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Patent-Infringement Lawsuit
 

Topline
Chinese firm Shanghai Zhizhen, which was recently awarded a local patent for a voice assistant similar to Apple’s Siri, has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against the iPhone maker that, if successful, could prevent Apple from selling its smartphones and other products in China, its second most important market.


Key Facts
* Shanghai Zhizhen has alleged that Apple’s devices violated its patent for a virtual assistant that is similar to Siri, and the company is suing Apple for around 10 billion yuan in damages (around $1.4 billion), the Wall Street Journal reported.

* As part of the suit, Shanghai Zhizhen has asked Apple to stop the sales, production, and use of products that allegedly violate its patent.

* Apple integrates Siri in nearly all its devices including its Mac computers, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, Apple TV and its smart speaker the Homepod.

* China is Apple’s biggest foreign market in terms of sales, although it has faced significant competition from homegrown brands in the country including Huawei, which has surpassed Apple to become the world’s biggest seller of smartphones.

* The potential legal action against Apple comes at a time when a trade war between the U.S. and China has heated up significantly, drawing in tech majors from both countries.

* The Journal’s report notes that if a preliminary injunction is filed, a local court could decide to ban Apple from selling products featuring Siri—nearly all its major products—in China for the duration of the trial.


Key Background
Unlike other American tech giants—like Google, Facebook and Amazon—Apple has a major presence in China. This has been primarily due to the Cupertino-based company’s willingness to comply with China’s restrictive internet laws, something that has led to criticism of the company in the U.S. Last month, Attorney General William Barr alleged, without citing evidence, that Apple was selling phones in China with security backdoors that could be accessed by local authorities. In the past few months, the escalating trade tensions between China and the U.S. have led to the Trump administration targeting Chinese tech firms with sanctions against products made by the likes of Huawei and ZTE. Trump, last week, threatened to ban the Chinese social media platform TikTok in the U.S.


Tangent
In 2016, Apple lost an intellectual property suit in China, when a Beijing court ruled in favor of a Chinese company that made handbags and smartphone cases under the label “IPHONE.” Prior to that, in 2012, Apple agreed to pay $60 million to settle a trademark dispute with the Chinese unit of another company, which claimed ownership of the “iPad” name in China.



Source: forbes.com
Website: https://bit.ly/3i5lY10
Date: August 03, 2020

Google and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski
 

One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent trade-secret cases in recent years came to a close Tuesday, as former Google and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Levandowski, who worked on autonomous-vehicle technology at Google’s Waymo, agreed to a deal in March, pleading guilty to taking thousands of files from his former employer when he left in 2016 to start the self-driving truck company Otto, which months later was bought by Uber Technologies Inc., where he became the head of its self-driving unit.

That spurred a bitter legal battle between Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, -0.63% GOOG, -0.64% Google and Uber UBER, +4.77% that was finally settled in 2018.

Levandowski was a pioneer in robotic vehicles, and was accused of stealing top-secret technology from Waymo including lidar, a key sensor for self-driving vehicles. Uber denied it knew about or benefited from the stolen documents, and eventually fired him.

Levandowski had sought a sentence consisting of home confinement, a fine and community service, but U.S District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said Tuesday that home confinement would give “a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets. Prison time is the answer to that.” Prosecutors had sought 27 months in prison.

His prison sentence will be delayed until after the COVID-19 pandemic.

He was also fined $95,000, and must pay $757,000 in restitution to Google. Levandowski was also ordered in March to pay Google $179 million over a contract dispute. He filed for bankruptcy soon after that ruling.

“The last three and a half years have forced me to come to terms with what I did,” Levandowski said in a statement Tuesday. “I want to take this time to apologize to my colleagues at Google for betraying their trust, and to my entire family for the price they have paid and will continue to pay for my actions.”

TechCrunch reported Tuesday that the saga may not yet be entirely over, as Levandowski has recently filed a lawsuit against Uber claiming he’s owed around $4 billion that Uber never paid him as part of the Otto acquisition.



Source: marketwatch.com
Website: https://on.mktw.net/2EL6wbW
Date: August 04, 2020

Clorox won't have enough disinfecting wipes until 2021, its CEO says...
 

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Grocery shelves won't be fully stocked with Clorox's disinfecting wipes until next year, CEO Benno Dorer told Reuters, as the world's biggest cleaning products maker struggles with overwhelming pandemic-led demand for its top product.

Since the start of global lockdowns, makers of hygiene goods have seen a sustained boom in sales. While California-based Clorox typically holds aside excess supply for flu seasons, it says it has been unable to keep up with a six-fold increase in demand for many of its disinfectants.

The company is currently understocked across much of its portfolio, which includes Glad trash bags and Burt's Bees lip balm. Supply for most products, like liquid bleach, will improve dramatically over the next four to six months - but not wipes, Dorer said on Monday.

Clorox products are used in Uber vehicles and United Airlines planes, and are sold by major retailers like Walmart, Amazon and Kroger.

"Disinfecting wipes, which are the hottest commodity in the business right now, will probably take longer because it's a very complex supply chain to make them," Dorer said.

Many companies in the industry make wipes with polyester spunlace, a material currently in short supply as it is also used to make personal protective equipment like masks, medical gowns and medical wipes.

"That entire supply chain is stressed. ... We feel like it's probably going to take until 2021 before we're able to meet all the demand that we have," Dorer said.

Dorer had said in May that Clorox expected to see shelves stocked with wipes by this summer.

Since then, Clorox has made "major" capital investments so it can ramp up output each quarter, including simplifying its disinfectant product line-up at factories that run 24/7 every day of the year. Clorox began outsourcing some manufacturing this year to 10 third-party supplies, and plans to keep looking for more.

On Monday, Clorox reported fourth-quarter sales and earnings that widely topped analysts' expectations, driven by a 33% increase in revenue from its health and wellness business, which makes cleaning products and accounts for more than 40% of total sales.

Clorox shares were up 2.5% on Tuesday.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/clorox-wo...110214518.html

Apple Buys Canadian 🇨🇦 Mobile Startup Mobeewave For $100M
 

Apple Inc. AAPL has purchased contactless mobile payment startup Mobeewave Inc. for $100 milllion, according to a Bloomberg report late Friday.

What Happened

The Tim Cook-led company is reportedly retaining Mobeewave’s team, which will continue to operate out of its home base in Montreal, Canada.

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” a spokesperson for the Cupertino-based company said in a statement — a message it typically reiterates when it intends to confirm an acquistion.

The smartphone maker already has an Apple Pay service on its iPhones since 2014 and could potentially use Mobeewave’s technology to enable those devices to accept payments without involving additional hardware, Bloomberg noted.

The Montreal-based startup’s technology enables smartphones and credit cards to make payments using a second smartphone with near field communications (NFC) without any extra hardware.

Why It Matters

Jack Dorsey-led Square Inc SQ 0.01% competes in the mobile payments space but its payment system uses hardware.

Last year, Mobeewave allowed Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s OTC:SSNLF phones to use the technology. The Korean technology titan is also an investor in the payments company, which has raised $20 million so far, Pitchbook data revealed.

Apple acquired the hyperlocal weather app Dark Sky in March and the virtual reality startup NextVR in May.

Last week, Cook along with CEOs of Facebook Inc FB Amazon.com, Inc AMZN and Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG appeared before the House Antitrust committee. The questions in that hearing broached on the matter of antitrust concerns related to the technology giant's acquisitions.

Price Action

Apple shares traded 0.56% higher at $427.40 in pre-market session Monday.



Source: benzinga.com
Website: https://bit.ly/3fx32GT
Date: August 03, 2020

Tech Giants Testified Before Congress Virtually
 

The leaders of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google took a brutal political lashing Wednesday as Democrats and Republicans confronted the executives for wielding their market power to crush competitors and amass data, customers and sky-high profits.

The rare interrogation played out over the course of a nearly six-hour hearing, with lawmakers on the House’s top antitrust subcommittee coming armed with millions of documents, hundreds of hours of interviews and in some cases the once-private messages of Silicon Valley’s elite chiefs. They said it showed some in the tech sector had become too big and powerful, threatening rivals, consumers and, in some cases, even democracy itself.

“Our founders would not bow before a king. Nor should we bow before the emperors of the online economy,” said Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.).

Cicilline, the chairman of the antitrust panel, opened a congressional investigation of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google last year, aiming to explore whether the tech industry’s most influential quartet of companies had attained their status through potentially anti-competitive means. In response, the four chief executives — Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai — took the witness stand to fiercely defend their businesses Wednesday as rags-to-riches success stories, made possible only through American ingenuity and the sustained support of their ever-growing customer bases.

But lawmakers repeatedly presented a different vision at their hearing, one in which Silicon Valley’s myriad advancements in commerce, consumer electronics, communication and a vast array of online services had come at an immense cost to the people who use those tools and the companies that seek to compete against the tech giants.

In exchanges likely to have lasting resonance, Democrats repeatedly confronted Facebook’s Zuckerberg with his own past emails. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the top lawmaker on the House Judiciary Committee, brought up a 2012 message in which Zuckerberg apparently said he sought to acquire Instagram, which at the time was a rival photo-sharing app, out of fear that it could “meaningfully hurt us.” Later, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) pointed to other Facebook communications that described the company’s acquisition strategy generally as “a land grab.”

“Mergers and acquisitions that buy off potential competitive threats violate the antitrust laws,” Nadler charged. “In your own words, you purchased Instagram to neutralize a competitive threat.”

“We compete hard. We compete fairly. We try to be the best,” Zuckerberg said earlier in the hearing.

Amazon, meanwhile, faced withering scrutiny over allegations it may have misled the committee. The e-commerce giant previously told lawmakers it does not tap data from third-party sellers to boost sales of its own products. But Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) brought up public reports that indicated to the contrary, prompting Bezos — delivering his first-ever testimony to Congress — to offer a striking admission of potential fault.

“What I can tell you is we have a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business,” he said. “But I can’t guarantee you that policy has never been violated.”

