November 2020 Tech News

Netflix goes old-school:

Netflix has decided to try out a new thing, and it should be a good ole bit of fun, because it has decided to create a channel on its browser-based website (for now) that will stream pre-selected movies and series like a regular old channel that you might find on a cable or satellite TV service. So it’s going back to the way things used to be, but without the ad breaks.

Now, this service is entirely opt-in, and it’s so far only been unveiled in France under the name Netflix Direct. This is apparently because French viewers tend to like watching things they haven’t selected themselves? It’s odd reasoning but if it works, it works. Now, this will not be for everyone, obviously, but for those who don’t want to have to choose, it’s probably a great way to have a curated channel with things of a certain quality that can be streamed to those who want it.

This would be a nice addition to Netflix for those who don’t know what to watch. It certainly would help with all those times where you make food and then sit around looking for something to watch and then the food gets cold but because you still can’t find something to watch and so it just gets colder and colder… although that may not be a problem for everyone.

 

Bridgefy launches some great messaging for protests and disasters:

There’s an ongoing issue in the world, and it has to do with communication when communication is difficult or impossible. When a disaster strikes and all those usual things fall away, all those usual means of connecting via cell towers disappear, then you still need to be able to communicate. And that is what the messaging app Bridgefy has attempted to do.

The app is for offline messaging and uses an innovative blend of Bluetooth and wifi to maintain communication in disasters and in places where internet has been blocked or just shut off. You know, like in autocratic states or for people attempting to protest. This app has proved useful in recent years with things such as outages in Turkey and Greece during earthquakes, troubles in Nigeria and even in the Hong Kong protests. And the app just got a much-needed update.

The update adds something that is quite important when trying to communicate without having to worry about things like government surveillance, and that’s end-to-end encryption. The app has already proven successful and will likely continue along that route so long as it presents users with a safer, harder to crack service for communicating when communication is either difficult or repressed.

 

Social media companies went into overdrive during the election:

The United States election went by this month and Joe Biden came out ahead, but during the election itself the social media platforms went into absolute overdrive as they dealt with all the misinformation that was being thrown around by the Trump administration and by Trump supporters. Every social media platform had to tangle with the misinformation that was being thrown in every direction.

TikTok flagged and took down misinformation, YouTube was pulling videos all over the place, Facebook and Instagram sent out notifications to warn people about misinformation floating around, Facebook pulled things too, and once the election was technically over, Twitter announced that Trump would be losing his Twitter privileges come January and would be treated like every other user. So false info from him will just be pulled down.

And that was the election. A lot of whining online, a lot of conservative fake news and news outlets finally having enough of it all. All in all, it was rather fun to watch. From the outside at least.

 

Twitter will now warn you if you’re gonna like something wrong:

As we’ve already seen, social media companies decided to take the election seriously and did a whole load of misinformation banning. They blocked things and did all sorts, but Twitter has decided to extend some of that into the post-election times. They already decided to put up notifications when you try to retweet something with “misleading information”. You can still retweet it but it will notify you that it’s a lie, and now they’re gonna be doing the same thing with likes.

The function will stop you before you like something, and will tell you that it is not a truthful tweet. The hope is that this will dissuade people from engaging in blatant lies if they know that these things are lies. Sadly, many people are conspiratorial and believe that Twitter is out to get them, so this likely won’t work, but it’s a nice gesture. Not as nice as just blocking false information, but ya know. Baby steps.

 

Apple announced things at its “One More Thing” event:

Apple decided to have one of its big ole events again, and they did many of their usual things: announced a new MacBook Air, a new MacBook Pro and a new iOS update that has been named the Big Sur (which then came on 12 November). So all the usual kinds of things, but the company also unveiled some new chips that will come to the Mac and also the new app functionality that will have apps coming to Mac. So the usual stuff, really.

 

Furries do great furry things:

Furries come out into the general news every now and then to do something fun, and this time they did something very entertaining. Now, first off, to understand this, it’s important to understand the context. Right before the news outlets in the States announced that Joe Biden had won the presidency, Trump held a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, and no one knows whether this was a mistake and they were supposed to book a Four Seasons hotel. Either way, it’s funny.

So that’s just a funny mistake that was potentially made, but a furry named coopertom decided to recreate the location in VR Chat and then invited a bunch of furry friends over. So it became a digital playground for my favourite internet sub-culture, and that’s just something wonderful that’s always worth a good ole mention.

