Facebook froze the page of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro for violating its policy against spreading COVID-19 misinformation, Reuters reported. Maduro has promoted a “miracle” remedy that he claims will cure the coronavirus, but those claims have not been supported by the medical community.
Facebook removed a video where Maduro touted Carvativir, a homeopathic remedy extracted from thyme. Maduro has praised the solution in the past as “miracle drops” and a “medical breakthrough.” Doctors in Venezuela have called Maduro’s claims that Carvatavir can treat the coronavirus “dangerous.”
This is not the first time Maduro has made false claims about coronavirus treatments on his social media platforms. Last March, Twitter removed one of Maduro’s tweets that endorsed a “brew” that he falsely claimed could “eliminate the infectious genes” of COVID-19. The removal came despite Twitter’s stance against removing tweets by world leaders unless the tweets explicitly violated its other rules.
Facebook has tried with mixed success to combat the spread of coronavirus misinformation throughout the pandemic, enacting policies that required posts that could lead to “imminent physical harm” to be removed. It expanded the policy to require the removal of false claims about COVID-19 vaccines, including conspiracy theories and false statements about the vaccines’ safety and side effects. It also applied labels to posts with incorrect coronavirus information, and guided users to accurate information from reliable medical sources.
Facebook did not immediately return a request for comment from The Verge on Saturday, but told Reuters that it follows guidance from the World Health Organization which says there is no cure for the coronavirus. “Due to repeated violations of our rules, we are also freezing the page for 30 days, during which it will be read-only.”
Facebook is planning to start its return to in-person work in May, after over a year of working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bloomberg. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced remote work plans near the start of the pandemic that promised around half of his employees could work remotely in the next five to 10 years, but until then, in-person work, at least in a limited capacity, is in the company’s immediate future.
Facebook is reopening its offices in the Bay Area — including its Menlo Park headquarters — but limiting capacity at 10 percent to start. The company expects its largest offices to not reach 50 percent capacity until September, Bloomberg writes. In addition to limiting how many people are working in close proximity, Facebook also plans to require masks, social distancing, and weekly COVID-19 tests.
Uber is hoping to get back to in-person work even sooner. The ride-sharing company announced that it’ll reopen its Mission Bay, San Francisco headquarters on March 29th, with a limited 20 percent capacity, according to Reuters. Uber plans to follow similar COVID-19 restrictions as Facebook, requiring face coverings, regular cleanings, and asking employees with sick family members to stay home. Prior to this reopening plan, Uber was letting its office employees work from home until mid-September 2021.
Other tech companies inside and outside of California are taking more of a mixed approach (or simply haven’t announced plans yet). Twitter took a big step and made working from home indefinitely an option for all employees at the start of the pandemic. The company doesn’t have a set date for when it will reopen its offices, however, but “it will be gradual, office-by-office, and at a 20 percent capacity to start,” a Twitter spokesperson tells The Verge.
Google and Microsoft are looking into hybrid work models going forward, with Microsoft starting by reopening its Redmond, Washington, headquarters on March 29th. The company also expects working from home part-time to be a standard for all office employees. Google’s plans are less certain, and the company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge, but in 2020, it said employees would be able to work from home until September 2021 and that it would explore requiring employees only to work three days a week in-person.
Apple did not respond to a request to expand on its plans for returning to in-person work, but the company was reported to have ordered some staff to return to its offices as early as May 2020.
There are still risks involved with working indoors in close quarters with others, and being vaccinated doesn’t guarantee the virus can’t be transmitted. But as companies ease back into whatever “normal” working conditions will look like post-pandemic, it seems guaranteed that remote work isn’t going away entirely anytime soon.
If you’ve ever wished your face mask had more tech, you might not have to wait too much longer. Razer confirmed this week that its RGB-clad, voice-modifying face mask will eventually be a real Razer product you can buy.
Razer first showed off a prototype of Project Hazel during the CES 2021 tech trade show in January. This week, during The Tom’s Hardware Show livestream, Mike Scharnikow, Razer senior marketing manager, confirmed that Razer is moving forward with Project Hazel and its robust set of tech.
“We’ve had a lot of great…feedback on this from CES as a prototype, and it’s something that we’re actually moving out of the prototype stage on, and out of the concept stage and taking this on the path to productization,” Scharnikow told Tom’s Hardware.
