August 2020 Tech News

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 TikTok and US government fight it out:

The current United States government is often a barrel of depressive laughs, but one of the biggest tech things to come around recently has been Donald Trump’s decision to go after TikTok of all things. Now, this is quite a mess of a thing so let’s start by saying that the whole issue arose because TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, and the claim is that the US government is attempting to protect US citizens from having their personal information stolen by a foreign company. It’s obviously much better for an American company, like Google, Apple or Microsoft, to steal user info.

So he decided to try and force ByteDance to sell TikTok in the United States, and he gave the company 45 days to adhere to this (thereby forcing them to prepare for in case they got shut down)! But when you’re doing really well you probably don’t want to have to sell and so ByteDance decided it wasn’t going to budge and that it was going to fight this unhinged demand from Trump. However, Trump’s supporters, like Mike Pompeo, jumped in to say that they completely support his plan to force the Chinese company to sell.

So, we’ve now got a company that doesn’t want to sell and a president who’s forcing his way into the economy to try and make it happen. He wants a United States company to buy up TikTok, and some of the biggest potential buyers to come along have been Microsoft and Oracle (although the Chinese government has stated that it wants final say on who buys it). But then Trump did something else that’s a bit of a problem: he decided that seeing as he “brokered” this deal, the United States government should get a portion of the proceeds from the purchase. Which is pretty much bribery…

He said: “A very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen.” So that’s a bit of a problem! And it may face some legal action because it’s kind of… illegal to do that. And it even led to TikTok suing the president! On top of that, the company’s CEO even decided to resign, probably because this whole hassle just isn’t worth the effort.

Then, Trump decided he wanted to try banning Tencent, which owns WeChat, Riot Games and some of Epic Games, from trading with US companies. So the revenge began with TikTok and just spread. The ban even led to some potential issues with its place on the App Store, seeing as ads may be forced off the app.

Meanwhile, in a more sensible part of the world, the Australian government decided against pursuing action against ByteDance because it saw no reason to do so. Cool.

 

Apple now has a $2 trillion market cap:

Apple shares have increased by 59% in 2020, and that’s awesome in an age of intense pandemic-accelerated poverty, and that led to it popping over the $2 trillion mark for a while before dropping back down. However, it’ll likely get back up there again! This comes during some rather bad times for these big tech companies as legislators turn their eyes towards what is perceived as a few companies that have effectively enforced an oligopoly over the whole tech industry. However, that probably won’t stop those wonderful ole profits from rising, rising, rising!

 

Facebook blocks Bolsonaro supporters:

Facebook put a big global block on a few Bolsonaro supporters. Now, this wasn’t actually its decision but was instead forced on it by the Brazilian Supreme Court. The court declared that the Brazilian president’s supporters had violated hate speech laws while doing some fake news stuff along the way. The move will likely be seen by many as a way of stopping the spread of false information, but Facebook is fighting the decision.

According to Facebook, the block, which was initially just in Brazil but eventually switched to a global block after the Supreme Court fined Facebook, violates freedom of speech. The last few months have seen increased debate over whether social media platforms should enforce stronger restrictions on what people say, because those platforms are technically private platforms and so they do not have to allow everyone to have a platform. Regardless of the debate, Facebook doesn’t like it and wants to fight.

 

Google is entering the online banking space:

Google has decided to expand its online banking services. This service, which is still in its infancy but plans to release sometime in 2021 (although there are no solid plans), is called Google Pay (see what they did there, Google Play, Google Pay… oh, they’re just so funny) and it’s partnered up with a number of United States banks to lend itself more credibility.

Some of the new banks include Bank Mobile, BMO Harris, First Independence Bank and a few more. In total, there are currently eight banks involved, and Google is possibly pursuing even more banks and credit unions. However, if you want your special Google Banking app you may have to wait even longer unless you’re a United States citizen because there’s nothing for international users. Yet.

 

SnapChat is tackling TikTok:

SnapChat wants to take on Tiktok and it wants to do it by partnering with various music labels so that users can use licensed music without fear of copyright claims. Isn’t that nice? So, the idea is to tackle TikTok while TikTok has some trouble coming its way from the United States government. Business is business after all. Attack while the enemy is weak, and all that jazz.