For all four executives, the afternoon offered an abundance of additional uncomfortable clashes, laying bare the broad, bipartisan frustrations with the way Silicon Valley puts users’ privacy at risk, polices content online and hurts competitors, including small businesses that have told lawmakers they cannot hope to compete with these tech giants. On several occasions, lawmakers cut off or talked over the tech executives when they offered vague or long answers, seeking to hold them to account for the evidence investigators had gathered from their probe.

PopSockets, Tile and other companies will ask Congress to help stop Big Tech bullying

Republicans, meanwhile, largely used their time during the hearing to attack some tech companies for engaging in perceived political censorship against conservatives, a charge that the industry vehemently denies.

“We all think the free market is great. We think competition is great. We love the fact that these are American companies,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “But what’s not great is censoring people, censoring conservators and trying to impact elections. And if it doesn’t end, there has to be consequences.”




To read the full article click the link below.



Source: washingtonpost.com
Website: https://wapo.st/2DFWgRC
Date: July 29, 2020

Disney Loses Nearly $5 Billion Amid Pandemic...
 

Walt Disney Co. posted its first quarterly loss since 2001, as the coronavirus pandemic slammed its theme parks and film productions.



Aug 5th

https://www.wsj.com/video/disney-los...now_video_pos2

Disney will be an interesting one to watch, while theme parks and live action films are certainly being hurt right now the difference that Disney has over other film production companies and tourist oriented properties is diversification. Animated film work can continue and with their large archive of films only recently being curated in one place for streaming in my opinion this company will weather this time better than many others who share some of the same spaces.

......:goodpost:.....

Alaska Airlines...
 

Alaska Airlines filed notice Monday with Washington state of almost 1,600 permanent layoffs starting on Oct. 1, the day after the government’s Payroll Support Program (PSP) ends.

Companywide, 4,200 employees received WARN notices or were laid off, the company said.

The local layoffs represent about 20% of the airline’s employees in Washington state, and includes customer service agents, flight attendants and maintenance technicians, Alaska said. Most of those affected are from the airline’s 6,000 flight attendants.

The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) union told its members in an online post that it has received 60-day layoff notices for approximately 2,089 of the most junior flight attendants company-wide, affecting all the airline’s bases in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Anchorage, Los Angeles and San Diego.

However, the union said the actual number of layoffs come October may be lower. The total of more than 2,000 is “inclusive of a significant buffer” above the expected number of actual layoffs in order to make sure the company complies with the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

Alaska management in a statement said it “will continue to refine our staffing modeling over the next several weeks and expect figures to be final closer to October 1.”

Alaska avoided layoffs among its pilots when it offered incentives including half pay to take voluntary leave. More than 1,000 of Alaska’s 3,000 pilots took the incentives.

The flight attendants were offered a voluntary-leave option that included health care but was unpaid.

In late July, Alaska announced a loss of $214 million in the last three months and an outflow of $4 million in cash per day due to the huge drop in air travel during the coronavirus pandemic.

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...f-fall-layoff/

Facebook launches its new TikTok clone, Instagram Reels..
 

Facebook’s Instagram is officially launching its answer to the hit short video app TikTok — Instagram Reels.

The new Instagram feature will let users record and edit 15-second videos with audio, and will let users add visual effects. Users will be able to share Reels with followers in Instagram in a dedicated section called Reels in Explore, or in the Story feature where posts disappear after 24 hours. The Reels option will be available in the Instagram app. The company has been testing Reels in Brazil since November and in France, Germany and India since earlier this summer. Facebook earlier launched a TikTok knockoff called Lasso in 2018, but closed that down in July. It also tried services similar to Snapchat called Slingshot and Poke before Instagram Stories caught on. But those were separate apps — it might have more success with a feature built into Instagram.

Facebook has a long tradition of cloning competitive services. The Instagram “Story” feature, which lets people share photos and videos that expire in 24 hours, is similar to Snapchat. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced tough questioning about the company’s habit of copying rivals before a congressional hearing on July 29.

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...stagram-reels/

Microsoft Has 45 days to Land TikTok Deal
 

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he does not mind if Microsoft Corp. buys the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok, but any purchase by an American company would have to be done by a Sept. 15 deadline.

The Republican president, who last week threatened to ban TikTok over national security concerns, said he had a great conversation with Microsoft's chief executive and that it might be easier if the company buys all of TikTok rather than 30 per cent.

Trump's comments confirmed a Reuters report Sunday that he had agreed to give China's ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of TikTok to Microsoft.

Trump also said the U.S. Treasury would need to get a lot of money out of a TikTok deal, but it's not clear how that would happen.

Microsoft said Sunday that CEO Satya Nadella had spoken to Trump and "is prepared to continue discussions to explore a purchase of TikTok in the United States."

U.S. President Donald Trump originally wanted to ban TikTok from the United States, claiming it was a threat to national security. He is now reportedly giving Microsoft 45 days to buy the app from its Chinese owner, ByteDance.

Reuters reported last week that some investors are valuing TikTok at about $50 billion US, citing people familiar with the matter.

"I did say that if you buy it, whatever the price is that goes to whoever owns it, because I guess it's China essentially — I 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," Trump said.

Trump later defended his push for a cut, adding "which nobody else would be thinking about but me, but that's the way I think."

Nicholas Klein, a lawyer at DLA Piper, said generally "the government doesn't have the authority to take a cut of a private deal through" the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is the interagency committee that reviews some foreign investments in the United States. It was not clear how the U.S. government would receive part of the purchase price.

'This is about privacy'

Many prominent Republicans, including House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, issued statements in support of a Microsoft acquisition of TikTok's U.S. operations. Some congressional aides are worried about a backlash by younger voters against the party if Trump banned TikTok, which has 100 million American users.

Microsoft and TikTok parent ByteDance gave the U.S. government a notice of intent to explore a preliminary proposal for Microsoft to purchase the TikTok service in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

• What would a U.S. ban on Chinese-owned app TikTok mean?
  
  
• Microsoft vows to continue efforts to buy TikTok from ByteDance

U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also backed the sale, while a senior White House adviser raised concerns about a sale to Microsoft.

"A U.S. company should buy TikTok so everyone can keep using it and your data is safe," Schumer said on Twitter, adding: "This is about privacy. With TikTok in China, it's subject to Chinese Communist Party laws that may require handing over data to their government."

President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. government should get a 'substantial portion' of the sales price of the U.S. operations of TikTok, but it's not clear how that would happen. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro suggested on Monday that Microsoft could divest its holdings in China if it were to buy TikTok.

"So the question is, is Microsoft going to be compromised?" Navarro said in an interview with CNN. "Maybe Microsoft could divest its Chinese holdings?"

Navarro said the Chinese government and military use Microsoft software "to do all the things they do."

Other acquisitions possible: analyst

U.S. officials have said TikTok poses a national security risk because of the personal data it handles.

TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said in a blog post last week that the company was committed to following U.S. laws and was allowing experts to observe its moderation policies and examine the code that drives its algorithms.

• TikTok teens, K-pop fans appear to have punked Trump's Tulsa comeback rally
  
  
• TikTok under scrutiny in Australia over security, data concerns

Daniel Elman, analyst at Nucleus Research, said a sale "could foreshadow a growing wave of U.S. company acquisition of Chinese internet properties, particularly if the geopolitical tensions continue to mount."

Elman said that could impact Tencent's WeChat.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referenced WeChat on Sunday and said Trump "will take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party."



Source: cbc.ca
Website: https://bit.ly/2PwrJZf
Date: Aug 3, 2020

EU Launches Antitrust Probe Into Google’s Planned Acquisition Of Fitbit
 

TOPLINE
The European Union has launched a full-scale antitrust investigation into Google’s $2.1 billion deal to acquire wearables maker Fitbit, expressing concerns that it would further consolidate Google’s dominance in the online advertising space by giving the search engine giant access to personal data collected from Fitbit’s health tracking devices.


KEY FACTS
* The European Commission said in a press release that it will investigate how data collected from Fitbit’s fitness trackers will increase Google’s “data advantage” in the personalization of online ads in a manner that would disadvantage its rivals.

* The regulator will also investigate the deal’s effect on the digital healthcare sector in the region, specifically examining if Google could make it harder for other wearables makers to integrate their products with Android-based mobile phones.

* The officials have set an initial December 9 deadline to approve or veto the deal.Responding to news of the probe Google said in a blog post that the “deal is about devices, not data,” adding that there is “vibrant competition” in the smartwatches and fitness tracker space.

* The U.S. tech giant has said that it won’t use health data from Fitbit devices for Google ads and will allow Fitbit users the choice to review, move or delete their personal data.

* Regulators around the world, including the FTC, have increasingly begun scrutinizing acquisitions of smaller competitors by big tech companies.


CRUCIAL QUOTE
“The use of wearable devices by European consumers is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. This will go hand in hand with an exponential growth of data generated through these devices. This data provides key insights about the life and the health situation of the users of these devices,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s antitrust commissioner said in the press release. “Our investigation aims to ensure that control by Google over data collected through wearable devices as a result of the transaction does not distort competition.”


KEY BACKGROUND
Since the announcement of Google’s plan to acquire Fitbit in November 2019, following which the deal has been facing scrutiny from various government agencies including the U.S. Justice Department and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In June, the Australian regulator had raised concerns that the deal would allow Google to further cement its position and raising barriers to entry for potential rivals. Apart from probing the acquisition, the U.S. Justice Department is also investigating charges that Google is engaging in anti-competitive behavior.


FURTHER READING
Google’s $2.1 Billion Fitbit Deal Faces Troubles in Europe, Australia (Wall Street Journal)

Justice Department Will Reportedly Review Google’s $2.1 Billion Fitbit Acquisition (Forbes)



Source: forbes.com
Website: https://bit.ly/2Dk8Vu2
Date: Aug 4, 2020

Moderna Just Signed a Big Cloud Deal with Amazon Web Services
 

$29 billion biotech company Moderna just signed a big cloud deal with Amazon Web Services, even as the race for a COVID-19 vaccine accelerates

* Biotech company Moderna on Wednesday announced that it has chosen Amazon Web Services as its preferred cloud partner.