Scharnikow demoed the mask, which is N95-compliant with active air ventilation. Not all tech concepts come to market. And if they do, they sometimes look different from the prototype. But Razer seems to be moving forward with a lot of the features detailed on the Project Hazel prototype, like a speaker array that uses Razer’s voice amplifier tech to ”take your voice from inside the mask and recreate it out in a very crisp, clear, natural manner to the outside world,” Scharnikow said. There’s also customizable RGB that can provide battery information and a silicone band to seal the mask against your face to prevent glasses from fogging up.
Razer is known for making some of the best gaming keyboards and other PC gaming-focused products, but Scharnikow pointed out that it’s been involved in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic as well, including converting some of its manufacturing facilities to make masks and donating over 1 million masks to medical facilities.
(Image credit: Razer)
So far we’ve seen Project Hazel in black or white, but if it’s successful we may see additional options. Scharnikow noted that Razer has a history of bringing new color options to its products.
“First we want to get this out, make sure it’s a great product, make sure it’s something that our fans and our customers love and are really using in the best way possible. And then we can figure out ways to put different colors on it for personalization and the like,” the exec told us.
Scharnikow couldn’t share a release date for Project Hazel but said those details will be available in “the coming months.”
Still don’t believe Project Hazel will really hit shelves? Well, Scharnikow isn’t the only one talking about the mask. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan also told Yahoo Finance this week that Razer is “going to proceed in making it a reality and ship the smart mask.”
Watch the full video above for more from Razer’s appearance on The Tom’s Hardware Show, including what’s up with that RGB toaster.
You can catch The Tom’s Hardware Show every Thursday at 3 p.m. ET on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and as a podcast.
Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.
This week, co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn bring in Verge reporter Allison Johnson to chat about her review of the One Plus 9 and how the phone compares to the company’s 9 Pro model as well as other Android flagship phones out in the market.
The second half of the show is dedicated to Congress’ first big tech hearing of 2021 with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Politics reporter Makena Kelly stops by while the hearing is ongoing to comment on the effectiveness these types of proceedings have on making new tech regulation a reality, the live Twitter trolling conducted by Dorsey himself, and Zuckerberg’s thoughts on reforming Section 230.
There’s a whole lot more in between all of that — like Intel’s big changes coming with its new CEO, an augmented audio reality startup taking on theme parks, and a class action status for the butterfly keyboard suit against Apple — so listen here or in your preferred podcast player for the full discussion.
Further reading:
AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine 79 percent effective in US study
US officials publicly question AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine data
Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine website builds on a swine flu tool
OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro announced with Hasselblad-branded cameras
OnePlus 9 review: cheaper than the Pro and almost as good
The lower-cost OnePlus 9R is official, and it sounds surprisingly strong
OnePlus 9 Pro review: the elegant Android alternative
Here’s how the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro compare to Samsung and Apple’s flagships
The $159 OnePlus Watch is OnePlus’ first smartwatch
Angry MacBook owners get class action status for butterfly keyboard suit
Intel invests $20 billion into new factories, will produce chips for other companies
Intel Unleashed, Gelsinger on Intel, IDM 2.0 (Stratechery)
The startup trying to augment audio reality in public spaces
Yes or no: Are these tech hearings doing anything?
Mark Zuckerberg proposes limited 230 reforms ahead of congressional hearing
Jack Dorsey is just trolling Congress with Twitter polls now
Lina Khan is just the first step toward tougher US tech regulation
Congress tries to get the FTC in fighting shape
Microsoft rebrands Xbox Live to Xbox network
The street prices of Nvidia and AMD GPUs are utterly out of control
Gaming platform Rec Room is now a unicorn, valued at $1.25 billion during a recent funding round of $100 million. It appears to be one of the first, if not the first, virtual reality-focused startup to achieve unicorn status, a notable feat since Facebook’s landmark acquisition of Oculus VR for $2.4 billion in 2014 helped established the modern VR business.
Founded in 2016, Rec Room is a free app that lets players build custom virtual spaces and games that can be played across various platforms. The Seattle-based company launched on Steam as a VR-focused platform, and in 2018, expanded to non-VR platforms. It’s now available on Xbox, PlayStation, iOS, and PC. CEO Nick Fajt said in an interview with The Verge that VR usage on the platform climbed over the holiday season due in part to sales of the Oculus Quest 2 headset.
In 2020, Rec Room saw a 566 percent increase in revenue — most of that comes from in-game purchases — and it now has more than 15 million lifetime users. Fajt says the company now has 1 million monthly active VR users, a number that tripled during the pandemic, TheWall Street Journal reported.
The platform’s primary users are teenagers between ages 13 and 16, Fajt said, so Rec Room benefited from students being online longer during the coronavirus lockdowns of 2020. But it was also growing in popularity before people were confined to their homes.