This feature is launching as a test in Australia and New Zealand for now, but seeing as music licensing is quite an annoying thing to get around it may never end up going anywhere else. Or maybe it does. Who knows!? Only time will tell. But for now, it’s just in the testing phase. But it would be nice to be able to use licensed music without it getting blocked immediately.

 

SpaceX gets more funding:

SpaceX, which is run by a man who doesn’t have billions (sarcasm for those unaware), has secured a further $1.9 billion in funding. These kinds of funding efforts come all the time but it’s just interesting to see it from a company led by someone who made serious bank during this ongoing pandemic somehow raising even more cash for the company.

 

Uber and Lyft lose court case over employees:

Uber and Lyft have been trying to have their employees classified as contractors for ages, but a new ruling from the San Francisco Superior Court has stymied those efforts. The issue here is that these ride-sharing companies want their employees to be classified as “contractors” because that allows them to get around certain laws concerning employee benefits.

The court ruling states that these companies went against Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), which states that companies have to classify workers as employees if the job controls how the worker completes said job. So, unlike a contractor, drivers kind of have to complete their jobs in very specific ways.

The companies plan on appealing this because of course they are, and it appears that they are framing this as benefiting the employees rather than the companies themselves, and they’ve even claimed that they’ll have to temporarily shut down if this happens to them. But such verbal sleights of hand are rather common when legal issues emerge around the way companies conduct themselves (it didn’t work either).

 

Epic Games takes aim at Apple:

Epic Games has not been too pleased with the monopolistic nature of Apple’s App Store, and so after the Fortnite company decided to put direct payments in its game, which would be purchases that don’t go through Apple, the mega-popular hit got pulled from the service. Epic responded by making fun of Apple’s Nineteen Eighty-Four ad from way back when and then went a bit more serious and accused them of anti-competitive policies (which occurs in the midst of Apple’s involvement in some anti-trust troubles) and then sued the company over the whole debacle.

This has just continued to rage ever on with Google even pulling Fortnite from its Play Store (and this led Epic to eventually sue them too), then Facebook got in on the action and started to stand up to Apple and then Microsoft jumped on board to dogpile Apple too. So, the whole situation is threatening to get out of hand as companies dog pile on one another, but at least it’s rather entertaining to watch what happens from afar as the capitalists vie for supreme dominance.

After this all happened, Apple decided to pull Epic’s dev tools from the service, such as those used in the Unreal Engine, and this would effectively screw over a lot of game developers who use that engine. And so Epic has added this to the list of things it wants the court to do with Apple, but Apple has retaliated by saying Epic tried demanding “special treatment” ahead of this whole debacle. Which is something Epic Games vehemently denies. And thus far, the court has blocked Apple from harming the Unreal Engine but Fortnite is still off the store. This hasn’t stopped Apple from terminating Epic Games’ account though.

And while this has all been going on, Epic decided to do a “#FreeFortnite Cup” in Fortnite to try and weaponize the fanbase against Apple. So that’s nice and not extremely problematic at all!

 

ICE made a facial recognition contract:

Do you know what kind of technology has definitely never caused any controversy? Facial recognition. And do you know which American federal agency never causes controversy? ICE. Well, we’re all in for a treat because the agency in charge of tracking down illegal immigrants in the United States has teamed up with Clearview AI, a facial recognition company that takes images from all over the internet, including social media, to make its matches.

The decision comes in the midst of facial recognition becoming an increasingly taboo technology that many companies and governments want to stay away from because it’s, in the eyes of the public, rather toxic. But that hasn’t stopped America’s most beloved agency from adopting the technology. Well done!

 

A mask firing gun has been invented:

Possibly the greatest invention of the pandemic has come: a mask firing gun! This comes courtesy of just a regular ole YouTuber named Allen Pan. He decided to create a gun that would just fire masks at people. It’s made using an 800 PSI CO2 canister, a solenoid valve, a brake line, a spray paint grip and some magnets. This could be perfect for shooting at partisans who think masks are somehow undermining their rights.

June 2020 Tech News

Snapchat took a stance against Trump:

After Twitter decided to add some fact checking labels onto Donald Trump’s tweets about voting by mail (and later adding warnings to a tweet of his that threatened violence), the president decided to threaten social media companies with regulation (which goes against common conservative values, but whatever). Then, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to criticise Twitter (although he’s done some about turns since), but Snapchat went the other route right from the get-go.