* The company is seen as a leader in COVID-19 vaccine research, entering its third phase of clinical trials late July.

$29 billion biotech company Moderna announced a new partnership with Amazon Web Services on Wednesday that will see the cloud giant become its "preferred" cloud provider. The deal will also see Moderna tap AWS as its standard platform for doing analytics and machine learning.

Moderna is one of the leading companies in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine, and last week dosed 30,000 people with the first vaccine candidate to reach phase 3 of testing in the United States.

The process of developing a new vaccine requires years of disease research and lab testing before it can be administered to humans. Moderna already uses AWS to run everyday accounting and inventory mangement as well as to power its production facility, robotics tools and engineering systems, "which enables the company to achieve greater efficiency and visibility across its operations," according to a press release.

"With AWS, our researchers have the ability to quickly design and execute research experiments and rapidly uncover new insights to get potentially life-saving treatments into production faster," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in that press release.

Biotech giants like Moderna are increasingly modernizing their IT infrastructures in the hunt for new drugs and treatments, including by use of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the biotechnology sector in general has become a sought-after market for AWS and its leading rival Microsoft Azure both, with the latter recently inking a big cloud and AI deal with drugmaker Novartis.

Results from the vaccine test could be made public as early as October, according to biotech analyst Michael Yee.



Source: businessinsider.com
Website: https://bit.ly/3gBrkAJ
Date: Aug 5, 2020

Jeff Bezos Sells One Million Amazon Shares Worth $3.1 Billion
 

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sold $3.1 billion worth of Amazon shares in the first few days of August, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. After taxes, the billionaire will take home an estimated $2.4 billion.

His last large Amazon sell-off occurred in February, when he sold $1.7 billion worth of Amazon stock.

Forbes estimates his net worth at $188.2 billion. He remains the richest person in the world.

It is unclear why Bezos is selling these shares. In 2017, the Amazon founder stated at a space conference he would be selling $1 billion worth of shares every year to fund Blue Origin, his space exploration company.

Since then, he’s made other commitments. He made a $2 billion pledge in September 2018 for the Bezos Day One Fund, which supports nonprofits focused on providing relief for homeless families as well as building a national network of Montessori-inspired preschools. Since the announcement, Bezos has given away nearly $200 million to homeless-focused nonprofits. He also made a $10 billion pledge in February to the Bezos Earth Fund, dedicated to climate change; no updates have been given since its founding.

A spokesperson for Amazon did not respond to requests for comment regarding the sales.

This latest sell-off comes less than a week after Bezos testified before Congress, via Zoom, as part of an antitrust investigation. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai also testified.



Source: forbes.com
Website: https://bit.ly/2Xw8rrh
Date: Aug 5, 2020

6G
 

'We're going to take the best of the best around the world from emerging technologies,' said Adam Boehler, CEO of U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and a leader in the White House push to break U.S. reliance on Chinese supply chains. 'Those are startups etc. It's not a Huawei game. It's a next generation game.'



In the ongoing technological battle with China, described by some as a new Cold War, the Trump White House is aiming to leapfrog over China through 6G and other tech innovations beyond Chinese telecom giant Huawei's 5G.

Adam Boehler, CEO of U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, told Just the News in a video interview that the United States has no intention of sitting passively by despite Huawei's sophistication in the 5G realm of cellular networking. Such networking capabilities are seen as enabling revolutions in cutting-edge technology fronts like artificial intelligence, satellites, 3D printing, and the broader networking of Internet-enabled devices.

"We're more interested in what the next wave is," said Boehler, a leader in the administration's push to break U.S. reliance on Chinese supply chains. "We're interested in 6G, and [that is] where we're investing, because that's where both the United States and other countries will dominate and where China is not going to rule through subsidies."

The Commerce Department in May issued new rules to prevent Huawei and its suppliers from using American technology and software. Last month, citing human rights abuses, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. will impose visa restrictions on Chinese technology firms, including Huawei.

In a press conference, Pompeo described Huawei as "an arm of the Chinese Communist Party's surveillance state that censors political dissidents and enables mass internment camps in Xinjiang and the indentured servitude of its population shipped all over China."

Boehler addressed the subsidies Huawei receives from the Chinese government and potential negative implications.

"I think the issue you have with 5G is Huawei subsidizes mainly," Boehler said. "And one of the things that we're looking at is why are we looking at 5G from a hardware perspective, think of any technology. It starts out hardware, and it moves virtual to software. Huawei and 5G. That's the old line technology. So if countries want to spend billions and billions of dollars on old line technology while putting their national security at risk? That's a question I would ask myself, and I would consider very seriously whether I'm going to invest in that."

Boehler said he thinks the United States was positioned to act more nimbly than China in the tech race because of its ability to easily tap into a global network of emerging technologies.

"We're going to look at any emerging technology, and I'm not just looking at us, we're looking abroad at any emerging technology," Boehler said "It's another advantage we have over China. We are not tied to one country. We're not tied to one country's technology. We're going to take the best of the best around the world from emerging technologies. Those are startups, etc. It's not a Huawei game. It's a next generation game."



Source: justthenews.com
Website: https://bit.ly/2CjmIR0
Date: August 9, 2020

Hydrogen-Powered Vehicles
 

Hydrogen-powered vehicles could soon be more common on the streets of Australia’s biggest city after Hyundai Motor Co. reached a supply deal for the zero-emissions fuel with local producers.



Hyundai Australia has signed a memorandum of understanding with Jemena Ltd. and Coregas to produce and supply hydrogen generated from solar and wind power to the South Korean company’s Sydney hub from early 2021.

“A lack of critical refueling infrastructure is regularly cited as a hand-brake to hydrogen vehicle sales,” Frank Tudor, Jemena’s Managing Director, said in a statement. The agreement “is an opportunity to demonstrate that renewably-generated hydrogen gas can be made directly available to the vehicle and transport sectors,” he said.

Fuel cell electric vehicles combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, which runs the motor. A fully-charged FCEV can travel around 650 kilometers (404 miles), giving them a bigger range than pure electric vehicles, which generally only stretch to 150 kilometers.

The global hydrogen vehicle industry was estimated to be worth around $650 million in 2018 and is expected to grow rapidly in the years ahead, according to Jemena, jointly owned by State Grid of China and Singapore Power. Hyundai’s Macquarie Park showroom in Sydney is currently the only hydrogen refueling site in Australia. Another is under construction in Canberra, with more planned for Melbourne and Brisbane.

The Australian government is also seeking to build a hydrogen export industry over the next decade by harnessing the country’s natural advantages of using renewable power to manufacture the fuel.



Source: bloomberg.com
Website: https://bloom.bg/31ASnWM
Date: August 9, 2020

Uber and Lyft Say They May Shut Down in California if Forced to Classify Drivers as Employees
 

Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. warned Wednesday of plans to potentially shut down their operations in California if they are forced to recognize drivers as employees in the state.

The two companies are appealing a judge’s ruling requiring drivers to be classified as employees instead of contractors. The judge gave Uber and Lyft 10 days to file an appeal before his order goes into effect.

Uber UBER CEO Dara Khosrowshahi warned Wednesday in an interview on MSNBC that the company’s ride-hailing service could shut down in California until November as a result. Khosrowshahi said that it would be “unfortunate,” but what the injunction granted Monday would require would be tough for Uber to pull off quickly.

“If the court doesn’t reconsider, then in California, it’s hard to believe we’ll be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly,” he said. “We can’t go out and hire tens of thousands of people directly overnight.”

After announcing earnings Wednesday afternoon, Lyft President John Zimmer said in a conference call that losing an appeal would “force us to suspend operations in California.”

Key to the appeal of this week’s ruling is whether the injunction granted by the judge is mandatory, as the company contends, or prohibitory. If it’s the former, an appeal would automatically trigger a stay; if it’s the latter, they can continue its appeal but would have to comply with the injunction order in the meantime.

Tom White, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, said in an interview Wednesday that “investors need to prepare for the likelihood that both companies are going to shut down in California.” California makes up 16% of Lyft’s ride-hailing business and 9% of Uber’s rides and delivery gross bookings.

Uber’s CEO pointed out that the company doesn’t think it’s likely that it will lose the appeal. If it did, he said Uber would have to go dark until November. That’s when California voters are set to consider Proposition 22, which would exempt Uber, Lyft Inc. LYFT, -0.42% and other gig-economy companies from Assembly Bill 5, a California law that would require them to classify their drivers and delivery workers as employees but promises them some concessions. AB 5, passed in May 2019, is based on a California Supreme Court ruling made more than two years ago that changed the standards for employee classification in the state.

The companies are challenging AB 5, which went into effect at the beginning this year, but it could be several months before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco takes up the appeal. Pending that, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the city attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego sought an immediate injunction to force Uber and Lyft to comply with AB 5, which San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman granted Monday.

When reached for comment Wednesday, an Uber spokesman said Khosrowshahi’s comments are in line with a motion for a stay the company filed in court Tuesday, in which it said that a shutdown “would irreparably harm Uber and all who rely on its Rides app to generate income for them and their families — particularly in the midst of a pandemic.”
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Mostafa Maklad, an Uber driver in San Francisco and a Gig Worker Rising leader, on Wednesday called Khosrowshahi’s words a threat “that won’t work.”

“It will be their loss because San Francisco and Los Angeles are their biggest markets,” he said in an interview. A possible shutdown “won’t be an easy transition for workers, but we will make it through together,” he added.

In an email Wednesday, Khosrowshahi urged drivers to vote for Prop. 22, which Erica Mighetto, an organizer with Rideshare Drivers United, said is “making an ask of drivers that will irreparably harm them.”