“The pandemic accelerated trends we’d been seeing for several years,” Fajt said. “A lot of people are looking for a digital third place that’s distinct from home and school or work where they can meet up with friends, hang out, explore, and be creative. I think that’s been true whether teenagers were going to school physically or on Zoom. People need a space like this.”
He added that while it’s possible the platform may see a decrease in users once teenagers can gather in person, he sees Rec Room as more than just a replacement for real-life socializing. “It’s helping a lot of people maintain connections with friends that are hundreds or thousands of miles away,” Fajt said. “These are friends separated by physical distance not just social distance. So if Rec Room has become part of your routine, I suspect it will stay that way even beyond the pandemic.”
Rec Room is preparing for an IPO in the coming years. In the meantime, other gaming platforms are continuing to grow thanks to a boost from pandemic audiences. Roblox, an online gaming platform for slightly younger users than Rec Room’s, also has seen a sharp uptick in use during the pandemic. Roblox went public via direct listing earlier this month and said in its prospectus that it has 31.1 million daily users, who spent an average of 2.6 hours daily on the platform in the past year.
Roblox told The Verge last summer that over half of US kids and teenagers under the age of 16 play the game. During the pandemic there has been much hand-wringing about kids’ increased screentime, but games like Roblox and Epic Games’ Fortnite provide socialization, just not the in-person kind we may be used to.
Before the pandemic, some of the appetite to develop new AR and VR hardware had started to wane — Sony PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan suggested in October that an update to Sony’s PlayStation VR headset was still a few years away. (Sony has since teased more details about its next iteration of PlayStation VR with a formal product announcement, followed by images of its new controllers.)
But other companies have for years been ramping up their efforts in AR and VR hardware. The Information reported earlier this month that Facebook has some 10,000 employees — roughly a fifth of its workforce — focused on new devices in both fields, and the company has already shown off prototypes of experimental research products and plans to release a pair of Ray-Ban-branded smart glasses later this year. Apple has long been rumored to be working on AR and VR hardware, too, and recent reports suggest the iPhone maker will debut a VR device sometime in 2022.
“The market has shown an increased appetite for gaming companies,” Fajt said. “I think that will only grow as more data becomes available about the strength and durability of these businesses.”
Congressional “Big Tech” hearings often follow a three-step formula.
Step one: lawmakers demand that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai answer questions simply with “yes” or “no.” (Sample: “Is YouTube’s recommendation algorithm designed to encourage users to stay on the site?”)
Step two: the aforementioned CEOs inevitably say something else, either to inject some legitimate nuance or to dodge obvious, unflattering answers with vague platitudes. (Sundar Pichai’s response to the above question: “Content responsibility is our number one goal.”)
Step three: lawmakers point out that they’re avoiding the question and mock them. (Sample, from Rep. Billy Long of Missouri: “I’m going to ask you a yes-or-no question. Do you know the difference between these two words: ‘yes’ and ‘no?’”)
Later today, my colleague Makena Kelly will publish a breakdown of “Disinformation Nation,” a marathon House of Representatives hearing about social media, extremism, and misinformation. But to massively oversimplify, just imagine several hours of that three-step process — and that Jack Dorsey is clearly, obviously sick of it all.
While Pichai and Zuckerberg have mostly stuck to answering questions, Dorsey has started openly tweeting through the hearing — favoriting other people’s commentary, sending passive-aggressive quote tweets wishing the questions were better, and trolling Congress with a Twitter poll.
Jack Dorsey, for what it’s worth, answered “yes” to Long’s question. And on Twitter, “yes” is winning by a margin of 65.5 percent to 34.5 percent — but depending on how much longer this hearing lasts, there’s plenty of time for that to change.
(Pocket-lint) – Motorola’s Moto G100 marks a big occasion for the brand. Why? Because it’s a G series phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 processor inside. That, on the face of it, contradicts what a G series is supposed to be all about: affordability. Which, in turn, would typically mean entry-level specification – not a high-end processor such as this.
But, no, the G100 is all about change. It’s the phone to say, “hey, you don’t need that big, expensive flagship when you can have this for half the price”. Which might sound like an echo of, say, what OnePlus has been shouting from the rooftops with its Nord model, as one example.
Yet the Moto G100 feels genuinely different. Having recently reviewed a glut of Chinese-borne phones – such as the Poco X3 Pro, the Redmi Note 10 Pro – where sub-flagship affordability is the key selling point, the lighter touch of the Motorola software feels simply refreshing.