 

YouTube had an outage:

YouTube generally manages to remain rather stable throughout its existence, and that is kind of a necessity considering its ubiquity, but on 12 November 2020 it had a big ole issue and went down around the world. The service was unavailable for several hours and the outage affected 286,000 people. Google got the service back up and running quickly enough, but it has been rather quiet about what caused the outage. Even the biggest online services can be subject to errors though. So, who knows what could have happened there.

 

Snapchat does TikTok:

Seeing as TikTok was repeatedly threatened by forces in the United States, various companies decided to try and come in and steal TikTok’s market share, and this was all announced a while back but now it’s come into actual being. You see, Snapchat has decided to release its special little feature called Spotlight, and it’s essentially TikTok but on Snapchat. So it’s just one of many rip-offs that’s likely to come in the following months, much like how Twitter decided to try its hand at doing Instagram Stories. Everyone just copying from everyone. The way capitalism was always meant to be. Never innovating, just chasing the latest trend and trying to one-up the people who did it first and better. Oh well. Fun times.

 

 

 

 

 

October 2020 Tech News

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!

 

 

 

 

September 2020 Tech News

Twitter and Zoom faced some algorithmic bias:

Various technologies allow people to have their faces on screen in some way and this can cause some issues with the algorithms that give priority to certain faces in images or videos. This is intended for various conveniences such as focusing on faces to remove blur and tagging. But those things have also caused some issues.

For Zoom, that issue led to a Twitter user sharing an image from a Zoom call with a colleague, and the colleague’s head was removed from the video service. It would appear that the man’s head was removed because he’s black and the service believed a light behind him was a face instead. So it just removed him entirely. This shows a bit of a bias in how the algorithm prioritises certain people over others.

Another issue came from Twitter, in which various users tested out which photo would gain priority when Twitter’s algorithm was forced to choose between multiple faces as its display image. It started out with testing whether the algorithm would prioritise Mitch McConnel or Barack Obama, one of which is white and the other is black, and the algorithm chose to prioritise the white man.

These algorithms are designed by human beings and so while algorithms themselves cannot be racist, because they’re just machines, the prejudice of those who design them can sneak in. This may not even be conscious on the part of the designers, but it’s something to keep an eye on, and it’s something that these companies have stated that they need to keep an eye on.

 

Nvidia unveiled its new GPUs:

Nvidia went and showed off its new RTX 3090 GPU, an absolute beast that easily overshoots all the prior GPUs Nvidia has put out there. It does come at a nice cost of $1,499 and so it isn’t for just anyone looking to play some games. But of course it will be a far superior GPU, with improved cooling, real-time ray tracing improvements and it brings in some 8k gaming.

The GPU is an absolute beast, and for those looking for the full list of specs check out this Rock, Paper, Shotgun piece on it. It breaks the whole thing down nicely. The future of gaming comes with every year’s new innovations, but this thing looks like a gigantic leap forward. It should be interesting to see what comes next.

 

The Epic versus Apple saga continues:

The big kerfuffle between Epic and Apple has continued. This past month, Epic decided that it wanted Fortnite back on the App Store during these legal proceedings, but Apple was always unlikely to allow that to happen because it needs to appear strong against Epic. In addition, Apple claimed that this whole thing has just been a way to reinvigorate interest in Fortnite. The tech giant hasn’t been too happy about being challenged.

So because of this, Apple has decided to seek damages over this contract breach, and it claimed that Epic just wants more money and even decided to officially state that: “Epic portrays itself as a modern corporate Robin Hood” despite being a massive, multi-billion dollar company. And Apple has started with some retribution because of this: it decided to remove the convenience of the “sign in with Apple” feature in Fortnite (although it hasn’t implemented this yet, but has suggested that it could at any moment) and it even pulled Fortnite: Save the World from the Mac.

In the meantime, Google, which also has beef with Epic, has officially distanced itself from this whole Apple v. Epic thing. It wants people to see its court case with Epic as something completely separate from Apple’s one.

 

Streaming services commit to self-regulation:

No company likes to invite regulation into its industry, and the online video streaming industry is no different. You see, in India, these companies are facing the threat of government-mandated regulation. This will entail a whole bunch of legal action and such, and so instead of going through a rigamarole like that, the various streaming giants have instead decided to sign a code created by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, and this code allows them to self-regulate instead.