Uber said in its filing that “it would take millions of dollars and months of effort to restructure the Uber Rides business model,” and outlined the steps required, including transforming the Rides app from a platform that “drivers can choose to use or turn off at their leisure” to “a taxi-like employment system” and building an HR system to onboard employees and track drivers’ hours and wages.

Opinion: Uber and Lyft’s ‘day of reckoning’ is finally here

During the injunction hearing last week, Matthew Goldberg, deputy city attorney for the San Francisco City Attorney’s office, argued that Uber and Lyft already have large white-collar workforces and human resources departments.

“Defendants have dramatically overstated what would be required” to switch their drivers to employee status, he said. “These businesses already do many of the things that lawful employers do.”

Uber shares fell 1.2% Wednesday, while Lyft shares declined 0.4%. Lyft shares initially moved higher in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company reported smaller quarterly losses than expected, but turned to a decline during the conference call.

In a note to clients Monday after the judge’s decision, Deutsche Bank analysts said they did not think a possible short-term shutdown in California would be a big hit financially to Uber because demand continues to be low in the state during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, they said “it’s obviously not the company’s ideal outcome.”



Source: marketwatch.com
Website: https://on.mktw.net/322up75
Date: August 12, 2020

A Big Day for Elon and Tesla
 

* Tesla on Thursday became the ninth-highest-valued US-listed company after its share price exceeded $2,000, according to data from YCharts.com.

* The electric-vehicle manufacturer has seen its stock rocket more than 45% since it announced a 5-for-1 stock split on August 11.

* Tesla is now more valuable than Walmart, and its market cap is less than $20 billion away from overtaking Johnson & Johnson.

* Here are the eight remaining S&P 500 companies worth more than Tesla.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.


Tesla is now more valuable than the bottom 492 companies in the S&P 500 - without being a member of the S&P 500 index.

At its intraday peak of $2,021.99 on Thursday, Tesla sported a valuation of more than $378 billion, above Walmart's market capitalization of $368 billion, according to data from YCharts.com.

The electric-vehicle manufacturer has surged more than 45% since it announced on August 11 that it would implement a 5-for-1 stock split later in the month.

Year-to-date, Tesla has surged 378%. Investors continued to bid up the company after it recorded its fourth straight quarter of profitability last month and became eligible to be included in the S&P 500 index.

The relative valuation of Tesla to Walmart is astounding when considering the financial profiles of both companies. In its latest fiscal year, Walmart recorded $500 billion more in revenue than Tesla.

But in a world of near-zero interest rates, growth is scarce, and investors are willing to pay up for it. Case in point: Tesla featured a price-earnings multiple of 1030x as of Thursday.

Here are the eight remaining S&P 500 companies worth more than Tesla after it surpassed Walmart:

8. Johnson & Johnson
Ticker: JNJ
Market cap: $398 billion

7. Visa
Ticker: V
Market cap: $432 billion

6. Berkshire Hathaway
Ticker: BRK.A/BRK.B
Market cap: $492 billion

5. Facebook
Ticker: FB
Market cap: $762 billion

4. Alphabet
Ticker: GOOGL/GOOG
Market cap: $1.07 trillion

3. Microsoft
Ticker: MSFT
Market cap: $1.61 trillion

2. Amazon
Ticker: AMZN
Market cap: $1.65 trillion

1. Apple
Ticker: AAPL
Market cap: $2.03 trillion



Source: markets.businessinsider.com
Website: https://bit.ly/2YsEdGu
Date: August 21, 2020

Apple and "Fortnite" Maker Epic Games are in the Opening Stages of a Heated Legal Battle
 

* New documents show that the bitter legal battle between Apple and the developer behind "Fortnite" was set up hours before the fight went public, with an email that declared war.

* In a new legal filing, Apple revealed that Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney sent a 2 a.m. email on August 13 to Apple CEO Tim Cook and other execs.

* "I'm writing to tell you that Epic will no longer adhere to Apple's payment processing restrictions," Sweeney said. "We choose to follow this path in the firm belief that history and law are on our side."

* Hours after the email was sent, Epic updated the wildly popular game "Fortnite" on Apple and Android smartphones that allowed players to bypass the companies' digital payment systems.

* In response, Apple and Google pulled "Fortnite" from their digital storefronts and cited the update as a terms-of-service violation — which caused Epic to sue both companies.


Apple and "Fortnite" maker Epic Games are in the opening stages of a heated legal battle, which started with "Fortnite" being pulled from Apple's iPhone and iPad App Store last week.

In the latest legal filing, Apple revealed a email sent by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney at 2 a.m. PT on August 13, 2020, to Apple CEO Tim Cook and several other Apple executives. Sweeney in the email laid out Epic's plan to cut Apple out of payments in "Fortnite" on iPhone and iPad.

"I'm writing to tell you that Epic will no longer adhere to Apple's payment processing restrictions," Sweeney wrote. "Today, Epic is launching Epic direct payments in 'Fortnite' on iOS, offering customers the choice of paying in-app through Epic direct payments or through Apple payments, and passing on the savings of Epic direct payments to customers in the form of lower prices."

This was not Sweeney's first email to Apple executives about the App Store's treatment of "Fortnite." The court records show that on June 30 Sweeney requested Apple allow a "competing Epic Games Store app" to be available on the App Store so "consumers would have an opportunity to pay less for digital products and developers would earn more from their sales."

Apple declined, which then led to Epic's move to circumvent Apple's App Store a month and a half later. Sweeney said he knew this would violate the App Store's agreement with Epic Games, according to the letter, but proceeded regardless because of "the firm belief that history and law are on our side."

Following the update to "Fortnite" that included the ability to pay Epic directly, Apple removed the game from the store and nixed Epic's developer contract. Instead of buying in-game virtual money ("V-bucks") through Apple or Google, players could buy it directly from Epic — at a discount, no less.

Apple and Google said the update was a terms-of-service violation for any developer with an app on the App Store or Google Play.

Future updates to the game aren't allowed, and there is no way to download it unless you've previously downloaded it to your Apple account. When the game's next major content update arrives on August 27, "Fortnite" players on iPhone and iPad will be left behind.

After Epic filed a lawsuit against Apple last week, the company followed up by filing for a temporary restraining order against Apple to keep the company from "removing, de-listing, refusing to list or otherwise making unavailable the app 'Fortnite,' including any update thereof."

For its part, Apple says the issue is Epic's to fix.

"We very much want to keep the company as part of the Apple Developer Program and their apps on the Store," a representative told Business Insider earlier this week. "The problem Epic has created for itself is one that can easily be remedied if they submit an update of their app that reverts it to comply with the guidelines they agreed to and which apply to all developers."

Read the full email exchange dating back to June 30, 2020: On their website.



Source: businessinsider.com
Website: https://bit.ly/2FX8Z3T
Date: August 21, 2020

Neuralink: Elon Musk Unveils Pig With Chip in its Brain
 

"It's kind of like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires," the billionaire entrepreneur said on a webcast.

His start-up Neuralink applied to launch human trials last year.

The interface could allow people with neurological conditions to control phones or computers with their mind.

Mr Musk argues such chips could eventually be used to help cure conditions such as dementia, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries.

But the long-term ambition is to usher in an age of what Mr Musk calls "superhuman cognition", in part to combat artificial intelligence so powerful he says it could destroy the human race.

* Elon Musk reveals brain-hacking plans.

Gertrude was one of three pigs in pens that took part in Friday's webcast demo. She took a while to get going, but when she ate and sniffed straw, the activity showed up on a graph tracking her neural activity. She then mostly ignored all the attention around her.

The processor in her brain sends wireless signals, indicating neural activity in her snout when looking for food.

[Cannot Display Video: Meet Elon Musk, the man who inspired Robert Downey Jr's take on Iron Man.]

Mr Musk said the original Neuralink device, revealed just over a year ago, had been simplified and made smaller.

"It actually fits quite nicely in your skull. It could be under your hair and you wouldn't know."

Founded in 2017, Neuralink has worked hard to recruit scientists, something Mr Musk was still advertising for on Twitter last month and which he said was the purpose of Friday's demo.




The device the company is developing consists of a tiny probe containing more than 3,000 electrodes attached to flexible threads thinner than a human hair, which can monitor the activity of 1,000 brain neurons.

Ahead of the webcast, Ari Benjamin, at the University of Pennsylvania's Kording Lab, had told BBC News the real stumbling block for the technology could be the sheer complexity of the human brain.

"Once they have the recordings, Neuralink will need to decode them and will someday hit the barrier that is our lack of basic understanding of how the brain works, no matter how many neurons they record from.

"Decoding goals and movement plans is hard when you don't understand the neural code in which those things are communicated."

Mr Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla have captured the public imagination with his attempts to drive progress in spaceflight and electric vehicles respectively.

But both also demonstrate the entrepreneur's habit of making bold declarations about projects that end up taking much longer to complete than planned.



Source: bbc.com
Website: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53956683
Date: August 29, 2020

Japan's 'Flying Car'
 

Japan's SkyDrive Inc., among the myriads of "flying car" projects around the world, has carried out a successful though modest test flight with one person aboard.

In a video shown to reporters on Friday, a contraption that looked like a slick motorcycle with propellers lifted several feet (1-2 meters) off the ground, and hovered in a netted area for four minutes.

Tomohiro Fukuzawa, who heads the SkyDrive effort, said he hopes "the flying car" can be made into a real-life product by 2023, but he acknowledged that making it safe was critical.

"Of the world's more than 100 flying car projects, only a handful has succeeded with a person on board," he told The Associated Press.

"I hope many people will want to ride it and feel safe."

The machine so far can fly for just five to 10 minutes but if that can become 30 minutes, it will have more potential, including exports to places like China, Fukuzawa said.

Unlike airplanes and helicopters, eVTOL, or "electric vertical takeoff and landing," vehicles offer quick point-to-point personal travel, at least in principle.




They could do away with the hassle of airports and traffic jams and the cost of hiring pilots, they could fly automatically.

Battery sizes, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercializing them.