The social media platform decided to stop promoting Trump’s content on its Discover page, and has stated that it refuses to “amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion”. So, Snapchat has taken a stance. Trump hasn’t been booted off the platform, and his content is readily available to those who follow him, but it won’t show up on Snapchat’s curated Discover page.

The Discover page has long been a curated space, unlike platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but the platform won’t otherwise affect Trump’s content. However, this hasn’t stopped his people from lashing out at the company and claiming that it’s trying to rig the election in Joe Biden’s favour. Either that or it just doesn’t want hate speech on its platform. Probably a riddle for the ages.

Facebook will add labels to state-controlled media:

Facebook, seemingly following a similar trend to Snapchat and Twitter despite its CEO originally going against what Facebook’s competitors have done, has rolled out a new feature that will help label news sources on its platform. This labelling is for state-owned media. Whenever a news source is coming from a government, the label will trigger and be shown alongside whatever that news source is.

In the current fake news era, in which all news sources should be viewed with at least some sense of scepticism, this announcement is long overdue. Facebook has also, thankfully, laid out its criteria for something to be classified as “state-run media”, because there are various ways in which governments help otherwise independent media operators, such as through funding. However, according to Facebook, various experts have been consulted and all of that will be taken into account.

This kind of real action from social media platforms is important. For far too long, social media platforms have attempted to pretend that they have no duty to curate their own platforms. But with news like this, it should, hopefully, be harder for state-run groups to tamper with news sources without the regular people learning about that tampering. Or at least hopefully that’s the case.

In addition to this, Facebook has added a label for political ads. This further notifies users of when political entities have a hand in what appears on the platform.

Remove China Apps app did well in India:

An anti-China app gained some traction in India at the beginning of the month. This app, which was from a self-proclaimed Indian app developer called OneTouch AppLabs, checked whether other apps on your device had been developed in China and then flags them. This allowed people to choose not to use Chinese-produced apps if they wanted, because this can often be difficult to do yourself because figuring out where an app comes from can be a challenge.

The app worked, according to the developers, by identifying a target app’s market research and determining its country of origin from there. However, it was kind of sketchy and the developers had a strange online presence. But the app did have high ratings on the Google Play Store and did manage to make it elsewhere in the world. It even surpassed a million downloads in its first ten days (and later surpassed five million). So that’s not bad. But it’s now been pulled from the Play Store for violating terms of service.

Anything like this can be a worry though because apps like this wonderfully named Remove China App can also be concealing their origins. It does also tend to stoke anti-Chinese sentiments, and while you can criticise the Communist Party, apps like these can lead to more widespread anti-Chinese sentiments aimed at the people rather than the politicians. Just worth keeping an eye on.

Protests increase demand for face-scrubbing tech:

Ever since the Black Lives Matter protests started after the murder of George Floyd, various people and groups have come forward to show their support by creating software that blurs people’s faces in photographs that might be taken at demonstrations. This tech also often scrubs photos of their metadata, such as when it was taken and on what device. Basically, this kind of tech makes it so that people can’t find you if you were at a protest.

This is pretty depressing considering the fact that many of these protests are occurring in places that have free speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to protest laws. So that’s disheartening. It’s wonderful to see a world slowly sinking into authoritarianism. But at least this kind of software can stop you from being identified, tracked and then arrested like some government groups have decided to do with their power. Yay!

IBM halts facial recognition development:

In response to the Black Lives Matter protests, IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna, sent a letter to the United States Congress and pledged IBM’s support for police reform. It also brought up the company’s prior commitment to progressive politics back in the fifties, but the truly interesting part of the letter was the CEO’s statement that IBM would halt all development of facial recognition technology because of its use in “mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values and Principles of Trust and Transparency.”

This is a rather interesting move considering the increased prevalence of facial recognition software for a variety of purposes over the last few years. Halting development on something that has become more and more integral to the development of various technologies, such as AI (which was mentioned in the letter). Software like this can be used to perpetuate the biases of those who create and implement it, and a major tech company like IBM taking a stand like this is a rather fascinating one to see.

Twitter implements new “read it first” feature:

Social media is known to be a place filled to the absolute brim with online vitriol and toxicity. Conspiracy theories run rampant because people don’t bother to think before they post something, and then this just adds to more and more misinformation around the globe. The proliferation of fake news may be a buzzword Trump loves to throw around but it is a genuine problem, and after Twitter decided to take a stand against the blatant lies Trump decided to spout to his massive audience, it would appear that Twitter is taking an even stronger stand.

