TikTok Sues the U.S. to Avoid Ban

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance are challenging a U.S. law that threatens to ban the app unless sold to another entity.

ByteDance says the law infringes on the First Amendment by portraying TikTok as a national security risk, a claim they argue is baseless and unconstitutional.

The law demands TikTok's sale within a strict timeframe.

ByteDance asserts that the sale is commercially unfeasible. And also technologically and legally impossible. Predicting an shutdown by January 19, 2025, if the law stands.

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Rising Rents and Lagging Job Markets

An analysis by Zillow Group Inc. revealed that from 2019 to 2023, rents across the US surged by 30.4%. While wages only grew by 20.2%.

Regions like Florida experienced even more disparity, with cities like Tampa and Jacksonville seeing rent hikes more than triple the pace of wage increases.

Meanwhile, an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York revealed that New York and San Francisco still face a labor shortage compared to their workforce numbers before the Covid crisis

Conversely, cities such as Austin and Phoenix are experiencing significant growth in their labor forces, with increases of 17% and nearly 10%, respectively.

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Meta Transforming Advertising with AI

Meta announced that they are enhancing their generative AI advertising tools. This expansion includes advanced image generation capabilities and direct text overlay options.

Advertisers will now be able to modify images of their products and generate variations, such as changing the orientation or depicting different usage contexts.

Meta is investing heavily in AI, asserting that these tools will streamline the creative processes in advertising campaigns.

They aim to launch this tool globally by year-end, without initial use of the watermarking safety feature currently seen in user-generated AI images.

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Breakthrough in Diamond Synthesis

Researchers in South Korea have developed a method to create synthetic diamonds. This new technique simplifies the diamond creation process, reducing the time and environmental conditions required.

Historically, synthetic diamonds were produced using high-pressure, high-temperature conditions, closely imitating natural diamond formation. This demands costly equipment and can take weeks to yield results.

The new method uses a novel approach involving a liquid metal alloy (from gallium, iron, nickel, and silicon) and gases (methane and hydrogen) at ambient pressure, producing diamond films in under three hours.

This solution opens up possibilities for applying diamond coatings more efficiently in fields like healthcare, manufacturing, and beyond.

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