"Many things have to happen," said Sanjiv Singh, professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, who co-founded Near Earth Autonomy, near Pittsburgh, which is also working on an eVTOL aircraft.

"If they cost $10 million, no one is going to buy them. If they fly for 5 minutes, no one is going to buy them. If they fall out of the sky every so often, no one is going to buy them," Singh said in a telephone interview.




The SkyDrive project began humbly as a volunteer project called Cartivator in 2012, with funding by top Japanese companies including automaker Toyota Motor Corp., electronics company Panasonic Corp. and video-game developer Bandai Namco.

A demonstration flight three years ago went poorly. But it has improved and the project recently received another round of funding, of 3.9 billion yen ($37 million), including from the Development Bank of Japan.

The Japanese government is bullish on "the Jetsons" vision, with a "road map" for business services by 2023, and expanded commercial use by the 2030s, stressing its potential for connecting remote areas and providing lifelines in disasters.




Experts compare the buzz over flying cars to the days when the aviation industry got started with the Wright Brothers and the auto industry with the Ford Model T.

Lilium of Germany, Joby Aviation in California and Wisk, a joint venture between Boeing Co. and Kitty Hawk Corp., are also working on eVTOL projects.




Sebastian Thrun, chief executive of Kitty Hawk, said it took time for airplanes, cell phones and self-driving cars to win acceptance.

"But the time between technology and social adoption might be more compressed for eVTOL vehicles," he said.



Source: techxplore.com
Website: https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-...Rw4sNJI65ZPl8k
Date: August 28, 2020

FAA Clears Amazon's Fleet of Prime Air Drones For Liftoff
 

* The Federal Aviation Administration has issued Amazon permission to begin conducting delivery drone operations.

* Amazon's Prime Air drone project has been in the works since 2013.

* The online retail giant received permission to begin testing drone deliveries in June 2019.

* "Amazon Prime Air's concept uses autonomous UAS to safely and efficiently deliver packages to customers," a FAA spokesperson said in a statement sent to Business Insider.


The Federal Aviation Administration will allow Amazon's fleet of Prime Air delivery drones to take flight.

A FAA spokesperson told Business Insider that the administration issued Amazon Prime Air its certificate on August 29. The Part 135 air carrier certificate allows Amazon to use "unmanned aircraft systems," or UAS, in a commercial operation.

"Amazon Prime Air's concept uses autonomous UAS to safely and efficiently deliver packages to customers," the spokesperson said in a statement sent to Business Insider. "The FAA's role is to ensure that any UAS operation is performed safely. The FAA supports innovation that is beneficial to the public, especially during a health or weather-related crisis."

Amazon representatives did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

"This certification is an important step forward for Prime Air and indicates the FAA's confidence in Amazon's operating and safety procedures for an autonomous drone delivery service that will one day deliver packages to our customers around the world," Amazon Vice President and Prime Air Chief David Carbon told Bloomberg.

The certificate will allow Amazon to dive into operating a commercial drone delivery service, which has been in the works since 2013. The FAA gave Amazon permission to test its drones in the US in June 2019. FAA regulations hold that "Part 135 certification is the only path for small drones to carry the property of another for compensation beyond visual line of sight."

But Amazon is not the only player in the delivery drones game. In July, regional grocery chain Rouses Markets teamed up with last-mile delivery drone startup Deuce Drone for test flights in Alabama. The FAA has also issued Part 135 air carrier certificates to Alphabet's Wing Aviation and UPS' Flight Forward.



Source: businessinsider.com
Website: https://www.businessinsider.com/amaz...-ruling-2020-8
Date: August 31, 20202

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan Donate Millions to Promote Safe Voting
 

* Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $300 million towards infrastructure to carry out the 2020 presidential election.

* $250 million will go towards nonprofit The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) to fund staffing, training, and equipment in local jurisdictions.

* $50 million is going to nonprofit The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) to help secure voting.



Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan on Tuesday revealed they are donating $300 million to try to help people vote in the 2020 presidential election.

The news was unveiled by the groups benefiting from the donation, The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR).

The CTCL will receive the majority of the money ($250 million), which it says it will redistribute to local election jurisdictions to: "help ensure that they have the staffing, training, and equipment necessary so that this November every eligible voter can participate in a safe and timely way and that their vote is counted."

The CEIR will receive the remaining $50 million, which will be spent on helping local jurisdictions secure their voting data.

"Due to the unprecedented challenges COVID-19 will have on voting across the country, election officials are working around the clock to make sure that every voter has the ability to participate safely and have their vote counted," Zuckerberg and Chan said in a joint statement.

"Many counties and states are strapped financially and working to determine how to staff and fund operations that will allow for ballots to be cast and counted in a timely way. These donations will help to provide local and state officials across the country with the resources, training and infrastructure necessary to ensure that every voter who intends to cast a ballot is able to, and ultimately, to preserve the integrity of our elections," the couple added.

This donation is the latest display by Zuckerberg to indicate he cares about election integrity. Facebook launched a tool in August aimed at promoting accurate voting information, and according to an August 24 New York Times report Zuckerberg has met with Facebook deputies to discuss the possibility of implementing a "kill switch" to shut down political advertising after November 3 to head off any potential misinformation.

The company faced fierce criticism in May after Trump posted misinformation claiming mail-in votes would be fraudulent on Facebook and Twitter. Twitter added fact-checks to the post, whereas Facebook chose to leave it untouched. In July the company started adding labels to all posts about voting from officials and political candidates, including the president.

Harming election integrity has a sore point for Facebook ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal and revelations of Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election.



Source: businessinsider.com
Website: https://www.businessinsider.com/mark...lection-2020-9
Date: September 1, 2020

Facebook Threatens to Block Australians From Sharing News in Battle Over Landmark Media Law
 

Facebook will block Australians from sharing news if a landmark plan to make digital platforms pay for news content becomes law, the digital giant has warned.

The sharing of personal content between family and friends will not be affected and neither will the sharing of news by Facebook users outside of Australia, the social network said.

The mandatory news code has been backed by all the major media companies including News Corp Australia, Nine Entertainment and Guardian Australia, as a way to offset the damage caused by the loss of advertising revenue to Facebook and Google.

“Assuming this draft code becomes law, we will reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram,” the managing director of Facebook Australia & New Zealand Will Easton said in a blog post on Tuesday.

“This is not our first choice – it is our last. But it is the only way to protect against an outcome that defies logic and will hurt, not help, the long-term vibrancy of Australia’s news and media sector.”

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the government would continue with the legislation and did not respond to “coercion or heavy-handed threats”.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims said Facebook’s threat was ill-timed and misconceived.

“The draft media bargaining code aims to ensure Australian news businesses, including independent, community and regional media, can get a seat at the table for fair negotiations with Facebook and Google,” Sims said.

“Facebook already pays some media for news content. The code simply aims to bring fairness and transparency to Facebook and Google’s relationships with Australian news media businesses.

“We note that according to the University of Canberra’s 2020 Digital News Report, 39% of Australians use Facebook for general news, and 49% use Facebook for news about COVID-19.

“As the ACCC and the Government work to finalise the draft legislation, we hope all parties will engage in constructive discussions.”

Tuesday’s statement marked the company’s first comment since Google also took an aggressive approach to the looming legislation, although the search giant has stopped short of saying it would block search functions in Australia.

The director of the the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology, Peter Lewis, said Facebook is prepared to remove trusted journalism from its site but will allow disinformation and conspiracy theories to flourish.

“As a big advertising company, Facebook would do well to realise its success is only as strong as its network of users,” Lewis said.

“Bullying their elected representatives seems a strange way to build long-term trust.

The announcement blindsided Australian media following a long silence from Facebook in Australia. Facebook chose to brief American journalists ahead of the release of the news about the ban, while ignoring Australian media.

Sources said the targeting of the US media indicated Facebook’s main concern was that the mandatory code set an “international precedent”.

Nine Entertainment, publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, said Facebook’s “strange” response had demonstrated its use of its monopoly power “while failing to recognise the importance of reliable news content to balance the fake news that proliferates on their platform”.

“We are ready to engage and hope to come to a constructive outcome with Facebook which will work for both of us and importantly the Australian community,” a Nine spokeswoman said.

Facebook said the competition regulator “misunderstands the dynamics of the internet” and will damage the media companies it is trying to protect with the bargaining code which would see Google and Facebook sharing some of the revenue they get from advertising using news content.

“When crafting this new legislation, the commission overseeing the process ignored important facts, most critically the relationship between the news media and social media and which one benefits most from the other.”

Easton denied the ACCC’s claim that the digital giants make money from news, saying “the reverse is true” in the case of Facebook.

He said in the first five months of 2020 Facebook sent two billion clicks from Facebook’s News Feed back to Australian news websites “at no charge”, traffic that was worth an estimated $200m to Australian publishers.

In the incendiary post Facebook branded the scheme devised by the ACCC as one which allowed publishers to “charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits”. The statement had some support, including from billionaire tech mogul Mike Cannon-Brookes who said media would be the loser not Facebook.

In a separate post, the vice president of global news partnerships for Facebook, Campbell Brown, said the company’s commitment to journalism had not changed and listed the projects Facebook had launched globally.

“And we hope to once again count Australian news publishers among our partners in the future,” Brown said.

Brown said the company was “disappointed” by the outcome in Australia which did not produce regulation which helped the relationships between technology companies and news organisations but one which hindered it.

Facebook told users it was updating its terms of reference next month, apparently to include the ban on Australians sharing news. The new line in the terms is: “We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook”.

The minister for communications Paul Fletcher said Facebook’s statement was a reminder that the tech giants had a history of making heavy-handed threats and the government remained committed to the mandatory code.

The commercial TV lobby group accused Facebook of bullying.

“What we’re seeing today is a global monopoly that will say and do anything to avoid making a fair payment for news content, Free TV Australia chief executive Bridget Fair said: “Australian Facebook users are being held to ransom as a tactic to intimidate the Australian Government into backing down on this issue.”



