Report: Oracle’s proposed TikTok deal includes search for backdoors

Elva Mankin 2 months ago

  • TikTok and Oracle are having to convince the Trump administration their proposed deal will keep data secure.
  • A source told Axios one condition of the deal is that Oracle will have to audit TikTok’s source code to make sure there aren’t any security backdoors.
  • TikTok’s source code and particularly its recommendation algorithm have become a sore point in negotiations after China imposed strict new technology export laws at the end of last month.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

 

Oracle’s TikTok deal might mean the US tech giant gets to turn the video apps source code inside-out.

A source

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New study tracks COVID-19’s effects on small tech firms

Elva Mankin 2 months ago

New study tracks COVID-19's effects on small tech firms

A new study by the UO’s Lauren Lanahan seeks to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small high-tech firms and track the challenges and opportunities they face as the crisis continues to unfold.


“The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced substantial disruptions to the U.S. and global economies, and in turn the innovative ecosystem,” said Lanahan, an assistant professor of management. “We seek to characterize changes in the landscape of high-tech small firms that result from the ongoing pandemic and related policy responses, as well as to examine the direct impacts of these institutional policy decisions on the structure and

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Uniswap Token Goes Live, Now Available On Coinbase Pro

Elva Mankin 2 months ago

KEY POINTS

  • Uniswap released UNI, its governance token, Thursday
  • All historical Uniswap users received at least 400 tokens
  • Those who provided liquidity received more tokens

Uniswap, a decentralized Ethereum trading platform, launched its governance token UNI on Thursday and announced that all its users could now claim 400 UNI (a process known as “airdrop”) while those who provided liquidy could claim more.

The surprise airdrop has put UNI in wild price volatility in the last 24 hours. This frenzy has continued as more exchanges, including Coindesk Pro, started to list the governance token.

With a total supply of 1 billion

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Amazon sinks cash into EV startup Rivian as part of Climate Pledge

Elva Mankin 2 months ago

Amazon delivery vans, courtesy of Rivian, coming soon.


Amazon

This past June, Amazon announced a $2 billion investment as its first step on the road toward becoming a net-zero carbon company by 2040. On Thursday, the online retail giant and technology company revealed the first group of companies that will benefit from the Climate Pledge Fund. Chief among them is electric vehicle startup Rivian.

Amazon didn’t disclose how much Rivian receives in the round of investment, but it said the Climate Pledge Fund “participated in Rivian’s latest investment round in July.” To be clear, this not a separate investment,

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Comcast shut off Internet to hundreds, saying they were illegally connected

Elva Mankin 2 months ago

A Comcast/NBC logo.

Comcast says that a broadband reseller illegally sold Comcast Internet service in residential buildings in the Denver area and has terminated the connections to those buildings.

As reported by Denver7 this week, the shutoff affected hundreds of people who live in buildings serviced by AlphaWiFi, “which installs and services Internet in approximately 90 apartment buildings across Denver.” The shutoff came as a surprise to residents, including Kaley Warren, who has been working at home during the pandemic.

“It is my entire lifeline,” said Warren, who said that without warning last Friday, her Internet service disappeared. “I felt lost. It was

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WeChat decision by U.S. Commerce expected by Sept. 20

Elva Mankin 2 months ago

In a court filing Wednesday, the Trump administration underscored the complexity of cutting ties with WeChat, a ubiquitous app in China that is also used by many Chinese speakers in the United States, some of whom filed a lawsuit trying to block the government from taking action against the app.

A Trump administration filing in that case said the Commerce Department is still reviewing “a range of transactions” related to WeChat for possible prohibition. The government does not plan to impose criminal or civil penalties on individuals for downloading or using the app for personal or business activities, but users

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What to expect at Apple’s September 15 ‘Time Flies’ event

Elva Mankin 2 months ago

Apple’s annual special event is only days away on September 15. Here’s what you can expect to be announced during the presentation, alongside the “Apple Watch Series 6″

Apple confirmed it would be holding its usual special event on September 15, continuing its annual tradition for one more year. While it will be a “virtual” presentation instead of one with a live audience, the show will still include a number of new product launches.

Apple Watch Series 6

For a start, there have been suggestions of a new plastic version alongside the existing metal and ceramic roster of

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Amazon, Apple, and Google’s open-source smart home standard is on track for a 2021 launch

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

Project Connected Home over IP — the ambitious attempt to bring together Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance with a unified, open-source smart home platform — has just posted its latest update on the project. The group has announced (in the first major update since the standard was revealed) that work on the project is still ongoing, and it’s targeting a 2021 release, along with the first clear idea of what devices the standard is aiming to work with.

The project is still on track to provide a “draft specification” for the new standard by the end of the

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Apple’s next big launch event will take place on September 15th

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

That threw the usual timetable into disarray and led to a handful of off-the-mark guesses, which are unavoidable even now. Persistent rumors have suggested that the iPhone 12 series won’t actually be unveiled until some time in October, so it’s possible this event could exclusively be about devices like the iPad and Apple Watch. Meanwhile, the event’s tagline — “Time Flies” — indicates that the Apple Watch will be the show’s major player.

Update (9/8, 12:02PM): Bloomberg’s Mike Gurman, who correctly predicted a launch event would be announced today, strongly suggests that Apple won’t unveil any iPhones next week:

That

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Bose QuietComfort Earbuds, Earbuds 500: Everything We Know

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

The true wireless earbuds category has been exploding in recent months. We’re not just talking about the sheer number of models available — which now number in the hundreds, if not the thousands — but also what these personal audio products are capable of doing.

