Things aren’t looking so good for Big Tech:
Big Tech has a bit of a reckoning on the way, or at least provided the Democratic party wins the United States election in November, because the House Judiciary Committee has finished up a panel on some antitrust issues concerning some of the tech giants. The panel met to discuss the issues surrounding Alphabet (which owns Google), Apple, Amazon and Facebook, and it stated that there are definitely some antitrust issues that need to be addressed.
It has been stated though that it’s unlikely anything will be done about this for the next few months, but that things may happen once the election ends. It’s especially likely that things will happen if Joe Biden is elected president because he appears to be particularly receptive to dealing with a trust issue. So maybe a time of reckoning is at hand.
Furthermore, the United States government later stating that breaking Google up may be the only option to end antitrust issues with them. So that isn’t the best thing to hear if you are Big Tech.
A program that watches how you write raised some extra cash:
A program called Writer has succeeded in raising some capital to the tune of $5 million, and while this isn’t an extraordinarily huge amount, the service promises something a little different to similar services like Grammarly. First off, it’s a word processor that does all the deluxe word processor things; it watches your spelling, the way you construct sentences and paragraphs, et cetera, but what sets it apart from the rest is the way it highlights individual words and phrases that are problematic for reasons external to grammar and punctuation.
The program watches and corrects the way you use certain words and then flags them for bias. So it looks at loaded language that you maybe shouldn’t be using, especially in a corporate setting in which inclusivity has become an increased priority. It will flag words for bias based on various factors, such as race, disability, sex, et cetera. It’s a fascinating algorithm that’s basically able to be an unconscious prejudice detector, and so just like other services of a similar kind, it’s available on a subscription basis for those who don’t understand that the words they use have more than one meaning.
Twitter only now decides hoping for someone’s death is bad:
Social media has always been a place where you can pop online, find someone you disagree with and then stalk them online, act creepy, tell them you hope they get cancer, but only now, when Trump got coronavirus, did Twitter decide that wishing for someone’s death is a no-no and that it would take down posts that celebrate his infection or possibility of death. It just took a major, divisive figure to get sick for them to decide to do something decent, so that’s nice.
However, according to them, this has been a rule since April, but there wasn’t much enforcement of it. And it just needed a demagogue’s sickness to push them into gear. So it’s great to see that when regular people have death wished upon them by anonymous people online that it’s just fine and there’s no point in doing anything about it but that when it’s someone like him, then we suddenly need to see to it that the rules are enforced!
Also, they haven’t actually enforced these rules, even now, it was mostly to placate Trump. Everyone else can still have cancer wished on them.
Facebook banned QAnon:
QAnon, the unhinged conspiracy theory about evil people secretly doing evil things rather than evil people overtly doing evil things, has finally been banned on Facebook. Originally, the social media platform decided to ban them whenever they threatened violence but has since decided to just ban the whole thing before it can become violent. Which is good, especially seeing as the FBI labelled QAnon a potential domestic terror threat in the United States. Probably better to get rid of them than patch things up as they incite violence.
Pakistan bans TikTok:
TikTok appears to be under threat all over the world, and this time the threat to its existence comes from Pakistan. The country decided to ban the app because of its “immoral and indecent” content, which does smell quite a lot like blatant censorship. The news comes off the back of TikTok having been banned in India and undergoing a process to perhaps even see it being banned in the United States, although that remains to be seen.
According to a statement from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the company was given plenty of time to respond to the accusations of lax moderation and never did. And so it got banned. The Authority does state that it would be willing to review the decision based on any information that TikTok brings forward in future. The Authority likely just wants stronger moderation on the app, but that could easily be seen as censorship
But the ban only lasted eleven days, and then TikTok pledged improved moderation and all went back to normal. It’s almost as if you force some level of moderation on a platform, the platform holders will do it rather than lose business. Fascinating.
Sony released a PS5 teardown video:
Sony decided to show us all how it’s done. How the PlayStation is put together. Or rather, how to take a PlayStation apart (although it does warn you not to it yourself). The company released a video hosted by Yasuhiro Ootori, the VP of the mechanical design department at Sony, and he shows off the PlayStation 5, breaks it down and shows off all the components.
So this video is worth a watch if you want to see just how big the machine is, all it’s specifications, its tiny SSD drives, it’s cute little stand and the tiny hole it has to vacuum out dust. It’s both adorable and informative! So, give it a watch, it’s less than ten minutes long anyway.
New iPhone doesn’t come with accessories:
Apple has decided to grace us mere mortals with its amazing plan to save the planet by charging the same amount of money for its next iPhone but just putting fewer things in the box. No more power adaptors or earphones shall be in the box any longer! And so if you don’t have special wireless earphones then tough luck to you, good madam and sir!
The stated reason is to make the whole process of manufacturing all this stuff carbon neutral. So making production more efficient, not being as wasteful with boxes and such, and having smaller boxes with less stuff in it does contribute to that, but it should always be noted that the reason for this is not environmental protection but rather reducing the bottom line and increasing profits wherever possible. But hey, at least it does kinda help the environment a bit.
A prison visitation video service maybe exposed some people:
Prisons are not the greatest places in the world, although that is kind of their purpose, but regardless of that they should at least be kept safe. This is why the prisons have locked down to attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus throughout the system, and that’s good, but it seems that prisoners just can’t catch a break because now there are issues with the special visitation video systems they use: they expose people’s personal lives.
This all started in St Louis in the United States, where a video service called HomeWAV, screwed up and accidentally allowed anyone to see private conversations between prisoners and families and, even more worrying, between prisoners and lawyers, which are supposed to be completely secure. This all happened because a security leak led to the online database losing its password protection and giving anyone who went to the site access.
A random security researcher found this and then the company accused a third party for the breach, because you apparently give administrator privileges and the ability to remove password functionality to a third party! There also hasn’t been much apologising from the company. So even prison calls aren’t secure, and those places are supposed to be some of the most secure places in the world!
The moon is getting an internet connection:
It’s nearly time for the first ethical colonisation in history because the moon is getting an internet connection. At last! It was the only reason many people never went there. So, the reason for having internet on the moon is that it will help with future moon colonisers general lives, such as operating various types of machinery, having communication abilities and maybe even to keep up with the latest trends while far from earth #MoonFashion.
NASA plans on having people on the moon by 2024, and Nokia has been enlisted, along with a private space craft design company called Intuitive Machines, to get a good ole connection set up on the moon. The set up will be finished by 2022 and will be a 4G/LTE connection because 5G is still a bit untested at present, but there are plans to upgrade it to that in future. So, this is a fun turn of events. We will have moon people in the next few years, and they’ll have access to Twitter. How fun!
Quibi is shutting down:
Oh and woe, the destined for greatness streaming service Quibi turned out to be a bad idea that didn’t actually work! What a magnificent loss! But in all seriousness, Quibi was always doomed for failure but at least the people behind it have finally acknowledged that fact and have decided to shut the whole thing down once and for all.
Quibi, for those unfamiliar, is a streaming service built for mobile devices, and the idea is that you can watch these things, which are designed to be in short bites of content (called “quibis”… like a quickie, I guess) and they can be watched in landscape or portrait! And that was supposedly something revolutionary, but whatever.
The service was the brainchild of some pretty big names, Jeff Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, and they came out to deliver the truth about the service: it was a bad idea to begin with and it was timed poorly. It launched in the middle of the pandemic! People are staying home, not watching stuff on the train. But it is a rather sad thing and it only lasted a whopping six months. But at least it tried!
WailingWolf 