Source: theguardian.com
Website: https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...ULnf_fBwTERfmI
Date: September 1, 2020

[QUOTE=PlatinumPearl;1274088][CENTER][B]Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $300 million to promote safe voting in the 2020 election

Be nice if they donated 2-3 Billion....they can afford it and it would indicate their sincerity and commitment.

Zuckerberg donating 300 Million at his level of income is equivalent to me donating $100 at mine.

Netflix
 

Netflix offering free catalogue of original content to non-subscribers worldwide.

The content includes Oscar-nominated 'The Two Popes' and 'BirdBox'.

Netflix is currently offering a free catalogue of its original content to non-subscribers worldwide in the hopes of attracting new users.

The content includes Stranger Things, Murder Mystery, Elite, Boss Baby: Back in Business, Birdbox, When They See Us, Love is Blind, The Two Popes, Our Planet and Grace and Frankie.

There is a catch, the streaming service is only offering the first episodes of the TV shows for free, after which you’ll be asked to sign-up for the service. You can watch the full-length of the movies, but there’s a 30-second skippable ad that will pop-up before it plays.

Further, the free previews are only accessible through web browsers and the Netflix Android app, and not the iOS app, unfortunately. It’s unknown why this is the case.

“Netflix is the premiere destination for all your entertainment needs. But don’t take our word for it–check out some of our favourite movies and TV shows, absolutely free,” the streaming giant notes on the catalogue page.

Netflix hasn’t stated how long this free catalogue will be available to non-subscribers, but notes that the selection may change from time to time.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Netflix has offered some of its original content for free, since it made To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before free for non-subscribers in Canada and U.S. ahead of the release of the sequel earlier this year.

However, this is the first time that Netflix has released an entire catalogue for users around the world to access without signing up. You can access it here.



Source: mobilesyrup.com
Website: https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/08/31/n...n-subscribers/
Date: August 31, 2020

Amazon Pitches New Palm Scanning Tech
 

TOPLINE New technology announced Tuesday by Amazon that allows the palm of a user’s hand to double as a credit card or company ID could find its way into use in office buildings and sports stadiums, according to the e-commerce giant, which said it chose the palm technology because it's "more private" than other biometric markers as consumers continue to have concerns over data privacy and big tech.

KEY FACTS
* The technology, called Amazon One, uses custom-built algorithms and hardware to create a person’s unique “palm signature,” allowing for everything from making credit card or loyalty card purchases to entering a location like a stadium, or badging into work securely, the company said in a blog post.

* Amazon, which is increasingly looking to evolve from e-commerce to bricks and mortar, will begin using the new technology in two of its Amazon Go stores in Seattle, where Amazon One will be added to the store’s entry gate.

* Now, consumers who shop at Amazon Go open a dedicated app and hold their phones near a gate that contains a scanner.

* To collect payment, those locations use what Amazon calls “just walk out” shopping which automatically charges items to a customer’s Amazon account.

* Amazon clearly is hoping to license the palm-reading technology to other users and said in the blog post that it is “in active discussions with several potential customers.”

CRUCIAL QUOTE
“We believe Amazon One has broad applicability beyond our retail stores, so we also plan to offer the service to third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings so that more people can benefit from this ease and convenience in more places,” said Dilip Kumar, vice president of physical retail and technology at Amazon.

KEY BACKGROUND
Retailers and financial transaction services have long eyed using biometric technology to speed contactless payment but have yet to get past consumer concerns about data privacy and a general unease with having facial images out in cyberspace waiting for a hack attack. In April 2019, Alibaba’s financial services arm, Ant Financial said it would spend $448 million to promote its point-of-sale payment device “Dragonfly” that would allow Alipay users to pay using only their faces, according to Technode. Update reported last week that facial recognition payments have not yet become popular in China due to problems with cumbersome enrollment and concerns about the security and privacy of the data and images involved. A 2019 survey by Wharton found that nearly half of Americans are concerned about the privacy risks associated with biometric authentication, according to ID Agent, which tracks cybersecurity issues. Amazon said its new technology is protected by multiple security controls. Palm images are not stored on the Amazon One device but are encrypted and sent to a “highly secure area we custom-built in the cloud where we create your palm signature.” The company said it chose palm recognition in part because it is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.

FURTHER READING
Introducing Amazon One—a new innovation to make everyday activities effortless.



Source: forbes.com
Website: https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenro...r#71290dd222a7
Date: September 29, 2020

Amazon Says 19,816 Workers Got Covid-19 This Year
 

TOPLINE After previously refusing to release coronavirus data on its workforce, Amazon for the first time Thursday disclosed how many employees have been infected with the virus: 19,816, or 1.44% of its workforce.

KEY FACTS
* The number comes from an analysis of 1.37 million Amazon and Whole Foods frontline workers in the U.S. employed at any time from March 1 to September 19, Amazon said.

* Amazon released state-by-state data, which shows employees in Florida and New Mexico had the highest number of cases per 1000 people.

* Based on the infection rate for the general U.S. population, Amazon said it expected 33,952 cases among warehouse workers and Whole Foods employees, which is 42% less than the actual number of cases.

* Amazon has been under pressure to release workforce infection rates for months, with workers resorting to tracking the number of positive cases themselves with crowdsourced databases.

* Amazon hopes to conduct 50,000 coronavirus tests per day across 650 sites starting in November, something it can do because it hired its own lab team with the goal of testing most frontline employees every two weeks.

KEY BACKGROUND
Early in the pandemic, Amazon became a target of labor groups, Democratic lawmakers and internal protests over its coronavirus procedures. Warehouse workers complained about lax enforcement of social distancing guidelines, not enough paid sick leave and called on Amazon to shut down and clean facilities with known infections. Amazon said at the time it is providing masks and temperature checks to employees, as well as staggered shifts and cleanings every 90 minutes. “All in, we've introduced or changed over 150 processes to ensure the health and safety of our teams,” Amazon said.

WHAT’S NEXT
Amazon noted it would be “more powerful if there were similar data from other major employers to compare it to,” urging other companies to follow by releasing their own infection rates.



Website: forbes.com
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachels...r#14423a092e84
Date: October 1, 2020

Finally!!
 

Imagine your doctor diagnosed you with pyelonephritis. Sounds scary and you might tune out some of the explanation where you’re told it’s a kidney infection. Wouldn’t it be great to have an automatic transcript of the conversation, so you could go back and read it later? Enter Pittsburgh-based startup Abridge. The company has combined a consumer app with artificial intelligence to securely transcribe any medical conversation that a patient chooses to record. Abridge, which announced its official launch and $15 million in funding on Tuesday, already has 50,000 users, mainly garnered through word-of-mouth.

“Technology has this potential to help so many more people than I could ever see in my weekly clinic,” says Abridge cofounder and CEO Dr. Shiv Rao, 41, a cardiologist who still occasionally sees patients.

The problem the company aims to solve is this: nearly two-thirds of patients surveyed by Abridge forgot more than 40 percent of the conversations they’ve had with their doctors, including key details, like what to do next to stay healthy. The app highlights key information from those conversations to help them. “It's helping them understand the details of their health from the high-level care plan down to the details of diagnoses, procedures, or medications that are discussed,” says Rao. Patients can also share the transcripts with caregivers or family members or other clinicians.

It’s the focus on the consumer—and using technology to bridge the gap between patients and clinicians—that attracted lead investor Union Square Ventures. “Most healthcare entrepreneurs attempt to solve things from the healthcare side,” says Andy Weissman, managing partner at Union Square Ventures. But Rao and his cofounder and CTO Sandeep Konam, 25, took the opposite approach. They focused on building what Weissman calls a “buttery user experience” for the consumer, which was key to other technology investments made by the firm, including Twitter, SoundCloud and Kickstarter. “It was rare for us to see people talking about that in healthcare,” says Weissman. Bessemer Venture Partners and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center also participated in the $10 million Series A round. The company previously raised $5 million in a seed round, which included Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer under President Obama, and investor Esther Dyson.




In the era of “Dr. Google,” where patients often turn to the internet to get answers to pressing medical questions, Abridge has defined over 400,000 medical terms in easy to understand language, pulling from resources like the Mayo Clinic and the National Library of Medicine. Konam and his team spent two years developing algorithms that could understand medical jargon, surface key terms and detect next steps. The technology skips over discussions of topics like the weather and only focuses on the medically relevant parts of the conversation. “Our thesis has always been that we should focus on the conversation between a patient and the doctor,” says Konam. “Because that conversation is upstream of all the diagnostics, therapeutics, labs and other services.”

What Abridge has built is more complicated than the technology that underpins voice-controlled systems like Alexa or Siri, since those devices have corrections through voice commands. The company’s algorithms had to be able to recognize complicated names of prescriptions, such as atorvastatin for cholesterol or lisinopril for hypertension, on the first try. Abridge has also partnered with the drug pricing company GoodRx (which went public in September) to include information about available coupons next to the name of prescriptions. Privacy and security of protected health information was paramount to the platform design, says Konam. Another big challenge was being able to interpret varying degrees of microphone quality and people talking over each other.

Abridge was founded in 2018, but the cofounders met a couple years earlier, when Konam was pursuing a master's in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where Rao was a cardiologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The company’s ties to both institutions still run deep. The algorithms were developed using a de-identified and consented research dataset from UPMC, which is also an investor, and Abridge continues to work with machine learning professors at Carnegie Mellon. The company has 15 full-time employees and plans to use the funding to expand on the engineering and product side to continue developing new features.

“The most important part of the health journey often happens between visits,” says Rao. That is the next step for Abridge, using nudges to get patients to take the next steps—fill their prescriptions, schedule a follow-up visit, get their imaging done. While the main users are patients, the main customers Abridge hopes to attract are health systems and health insurers, who are willing to pay for the use of a platform that could help improve the long-term outcomes for their patients. “Our ambition here isn't to automate humans away,” says Rao. “That's not where we're coming from. We're coming up with an angle of using cutting edge technology, like machine learning to augment humans and the relationships between them.”



