Twitter & Facebook Kill Covert Chinese Government Accounts; Apple TV Coming in November; Minecraft Graphics Update; IFTTT Warns Not to Migrate Nests to Google Accounts

Twitter is no longer going to accept ads from state controlled media outlets. This is on the heels of their taking down a covert Chinese social media campaign aimed at undermining pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Facebook also killed the accounts controlled by the Chinese government. Cnn.com reports that Twitter said the new policy would only apply to “news media entities that are either financially or editorially controlled by the state.” Twitter killed over 900 accounts traced back to the Chinese government. Facebook identified around a dozen pages that were followed by some 15,000 accounts before they pulled down the pages. It may sound like a drop in the bucket, but it’s a start.

Apple plans to launch Apple TV+ in November, as part of their effort to hit $50 billion in services sales by 2020. According to bloomberg.com, they will roll out a small selection of shows…around a half dozen originals, and have a free trial period. Most Apple watchers think the plan will end up being priced $9.99 a month like Apple News and Apple Music. This will be a tad higher than Amazon Prime and Netflix at $8.99, and notably higher than Disney+ which is debuting at $6.99. The first shows will be ‘The Morning Show,’ with Jennifer Anniston Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell, which already has a trailer out, ‘Amazing Stories,’, ’See’ (with Jason Momoa), ‘Truth Be Told,’ with Octavia Spencer, and a documentary about pricey houses called ‘Home.’

Microsoft if bringing Nvidia’s RTX ‘ray tracing tech’ to Minecraft. Businessinsider.com says says ray tracing enhances video game graphics by enhancing the lighting to look more realistic than in conventional video game lighting. Right now, the upgrade will only be on PCs. Rumor is, the next generation xBox will get ray tracing tech, but it won’t be Nvidia’s….Project Scarlett, the next gen xBox runs AMD hardware. In one way, this is a big move for Microsoft, as Minecraft has been playable on very cheap, underpowered computers (as cheap as a $350 laptop), and to play with the ray tracing upgrade, you will need an Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card, which runs about $350 just by itself!

Google has planned to move Nest devices to the Google ecosystem for simplicity’s sake, but now with pushback from users, will maintain Works With Nest connections for some third party integration. TechCrunch.com reports that migrating over breaks connections with non-Nest gear using IFTTT integration over Works with Nest. They say it is irreversible. If you are using devices that run IFTTT applets, do not move over to Google, because they will lose functionality after August 31st.