Tech News
Tech News and Analysis from around the web
Will Oremus / OneZero :
A look at some radical proposals for creating better social networks, from establishing sites as nonprofits to restrictions on data collection — An offhand tweet sparked an outpouring of ideas to fix what's broken about Facebook and Twitter — Welcome back to Pattern Matching …
Greg Thomson / Decrypt:
Voice, a blockchain-based social media site on EOS that rewards users with tokens for posting “quality content”, is now open for the public to browse — After months of delays, and a $150 million cash injection, the EOS-based Voice platform is now open for viewing. — EOS — In brief:
Manuel Vonau / Android Police:
Indian ISPs start restoring access to DuckDuckGo after blocking the service via their DNS servers starting July 1; it is unclear why the service was blocked — Following the Indian ban of almost 60 Chinese apps including TikTok and Weibo, many people living in the country now report …
Sankalp Phartiyal / Reuters:
India's TikTok ban resulted in a surge in popularity for Indian apps like Roposo, Mitron, and Chingari; Roposo says it has added 22M users in 48 hours — NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian tech and entertainment firms are looking to capitalise on sudden opportunities arising from a government ban …
Pei Li / Reuters:
Tencent launches US game studio LightSpeed LA, to create AAA titles and increase overseas share of its total games revenue, which accounted for 23% in Q4 2019 — HONG KONG (Reuters) - Tencent Holdings, China's biggest social media and video game company, launched a new California-based studio this week …
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
Ifeoma Ozoma, Aerica Shimizu Banks, and five other former Pinterest employees share examples of Pinterest's failure in addressing racial discrimination and bias — Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks claim they were underpaid, faced racist comments, and were subject to retaliation for raising complaints.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Google VP in charge of Android Security withdraws from Black Hat conference and asks the infosec community to stop using terms like “black hat” and “white hat” — A Google security researcher withdrew from the Black Hat security conference and asked the community to stop using the ‘black hat’ term.
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
India's e-commerce policy draft seeks creation of an e-commerce regulator, mandates government access to online companies' source codes and algorithms, more — - Plan comes amid calls to reduce dominance of global giants — E-Commerce regulator to be named to ensure fair competition
Bloomberg:
Colin Huang, the CEO of Chinese e-commerce company Pinduoduo, steps down; the company says he will remain chairman and work on long-term strategy — - PDD shares have more than quadrupled in less than two years — Huang gives away $14 billion stake after stepping down as CEO
Wall Street Journal:
Hong Kong's new national security law could force platforms like Facebook and Twitter to relinquish some of the freedom their operations have had in the city — New national-security law means authorities can ask companies to delete users or their content — HONG KONG—U.S. technology titans face …
Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:
Some Amazon contracted delivery drivers in the US say they are feeling overwhelmed and overworked by dramatic increases in workloads during the pandemic — Amazon's contracted delivery drivers say that their workloads have dramatically increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, in some cases more than doubling.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
The Wild Wild Web, a shoot-first, aim-later era of tech strategy, is coming to an end, and a less willfully naïve, self-policing ethos is taking its place — The internet is changing, and the freewheeling, anything-goes culture of social media is being replaced by something more accountable.
Neil Greenberg / Washington Post:
Evo, a renowned esports tournament that moved online in 2020 due to the pandemic, is canceled after parting ways with co-founder for alleged sexual misconduct — Evo, the biggest fighting game event of the year, has been canceled after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced regarding …
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Profile of investor Lee Fixel, the partner behind Tiger Global's investments in Flipkart and Peloton, who says he raised $1.3B for his VC firm Addition — Peloton CEO John Foley was used to hearing “no” by the time he met with investor Lee Fixel in early 2014.
Washington Post:
Some advertisers participating in the ad boycott remain unimpressed with Facebook's promises to better police hate speech, as negotiations continue — More than 750 advertisers are boycotting Facebook, asking for better policing of hateful content. Facebook's concessions so far haven't won them over.
When I was in sixth grade there was a school-wide spelling bee. I had finished in the top group in my class, so I got to go to the bee for the whole grade. By luck I went first and only got 5 of 10 right. People actually laughed. I went out to the yard to play and wait.
One by one the others came out and each had lower scores than me. In the end I had the highest score of all.
Moral of the story for countries who pity the US. This isn't over yet. And it's bad luck to declare victory before it's over. And this isn't really a contest. We like to say we're all in it together, and you know what, we are.
JavaScript is a lovely language once you’ve spent a few years getting comfortable with its quirks. Not what I’d recommend as a starter language. Yet it is the language most people choose to learn as their first language.
Here are the qualities I look for in the ideal starter language.
- One way to do things not 20.
- Boring, so the newbie can focus on their own app, not the language weirdnesses.
- Frozen. They should be able to run their student projects 40 years from now. Not a place where language designers try out new ideas.
- No callbacks, synchronization handled in runtime.
- Algol-like, so you can get support form millions of experienced developers.
May think of more qualifications later...