So what gives? Well, the G100 can’t pretend to have the biggest, fanciest cameras. Because it doesn’t. It’s not got a Hasselblad partnership like OnePlus. It’s not got a Zeiss partnership like Vivo. But, you know what, we don’t care – because the Moto G100 is a half-price flagship that adds up to oh so much more.
Curiously the G100 has already been released elsewhere in the world: it’s called the Edge S in China. Which, um, makes absolutely no sense to us – as we thought the ‘Edge’ series was all about having a curved screen edge.
Pocket-lint
The G100 does not have a curved screen, it’s flat, so there’s nothing ‘edge’ about it. It’s also an IPS LCD panel, not an AMOLED one, so you might not call it ‘cutting edge’ either.
That said, it sits perfectly well in a device like this a you don’t really lose out on brightness or resolution at this level. Plus the IPS part of the tech means viewing angles are good without causing colours to skew. Speaking of which: the colours – available in natural, boosted and saturated configurations within the settings – hold up really well, delivering realistic rather than ridiculous hues.
Best smartphones 2021 rated: The top mobile phones available to buy today
By Chris Hall
·
The best smartphones you can currently buy, covering the best of iPhone and Samsung, and everything Android has to offer
The only thing that we’re a little less keen about with this panel is the surface’s coating, which is a little more reflective than some. Oh, and the double punch-hole camera is, well, exactly that: two holes burning into the corner of the screen that are more distracting than just the one (but at least it’s not a giant pill-shaped hole).
Pocket-lint
Flip the G100 over and, what’s this, a finish that’s actually fun? Hurrah. After the dodgy palette of the Moto G30, it’s good to see that the colour palette people at Motorola have got their mojo back. This model pictured is called ‘Iridescent Sky’, because it looks like one of those pink/blue spring-time sunsets we suppose.
That finish is good at hiding how fingerprints catch on the surface, too, because they are there aplenty – we’ve just been cautious when photographing the handset. It’s easy to wipe clean, though, as the surface is nice and smooth – even the ‘batwing’ Motorola symbol on the rear is holographic-like in appearance, not debossed or textured onto the surface.
That the Moto logo lives on the rear and doesn’t serve a function hints at the fingerprint scanner’s location too: it’s found within the power button on the side of the phone, foregoing the in-display option. Much as we like the display-based sign-in, this fingerprint scanner is a decent operator. And there’s face unlock available too.
Pocket-lint
Keeping with being a G series handset, the G100 also features a 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card expansion slot. Good to see it’s not forgotten its roots.
While the G100 supports such legacy features as card expansion and wired headphones, in other departments it’s very much all about embracing the future. There’s no sloppy Wi-Fi connection, as you’ll suffer in the lower-down-the-ranks G10. The 128GB storage is reasonably generous, but it’s UFS 3.1 to ensure fast read/write access for best performance.
Pocket-lint
But above all else, the big sell of this phone is the Qualcomm platform at its heart. Here it’s the Snapdragon 870 – which, while part of the 800 series, isn’t the very, very top-end processor, it’s only a whisker away. Which is to say: it’s mighty fast, a step up from many of those using 700 series processors, and if you want to dabble in a bit (or a lot) of gaming then it’s a really good choice.
That’s one of the things about the Moto G100: it’s kind-of like a budget gaming phone. Things will run super smooth thanks to the processor, the fast RAM, but also the smooth 90Hz refresh rate of the display. No, you won’t see that bump in refresh affecting everything all of the time – plus you’ll need to activate it within the settings, as it’s off by default – but it’s a good place for a phone such as this to exist.
Even plugging away at games for hours at a time doesn’t cause too much trouble where battery is concerned. The 5,000mAh cell is a big part of the reason for the G100’s above average weight, but it’s a great capacity to have at your fingertips. We’ve seen its drain be very linear – around 30 per cent every 8 hours – even with an hour of gaming thrown in during such a time-frame.
Given the capability of the processor, the screen refresh rate, and the presence of 5G (we’ve been outside of such networks for this review though), that’s really solid performance.
As we’d alluded to before, the software in the Moto G100 is lovely to use. It’s close to stock Google Android, with a single Moto app to control gestures, themes/styles, display notifications, and gaming controls (such as do not disturb). You don’t have to dabble in the Moto app, indeed you could entirely ignore it. But what’s particularly great about the software is that it doesn’t need lots of tinkering, it just works – and without glitches, such as the notification delays issue with our Xiaomi Mi 11.
