James Farrell

James Farrell is the former editor-in-chief of Chiang Mai CityNews, where he wrote and managed daily news, features, op-eds and blogs on a diverse range of topics. Prior to this, in the same city of Northern Thailand where he lives, he was the longstanding deputy editor of the monthly magazine Citylife. He has written on culture, politics, travel, tech, business, human rights, for local, national, and international news services and magazines. He has a keen interest in the role technology is playing in the transformation of society, culture and politics, especially in developing nations. This is reflected in his not-so-successful first novel.

Latest from James Farrell

Supreme Court tackles controversial topic of Biden administration-big tech cooperation

Both liberal and conservative justices at the Supreme Court today seemed wary of finding that the Biden administration acted improperly when it worked with Big Tech companies to censor online content it deemed “misinformation” regarding the 2020 presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other issues. The case at hand is Murthy v. Missouri, in which ...

Pornhub pulls out of Texas amid age verification dispute

Fans of Pornhub in Texas may have been disappointed today after the website blocked any internet addresses trying to access it from the state amid a legal wrangle concerning a new age verification law. Pornhub in February was the sixth most visited website in the U.S., garnering more than 2.8 billion visits that month. It’s also ...

Google errs on the side of caution with its Gemini chatbot and global election information

Google LLC confirmed today that it will play it safe this year with regard to election-related queries that its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot might be asked. In the coming year, there will be major elections in 64 countries, affecting almost half the people on the planet. 2024 is being hailed as the year of the ...

Report: Automakers might be secretly selling your driving data to insurance companies

Car companies have been selling their customers’ detailed driving behavior data to third-party brokers, possibly affecting the owners’ insurance premiums, according to a New York Times exposé published today that asks serious questions about privacy within the internet of things. Companies such as the General Motors Co., Honda Motor Co. Ltd., the Kia Corp. and more, ...

Bipartisan bill could see TikTok banned in US if it doesn’t split with China

House Republicans and Democrats have banded together to introduce a bill that will require the Chinese tech giant ByteDance Inc. to sell its popular video-sharing TikTok app or face a ban in the U.S. For years now, TikTok has faced scrutiny in the U.S. from all sides of government. The app has continually been discussed ...

Google details changes for compliance with EU’s Digital Markets Act

With the European Union’s Digital Markets Act coming into effect this week, Google LLC, one of the designated gatekeepers, has had to get busy making a slew of changes to how it does business in Europe. The Digital Markets Act, or DMA, is a piece of far-reaching legislation that has been in the pipeline for ...

Former Twitter executives sue Elon Musk over severance payments

A group of former Twitter Inc. executives filed a lawsuit in a federal court today against Elon Musk and what is now called X Corp., arguing that the company owes them a total of $128 million in unpaid severance. When Musk (pictured) finally took over the social media giant in 2022, he soon got busy ...

US launches ‘unprecedented’ investigation into Chinese connected cars, citing national security concerns

The Biden administration today announced that it’s launching a probe into Chinese-made smart cars, alleging that the vehicles could be used to collect sensitive information on Americans and cause various kinds of mayhem. The investigation, which will be led by the U.S. Commerce Department, will look into how Chinese “connected vehicles” could be used for ...

Google faces $2.3M lawsuit from dozens of European media companies over ad practices

A total of 32 European media companies hit Google LLC with a €2.1 billion ($2.3 billion) lawsuit today, alleging that the American search giant’s advertising practices have led to severe financial losses. The companies come from far and wide – Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain ...

Peace, not war: Tumblr and WordPress are gearing up to sell their data to AI companies

Microblogging website Tumblr and blogging platform WordPress.com will soon begin sharing their data with the artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Midjourney. The platforms’ parent company, Automattic Inc., published a blog post today assuring users of the platform that they will be able to opt out of the deals that will be made to train AI. The ...