Source: forbes.com
Website: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katieje...r#5c1aa1d53d90
Date: October 6, 2020

Billionaire wealth increased to $10.2 trillion through the end of July, setting a new record amid the coronavirus pandemic even as millions of unemployed people fall into poverty.

The number of billionaires also rose from 2,158 in 2017 to 2,189 this summer, according to the report.

While the UBS analysis looked at billionaires around the world, a separate analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness found that billionaire wealth in the United States has grown by $792 billion, or 27%, since the beginning of coronavirus lockdowns in March. The combined wealth of American billionaires now tops $3.7 trillion.

The study pointed to President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which helped billionaires keep more of their earnings. The UBS study noted that Trump's desired capital gains tax cut, billed as a pandemic-related stimulus, would overwhelmingly favor the richest Americans.

"For billionaires, this is a heads-we win, tails-you-lose economy, boosted by Trump policies to funnel wealth to the top," Chuck Collins, the head of the Institute for Policy Studies' Program on Inequality, said in a news release.

The study pointed to President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which helped billionaires keep more of their earnings. The UBS study noted that Trump's desired capital gains tax cut, billed as a pandemic-related stimulus, would overwhelmingly favor the richest Americans.

"For billionaires, this is a heads-we win, tails-you-lose economy, boosted by Trump policies to funnel wealth to the top," Chuck Collins, the head of the Institute for Policy Studies' Program on Inequality, said in a news release.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/billionaires-rich/

Tesla’s Tequila
 

Elon Musk has branched out from rockets and cars into booze — as Tesla has launched Tesla Tequila on its website today. If you have $250 burning a hole in your pocket, you can pick up your very own lightning-shaped bottle.




The original branding was Teslaquila, but that must have been jettisoned somewhere along the way. (Well, the idea did start as an April Fools’ Day joke.) Orders are limited to two bottles, and only people in some states can receive them because of “industry regulations.”




According to the marketing copy, the booze is “an exclusive, small-batch premium 100% de agave tequila añejo.” An añejo is typically aged from one to three years in oak; this one was aged for 15 months.

Tequila, like Champagne, is subject to strict denomination-of-origin rules; tequila must be manufactured in one of five Mexican states. It must also be made from blue agave, among other rules. (Mezcal, a similar drink, can be made from several varieties of agave.) According to the website, the product was produced by Nosotros Tequila, a California-based brand. On Nosotros Tequila’s website, it says its agave is sourced in Jalisco, one of the permitted states.

In 2018, Musk ran into some trouble with the Tequila Regulatory Council in Mexico (CRT), after he’d tweeted a “visual approximation” of a bottle. The problem had to do with a patent application that didn’t fit with the tequila denomination-of-origin rules. At the time, Reuters reported the CRT said that if Tesla wanted to produce a tequila, “it would have to associate itself with an authorized tequila producer, comply with certain standards and request authorization from Mexico’s Industrial Property Institute.”




Merch is normal for car companies — though it could be argued that alcohol is in poor taste. But Tesla won’t be liable if consumers drink and drive; besides, alcohol companies are probably more excited than anybody about self-driving cars. Tesla isn’t yet at full automation, though it did recently release a feature called “Full Self-Driving” in beta, catching regulators’ attention.



Source: theverge.com
Website: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1...exists-website
Date: November 5, 2020

Amazon Palm Payment
 

In its latest push to collect data on consumer purchases, Amazon is expanding a new palm recognition payment technology into three more Seattle-area stores, the company announced Tuesday.

Civil-liberties advocates, though, are concerned the company is storing immutable biometric information on its customers, which they say poses risks to consumer privacy.

The technology, called Amazon One, was piloted in two cashierless Amazon Go stores in South Lake Union earlier this fall. Customers who have linked their handprint to a credit card pay by waving their hand over a sleek palm scanner. Customers can also link their handprint to their Amazon account, though that’s not required.

The company will roll out Amazon One devices at the Amazon Go Grocery in Redmond on Wednesday, followed by the Amazon Books in University Village and the Amazon 4-Star store in Southcenter in coming weeks, said Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology, in an interview.

Amazon dominates the e-commerce marketplace, in part because it collects massive amounts of data on customers’ online shopping habits, enabling it to predict with uncanny accuracy which goods might appeal to specific customers.

Lately, the company has started to collect similar data on customers’ purchases in physical stores — and plans to expand those efforts beyond the Amazon ecosystem.

Amazon is marketing the Amazon One service to “retailers, stadiums, and office buildings,” Kumar wrote in a blog post announcing the product launch. (As to whether the company will expand Amazon One into the chain of Whole Foods grocery stores, which it purchased in 2017, customers should “stay tuned about that,” Kumar said.) Once a customer registers, they can use the same handprint signature at every Amazon One terminal, no matter where the device is located.

The impetus behind the science-fiction-esque palm scanner is to “remove friction in the shopping process,” Kumar said in the interview, by reducing how long it takes to pay.

That builds on the premise behind the company’s 26 Amazon Go convenience stores, where cash registers have been replaced by sophisticated cameras tracking which items customers remove from shelves to bill their Amazon accounts later.

To civil-liberties advocates, though, it’s not clear whether the purported convenience of using biometric technologies to pay for groceries outweighs the potential risks to consumers’ privacy.

“The way the surveillance infrastructure is being built around us at increasing speed, it’s very disturbing,” said Jennifer Lee, who works on the intersection of technology and privacy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.

The scanners use two sets of cameras to capture images of both the exterior and interior of a customer’s palm, according to a patent application Amazon filed last year. The process, called vein matching, isn’t new — it’s been around since the 1980s, and has been used by Japanese banks to secure ATM transactions since the early 2000s. Amazon One, though, represents the first significant commercial rollout of the technology in the U.S.

The gradual encroachment of Amazon’s data collection into ever-more-personal spheres, Lee said, may generate a sense of complacency among consumers. “First it’s your online shopping patterns, then it’s your palm prints, then it’s facial recognition, then you’ve ceded all privacy,” she said. “It’s very concerning.”

Amazon has previously come under scrutiny for its ties to law enforcement, raising concerns over whether police or federal agencies might be able to access the handprint data, Lee said. The company’s home security division, Ring, supplies home surveillance footage to 1,300 law enforcement agencies around the country. The company has previously marketed its facial recognition software to police agencies; it placed a one-year moratorium on police use of the technology this summer amid protests over police violence.

There are also concerns about data breaches.

“This vein mapping data will be stored on servers that are hackable,” said Jevin West, a professor at the University of Washington’s Information School who studies data collection.

Amazon rebuffed those concerns. The palm-print data is anonymized and stored securely in the cloud, Kumar said, and the proprietary way Amazon scans customers’ hands means the data is of virtually no use to any other organization.

The only people who have access to the palm data are a “small group of trained Amazon researchers” working “to improve the technology and service,” said Amazon spokesperson Kerri Catallozzi in an email. Customers can ask Amazon to delete their handprint from its cloud storage.

Most worrisome, West said, is that the camera devices and cloud technologies powering Amazon Go and Amazon One record consumers’ immutable physical characteristics.

“Some may argue that we essentially have this kind of personal identifying information in our phones or our wallets,” West said. But if credit card or cellphone data is exposed, “I can throw away those phones and wallets. I can’t throw away my hand.”


Source: seattletimes.com
Website: https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...box=1605153124
Date: November 11, 2020

Facebook, Twitter CEOs Testify on Censoring Hunter Biden Story, Handling of Election
 

Facebook Launches ‘Drives’ - US ONLY
 

Facebook today is introducing a new feature that will allow users in the U.S. to collect food, clothing, and other necessities for people in need. The feature, called “Drives,” is being made available through Facebook’s existing Community Help hub, which is the place where Facebook centralizes requests and offers for help within a local community.

The Community Help hub was first launched in 2017 as a way for Facebook users to centralize their resources in the wake of a crisis, like a man-made, accidental or natural disaster, ranging from weather events to terrorist attacks, and more. In 2020, however, the feature has been put to broader use as a part of Facebook’s COVID-19 efforts, which even saw a version of Community Help feature scaled globally to help those impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.

Now, with the economic crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., millions are out of work and 12 million may lose their unemployment benefits in December when CARES Act provisions lapse. Food insecurity and an inability to pay bills, including rent and mortgage payments, as well as manage other household expenses, are impacting millions as well.

With Drives, Facebook will allow users to create and share their own efforts in collecting items for those in need, like a Canned Food Drive that’s looking to gather items for local shelters, a Clothing Drive, or any other event where someone is working to collect items to help others.




To create a Drive, type “Community Help” into Facebook Search to find the shortcut that takes you to the Community Help hub. From there, click the “Request or Offer Help” button, and on the bottom sheet that appears, click “Create Drive.” You can then fill out the form, setting a goal for the number of items you want to collect. When you post the Drive, others will be able to see what’s still needed with this goal tracker. Once created, the Drive will appear in your News Feed and Timeline like a regular post, in addition to appearing in Community Help.

The feature is rolling out starting today, but Facebook’s blog post originally said the feature may not be widely available to all for “weeks.” That would be unfortunate, given that many people likely want to run holiday-related Drives within the hub to help get food for holiday meals or toys for families in need, for example. (After publication of our article, Facebook updated the blog post to say “coming days” and emailed TechCrunch to say it will expedite the feature to ensure it arrives in time for the holidays.)

Facebook notes that all posts in Community Help, including Drives, are reviewed to ensure they don’t violate Facebook’s Community Standards or its Community Help Product Policies. These policies prohibit insensitive and promotional content, spam, inauthentic posts, and posts from users under 18, among other things. If posts are found to be in violation, they’re taken down, the company says.

Drives is one of several efforts around holiday giving that Facebook announced today. The company also says it will match up to $7 million in eligible donations to U.S. nonprofits on GivingTuesday (Dec. 1), and is running its own fundraiser, “Peace Through Music: A Global Event For Social Justice” exclusively on Facebook Live. The event, on Dec. 1 at 12 PM ET, will feature Aloe Blacc, Billie Eilish, Becky G, Carlos Santana & Cindy Blackman Santana, Killer Mike, Ringo Starr, Skip Markey, and others. The event will support the Playing for Change Foundation, the United Nations Population Fund, Sankofa, Silkroad and The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.