Pocket-lint
There’s another sideline part of the G100 puzzle too: it’s the first Motorola phone to be compatible with the company’s Ready For system. Which is a bit like ‘Moto DeX’ if you’re familiar with Samsung’s desktop-based DeX system. We’re not going to dig deep into the system for this review as, frankly, we don’t think it’s the core appeal of why people will buy a G100. It’s a niche extension option, complete with a camera dock that may have its uses instead of a Facebook Portal, but that’s as much as we can say right now.
Whereas many flagships make a big song and dance about their camera arrangements, the G100 doesn’t really earn the right to do so. That’s the thing about top-end devices these days – so much of the cost comes from additional lenses, co-engineering partnerships, and so forth. The G100, on the other hand, keeps things fairly simple.
Pocket-lint
: Main cameraMain camera
Well, kind-of simple. The claim of “quad camera” on the rear is nonsense as that apparently includes both a depth sensor and time-of-flight sensor, which would more or less do the same thing – both are there to ultimately make up the numbers as if “quad” is better than “triple”, even if it isn’t due to lack of core, usable lenses.
Anyway, let’s focus on what is here: a usable main camera and less commendable wide-angle one. There’s a gallery above showing how the two compare, and the quality drop-off from the wide-angle option is quite significant.
The main lens is 64-megapixels, using a four-in-one processing method to output at 16-megapixels total – although the processing is often heavy handed, oversharpens and can’t discern detail in all situations (the daylight country scene below being one such example – the trees are all blocky and indistinguishable, if you look at the 100 per cent crop).
Pocket-lint
: Main cameraMain camera
Where subjects are a little closer to camera – but not too close as it struggles to focus and the macro mode is poor (avoid this when prompted) – there’s more ability to resolve detail from a scene. Whether a dim-lit puzzle board or the fur of a toy bear, there’s enough detail to tick the main camera’s “usable” box.
But we touched upon this at the very beginning: if you don’t want the biggest and fanciest of cameras then the G100 does the job. Not the best job, but it gets by. And with features such as HDR (high dynamic range) to balance out shadows and highlights, various shooting modes, and the hardware to capture without delay, there’s enough to keep this camera setup from being the very baseline of entry-level kit for 2021.
Verdict
The Moto G100 is a shake-up for the G series, bringing performance levels not before seen in this line-up. While that might be a little perplexing on the face of it – especially as it’s not a G series device in China, it’s the Edge S, muddying the naming convention further – it’s a rather refreshing take in a section of the market where there’s not a tonne of great options.
If you’re willing to forego the usual camera hype and pizzazz that top-end flagships tend to promise – as there’s really very little of that here – and having a high-end processor and performance potential is high up your roster, then the Moto G100 is a strong sell. It’s got the software right – which, in our opinion, can’t be said of the Xiaomi MIUI and Oppo ColorOS competition – the visuals tight, and performance is at peak height.
That’s the Moto G100 in a nutshell: a budget gaming-capable phone that foregoes the AMOLED screen hype and camera cost implications to deliver a half-price near-flagship that, in use, adds up to oh so much more.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
OnePlus Nord
squirrel_widget_305633
Also 5G capable, with a 90Hz refresh screen, but a little less power and, therefore, a little lower asking price. If every penny counts then it’s a savvy alternative.
Apple has a rocky relationship with some iOS developers because of its seemingly arbitrary decisions over what gets published and when — and now, because of a dumb miss, it’s being accused of putting profits ahead of human rights in Myanmar by the founder of ProtonMail and ProtonVPN, even though that’s probably not what happened.
Proton founder Andy Yen writes that Apple blocked an important security update to the company’s privacy-protecting ProtonVPN software simply because Apple didn’t like the app’s description, specifically this line:
Whether it is challenging governments, educating the public, or training journalists, we have a long history of helping bring online freedom to more people around the world.
If you’re having a hard time finding anything objectionable there, you’re not alone — but Apple told Proton it wasn’t okay to encourage “users to bypass geo-restrictions or content limitations.”
The context here is that VPNs have become a critical tool for protesters in Myanmar to sidestep an huge internet crackdown during the country’s ongoing, bloody military coup. One researcher told Bloomberg that VPN use has increased 7,200 percent since early last month, when the government blocked Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
I’m with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on this: I highly doubt Apple made a conscious decision to deny ProtonVPN to Myanmar — the company’s smart enough to know how that would look, and it’s not like the app was blocked, just a security update. Yen is an outspoken critic of the App Store now, having told Congress (and The Verge) last year how he’d been strong-armed by Apple.
But the fact it’s just a security update makes the rejection extra dumb,because Apple explicitly said last year that it’d no longer hold up bug fixes because of these arbitrary guideline violations.