Various companies, like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and others, have committed to this self-regulation. This self-regulation seems like some pretty obvious stuff though. Things like adhering to age ratings, having internal departments for dealing with any issues and having a complaints department. At least none of the companies attempted any strong opposition to voluntary self-regulation. So that’s nice.

 

Researchers took the first 3,200-megapixel photo:

Researchers at Stanford have created a massive digital camera that will be installed at Stanford’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) (which is in Chile) and it will be used to study things like dark energy, dark matter and such.

According to them, this camera would be able to take a picture so large that it would take 378 ultra-high-definition TV screens to display it at full size. And that the resolution is so high that “you could see a golf ball from about 15 miles away”. So it’s a pretty gnarly photo. And the first photo was taken as a test run before it gets into the real nitty gritty of its work.

This should be a fantastic technological marvel for continuing to study things that are so very small that our disgusting human eyeballs are not able to see. Exciting times and exciting sights are ahead of us.

 

ByteDance is going to partner with Oracle and Walmart:

The TikTok debacle continues ever on. It all started with ByteDance, the owners of TikTok, coming out swinging by stating that it would not be selling TikTok but would instead partner up with Oracle. That would allow Oracle to handle the U.S user data and would allow TikTok to keep operating under ByteDance without having to give up its algorithm. Then Walmart expressed its interest in having a piece of the pie.

Ultimately, this resulted in Oracle taking 12.5%, Walmart taking 7.5% and the rest going to a ByteDance subsidiary called TiKTok Global (but seeing as 40% of ByteDance is owned by U.S. investors, this equals out to TikTok being majority owned by U.S. companies and individuals).

In the meantime though, this led to Trump trying to block TikTok from being downloaded, but ByteDance contested this and it got dropped. The saga continues!

 

Nvidia is buying Arm:

Nvidia, the PC hardware heavyweight, has confirmed that it will be buying up Arm, a chip design company, to add to its ever-expanding business. This new acquisition has not yet been finalised but the heads of Nvidia, Arm and SoftBank (the company that currently owns Arm) have agreed on the outline.

This represents Nvidia’s desire to push further into the UK as an engineering location, and so Nvidia will continue to grow. In the meantime, SoftBank will make a lot of money; up to $40 billion. And this is needed for the company after it suffering several large-scale losses over the last few years. This is unlikely to affect the end-user in any meaningful way though, but at least the capitalist machine keeps on a ticking.

 

China banned a kid’s programming language:

Scratch is a visual programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab and it’s used by about 60 million kids. It’s just there to teach you how to do some basic programming and to get you interested in it. But despite having about 3 million Chinese users, the Chinese government has decided to ban the programming language and has blocked the website from Chinese users.

The software, which is mostly used to make games, animations, stories and other cute little things, was (also) used to make some things that were critical of the Chinese government and so it had to go! Anything that criticises them is a no-no. But other educational programming languages will likely crop up in the country to take Scratch’s place.

 

Airbus has concepts for hydrogen-powered planes:

Airbus has decided that it needs to do some innovation, especially during a time when a deadly virus has wracked the planet and has left air travel something of a hazardous business to be in. So Airbus decided to set a 2035 deadline for new carbon-free commercial airlines. The company has put out three visual concepts for these zero emission jets thus far.

The concepts involve special hydrogen burning engines instead of the usual jet fuel ones, and some wing alterations. These jets should function the same as other jets but without all those nasty emissions. There are many issues around this though, such as the fact that hydrogen extraction is still rather expensive (although Airbus sees this as a minor hindrance as hydrogen will have to become cheaper as demand goes up) and storing hydrogen also presents a dilemma, but these are problems that will just have to be sorted out.

 

Scientists have made something that eats plastic:

A study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Sciences, and in it, the scientists discovered further evidence about a bacteria called Ideonella sakaiensis that produces specific enzymes that are able to break down PET, the most common form of plastic. This means that these enzymes, if synthesised, could allow us to get rid of a huge proportion of the plastic waste in the world. A substance that is notorious for being difficult to get rid of. So well done to them!

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.

July 2020 Tech News

Twitter got hacked big time:

Twitter got hacked by an unknown group on 15 July 2020. The hackers, whoever they are, went hard on the social media platform and managed to get a hold of the accounts of various high-profile Twitter users, like Apple, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and many more. These accounts were then used to spam a common cryptocurrency scheme out to millions of people.

