The Morning After: Twitter says Meta stole trade secrets to build Threads
And former employees.
Are you on Threads yet? Meta’s Twitter rival pulls your existing Instagram handle and follows to create a pretty busy timeline, despite only launching over 24 hours ago. It’s already got over 30 million users – which is insane – and speaks to the ease of converting your Instagram account to a Threads account.
Twitter probably isn’t happy, as beyond its own problems, Threads is doing a decent job (in these early days) of replicating Elon Musk’s social network. Now that’s legally true: Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta, accusing it of poaching former employees and unlawful misappropriation of trade secrets and intellectual property.
“Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Alex Spiro, Elon Musk's personal lawyer, wrote in a letter to Meta. Spiro, who is acting on behalf of Twitter parent X Corp., claims Meta has hired dozens of ex-Twitter employees over the last year. (Surely, they have to get jobs somewhere.)
Meta has refuted Spiro's claims. “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing," Meta communications director Andy Stone wrote on… Threads.
– Mat Smith
You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!
The biggest stories you might have missed
The best gaming laptops for 2023
‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ is coming to Peacock on August 3rd
French Assembly passes bill allowing police to remotely activate phone cameras
Police could tap into cameras and mics for surveillance.
Lawmakers in France's National Assembly have passed a bill that lets police surveil suspects by remotely activating cameras, microphones and GPS location systems on phones and other devices. A judge will have to approve use of the powers, and the recently amended bill forbids use by journalists, lawyers and other "sensitive professions," according to Le Monde.
But civil liberties advocates are alarmed. The digital rights group La Quadrature du Net previously pointed out the potential for abuse. As the bill isn't clear about what constitutes a serious crime, there are fears the French government might use this to target environmental activists and others who aren't grave threats.
Dine like it's 2013 at New York's Angry Birds cafe
Yes, it’s still a thing.
To give you an idea how old Angry Birds is, it arrived on iOS, webOS and something called Maemo 5 (you don’t remember Maemo?) before it even came to Android, according to our 2010 review. It’s still around, over 13 years later, and Sega is buying its developer, Rovio, for around $776 million. Now we’re getting the first Angry Birds-themed restaurant, called iSwii by Angry Birds, in the food court at the new Tangram mall in Flushing, Queens, NY. I prefer the Kirby Cafe.
The best Windows laptops for 2023
We’ve got recommendations for almost every size and situation.
We all know this, but there are so many Windows laptops now. If there’s a specific feature (like a touchscreen or stylus input) you really need, there’s a great chance there’s a notebook for you. However, that abundance of choice can also make it difficult to know where to start shopping. If your main focus is on general productivity, a sleek ultraportable is all you need. But if you edit photos and videos or play AAA games, you may want a bigger system with discrete graphics. We lay out the most crucial specs, our top-rated devices and our best budget picks too.
‘Pokémon Sleep’ is coming later this month
And there’s a gameplay trailer to prove it.
It’s now been four years since Pokémon Sleep was announced, in the wake of the Pokémon Company’s success with Pokémon Go. Finally, there’s a brand-new gameplay trailer and an approximate release date of late July. Can you call it gameplay, though? Because, really, it’s a sleep-tracking app wearing a Pokémon jacket.
