Technology

At this moment, more than 104,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus and more than 1.8 million have been infected. It can be hard to wrap your head around the devastation the coronavirus has wreaked on families across the US, especially as some states try to gradually reopen and return to whatever normal looks like now. As part of its stellar Voices from the Pandemic series, The Washington Post has a first-person account of a nursing home worker whose mother died of suspected coronavirus last month. Francene Bailey had been suffering from coronavirus symptoms for weeks and was trying to stay away from the rest of her family. The thing is, I was trying so hard to be careful from the very beginning. It’s not like I was one of those people who didn’t pay attention. I work at a nursing hom...

Spotify will add an 8 minute and 46-second moment of silence to select playlists and podcasts on the platform to honor George Floyd. The length of the moment of silence is equal to the amount of time former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned Floyd down by the neck with his knee, resulting in Floyd’s death and sparking universal outcry and demonstrations in US cities and around the world. Spotify’s action is part of a broader movement in the music industry called Blackout Tuesday designed to protest police violence and racism. A number of record labels are participating following a call to action from Atlanta Records marketing chief Jamila Thomas and former Atlantic employee Brianna Agyemang that started with the hashtag #TheShowMustBePaused. ViacomCBS is also participating in ...

I. The CEO On Friday afternoon, Facebook made one of its most controversial content moderation decisions in company history. After President Trump posted to Facebook some tweets that Twitter had placed behind a warning for “glorifying violence,” Mark Zuckerberg said that the company would allow them to stand. “I know many people are upset that we’ve left the President’s posts up,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post, “but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies.” “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump had tweeted — quoting a former Miami police chief who, in 1967, called for a violent crackdown on the city’s black community. And just as the president sugg...

If you’ve been participating in the recent protests and want to do more, or if you’re unable to participate and want to do something, one way to help is to donate your money or your time. There are a range of organizations that are providing activists with bail bonds and legal help, or that are helping small businesses and other community resources that have been adversely affected. What follows is only a limited list. Two things should be kept in mind: First: before you click on a link to donate to an organization or fund, make sure that it is legitimate. Unfortunately, whenever there is a crisis, there are also those out there who will try to take advantage of the larger community’s eagerness to help. In addition, some well-meaning people may start a GoFundMe or other fundraising campaig...

After the Dallas Police Department asked people to send videos of “illegal activity from the protests” happening in the city over the weekend using a special app called iWatch Dallas, K-pop fans flooded the software with content from their favorite artists and seemingly overloaded the reporting system in the process. The day after the Dallas Police Department tweeted out the original request, a secondary tweet confirmed that “due to technical difficulties iWatch Dallas app will be down temporarily.” Replies to both tweets are a mix of clips from various K-pop groups performing, games like Animal Crossing, anime GIFs, and other pop culture references calling out the request and later celebrating the app being down. K-pop fans crashed the app within a day of the original request Buzzfeed New...

TikTok on Monday laid out a series of actions it plans to take to address criticisms that its recommendation algorithm suppresses black creators. These steps include launching what it calls a “creator diversity council” aimed at “recognizing and uplifting the voices driving culture, creativity, and important conversations on the platform,” the company wrote in a blog post. TikTok says it will also reassess its moderation strategies, build out a new “user-friendly” appeals process, and develop a new creator portal for expanding communications and “opportunities for our broader creator community.” TikTok said it will “stand in solidarity with the Black community” on Tuesday by participating in “Black Out Tuesday,” a day of action against racial injustice planned by the music industry. TikTok...

Twitter has restricted a tweet from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for violating its policies against glorifying violence, following a similar action taken against President Donald Trump last week. In a tweet published Monday, Gaetz wrote, “Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” The post was retweeted over 12,000 times before Twitter took action against it. Hours after it was posted, Twitter determined that it violated its policies against glorifying violence. In doing so, the tweet is hidden from Gaetz’s profile and users must click a “view” button before seeing. Likes, retweets, and replies are all disabled from the tweet in an effort to limit its reach. “We have placed a public interest notice on this Tweet from @mattgaetz. The ...

Google is adding its Advanced Protection Program to Nest devices, the company announced in a blog post Monday, giving added security to its smart home devices. Previously, a user could use their Google account for either the Advanced Protection Program or for Nest, but now they can use both with the same Google account at the same time. “Since we launched, one of our goals has been to bring Advanced Protection’s features to other Google products,” Shuvo Chatterjee, product manager for Advanced Protection Program, wrote in a blog post. “We want as many users as possible to benefit from the additional levels of security that the Program provides.” The Advanced Protection program is designed for people at risk of targeted attacks online, such as activists, business leaders, politicians, and j...

Dozens of Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout on Monday in protest of the company’s decision not to take action against incendiary posts by President Donald Trump last week, according to The New York Times. The virtual walkout comes on the heels of a decision from Facebook not to take any action against a series of controversial posts from Trump last week, including one that seemed to threaten violence against protestors by saying, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter determined that the same message violated its rules against the glorification of violence last week, limiting the ability to view, like, reply, and retweet the post on its platform. According to the Times, employees took the day off to support protests across the country and are leaving behind autom...

Four major book publishers have filed suit against the Internet Archive for copyright violations relating to the Open Library project, setting the stage for a major legal fight over one of the internet’s longest-running ebook archives. Launched in 2006, Internet Archive’s Open Library allows users to borrow ebooks scanned from physical copies, according to a theory called “controlled digital lending” (or CDL) that limits how many times a single scan can be borrowed at once. The project expanded in March with the launch of the National Emergency Library, which suspended waitlists in response to the global pandemic, making all scanned books immediately accessible to anyone with an account. Crucially, the project circumvents the typical licensing restrictions used by conventional libraries. O...

Sony is postponing its PlayStation 5 event that was scheduled for June 4th due to ongoing protests. “While we understand gamers worldwide are excited to see PS5 games, we do not feel that right now is a time for celebration,” says Sony in a Twitter message. “And for now, we want to stand back and allow more important voices to be heard.” Sony is clearly referencing the response to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, and the resulting protests we’ve seen take place in the US and around the world. Sony had been planning to use Thursday’s event to showcase PS5 games, promising an hour-long event with a first look at some of the games people will be playing when the PlayStation 5 launches this holiday season. Sony’s postponement comes amid widespread protests Widespread protests have taken...

Nearly two hours after NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first astronauts launched to space on a privately-owned rocket, they also became the first to pilot a spaceship using only touchscreen controls. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon eschews the famous maze of manual controls and switches found on retired spacecraft like the Space Shuttle or the Apollo command modules. Instead, Crew Dragon pilots have just three large touchscreen panels in front of them and a few spare buttons below. So during the few times that they have to manually control the spacecraft, they do so using a video game-style interface on those screens. Behnken and Hurley got to take that interface for a brief test ride Saturday afternoon when SpaceX had them manually operate the Crew Dragon to make sure everythi...