The attack started when various accounts started tweeting out a scheme that involved sending money to a Bitcoin wallet and then the money would be doubled (but of course, in actuality, the money would just be stolen). It was tweeted out with some variation of the message “I’m going to give back to the community”, so people probably trusted that billionaires would be giving money away for nothing. That is, after all, a very common occurrence. Billionaires are definitely known for their immense generosity!

The initial webpage the scammers were using got pulled down by Namesilo (the domain registrar the webpage was connected to), but the Bitcoin wallet then jumped around, and that made it harder to track them down and disable them. To try and curb the spread, Twitter shut down tweeting functionality for verified users to stop potential hacks from continuing (non-verified users tend to have less reach after all).

Twitter did acknowledge the hack relatively early and started to work on figuring out what to do (and that included that shut down of verified accounts). One of the things that made the hackers difficult to find was that they had somehow gotten access to these verified accounts and changed the email accounts associated with them and thereby made it harder for the users to get into them. It also made it hard for Twitter to find them.

In the aftermath, Twitter’s stock price fell a good bit. And, at time of writing, Twitter’s still trying to find those responsible, but has been unwilling to give all the info it may have. However, the hack may have originated on gray market forums and the FBI has even opened up an investigation. The hackers had a lot of access, including to some non-verified accounts and to direct messages, a lot of direct messages. This was a major hack.

UPDATE: A couple teenagers got arrested for the hack.

 Facebook shut down its scrapbook app:

According to TechCrunch, Facebook has decided that its immensely popular app Hobbi has to be shit down. It’s probably a massive blow to so many people. Not really though because this app, which is pretty much like Pinterest in that it’s for sharing your hobbies and personal projects and all that jazz, shut down on 10 July after only having been launched back in February.

The app itself functioned like a scrapbook, and so didn’t have the same pinboard style layout as Pinterest (but was catering to the same kind of audience). Sadly, it was rather empty and had been downloaded less than 10k times. So that’s not so great for a new app. Just another digital experiment down the drain.

BMW wants to get into the subscription game:

BMW, at a digital showcase from Munich, announced some fun things for its drivers. It has announced that it will now have a subscription service for all those extra features you might want in your car. This is for all new BMWs and all the older ones that can be updated to Operating System 7. So that’s nice for people with those cars.

The subscription service in general, which has been a mainstay across the internet for several years, has never much been a thing insofar as cars are concerned (well unless you count paying off your car via loan repayments as a “subscription”), but BMW is happy to change that. This subscription service will, according to them, add flexibility to the driving experience and it’ll be great for people who bought a BMW second hand.

This subscription service allows the car manufacturer to just make all cars the same, with the same hardware, which minimises production costs, and then you just have to pay a persistent rate to get access to certain features. Features like heated seats, “infotainment”, map services, advanced driver assistance systems, et cetera. All those kinds of things. So, if you didn’t get to have those things when you bought the car you can have them after the fact with a nice subscription that never goes away. Happy driving!

An AR mirror in South Korea helps with makeup in the corona era:

The cosmetics franchise Amorepacific has unveiled a new addition to its stores in Seoul: a special mirror that can help you out during the coronavirus era. This mirror is for makeup, and while makeup isn’t something that usually shows up when discussions of technology abound, this particular mirror uses augmented reality technology to help you choose makeup so you don’t need to touch any of the products with your hands.

The AR mirror gives you options for various types of makeup and then creates an image of your face with that particular shade on. It allows you to see what the makeup will look like where it counts rather than forcing you to put test makeup on your face or swatching it on your hand. You don’t have to be exposed to people’s disgusting germs and can instead just see it on your face.

This is still new tech, and the technology is likely too advanced and expensive for many shops to stock it, but this is the way that makeup should go. The makeup testers they provide in shops are vectors for all sorts of things seeing as multiple people are touching them and touching their face and touching the product again and then touching another product. Very unhygienic. So, kudos to them for doing it because more places should do it.

 

Boeing is ending production of the 747:

The Boeing 747 jumbo jet is probably the most famous passenger plane in the world, and Boeing has been building them since 1970. So, it’s been around for quite some time, but it would appear that even though it’s been around for fifty years, the times are a changing. Boeing has, reportedly, decided to stop production of the 747 in the next two years.

Boeing itself has stated that there are still remaining orders that it needs to fill out, but smaller, more fuel-efficient jets are becoming more prevalent. These gigantic airbuses aren’t too great in a post-pandemic era anyway. Smaller jets that can get around more cheaply make a lot more sense. So, it’s the end of an era, but airlines will keep going as per usual, they just may be shifting to smaller planes in the next few years.