Meanwhile, Instagram will soon gain new fundraising tools. Today, Instagram users can fundraise with stickers on Stories and on Instagram Live. A new feature will allow Instagram users to post fundraisers to their Instagram Feed, too, but Facebook didn’t offer a timeframe as to when that feature would launch.



Source: techcrunch.com
Website: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/23/fa...eople-in-need/
Date: November 23, 2020

Qantas Airlines
 

Qantas plans to insist that passengers on international flights have been vaccinated against Covid-19 before boarding its planes once any jab is rolled out.

Alan Joyce, the Australian airline’s chief executive, said he thought a vaccine would become “a necessity” for international travel.

“We are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say for international travellers, we will ask people to have a vaccination before they can get on the aircraft,” Mr Joyce told Channel 9 in Australia.

“I think that’s going to be a common thing talking to my colleagues in other airlines around the globe,” he added.

Qantas is the first big airline to publicly raise the possibility of refusing travel to passengers who have not been vaccinated.

The pandemic prompted Australia to close its borders to non-residents, and Qantas has suspended all international flights except for a skeleton schedule to New Zealand. The company does not expect to reopen most of them until the middle of next year.

Vaccine breakthroughs in the past two weeks have raised hopes that international travel could start to recover in 2021 but they have also provoked questions about how the health status of would-be passengers will be verified.

On Monday Oxford university and AstraZeneca became the third team of vaccine developers to announce their jab had been shown to be effective in late-stage trials.

David Powell, medical adviser to airline industry body Iata, said it was “a really strong possibility” that countries would start to demand proof of health status from travellers, particularly in areas with low prevalence of the virus such as Australia.

“Being able to have verifiable information about the health status of passengers, I think that is going to be critical,” he told reporters on Monday.

Tony Douglas, Etihad chief executive, told the Financial Times in September that health visas certifying that passengers were safe to fly could help the airline industry recover from the crisis.

Several digital health passes have since been developed, including the World Economic Forum-backed CommonPass, which uses a digital certificate downloaded to a mobile phone and has held test runs to and from major hubs including New York, London and Singapore.

Iata on Monday announced it was developing a health pass with British Airways owner IAG.

But given the airline industry is not expecting a vaccine to be readily available until the middle of next year, executives see airport testing as a first step to restarting travel before any jab is rolled out to a critical mass of the population.

Airlines for Europe, a lobby group, said that while it was “very likely” that international standards would be needed on certifying vaccinations, the industry “can’t afford to wait that long”.

“At this stage, our main priority is the adoption of a common testing protocol and the recognition of test standards and measures for travel both in Europe and across the globe,” it said.

EasyJet said it had no plans to ask passengers to prove they had been vaccinated before travel. IAG and Virgin Atlantic declined to comment, while Ryanair declined to comment.



Source: Financial Times
Website: https://www.ft.com/content/8a59043d-...0-2780f06c5d1e
Date: November 23, 2020

Apple Alleged Bribery
 

KEY FACTS
* A grand jury alleges that Thomas Moyer promised to donate 200 iPads worth $70,000 to the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Office in exchange for four concealed firearm licenses for Apple employees.

* Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen alleges the scheme was orchestrated by Undersheriff Rick Sung and Captain James Jensen, who were also indicted.

* The donation never came to fruition, though, because the district attorney’s office began to investigate in August 2019.

* Moyer’s lawyer Ed Swanson said in a statement to Forbes his client is innocent of the charges filed against him and collateral damage in a dispute between the Santa Clara County sheriff and the district attorney.

* Moyer’s indictment is part of a larger scandal involving alleged bribes that went to Sheriff Laurie Smith’s reelection campaign in 2018, which has seen four other people, though not Smith, indicted this year.


CRUCIAL QUOTE
“In the case of four CCW licenses withheld from Apple employees, Undersheriff Sung and Cpt. Jensen managed to extract from Thomas Moyer a promise that Apple would donate iPads to the Sheriff’s Office,” a press release from the Santa Clara District Attorney reads.


FURTHER READING
Read the full indictment here.


This is a developing story.



Source: Forbes
Website: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachels...h=791616072400
Date: November 23, 2020

CFAA Case
 

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday in a case that could lead to sweeping changes to America’s controversial computer hacking laws — and affecting how millions use their computers and access online services.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was signed into federal law in 1986 and predates the modern internet as we know it, but governs to this day what constitutes hacking — or “unauthorized” access to a computer or network. The controversial law was designed to prosecute hackers, but has been dubbed as the “worst law” in the technology law books by critics who say it’s outdated and vague language fails to protect good-faith hackers from finding and disclosing security vulnerabilities.

At the center of the case is Nathan Van Buren, a former police sergeant in Georgia. Van Buren used his access to a police license plate database to search for an acquaintance in exchange for cash. Van Buren was caught, and prosecuted on two counts: accepting a kickback for accessing the police database, and violating the CFAA. The first conviction was overturned, but the CFAA conviction was upheld.

Van Buren may have been allowed to access the database by way of his police work, but whether he exceeded his access remains the key legal question.

Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said Van Buren vs. United States was an “ideal case” for the Supreme Court to take up. “The question couldn’t be presented more cleanly,” he argued in a blog post in April.

The Supreme Court will try to clarify the decades-old law by deciding what the law means by “unauthorized” access. But that’s not a simple answer in itself.

“The Supreme Court’s opinion in this case could decide whether millions of ordinary Americans are committing a federal crime whenever they engage in computer activities that, while common, don’t comport with an online service or employer’s terms of use,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at Stanford University’s law school. (Pfefferkorn’s colleague Jeff Fisher is representing Van Buren at the Supreme Court.)

How the Supreme Court will determine what “unauthorized” means is anybody’s guess. The court could define unauthorized access anywhere from violating a site’s terms of service to logging into a system that a person has no user account for.

Pfefferkorn said a broad reading of the CFAA could criminalize anything from lying on a dating profile, sharing the password to a streaming service, or using a work computer for personal use in violation of an employer’s policies.

But the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling could also have broad ramifications on good-faith hackers and security researchers, who purposefully break systems in order to make them more secure. Hackers and security researchers have for decades operated in a legal grey area because the law as written exposes their work to prosecution, even if the goal is to improve cybersecurity.

Tech companies have for years encouraged hackers to privately reach out with security bugs. In return, the companies fix their systems and pay the hackers for their work. Mozilla, Dropbox, and Tesla are among the few companies that have gone a step further by promising not to sue good-faith hackers under the CFAA. Not all companies welcome the scrutiny and bucked the trend by threatening to sue researchers over their findings, and in some cases actively launching legal action to prevent unflattering headlines.

Security researchers are no stranger to legal threats, but a decision by the Supreme Court that rules against Van Buren could have a chilling effect on their work, and drive vulnerability disclosure underground.

“If there are potential criminal (and civil) consequences for violating a computerized system’s usage policy, that would empower the owners of such systems to prohibit bona fide security research and to silence researchers from disclosing any vulnerabilities they find in those systems,” said Pfefferkorn. “Even inadvertently coloring outside the lines of a set of bug bounty rules could expose a researcher to liability.”

“The Court now has the chance to resolve the ambiguity over the law’s scope and make it safer for security researchers to do their badly-needed work by narrowly construing the CFAA,” said Pfefferkorn. “We can ill afford to scare off people who want to improve cybersecurity.”

The Supreme Court will likely rule on the case later this year, or early next.



Source: techcrunch.com
Website: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/29/su...buren-hacking/
Date: November 29, 2020

How did retailers miss this?!
 

UPS Shipping Limits Set from 5 Major Retailers May Delay Christmas Gifts..

Amazon Sellers Report Increases In Shipping Delays....

Shipping delays are expected to surge. As many as 1 in 5 packages won’t arrive on time this holiday season, according to a forecast by LateShipment.com.

Sidebar: Consumers have been shopping more and more online since this pandemic hit! Did businesses just assume this would slack off as the holidays grew near? And why didn't FedEX, United Parcel Service, USPS, etc have the foresight to see this continuing trend and hire more help?

We placed an order on Cyber Monday with See's and have yet to get a email verifying the order has shipped with a tracking number!

Hopefully it wasn't based on what that idiot in the White House was saying about the pandemic just magically disappearing!

Time to Shop Local and Support Your Small Businesses!!
 

Amazon workers are so exhausted by long hours and relentless targets they are falling asleep on their feet, according to a new investigation.

Employees reportedly had timed toilet breaks, a claim denied by the company. Some were made to do compulsory overtime, meaning they were working a 55-hour week ahead of the Christmas period.

Pictures taken by an undercover reporter captured workers asleep standing up as they reportedly had to process a parcel every 30 seconds.

Sunday Mirror reporter Alan Selby spent five weeks working at the online shop's warehouse in Essex and finished his last shift on Black Friday.


A number of workers who could not cope with the relentless targets were attended to by ambulance crews after they collapsed on the job, the investigation found.

The reporter was told to pack 120 items an hour, although that target is set to rise to 200 items. Workers are paid £8.20 an hour.

One colleague told him: “Everybody suffers here. I pulled my hamstring but I just had to carry on. My friend spent two days off after she damaged her knee ligaments.”

Amazon said in a statement: “Amazon provides a safe and positive workplace with competitive pay and benefits from day one. We are proud to have created thousands of permanent roles in our UK fulfilment centres in recent years.

“We offer great jobs and a positive environment with opportunities for growth. As with most companies, we expect a certain level of performance.

“Targets are based on previous performance achieved by our workers. Associates are evaluated over a long period of time as we know a variety of things could impact the ability to meet expectations in any given day or hour.”



Source: independent.co.uk
Website: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a8079111.html
Date: November 27, 2020