Meta Suing Cloner for Scraping; TikTok Punts Live Shopping in US & EU; Apple-Lockdown Mode; Ads on Android Lock Screens

Meta is suing two prolific data scrapers. Engadget.com reports that they have filed separate federal lawsuits against a company called Octopus and an individual named Ekrem Ateş. According to Meta, the former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese multinational tech firm that offers data scraping-for-hire services to individuals and companies. Octopus also sells software people can use to carry out their own data collection campaigns. The software can obtain phone numbers, dates of birth and other personal information about every Facebook and Instagram friend connected to a particular Octopus customer. ” As for Ekrem Ateş, the individual Meta sued, the company says he used automated Instagram accounts to collect information on more than 350,000 Instagram users and later published that data on a series of clone sites where one could view the data of those individuals without their consent. 

TikTok has been a juggernaut in social media, but may have hit a pretty big speed bump for at least one of their plans. According to theverge.com, TikTok is scaling back its live commerce plans in Europe and the US, the Financial Times reported, after early launches simply haven’t been successful. TikTok has been testing live shopping in the UK since late last year. The live online shopping has been successful in India and other parts of Asia. It is possible that they will reimagine and retool the effort and try again, of course. 

Apple has announced a new Lockdown Mode coming to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac with iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura. Apple says the optional security feature is designed to protect the “very small number” of users who may be at risk of “highly targeted cyberattacks” from private companies developing state-sponsored spyware, such as journalists, activists, and government employees. Macrumors.com says that Lockdown Mode will be available to all users when the software updates are released later this year. While the feature is aimed at users who are targets of cyberattacks, it appears that it can be enabled by any user. When enabled, Apple says Lockdown Mode provides an “extreme” level of security by strictly limiting or disabling the functionality of features, apps, and websites. 

A Google-backed ad company called Glance is looking to launch in the US, and it brings media content, news, and casual games to Android lock screens. According to androidpolice.com, the lock screen platform is part of the pre-installed software on many, if not most, Android phones sold in India and other Asian markets, and it has also made its way to the EU on a few select brands. They are presently negotiating with US carriers, and are  looking to launch in the US within the next two months. What does it do? The lock screen feed tries hard to become part of your routine. Occasional notifications and swipe suggestions on the lock screen nudge you to interact with it. Once you give in and open the feed, it will override your lock screen wallpaper with its content, making you change back to your preferred wallpaper manually! Yes, more crapware to try to sell you stuff and to gather more data on you. Good times!

Stranger Things 4 #2 All Time-Netflix; EU Big Tech Regs Final Passage; Tesla Pothole Software; Firms to Use More AWS

Stranger Things 4, the most recent season of the hit show, just became the second Netflix show ever to surpass a billion hours viewed. Theverge.com reports that since the first installment of the season dropped on May 27th, viewers have spent a cumulative 1.15 billion hours watching the season’s nine episodes, including 301 million hours just this past weekend. Theverge.com reports that the big viewing number makes Stranger Things 4 the second most-watched Netflix season ever, after Squid Game in 2021. It is a long way from catching Squid Game, though.  Squid Game is well out of reach right now… with 1.65 billion hours viewed. Stranger Things could still catch it, though. At this rate,  you can assume that Stranger Things 5 is going to be huge.

EU lawmakers gave the thumbs up on Tuesday to landmark rules to rein in tech giants such as Alphabet unit Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, but enforcement could be hampered by regulators’ limited resources. According to Reuters, in addition to the rules known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), lawmakers also approved the Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires online platforms to do more to police the internet for illegal content.Companies face fines of up to 10% of annual global turnover for DMA violations and 6% for DSA breaches. This is all well and good, but the real trick will be how…or if…they can enforce the new rules. 

Tesla has introduced a software update that allows its vehicles to scan for potholes, broken pavement and other defects, Electrek has reported. It can then use that to generate “rough road map data,” and trigger the adaptive suspension in supported vehicles to adjust the ride height for more comfort. The ride adjustment will only work in Tesla Model S and Model X cars with adaptive suspensions. It’s not clear if the Model 3 or Y vehicles also scan for rough roads, even if they lack the adaptive suspension to benefit from the data. Ford has also previewed such a feature for some models.