A dating app introduced a blurred video option:

Dating apps don’t show up all that often for innovative ideas and concepts. But this is different. Because the dating app S’More (which means “some more”, apparently) has been doing rather well during this whole pandemic thing even though people probably shouldn’t be hooking up at the moment, and this company has decided to launch a rather interesting feature that someone really should have thought of before.

This feature allows you to have a blurred video call with someone. A call with a new person is blurred for the first two minutes so that creepy guys (because let’s face it, it’ll be creepy guys) might otherwise attempt to abuse a video call system. So, you have to actually talk to a person without being able to properly see them at first. This obviously emphasises trying to get to know the person rather than the superficiality of what they look like.

It’s an interesting gimmick and one that more services in general should give you the option for, because sometimes you don’t want people to see your unblurred face but you also don’t want to just do an audio call (because a phone call is terrible; they’ve never been good). More options in these cases is always a good thing. Awesome to see it implemented and now it should just be implemented elsewhere (and even Tinder has started with video calls, but not blurred ones).

Air-conditioned shirts now exist:

The greatest invention of all time has finally come. Sony has created a wearable air-conditioner that can keep you cool when it’s hot out. This is the greatest thing in the world for people who overheat far too quickly. The device is called the Sony Reon Pocket, and it comes with a special t-shirt that allows it to hook into the top of the shirt by the back of the neck and it pumps the hot air out through a vent at the back. It’s also controlled with an app, because of course it is.

The mini air-con can cool your body during those hot months, but it can also be used for the inverse if need be. It can heat you up if you’re cold, but sadly it does have an internal battery that isn’t a perfect machine. It lasts a good 2-4 hours though, and that’s generally enough to get you through a hot or cold spat until you’re able to get somewhere with a more agreeable temperature.

The greatest invention of all time is upon us and we should bow to its might!

KFC is going for lab-grown meat:

KFC has decided to partner up with 3D Bioprinting Solutions and Beyond Meat to create standard meat substitutes as it looks towards the future of food (which may not be able to sustain the continued use of meat production as it stands today). These two companies are looking at it from very different angles.

Beyond Meat launched its brand of Beyond Fried Chicken on 20 July 2020 in fifty stores throughout the southern California region. These substitutes are made from plant matter and therefore have no meat in them whatsoever. This is the same company that’s done the Beyond Burger. So, expect something along those lines. KFC wants to try and match the taste as best as possible.

Then you have 3D Bioprinting Solutions, and it will be launching its KFC meat in Moscow as a test run. This company grows the meat from meat cells so that it can massively reduce the need for pastoral animal grazing. Just a few cells and you can make meat without having to murder millions of chickens. KFC is invested in both of these options and the next few months should tell us whether either of these options will be viable for KFC in the long-term.

A new app may help track your mental health:

A new app called PROSIT, designed by researchers at Dalhousie University, has been designed to help track and measure a variety of things in your life to detect signs of mental health issues like anxiety or depression. With this kind of information, it hopes to help with identifying and diagnosing mental health issues in those who need help.

The app, which is part of a research study with about 300 people (about half of which are patients already), tracks things like exercise, sleep, how often you call, your message history, music tastes, typing speed, and it even has you send in an audio clip to record things from your week. All of this is meant to help identify mental health issues, but there are two problems with this right out the gate.

The first, and probably most pressing problem, has already been addressed by the researchers. And that problem has to do with privacy concerns. Tracking all of this can be incredibly invasive. However, to use the app you have to sign a consent form and all the information has to be stored safely. Thanks to the explicit purpose of the app, and the researchers behind it, data theft a bit less likely though.

The other problem is simply the usual problems that come along with any of these algorithm-based systems that claim to be able to identify something about people. What might be seen as a sign of anxiety in some may not be a sign of anxiety in others. Different people are wired differently, and different people respond differently to different things. So trying to boil all that down to something like this could lead to massive generalisation of certain mental health issues, but considering the fact that it’s being used by university researchers it’s quite possible that all this information will be used in conjunction with humans who are able to better understand subtlety in the human psyche.

This could be the beginning of machine learning being used more extensively in the mental health department, and there’s a lot of room for it to be an immensely useful thing seeing as machines can track things we just can’t. So hopefully this is the start of something good.