Apple, Sony, Jabra, Sennheiser, and Google — just to name the biggest brands — have all released new or updated versions of their true wireless earbuds in the last 10 months, all with improved battery life, sound quality, wireless connectivity, and even active noise cancellation (ANC). However, the one company that hasn’t debuted a new

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America’s Federal Robot Subsidy Hurts Workers

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

A  tax subsidy for automation would overturn an assumption made by economists since at least the 1930s. The assumption is that technology, in order to displace human labor, must perform a workplace task more efficiently than a human. If tax policy penalizes the employment of human labor relative to the deployment of robots, the basis for expecting even these “efficiency gains” as an upshot of a vanishing human workforce also vanishes. Machines can displace workers while still lagging them in productivity. They can win due to a subsidy that rigs the game in their favor.

It’s not science fiction, but

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Judge Warns Julian Assange to Shut Up After Shouts of ‘Nonsense’ at Extradition Hearing

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

LONDON—In a few weeks or months, Judge Vanessa Baraitser will rule on whether Julian Assange can be taken to the United States to face a string of serious espionage charges, so it’s probably a good idea for him to stay in her good graces.

But on Tuesday, the second day of the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition hearing in London, which was delayed for months by the coronavirus pandemic, Baraitser delivered a forceful warning to Assange that he will be removed from court for good if he can’t keep his thoughts to himself while witnesses are delivering their evidence.

Assange reportedly shouted

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Tech chills spill into Asia, as shares sink across region

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

title=

A man walks by an electronic stock board of a securities firm in Tokyo, Monday, Sept. 7, 2020. Asian stock markets were mixed Monday after Wall Street turned in its biggest weekly decline in more than two months.


Koji Sasahara

AP

Asian shares declined on Wednesday after a sell-off of big technology stocks on Wall Street pulled U.S. benchmarks lower. Crude oil prices and Treasury yields also weakened.

Australia’s benchmark led regional declines on Wednesday, losing more than 2%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.6%.

Troubles with Astra-Zeneca’s coronavirus vaccine trial and simmering China-U.S. tensions also have rattled investors.

“At a

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Chef to be acquired for $220M by Progress in ‘next chapter’ for Seattle automation tech company

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

Chef CEO Barry Crist. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)

Updated below with details from interview with Chef CEO Barry Crist.

Business application platform Progress will acquire Seattle-based automation technology company Chef for $220 million in cash under a deal announced Tuesday.

It’s a major turn of events for a company that has been a mainstay of the Pacific Northwest tech community for more than a decade. Progress, based in Bedford, Mass., is publicly traded on the Nasdaq. The acquisition “will provide the scale to further drive Chef’s platform forward and deliver additional value to our customers,” said Chef CEO

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Trump is angry that Twitter won’t remove a crudely edited ‘Moscow Mitch’ meme poking fun at McConnell

Elva Mankin 3 months ago



Donald Trump wearing a suit and tie: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

© Provided by Business Insider
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
  • In a tweet Tuesday, President Donald Trump pressured Twitter to remove a meme poking fun at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
  • The meme, shared by a user with less than 200 followers, depicts McConnell’s face photoshopped onto a Soviet Union soldier with the caption “Moscow Mitch.”
  • Trump said lawmakers should repeal Section 230, a law that shields social networks from being held liable for users’ posts as long as they remove illegal content.
  • Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitter’s policies ban content that’s explicitly meant
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The highest paid tech jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

  • Business Insider analyzed the tech jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area that pay the highest salaries.
  • The Bay Area is the hub of the tech industry, and it’s where many of the world’s most prominent tech companies, like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Netflix, were founded, creating an ultra-competitive market for tech talent.
  • We analyzed the data for over 35,000 active foreign worker-visas in the San Francisco Bay Area. Companies seeking foreign workers must disclose salary data for particular jobs when they seek visas.
  • For this list we focused on jobs paying above $240,000. Some of the tech industry salaries
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An article for the new Luddites

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

If you’re looking for some new technology, DealExtreme has you covered. But if you want to know what the alternatives are, look no further than Suomiarvostelut, the best review website in Finland!

Some of you might have read that and thought that this is just the new generation becoming too reliant on technology. In England, you would be known as a “Luddite”. Someone scared of change and prefers things to be the way they used to be.

But this article is for people like you! I want to try and convince you that technology doesn’t make things worse, it … Read More

PS5 Preorder Signups: Register For A Chance To Reserve A Console

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

Though it’s still set to launch later this year, there are some key pieces of info about the PlayStation 5 we still don’t know. Sony has revealed the console’s look, the DualSense controller, and some upcoming PS5 games, but the company has kept the PS5 price and release date a secret so far. It’s looking like we’ll hear more very soon, however–Sony is now letting gamers register to be one of the first to preorder the PS5. As it looks like the highly-anticipated Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart could be released around launch, you’ll want to get the system as

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Widespread Internet Outage Affects CenturyLink Subscribers

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

CenturyLink subscribers were affected by a widespread internet outage across the U.S. on Sunday morning.

Over 10,000 CenturyLink subscribers reported problems, according to DownDetector.com. Out of the reports, 96% were related to internet services, with the most reported locations including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Orlando, Portland, and Miami.

Amazon Web Services’ Giorgio Bonfiglio pointed out the CenturyLink service outage, which is apparently also affecting parts of Europe.

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Why Digital Transformation Always Needs To Start With Customers First

Elva Mankin 3 months ago

Customers’ expectations, preferences, changing patterns in how and why they purchase need to be the core of any digital transformation effort. With it, digital transformation projects flourish and take on a life of their own. Without it, I’ve seen digital transformation projects become myopic, narrowly focused, substituting internal metric gains for measures that matter most to customers.

Digital Maturity Drives Revenue

Anyone who has worked on a digital transformation project quickly sees how the most digitally

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