 68% of organizations using Amazon Web Services report they plan to become more reliant on cloud managed or professional services over the next 12 months alone, according to a new report from 451 Research. The report surveyed 950 North American organizations using AWS. Venture Beat notes that fifty-nine percent of respondents report using AWS to increase the speed and agility of launching applications, the top single driver for organizations’ selection of AWS. Even sophisticated users have issues with AWS, though.  41% of respondents named cloud performance optimization and cost, 39% cited building cloud-native applications, and 38% reported struggling with migrations from legacy infrastructure to AWS. 

iPhone Production Steady-Kuo; Google Will Remove Sensitive Location Data

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo doubts a Digitimes report that says TSMC’s iPhone 14 orders have been cut by 10%. In a thread on Twitter, the analyst says the shipment forecast for iPhone 14 components and EMS remains the same as he reported early this week. Acording to 9to5mac.com, Kuo says that “Apple’s slight adjustments for iPhone shipment forecasts (single-digit increase/decrease) are common, including new models before mass productions.” “Apple doesn’t usually markedly change shipment forecasts for new iPhones (double-digit increase/decrease) before launching new models and confirming the actual market demand/feedback.” He expects them to still produce about 90 million phones in the first wave of production.

Google has announced in a blog post that it would remove Location History data about some “particularly personal” places from a Google account shortly after someone visits. Locations that will have their data deleted include “medical facilities like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others.” TechCrunch reports that Fitbit users who use the device’s companion software as a period tracker currently must delete those entries one by one, but an easier way to “delete multiple logs at once” is on the way. 

Pixel Crash Detection to Other Androids; Amazon Limits Plan B-Supply Issues; Google Launches Public Sector; Mobile World Congress Stays in Barcelona

Google seems to be preparing for car crash detection and other Pixel-exclusive Personal Safety features available on other Android phones. According to 9to5google, com, one of the hallmark features of Personal Safety, the currently Pixel-exclusive app that aims to make your smartphone more helpful in emergency situations, is car crash detection. Using a combination of factors including your phone’s motion sensors (to detect an impact or sudden stop while at high speeds) and microphone (to listen for the sounds of a crash) Personal Safety is able to automatically connect you to emergency services, if need be. New code has showed up in the latest version that indicates ‘nonpixel.’ While this doesn’t mean it’s a slam dunk that the crash protection will be released to other Android phones, it would be a great move to allow it, since it promotes user safety. 

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Amazon is limiting sales of Plan B and other emergency contraceptives to three units per customer in the wake of increased demand, the company confirmed to several media outlets. Engadget.com reports that last week’s US Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade prompted a spike in sales of Plan B and other generic brands of levonorgestrel morning-after pills. Rite-Aid is also capping both online and in-person sales of emergency contraception to three per customer. Walmart has a more generous limit of 10 units of Plan B per customer, and Target limits online sales of Plan B to six orders per customer. Following a temporary cap on sales, both Walgreens and CVS have removed purchase limits on Plan B.

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Google has unveiled ‘Public Sector,’  which will focus on helping US public sector institutions. 9to5google.com says Google Public Sector “will operate as a subsidiary of Google LLC and will specialize in bringing Google Cloud technologies.” This includes Workspace productivity tools like Gmail and Docs, while Google Cloud Platform (GCP) covers data and analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning tools. Offering cybersecurity products is also touted, while Google will “continue to invest in training.” Google has also announced partnerships with a number of federal agencies, including the Air Force, Navy, and Department of Veteran Affairs. 

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Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile tech event, will keep taking place in Barcelona until at least 2030. According to Mashable.com, the event, which has been in Barcelona for the last few years, originally was in Rome, and moved to a new city every year. MWC has been in Barcelona now since 2006…but that deal was going to expire in 2024.  It has been in Barcelona since 2006. MWC had 109,000 people attend in 2019, but was cancelled in 2020, and a cut back version was held in 2021. The 2022 conference this spring was back to normal live, but was attracted a smaller audience. 

Waymo, UPS, Others Want Self-Drive Trucks in CA; Google Shuttering Hangouts in November, Climate Change Changing Wine Chemistry; Tesla Vets Start EV Factory Automation Firm

Waymo, UPS, and over 30 autonomous vehicle developers have sent an open letter to Governor Newsom asking him to revisit the California Department of Motor Vehicles 2015 ban on operation of autonomous trucks in the state. Techcrunch.com notes that things have opened up for cars…Cruise just started charging for totally driverless rides, and Waymo recently opened up driverless testing for employees in San Francisco. Right now, the state bars autonomous testing or deploying of vehicles weighing over 10,001 lbs. Meanwhile, Texas is steaming ahead…with Waymo Via, Kodiak Robotics, TuSimple, and others already testing on their roads. Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, Nevada and Colorado also have testing and deployment regulations for autonomous trucks.