Apple announces security research device program:

Apple has decided that it will be giving out some very special iPhones to a few select people. These iPhones are hacker friendly and allow you to access pretty much everything on the device. So you can bypass everything that’s on it, all the security features, but it’s not available for commercial use (obviously). So tinkerers shouldn’t get excited about it. Instead, these devices will be sent to people who specifically work in security research.

The devices are used solely for security research and remain the property of Apple. So, this is essentially for the purpose of improving Apple’s security (and getting other people to do it for them). Anyone who finds a vulnerability will be recognised for their accomplishment (provided they report the vulnerability). So, if you’re interested in cyber security and you fulfil the various conditions, you too can get a special phone that’s used for security research and nothing else. Fun!

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.

May 2020 Tech News

Zoom introduced new end-to-end encryption:

In a blogpost, Zoom announced that it has a new company’s tech under its own belt. This company is Keystone, an end-to-end encryption company that allows for great security in video conferencing seeing as loads of people are now forced to do that if they want a job. This new Keystone system works by creating temporary network keys for individual meetings that are entirely controlled by the host of the meeting.

This means that the host gets to choose who receives invitation keys and therefore stops people from snooping around inside someone else’s call because everyone in the call must be listed in a participant list. Zoom added Keystone because it’s believed that the encryption will allow current streaming quality while upgrading the security behind the system itself. Always good to get some more security especially when everyone’s forced to have their webcams on almost constantly.

CRISPR-based COVID-19 test approved by FDA:

Sherlock Biosciences, a biological engineering company, stated via its blog that it has successfully managed to get FDA approval on a new form of coronavirus testing that will detect the genetic signature of COVID-19 and produce a trace signal that can be picked up. The thing about this particular test that makes it so interesting is that it’s the first time the FDA has approved the gene editing technology of CRISPR.

For those unfamiliar with gene editing or CRISPR, John Oliver did a great video on the topic (and you here’s the link to that), but if you’re familiar then you’d know that this is still considered pretty cutting edge technology that is often approached cautiously. However, “in these uncertain times” the process for testing stuff like this has become significantly more streamlined.

This new test is called Sherlock, and that’s a really, really stretched acronym for Specific High-Intensity Enzymatic Reporter Unlocking. This technology will help with faster testing and the company is even attempting to create a handheld version that works like a pregnancy test. So a new age of gene editing may be approaching, and for those who aren’t afraid of playing god a bit it’s a rather fascinating time to be alive.

WHO is designing a coronavirus app for nations that aren’t making their own:

In an interview with Bernardo Mariano, the chief information officer for the World Health Organisation (WHO), it was announced that the WHO is producing its own coronavirus tracking app for use by countries that are not willing or able to create their own app.

This app will be open-source and any nation can modify it for its own specifications, but at its core it allows users to put in their symptoms, keep track of their status and then it dishes out advice. It will also personalise according to your individual data. The purpose being that it will aid in contact tracing, the way in which coronavirus is tracked, and so help these countries to formulate responses to the pandemic.

All of these tracing apps come with baggage because of the inherent issue with giving away your personal information, but this is an extraordinary circumstance and so the desire for it is likely at an all-time high. Once the virus has passed though, such apps should be immediately removed and rendered inactive.

Steam introduces Play Next:

In a brief blogpost on Steam, Valve have stated that a new feature has been added to the Steam Library. This new feature uses an AI-assisted algorithm to recommend the next game for you to play. However, it isn’t an ordinary recommendation system. This system doesn’t detect games you may like and recommend them for purchase, it instead recommends games you already own but haven’t played.

The idea is that some people have large Steam libraries that they never get around to playing, and this new algorithm watches what you play and then detects games in your library that have either hardly been played or haven’t been played at all. It then brings them up as a possible next thing to play. You can obviously ignore these things if you want to, but for those wracked with indecision over what to play, at least you get a little bit of a nudge in a potentially worthwhile direction.

Sony’s new cameras use machine learning:

Sony has some new cameras that are soon gonna be on the market. These new cameras have the delightful names IMX500 and IMX501, and the thing that makes them tick is that they are outfitted with rudimentary AI software that helps them do a bit of simple machine learning. That means we’re going to have cameras that can do at least a little bit of their own thinking.