Regardless, Apple comes off looking a little like the bad guy here, especially now that ProtonVPN has taken the high road and ceded to Apple’s demands. “Due to the emergency situation in Myanmar, we removed the language about challenging governments which Apple found objectionable, and the app was finally approved,” Yen tells The Verge. Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
That perception seems like it’s going to be increasingly hard to fight, now that antitrust scrutiny of Apple’s App Store has been heating up in Congress and the courts, with the Epic App Store trial set to begin May 3rd.
It doesn’t help when Apple is seemingly caught breaking its own rules and needing to apologize, particularly when it could be seen as retaliation against an app developer (Yen) who’d previously spoken out. Last year, many other developers weren’t willing to come forward and admit they’d been forced to add in-app purchases to their apps, specifically because they feared retaliation.
On paper, using a website to schedule your vaccine appointment seems like an easy way to gain access to much needed COVID-19 immunizations. But a new investigation from The Markup shows that state-run vaccine websites are slow to load on mobile devices, compounding what can be an already intimidating sign-up experience for people who are less comfortable online.
The Markup conducted its performance tests using Google’s open-source Lighthouse tool, in this case relying on the tool’s ability to measure the time it takes for a site to load and be functional. For this test, The Markup focused on the performance of the mobile version of sites on the Chrome browser and conducted the tests from three separate locations (New York, Texas, and California). Nevada’s state vaccine site was the slowest to load, taking 15.7 seconds to fully load in comparison to the fastest (Puerto Rico) at 1.4 seconds, and the average (Colorado) at 5.9 seconds.
The spread of state vaccine site loading times.Image: The Markup
The causes for these slowdowns vary, but in the case of the Nevada site, The Markup suggests that an abundance of interactive, embedded content could be contributing to the slowness:
Nevada’s vaccination page features several embedded YouTube videos and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts that offer public health information, featuring health professionals answering common questions in both English and Spanish. Our tests show that Nevada’s page has the lowest average performance score of all the sites we examined.
All of that extra information is great, but I think the confusion also arises for less web-literate people because these sites don’t work like scheduling a traditional doctor’s appointment over the phone. Being presented with a bunch of links from the original site out to other vaccine provider’s websites was intimidating for my grandparents — who often worry about getting “lost” online — and I imagine it would be for many others.
The situation is reminiscent of other times government organizations have been tasked with building out essential online infrastructure, like the rollout of healthcare.gov. The federal site’s issues have since been resolved, and state health departments are working at a much smaller scale, but some of the problems are similar. It’s not that these departments are incapable of making a website, it’s that time and resources are stretched thin, and many of them have never really been tasked with a project so huge. “They’ve never required the infrastructure that they do now,” Ohio State University health services professor Tory Hogan tells The Markup.
Third-party solutions have sprung up in response to these inadequacies, from startups focused on connecting people with leftover vaccine doses like Dr. B, to independent vaccine hunters booking appointments for strangers. But there’s no one solution, at least not until President Biden’s promised vaccine finding website launches on May 1st. Here’s hoping that website works better.
Opening statements from Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey have been published ahead of Thursday’s misinformation hearing in the House — and they show all three CEOs taking on an unusually sensitive issue for tech platforms. All three statements are worth reading, with Dorsey focusing on internal tools like Birdwatch and Pichai warning of the dangers of a full repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
But the most detailed proposal came from Zuckerberg, who talked at length about his preferred changes to Section 230. Instead of repealing the law entirely — as President Biden called for during the campaign — Zuckerberg’s proposal would make Section 230 conditional on companies maintaining a system to remove illegal content.
As Zuckerberg describes it in the letter:
We believe Congress should consider making platforms’ intermediary liability protection for certain types of unlawful content conditional on companies’ ability to meet best practices to combat the spread of this content. Instead of being granted immunity, platforms should be required to demonstrate that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it. Platforms should not be held liable if a particular piece of content evades its detection — that would be impractical for platforms with billions of posts per day — but they should be required to have adequate systems in place to address unlawful content.
The standards for retaining 230 protections could be set by a third party, Zuckerberg goes on to say, and would exclude demands around encryption and privacy “that deserve a hearing in their own right.” That distinguishes Zuckerberg’s proposal from previously introduced 230 bills like the EARN IT Act, which conditions protections on a long-sought encryption backdoor. Zuckerberg’s proposal is closer to the PACT Act, which conditions the protections on transparency disclosures and other measures but focuses less on the removal of illegal content.
Broadly, it’s unusual for companies to propose rules for how they would like to be regulated, but it’s less unusual for Zuckerberg, who has previously written at length about favorable data portability and content moderation rules.
