AI agents meant to replace Meta workers made “large-scale, disruptive actions”

AI agents meant to replace Meta workers made “large-scale, disruptive actions”

fivenewscrypto    août 28, 2026   

Earlier this year, Meta created a “plan” to reduce some of its teams by as much as 60 percent to make the company “AI native,” Reuters reported today, citing two people familiar with Meta’s internal affairs.

Reuters’ report highlights the challenges organizations face when analyzing the best uses for AI and determining when the technology is a better fit for certain tasks than employees.

Meta confirmed to Reuters that the plan, reportedly codenamed Project OT (short for organization transformation), explored scenarios in which Meta reduced some team headcounts by 60 percent and that the plan called for two rounds of layoffs. Meta wouldn’t confirm which teams Project OT affected.

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New Twitter launches, says Musk's X gave up the name

New Twitter launches, says Musk's X gave up the name

fivenewscrypto    août 28, 2026   

Operation Bluebird, the Virginia-based startup trying to revive the allegedly abandoned “Twitter” name and logo, announced Monday that it has launched its new social media network: Twitter.now.

“We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” Stephen Coates, one of Operation Bluebird’s cofounders, told Ars. “And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.”

As Ars reported in December 2025, Coates and his coterie believe that when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and quickly changed the company's name to X, the Twitter identity and intellectual property were abandoned.

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Meta settles states' child-safety claims for $18B; Florida rejects deal as "peanuts"

Meta settles states' child-safety claims for $18B; Florida rejects deal as "peanuts"

fivenewscrypto    août 27, 2026   

Meta agreed to impose daily limits on children's social media use and pay nearly $18 billion in settlements with nearly every US state today, cutting short a trial in which Meta said several of the states were demanding over $1.4 trillion. The settlement requires court approval.

Meta is facing claims that it designed its products to foster compulsive use by children and failed to warn users of addiction and mental health risks. Meta, which already uses ID checks and face analysis to verify user ages, said it agreed to impose on people under 18 a "default two-hour daily time limit that teens can only turn off with a parent’s permission," a default block between midnight and 6 am, and a school mode in which notifications are muted by default from 8 am to 3 pm.

The two-hour daily "limit is cumulative across Facebook and Instagram, and time spent scrolling on both apps counts toward the total, including if we detect that someone has multiple accounts," Meta said. Teens will "receive prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on Facebook or Instagram," and "prompts when their total daily usage hits 60 minutes and 90 minutes."

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Florida Catholics slap down state AG by rejecting religious vaccine exemptions

Florida Catholics slap down state AG by rejecting religious vaccine exemptions

fivenewscrypto    août 27, 2026   

Florida's attorney general got a fiery rebuke and some ecclesiastical schooling from the state's Catholic bishops after he boldly threatened to block funding to Catholic schools unless the church bends to the state's anti-vaccine policies—policies allegedly intended to uphold religious freedom.

On July 31, Attorney General James Uthmeier sent a questionable letter to the bishops regarding exemptions to school vaccination requirements. Florida law requires public and private schools to allow vaccination exemptions based on religious grounds. But Catholic schools in the state do not accept religious exemptions; Florida's Catholic dioceses support vaccination and recognize no theological argument against it. The schools only accept exemptions based on medical conditions that are verified by a healthcare provider.

Uthmeier, himself a Catholic, wrote to the bishops in an open letter that, based on his own understanding of Catholicism, he saw "no legitimate religious reason to refuse granting religious exemptions." He reviewed select theological positions regarding the use of "abortion-derived vaccines," and suggested to the bishops that it was "morally reprehensible" that they not grant religious exemptions.

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Google announces Gemini 3.5 Transcribe for AI-powered speech-to-text

Google announces Gemini 3.5 Transcribe for AI-powered speech-to-text

fivenewscrypto    août 27, 2026   

While we wait (possibly in vain) for Gemini 3.5 Pro to launch, Google is releasing a different model in the 3.5 branch. The company has announced Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, an AI model designed to streamline voice input by editing out "ums" and corrections, outputting polished AI text. This model already powers the Gboard "Rambler" feature on the Pixel 11, but it's about to appear throughout the Google ecosystem.

According to Google, Gemini 3.5 Transcribe is much faster and more accurate than its previous voice-to-text engine, known as Chirp 3. The new AI model should be about 70 percent faster from voice to final transcribed text, and the live-speech error rate has dropped to 5.5 percent. That's only a little better than Chirp 3, which Google measures at 7.32 percent. Still, it's a pain to fix typos when you're using voice input, so any improvement here is beneficial.

Credit: Google

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The Porsche 911 GT3 Touring punches above its weight class

The Porsche 911 GT3 Touring punches above its weight class

fivenewscrypto    août 27, 2026   

The GT3 occupies a singular place in the 911 lineup. Whereas the range-topping Turbo S piles on power, technology, luxury, and all-weather capability, the GT3 has always pursued something more elemental: a lighter weight, more focus, and a finely honed setup that puts the driver at the center of the experience.

Porsche has expanded the GT3 formula since the model’s debut in 1999, adding the more extreme GT3 RS to the lineup in 2003 and the slightly more reserved GT3 Touring in 2017, along with the GT3 S/C earlier this year. While the concept behind the drop-top S/C requires some mental gymnastics to make sense of it, the Touring’s original premise was refreshingly simple: Take the standard GT3—including its naturally aspirated 4.0 L flat-six and track-tuned chassis—and replace the fixed rear wing with the deployable spoiler from the Carrera. The result is a subtler version of the homologation car that recaptures the classic 911 silhouette without giving up the hardware that makes a GT3 a GT3.

Fresh from its 992.2 mid-cycle update, the latest GT3 Touring sticks closely to that original design. Its 4.0 L flat-six still spins to 9,000 rpm and produces 502 hp (375 kW) and 331 lb-ft (449 Nm), sending its output exclusively to the rear wheels through either a seven-speed PDK dual-clutch automatic or six-speed manual gearbox. Massive brakes, rear-axle steering, a GT3-specific suspension, active sport exhaust, and plenty of other road course-oriented hardware remain standard.

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Xtracycle's Swoop ASM e-bike brings an automatic transmission to cargo bikes

Xtracycle's Swoop ASM e-bike brings an automatic transmission to cargo bikes

fivenewscrypto    août 27, 2026   

The Velotric Discover M e-bike we reviewed earlier this year had a feature I found somewhat annoying: It would sporadically block much of the display with an alert telling me I should be in a different gear. While the implementation bugged me, the concept made a certain degree of sense; most e-bikes now know your cadence, how much torque you're generating, and how that power is being translated into speed. That's everything you need to know to determine an optimal gear.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought, "If you're so smart, why don't you just shift for me?"

I was completely unaware that Shimano had already developed a system that did exactly that. And for the past few weeks, I've been using it on a $4,500 cargo bike from Xtracycle called the Swoop ASM that let me see what it's like to hand control of my gears to an electronic brain.

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