It’s not as if we didn’t know this was coming…Google has been saying they would do it for quite a while now. Well, the time is nearly upon us…in November, Google will shut down Hangouts. According to theverge.com, they are beginning to migrate free, personal Hangouts users to Chat. People who still use the Hangouts mobile app will see a prompt to move to Chat. The web based Hangouts users will start to see the prompt in July. We have used Chat at work to communicate info to each other that doesn’t need to go over the air…for example, notifying a co-worker that a news story is ready to go. The migration was seamless. A note: Google Chat is not the same thing as GChat, which Google killed off earlier this month. Chat does offer some additional features, like the ability to make direct calls, and share and view multiple images. 

As if the heat, water shortages, and fires weren’t bad enough, apparently climate change is affecting the chemistry of wine. Arstechnica.com says growers are concerned that wildfires and warmer temperatures can transform the flavor of wine, whose quality and very identity depends on the delicate chemistry of grapes and the conditions they’re grown in. Many growers and winemakers are increasingly concerned that climate change is robbing wines of their defining flavors, even spoiling vintages entirely. The chemistry? Wine quality, at its most granular, boils down to achieving balance between three broad aspects of berries: sugar, acid and secondary compounds. Sugar builds up in berries as vines photosynthesize, and acid breaks down as the grapes ripen. Secondary compounds—basically, chemicals beyond those essential to the plant’s core metabolism—accumulate over the season. When a region’s climate changes, it disrupts the balance of sugar, acid, and secondary compounds. It’s too early to say bye-bye to the Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, or Bordeaux region of France yet, though. So far the public seems to embrace the ‘bolder and jammier wine.’ Winemakers and their chemists are trying to stay a step ahead of the climate alterations in their vineyard areas. 

A new startup aimed at improving manufacturing tech in EV factories has been founded by two Tesla vets. Techcrunch.com reports that Industrial Next has raised $12 million from Lenovo Capital, the venture capital arm of Chinese computer firm Lenovo. Industrial Next founders are Allen Pan, who was Tesla’s autonomous factory lead at Fremont, and Lukas Pankau, who was a lead electrical architect behind Model X, Y and 3. They want to bring the latest production technologies to electric vehicle suppliers around the world, by selling a mix of modular equipment, customized software, and follow-on service, which means clients can procure for one production unit or the entire factory.

Apple Readies Slew of Hardware; Your Data Post Roe; Stardust-1st Period App End-to-End Encrypted; Ukrainian Women Only Fans Raises Money to Fight Russians

Apple is apparently planning a slew of hardware upgrades this fall. Macrumors.com reports that Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, is preparing to drop new Mac Mini models with M2 and M2 Pro chips, new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, and a new Mac Pro tower with M2 Ultra and “M2 Extreme” chips. Also, later in the year, look for possible new Apple TV boxes with an A14 chip and more RAM, a new HomePod (hopefully with a less eye-watering price) with essentially the same sound and footprint as the original…albeit with an updated top of speaker display. For the Apple Watch, look for an S8 chip…but Gurman says it will have the same specs as the S7 and S6 chips. Of course, the 4 new iPhone models will probably drop as usual in September….they are rumored to be in production now. 

As some states move to criminalize abortion, advocates of digital rights note that such things as your internet history, text messages, and location data may be used as criminal evidence. According to businessinsider.com, “The concern about digital privacy security and data safety within the abortion access movement — people seeking an abortion — is all very real,” said Daly Barnett, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit data rights group based in San Francisco. Woman may want to go back to old fashioned paper calendars for period tracking, and use a vpn and browser like Duck Duck Go for web searches. Also, if planning an out of state abortion, it may be prudent to temporarily buy and use a burner phone. 

Period tracking app Stardust is announcing that they are the first such app to offer end-to-end encryption. Mashable.com says the app, which combines traditional menstrual tracking with movements of the moon and planets had planned the update before the Supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Other ‘safer’ period trackers (not necessarily safe from government intrusion) include Clue, Drip, and Euki. Stardust’s encryption goes live June 28th.

A group of Ukrainian women has launched an Only Fans type project to raise money for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. Business Insider says it’s called TerOnlyFans, and it has raised over $700,000 since March. The women are selling nude pictures of themselves, with most of the money going to Ukraine’s Territorial Defense. A small amount has been donated to refugees and animal shelter organizations. So far, 35 women and 3 men are involved. They have gotten money from people in the Netherlands, France, and the UK. They note that they don’t take requests for pictures, since they aren’t sex workers. They have picked out the pix themselves. Founder Nastsassia Nasko says ‘We will end this project when Putin dies and Russia stops their aggression.