This is the most detailed proposal for Section 230 that Zuckerberg has yet put forward, and it’s one that would require few material changes for Facebook itself. Facebook already maintains significant systems for identifying and removing illegal or otherwise objectionable content. Still, the proposal might address some of the most urgent objections to Section 230, which often focus on smaller sites entirely dedicated to malicious activity.
The issue is particularly urgent for groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which struggle with websites that don’t scan or moderate for child abuse imagery.
“There are a lot of companies, especially some of the very large companies, that engage in really tremendous voluntary measures,” NCMEC’s Yiota Souras told The Verge earlier this year. “But there are a lot of companies that don’t, and there is no legal requirement for them to use any kind of detection or screening.”
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 12PM ET on Thursday, March 25th.
YouTube says the platform will not remove a controversial live-streamed video of a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, despite criticism of the streamer’s tactics and commentary.
“Following yesterday’s tragic shooting, bystander video of the incident was detected by our teams. While violent content intended to shock or disgust viewers is not allowed on YouTube, we do allow videos with enough news or documentary context,” YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez told The Verge. “We applied an age restriction to the content and will continue to monitor the situation.”
The live stream was broadcast from around the King Soopers supermarket in Boulder; according to Vice, it reached a live audience that peaked at around 30,000 people and has since been viewed around 585,000 times. The streamer, Dean Schiller, began recording inside the supermarket soon after the attack. He continued recording from outside for more than three hours, despite police requests for him to leave.
Schiller has identified himself in the past as a citizen journalist, and in 2019, he and another videographer were arrested and jailed for filming around the Boulder County Jail, following a series of videos that captured alleged police misconduct. But as Vice notes, Schiller has been criticized on several fronts for the shooting video. Some video commenters called him out for not dialing 911 or attempting to help people fleeing the building, while some other news outlets and anti-extremism researchers criticized him for speculating on the shooter’s motives, revealing police tactics, and briefly filming the bodies of victims.
Yesterday’s shooting in Boulder left 10 people dead, and a police spokesperson said the alleged killer was taken into custody after being shot in the leg by a police officer. Police have not offered a motive for the attack.
Videos of murder have created a quandary for social network moderators who are tasked with distinguishing between meaningful journalism and content that could inspire copycat attacks or play into a killer’s search for publicity. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube have scrambled to remove video directly recorded by mass shooters, including a 2019 attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. But they’ve also been criticized for removing video documenting newsworthy events like police shootings.
Platforms have also responded by surfacing trusted news outlets or by limiting the reach of controversial posts, even if they’re not banned outright. But YouTube didn’t outline any specific steps it had taken on Schiller’s video beyond requiring users to log in and verify their age before viewing it.
The video also plays into long-standing questions about how journalists should responsibly cover violence. While some YouTube comments called the video a negative byproduct of social media reporting, others drew parallels with sensationalist coverage in older mediums like TV news — comparing Schiller to the protagonist of the 2014 film Nightcrawler.
Traditional media outlets have gradually reevaluated their playbook for reporting on mass shootings in recent years. That includes trying to avoid an inordinate focus on the shooter or unsubstantiated speculation about their motives, particularly in the early stages of an incident, when very little is known about the attack. Some best practices also include avoiding graphic violence that’s posted without a clear purpose — and could add to the trauma of people who have survived the shooting.
Facebook’s F8 developer conference is returning this year as a one-day virtual event on June 2nd. Like so many big gatherings, last year’s F8 was canceled over concerns regarding coronavirus. But the world’s largest social network evidently wants to keep its sizable community of developers engaged and is bringing the conference back in 2021.
In a blog post, Facebook’s VP of platform partnerships, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, said the new format, dubbed F8 Refresh, would return the event “to its roots: a place to celebrate, inspire and help developers grow.” He added: “Our virtual stage will be open to developers across the world and live streamed on our Facebook for Developers page on June 2nd.” Interested developers can sign up here to be notified when registration opens.
One big difference to previous years is that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg won’t be speaking, according to TechCrunch. Instead, Papamiltiadis will deliver the opening presentation, which TechCrunch says is expected to “provide some updates on new launches for the platform” including new product tools for Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, and WhatsApp.
Without Zuckerberg at the helm, though, we can probably expect fewer big consumer-facing announcements, as we’ve seen in previous years. Facebook still has a lot to talk about, though, and potential topics could range from ongoing challenges like platform moderation to the company’s big bets in augmented reality and virtual reality. From the hints Facebook is dropping, though, it seems F8 Refresh will be a low-key affair.
