Science and Technology

Under pressure from critics who say Substack is profiting from newsletters that promote hate speech and racism, the company’s founders said Thursday that they would not ban Nazi symbols and extremist rhetoric from the platform.“I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either — we wish no one held those views,” Hamish McKenzie, a co-founder of Substack, said in a statement. “But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don’t think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse.”The response came…

A man involved in a brazen plot to manipulate the stock price of a New Jersey deli’s parent company pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Wednesday.James T. Patten, 64, of North Carolina, admitted to orchestrating a series of misleading trades in an apparent bid to enrich himself and two co-defendants in U.S. District Court in Camden, N.J.Mr. Patten faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 million for securities fraud. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and…

Drivers of Tesla vehicles will automatically receive the software updates the company is issuing to address concerns from federal auto safety regulators about its driver-assistance system, Autopilot.The updates, which Tesla will send to cars over cellular networks, will include new warnings and checks to make sure drivers are paying attention to the road and their cars while using an Autopilot feature that can steer cars on its own. Customers will not have to bring the vehicles into a service center.The company pioneered the use of such wireless updates, which are now also used by many established automakers.Drivers who have questions…

Parents, schools and even attorneys general have increasingly been raising concerns about how TikTok may be hooking children to the app and serving them inappropriate content. But some lawyers say bringing legal action against the company could be more difficult after TikTok quietly changed its U.S. terms of service this summer.In July, TikTok removed rules that had required user disputes to be handled through private arbitration and instead said that complaints must be filed in one of two California courts. While arbitration has long been considered beneficial to companies, some lawyers have recently figured out how to make it costly…

Want to go viral on TikTok right now? Grab some pink ribbon and a random object. A roll of toilet paper, a houseplant, or a kosher dill spear will do. Tie it up in a bow and film it. Post the video online, and voilà.In recent weeks, bows in all the wrong places have become all the rage on the social media platform. Popular TikTok videos have featured ribbons wrapped around a bowl of macaroni and cheese, a knife and a Chick-fil-A order. Another video showed what appeared to be a bowl of cereal at first glance — but instead…

Higher for (not much) longer The “everything rally” has gone global, sending stocks and bonds soaring in Asia and Europe and lifting U.S. stock futures, after investors got their clearest signal yet that the Fed would begin cutting interest rates soon. Hopes are growing, too, on Thursday that other central banks will follow suit.The Fed delivered an unexpectedly dovish forecast on Wednesday, penciling in three rate cuts next year. Those moves are projected to lower the Fed’s prime lending rate to 4.6 percent, a notable drop from the central bank’s last estimate in September.The revision sent the Dow Jones industrial…