Twitter-Beyond 280 Characters; Amazon Fully Auto Warehouse Robot; Toyota & Redwood Partner-Battery Recycling; Alexa Reads in Grandma’s Voice

After expanding from 140 characters to 280, now Twitter is apparently looking at vastly more characters…but not on the main app. Android Police reports that Twitter has announced Notes, a brand new feature currently in testing with a select group of writers. The idea behind Notes is simple: with newsletters now more popular than ever, pivoting into full-on blogging — while keeping the 280-character limit for the bulk of the site — should bring a new audience to Twitter without shedding what makes it unique in the first place. Each Note is tied to your Twitter account, with your handle and username filling in for the usual byline. It supports photos, embedded tweets, paragraphs, text formatting (like bold and italics), and more, bringing it in line with the likes of WordPress and other blogging platforms. This should let bloggers use the reach of their Twitter account to lure people to their longer form blogs. 

Amazon has announced its ‘first fully autonomous mobile robot.’ According to theverge.com, it is intended to move large carts around its warehouses. The robot is named Proteus. Amazon claims it can safely navigate around humans in the warehouses…something that has been beyond present robots. The current crop of bots has to be kept in a separate, caged area. Amazon also announced several other robotic systems. One, called Cardinal, is a robotic arm that can lift and move packages weighing up to 50 pounds, which Amazon hopes to deploy in warehouses next year. The company says that its computer vision systems let it pick out and lift individual packages, even if they’re in a pile. The company has said  “replacing people with machines is just a fallacy” that could lead to a company going out of business. This was pointed out by the head of Mercedes-Benz over 2 decades ago, when they brought automation to their car manufacturing plants. The CEO at the time said Mercedes would use robots ‘to save backs, not replace hands.’ They believed the human touch was a crucial factor in their success. 

The battery packs in electric vehicles are one of the most, if not the most expensive components in an EV. Then there is the issue of what to do when they have run their course. According to theverge.com, Toyota is partnering with Redwood Materials, a company of Tesla co-founder JB Straubel to collect and recycle old batteries. They will take the worn out batteries, and refurbish them or break them down so the materials can be used in new batteries. 

Because we haven’t had a creepy story in a while, it’s time for one again. Techcrunch.com reports that soon, Alexa will be able to read stories in the voice of your dead Grandma! They have allegedly worked out new tech that can take just one minute of speech from Granny, and synthesize her voice to read a Grandchild a bedtime story. The feature was explained at Amazon’s annual re:Mars conference in Las Vegas. There is no timeline for it, and no more details, but it is an interesting (and creepy) use of technology. ‘Alexa, read Junior ‘Charlotte’s Web’ in Dead Grandma’s voice. 

Tesla Ex-employees Sue; Twitter Revives Chirp Dev Conference; EU Disinformation Rules; Latest Trusted Brands

Tesla is being sued by a couple of former employees from its Sparks (Reno), Nevada gigafactory or mass layoffs. Engadget.com reports that the former employees claim that more than 500 employees were terminated without the required 60 days of advance notice per the US Warn Act…a violation of that federal law. Tesla also only offered a week of severance pay to some employees (and demanded a release from them.) Musk told CNBC that the lawsuit wasn’t important. “That is a small lawsuit of minor consequence,” he said. “Anything that relates to Tesla gets big headlines, whether it is a bicycle accident or something much more serious.”

It’s been over 10 years since they held one, but Twitter is reviving its Chirp Developer Conference in November. According to techcrunch.com, Twitter has acknowledged its past screwups with developers, and admitted that it needs to rebuild its relationship with the developer community. The conference will be live in San Francisco, and will also stream live. In addition to announcing the Chirp event, Twitter rolled out new pricing tiers that aimed to make it easier for different types of developers, small and large, to get started with the platform — including researchers and academics in need of larger datasets. Not all of these are yet available — Twitter’s Elevated+ access which offers more than 2 million tweets per month, for example, is still waitlisted. 

The European Union has toughened rules for deep fakes, bots, impersonation and fake accounts, with huge fines for tech companies that don’t help fight disinformation. Geekcentral.com says that now Google, Meta, Twitter, Twitch, TikTok, and Clubhouse have signed on to the rules…along with over 32 other companies.The 2022 Code of  Practice toughens one the EU introduced in 2018. How big is the fine for non-cooperators? 6% of global revenue!