Google is expanding efforts to design its own chips with the hiring of Uri Frank, an Intel veteran with over two decades of experience in custom CPU design, the company has announced. Frank will head up a new Isreal-based team for Google, and will serve as the company’s VP of Engineering for server chip design. “I look forward to growing a team here in Israel while accelerating Google Cloud’s innovations in compute infrastructure,” Frank wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing the move.
As Google and other tech giants have sought more performance and power efficiency, they’ve increasingly turned towards custom chip designs tailored towards specific use cases. Google has already introduced several custom chips including its Tensor Processing Unit (to help with tasks like voice search and photo object recognition), Video Processing Units, and OpenTitan, an open-source security-focused chip.
On the consumer side, Google already designs custom chips like the Titan M and Pixel Neural Core for its phones. There have also been reports that Google is designing processors that could eventually power its Pixel phones and Chromebooks.
Despite the hire, Google cautions that it’s not planning on building every server chip itself. “We buy where it makes sense, build it ourselves where we have to, and aim to build ecosystems that benefit the entire industry,” the company explains. But the big change will be trying to integrate these different pieces of hardware on a single system on chip (SoC), rather than via a motherboard where they’re separated by “inches of wires” that introduce latency and reduce bandwidth. “The SoC is the new motherboard,” Google says.
Other tech giants have similar custom chip ambitions. Amazon has its ARM-based Graviton server chips while Facebook has announced data center chip designs of its own. Microsoft is also thought to be working on designing its own server chips, as well as processors for its lineup of Surface PCs. Apple has several chip designs to its credit, and is currently in the process of transitioning its Mac lineup from Intel to its own ARM-based processors.
President Joe Biden has announced his intent to nominate Lina Khan, a legal scholar and leading voice in the growing tech antitrust movement, to serve as a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.
The pick signals that the Biden administration is preparing to take on some of the tech industry’s most powerful and influential companies. In 2017, Khan authored an article for the Yale Law Journal titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” which exploded in popularity in progressive economic policy circles. Khan has also served as an aide to the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on antitrust throughout its yearslong investigation into anticompetitive behavior in the tech industry.
Khan’s nomination follows the appointment of Tim Wu, a Columbia Law professor, to work on technology and competition policy at the National Economic Council. Wu coined the term “net neutrality” and has been a prominent voice on the subject of antitrust regulation against Big Tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
Biden’s choice of Khan to serve at the FTC comes as regulators, lawmakers, and the courts are facing immense pressure to take on Big Tech. The House Judiciary kicked off the second leg of its antitrust investigation last month and it’s poised to introduce competition legislation to rein in tech this spring.
In February, current FTC Acting Chairwoman Rebecca Slaughter made remarks suggesting that the agency will take an aggressive approach to tech. Slaughter laid out her enforcement priorities, including competition in markets and algorithmic discrimination.
“[M]any of the largest players in digital markets are as powerful as they are because of the breadth of their access to and control over consumer data,” Slaughter said at the time.
João Silva 2 days ago Featured Tech News, Graphics, Notebook
The Geekbench 5 database is leaking more unannounced hardware. This time around, entries have detailed the upcoming RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti GPUs for laptops, including specifications and performance scores.
The RTX 3050 will feature 2048 CUDA cores, 4GB of VRAM across a 128-bit memory bus and a 1060MHz clock speed. The GPU was tested in an unannounced laptop – the Samsung 760XDA. The GPU scored 52,587 points in Geekbench 5’s OpenCL test, rivalling the GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q, which scored 53,607 points in the same test.
The RTX 3050 Ti was also tested inside of a Samsung 760XDA laptop, so there will be multiple configurations of this laptop available. The RTX 3050 Ti ups the ante with 2560 CUDA cores, a 1030MHz clock speed and the same memory configuration as its younger sibling.
In Geekbench 5’s OpenCL test, the RTX 3050 Ti comes out with a score of 60,479, putting it roughly on par with the RTX 2060 Max-Q. You gain about 15% extra performance jumping from the RTX 3050 to the Ti model.
RTX 3050 series laptops are expected to begin shipping in Q2 2021. Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru says: These are early and limited indications of performance, but it still gives us a good idea of what to expect from Nvidia’s entry-level RTX laptop GPUs. What do you think of the RTX 3050 and the RTX 3050 Ti? Is performance in line with what you expected?
Become a Patron!
Check Also
Intel NUC 11 Extreme Compute Element to feature up to Intel Core i9-11980HK
Intel’s next generation NUC is coming soon and recent leaks have given us a good …
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