This may be part of an ongoing trend, but Twitter has decided to implement a new feature that will ask you to read an article before you retweet it. The feature won’t stop you from retweeting it and will only serve as a prompt (although people who have replied to the tweet that Twitter put out about this seem to be arguing in bad faith and acting as if this is a form of censorship rather than a gentle prod that may mildly inconvenience people). Some people may actually follow through with it and read the article and then decide against sharing it, but of course there will always be those who decide to share discriminatory material because they want to.

The feature is currently just a test feature and so it may not stick around, but sometimes having too much convenience can lead to people abusing a system. So just one extra step may actually help matters a bit, but it certainly won’t be a massive change up that ends all online misinformation forever. That would take actual work from platform holders, after all!

The Internet Archive tried a thing, got shut down:

The Internet Archive decided to try a thing that would have helped many people currently struggling with their education through the COVID-19 pandemic: an online National Emergency Library that would make 1.3 million books available for checkout for free. This would have meant that many people could have gotten their hands on the books needed to further their education, but that sadly didn’t happen.

The library was supposed to stay open through till the end of June, but it got cut short and shut down on 15 June instead because publishers decided to threaten them with legal action. Various book publishers, like HarperCollins and Penguin Random House, understandably likened this to digital piracy on an “industrial scale”. Makes sense, and that is what those companies would have to do under the circumstances to ensure that their intellectual property was protected.

However, this could have helped a lot of people with their education, but it was doomed to failure. Something in a similar vein could one day be encouraged and maybe even built, something along the lines of Project Gutenberg but for things not in the public domain, but until such a time that a thing like that is feasible people will just have to resort to regular old libraries.

Apple announced a bunch of things at the WWDC 2020 keynote:

Apple has come out once again to show off all the things it plans on doing and rolling out over the next year. Some of it is very basic stuff like a new version of iOS (which isn’t even news considering its regularity), Apple’s going to be adding some interface things in there (which often annoys people at first but you get used to it), new stuff for the Apple Watch and Airpods, the usual stuff you’d expect. But the two most interesting things in terms of actual changes are about privacy changes and processors.

Privacy and location tracking have become hot topics in the last few weeks thanks to their usage in cracking down on freedom of assembly, and so new iOS features allow you to remove the option for your exact location, but to instead have an approximate location shown. This is good if you’re at a protest and don’t want to get ID’d. In addition, their privacy policies are being simplified (good) and your phone will indicate whether an app is accessing your camera or microphone. Which should help people monitor whether someone is watching or listening to them.

The other big thing is the new processor news. Apple has been using Intel processors for years, but it has decided to make the change over to in-house processors. So, Apple is now designing its own tech rather than using another company’s tech. The only issue here is that any kind of major hardware change like that can come with compatibility issues. Although that is common whenever new technology is unveiled. We’ll have to see how those processors fare against existing brands in the coming months.

YouTube is making its own TikTok:

YouTube has decided that it too wants to get in on the TikTok game and has released a feature for mobile devices that focuses on short 15 second, multi-segment videos. It even has the same functionality as TikTok in that you can make video clips by tapping and recording and the releasing so as to piece the clips together later.

It does make sense though, the young people like these TikTok videos for some reason and YouTube needs to try to maintain its place as the video streaming juggernaut of the internet landscape. So they’ll be catering to these short attention span videos on mobile but your more dedicated platforms, like PCs, will likely just continue on as per usual (at least for now), because the audience for regular old YouTube has never left.

Robots can be used to disinfect warehouses:

A couple of researchers from MIT decided to try out a different approach to cleaning out shared spaces that may be infected with COVID-19 particles. They decided to take an Ava Robotics mobile robot base and attach a UVC light to it so that it can make its way through spaces like factories, schools, restaurants, et cetera to disinfect said areas.

The UVC light, which doesn’t agree with human beings all that much, is capable of eliminating 90% of coronavirus particles on surfaces and it eliminates particles in the air. In addition, these robots are able to map out an area and move around to disinfect the entire area. These researchers tested this at the Greater Boston Food Bank, and it was able to cover the entire 4,000 square foot warehouse in half an hour.

This is certainly better than risking human lives on disinfecting places, but it’s likely far too expensive a solution for the majority of organisations. However, for large-scale institutions this may be a fantastic way of ensuring their locations are virus-free.