Morning Consult surveyed 5,000 Americans to find out what are the most trusted brands.  The pandemic has brought an interesting mix. In previous years you might see the likes of Disney, Apple, or Coke. The latest top 10 are: Band-Aid at number 1, runner up is Lysol, in third place is Clorox, with venerable UPS clocking in at 4th. the 5th most trusted is CVS Pharmacy, followed by 6th place Visa. #7 is Cheerios, and the 8th place brand is The Weather Channel. Rounding out the top 10 are number 9 Colgate, and 10th place is Home Depot. 

Crypto Hammered; ‘Upskilling’

Roughly $2T of cryptocurrency value, or more than two-thirds of all the crypto that existed, has been erased since bitcoin hit an all-time high in November 2021. The Wall St Journal notes crypto has  shared characteristics with other bubbles throughout history, marked by speculation bordering on delusion, disregard and disrespect for risk, and greed. With inflation at the highest in decades and markets dropping, cryptocurrency has been one of the first assets to be dumped. Bitcoin was under $18,000 Saturday, but was back up over $20,000 Sunday. Ethereum dropped under $1000. 

Employers are continuing to struggle with getting and keeping people with good tech skills. ZDnet points out that in place of hiring in an environment where skilled people can easily resign and jump to another company. it is often better to be ‘upskilling’ and retraining existing staff to take on more technical roles. Pluralsight has just done a survey, and of 7,000 people surveyed, 87% want to improve their tech skills…BUT 61% of them feel too busy to dedicate the time to upskilling. To keep from bleeding skilled staff, firms may just have to loosen up, and provide time on the company nickel for employees to get trained up.

Ford Recalls EV Mustangs; Redfin Lays off 8% of Workforce; Twitch-More Money for Streamers; RIP Microsoft Internet ‘Exploder’

Ford has announced a recall for 48,924 Mustang Mach-E EVs and asked dealers to pause deliveries of the vehicle. Engadget.com reports that Ford says  there’s a possibility of the high-voltage battery connectors overheating, which could prevent the vehicle from starting or cause it to lose propulsion power while on the road. Ford claims it should be able to fix the issue with an over-the-air software update, which will be rolled out next month… or, owners can take their Mach-E to a Ford or Lincoln dealer and have the update installed there. Affected vehicles were built between May 27th, 2020, and May 24th, 2022 at Ford’s factory in Cuautitlán, Mexico.

Seattle real estate company Redfin announced Tuesday that it is cutting about 8% of its workforce, acknowledging that a housing downturn in the U.S. is hitting the company hard. According to geek wire.com, the company is blaming “market conditions” in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, and Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said in a note to employees, which was posted on the company’s blog, that “a layoff is always an awful shock, especially when I’ve said that we’d go through heck to avoid one.” But May demand was 17% below expectations, he added, and fewer sales left the company with “less money for headquarters projects.” The cuts will impact approximately 470 employees and are expected to be completed by the end of June. 

Twitch is expanding its ad incentive program to include more creators and pay them more money. Theverge.com notes that earlier this year, Twitch began offering select streamers a flat, guaranteed payment in exchange for running a fixed amount of ads during a fixed number of hours. Now, Twitch is opening up the program to include more partners and is changing the way it structures payouts to pay creators more. The payouts earned with the ad incentive program were calculated using a CPM (cost per thousand model.) The platform now says they will go to a more understandable model which increases the share for streamers. The new system will pay creators 55 percent of the revenue for each ad that runs on their stream. The program will roll out June 15th, but no one will see the bump until August. ‘Affiliates’ will qualify for the 55 percent of ad revenue starting in August so long as they run three minutes of ads per hour. Twitch will also disable the highly annoying pre-roll ads for users who run ads for that same amount of time.

A moment of silence….or if you are inclined, darken your screen for a few moments. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is dead. Redmond is killing off IE today after nearly 27 years. Most Windows systems already have the successor, Microsoft Edge. Not many users will miss ‘Internet Exploder.’ According to theverge.com, IE has less than half a percent of overall browser market share. Microsoft has been trying to stop people from using Internet Explorer for years now, and the company previously labeled it a “compatibility solution” rather than a browser that businesses should actively be using. While Microsoft has moved to its Chromium-powered Edge as the default browser on Windows 11, the MSHTML engine that powers Internet Explorer is still part of Windows 11. It exists purely for IE mode in Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft says it will support IE mode in Edge through at least 2029.