming again

• The government is tossing up if they should introduce a "new levy on large digital platforms" and funnel that cash to the media. They know that if they enforce the News Media Bargaining Code, Facebook and Google will stop offering news, leaving nothing to tax and the media companies without a valuable distribution avenue. With some luck Meta decides Facebook isn't worth operating in Australia and they just quit the country entirely.
• A report from Grapevine highlights that fuck all has changed with how the tech industry in Australia treats women. Large amounts of women are still leaving the industry due to harassment, bullying or discrimination, there's still fear of repercussions for reporting abuse and almost all women have had "negative experiences dealing with senior leaders, HR or managers".
• The Commonwealth Bank was fined $7.5m by ACMA for having "contravened spam laws by sending its customers marketing messages without any method to unsubscribe". Over 170 million emails were sent without an unsubscribe link, plus an additional 34.8 million sent "to Australians who either hadn't consented to the messages, or had explicitly withdrawn their consent from CBA’s email chain". I wonder if CBA gained more than $7.5m of new business via this spam??