The idea is the camera is able to perform machine learning tasks without the need for external software, which is something that, for instance, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has some new regulations on. The camera will be able to do things like detecting if a stray animal entered your backyard (and therefore not triggering the alarm) or it could help in shops with stocktaking or detecting whether people are wearing a mask. It also does all this in real-time and so it’s a great way to keep track of everything.

This new tech will be available in high-end products from the end of the year and throughout 2021. However, it likely won’t be available for residential usage just yet as tech like this is typically expensive for some time before it reaches ordinary consumers. But one day you too can have machine learning in your personal security systems to monitor your backyards!

Tesla has some new, cheaper batteries in the works:

In a report from Reuters, it appears that Tesla has some new batteries in the works. These batteries are intended to bring the price of electric vehicles down to the price of gasoline vehicles and thereby increase the affordability and availability of such vehicles for people who aren’t incredibly rich. These batteries are also supposed to be reusable in the electric power grid.

By doing this, Tesla is further entering into the electricity production industry and is aiming to become a major competitor in this space. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, has been teasing this for some time but there hasn’t been any follow-through until now. However, regardless of their plans to produce reusable batteries that can last a million miles, this technology is probably still a long way from global adoption.

The new batteries will be tested in China and then likely migrate to European and American markets, but it’ll be some time before they come to developing nations (like my own), and so the electric car revolution is likely a relatively long way off for the rest of the world, but at least the rich countries get to have better toys in the meantime.

NASA lays out the Artemis Accords:

The desire to return to space has been increasing over the last few years, and now that space exploration is becoming a bigger and bigger deal, NASA has released the Artemis Accords to lay out a few guidelines for future space exploration. This new Artemis program plans to land a woman and man on the moon by 2024 and seeing as NASA is leading this new program it has a few things it wants its international partners to keep in mind.

A quick overview of the things the accords request: all international space exploration must be for peaceful purposes, it must be transparent, everything must be nice and open for everyone to cooperate, nations must help out when emergency assistance is needed, all “space objects” must be registered, all scientific data must be freely accessible, heritage sites must be protected, there must be avoidance of conflict and trash must be properly disposed of!

These things are mostly pretty obvious but seeing as there’s always been conflict between various nations over space exploration, maybe it’s necessary for this to be a thing that needs to be explicitly stated. Then no one can claim to be ignorant of the facts once they get into a fight. But hopefully we aren’t going to have any star wars just yet.

Twitter is testing some new reply features:

According to Twitter’s blog section, the social media network has rolled out a new feature aimed squarely at replies. This new feature is still in the test phases, so it isn’t necessarily going to stick around, but if it’s a success then it will. The feature is quite simple. Whenever you tweet something you can choose to allow any replies (meaning from any person who reads it), only replies from people you follow (and so therefore your “friends”) or only replies from those specifically tagged in the tweet itself.

The immediate reasoning is probably obvious: to keep trolls from replying. However, it does feel like Twitter’s implementing a feature to finally allow people to have private conversations that… other people can see. It’s a bit strange, but is likely useful for people/organisations that are often attacked by hate groups and for announcements that you don’t want any replies to. Regardless of which one you choose, users can still retweet or like the tweets regardless of their relationship to the sender.

More options are generally a good thing and so this is probably a good, or at least neutral, thing. If you don’t want replies then you don’t want replies. It’s that simple, but there will probably be at least some backlash to this because it is, you know, Twitter.

A new iPhone hack can jailbreak every iPhone:

Via a report from TechCrunch, a group of hackers who go by the name unc0ver have uncovered an exploit for the iPhone that allows one to jailbreak any iPhone from iOS 11 to iOS 13.5 (which is the latest release). Jailbreaking software for iPhones has been around for as long as Apple decided to gate its little software away from the world the way it does, but as soon as an exploit like this is discovered Apple is hot on the tail of attempting to stop it from happening. It’ll probably keep happening though, but cracking the system so shortly after it was updated is probably a bit worrying to Apple.

Twitter clamps down on misinformation:

Twitter is full of misinformation, but at the moment there’s a need for someone to step in and stop some of that spread of misinformation, but seeing as one of the biggest contributors to said misinformation is the current President of the United States, Twitter has always been in a bit of a tight spot. However, the company has started throwing fact-checking labels onto Trump’s false claims. The first of which was about voting fraud.

The company claims it is working within its own misinformation parameters by putting the warning label there, but the label angered the president (obviously). This may be a step in the right direction though, provided the company doesn’t back down, because stopping the spread of misinformation is ultimately an important thing, especially at the moment.