It's the dream: Find a smoldering someone on a dating app, match with them, and quickly launch into a conversation filled with subtle compliments, definitive date night plans, and witty repartee. According to research conducted by Preply, -- a language learning app and platform, – more than 70 percent of dating app users surveyed said it's possible to engage in meaningful conversation, and even fall in love with someone, before ever meeting in person (having only spoken on an app). The challenge, of course, is getting there, shifting from the notification that "It's A Match!" into dialogue worthy of a Shonda Rhimes production. It's a daunting task, so we brought in the pros: rom-com authors. Mashable spoke with several -- all with books jam-packed with quippy dialogue out this spring and summer -- to get their expert takes on how to write witty banter.

On Friday, Elon Musk announced he was pausing his $45bn purchase of Twitter because he had only just discovered some of the accounts on the site were fake. But that's not the strangest thing that has happened to the beleaguered social media platform this week. Because on Tuesday the current top brass, perhaps trying to demonstrate their vision for the site, released a Super Nintendo-style browser game that recaps Twitter's private policy. The platform unveiled Twitter Data Dash, which plays like a vintage side-scrolling platformer that's been draped with a healthy dose of disinformation anxiety. You take control of a blue-hued puppy named Data and are tasked with retrieving five bones hidden in each of the game's day-glo urban environments.

Most swiping for love on a dating app know the drill. Perhaps declare intentions: Looking for something serious? The dating app Mirchi presents another possibility: "Auntie made me sign up." The option is part joke, part knowing nod to its audience. Unlike the mainstream apps such as Tinder or Bumble, Mirchi is among the growing world of dating apps created by and catering to South Asians.

Instagram and Facebook users in Texas lost access to certain augmented reality filters Wednesday, following a lawsuit accusing parent company Meta of violating privacy laws. In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton revealed he would sue Meta for using facial recognition in filters to collect data for commercial purposes without consent. Paxton claimed Meta was "storing millions of biometric identifiers" that included voiceprints, retina or iris scans, and hand and face geometry. Although Meta argued it does not use facial recognition technology, it has disabled its AR filters and avatars on Facebook and Instagram amid the litigation. The AR effects featured on Facebook, Messenger, Messenger Kids, and Portal will also be shut down for Texas users.

In the previous blog post in this series, we examined overall machine learning (ML) maturity in industry with a specific focus on machine learning operations (MLOps). The two main takeaways were the striking lack of ML maturing in industry as a whole, as well as the complexities involved in fully embracing MLOps, which can be taken to represent the apogee of ML maturation. In this blog post, we will consider the implications for tooling adoption in industry and the wider ML tooling market. This blog post is concerned with the second question. As with the previous post, the same disclaimer applies: This series of blog posts is by no means meant to be exhaustive -- or necessarily even correct in places! I wrote this to try to organise my thinking on the reading I've done in recent weeks and I want this to become a jumping off point for further discussion.

Besides cat videos, the one thing the internet surely needs more of is consultants talking about disruption. But as you read yet another post about the most overused (and misused) term in tech, I'd ask that you at least consider my argument and weigh in- especially if you disagree. Let's start with a few definitions. Clay Christensen, the author of disruption theory, first outlined his thesis of sustaining vs. disruptive technology in his 1995 Harvard Business Review article, and later in his classic The Innovator's Dilemma. In HBR he provides these definitions for sustaining vs. disruptive technologies: "Sustaining technologies tend to maintain a rate of improvement; that is, they give customers something more or better in the attributes they already value."

Clearview AI has promised to stop selling its controversial face-recognizing tech to most private US companies in a settlement proposed this week with the ACLU. The New-York-based startup made headlines in 2020 for scraping billions of images from people's public social media pages. These photographs were used to build a facial-recognition database system, allowing the biz to link future snaps of people to their past and current online profiles. Clearview's software can, for example, be shown a face from a CCTV still, and if it recognizes the person from its database, it can return not only the URLs to that person's social networking pages, from where they were first seen, but also copies that allow that person to be identified, traced, and contacted. That same year, the ACLU sued the biz, claiming it violated Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which requires organizations operating in the US state to obtain explicit consent from its residents to collect their biometric data, which includes their photographs.

Meta, Facebook's parent company, is facing another lawsuit filed by one of is former content moderators. According to The Washington Post, this one is filed by Daniel Motaung, who's accusing the company and San Francisco subcontractor Sama of human trafficking Africans to work in exploitative and unsafe working conditions in Kenya. The lawsuit alleges that Sama targets poor people across the region, including those from Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda, with misleading job ads. They were reportedly never told that they'd be working as Facebook moderators and would have to view disturbing content as part of the job. Motaung said the first video he watched was of someone being beheaded and that he was fired after six months on the job for trying to spearhead workers' unionization efforts.

I have written a series of articles about the future of information, truth and influence. These articles explore the human vulnerabilities that are exploited in social media, and in combination with other traditional forms of media. I also explore the concept of social engineering and information operations where professional marketers, military and political strategist use the way our brain works to influence us. In this article we explore how our brains and their instinctual and learned biases can cause us problems when combined with artificial intelligence and automation. In the revealing new book, The Loop, by NBC News technology correspondent, Jacob Ward, he shares how we can cause ourselves harm by letting our unconscious, evolutionary instincts and biases shape our automated future.

Online dating juggernaut Match Group is suing Google, alleging that its Android apps are being forced to use the tech giant's in-app payment system -- thus allowing Google to extract royalties for such transactions. Match Group owns numerous popular dating apps and websites, including Hinge, OkCupid, Tinder, and PlentyOfFish. The issue comes down to Google's outsized influence and control over Android app distribution, as well as its requirements for allowing apps on the Google Play Store. According to Match Group's federal court filing, over 90 percent of Android app downloads are handled through the Google Play Store. Thus, if developers want to reach enough users for their Android app to be sustainable, there's practically no way around putting it on Google's app store.