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Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts is calling on Congress to pass new legislation to rein in Big Tech companies after Elon Musk ignored an information request. "Elon Musk could respond to my tweets but failed to respond to my letter by yesterday's deadline and answer basic questions about Twitter verification," Markey tweeted Saturday. "Congress must end the era of failed Big Tech self-regulation and pass laws that put user safety over the whims of billionaires."
Musk had until November 25th to answer a letter the senator sent on November 11th about Twitter's paid account verification feature. The initial rollout of the new Twitter Blue saw trolls use the service to impersonate celebrities, politicians and brands. Markey sent Musk a list of questions about the launch after The Washington Post created a "verified" account impersonating him. One day after Markey shared a copy of the letter on Twitter, Musk attacked the senator.
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey)
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Fifteen years after the release of the iPhone, it's easy to overlook the role early innovators like Palm played in popularizing the smartphone. By the time HP unceremoniously shut down the company in 2011, Palm had struggled for a few years to carve out a niche for itself among Apple and Google. But ask anyone who had a chance to use a Palm PDA in the late ‘90s or early 2000s and they'll tell you how fondly they remember the hardware and software that made the company's vision possible. Now, it's easier than ever to see what made Palm OS so special back in its day.
This week, archivist Jason Scott uploaded a database of Palm OS apps to the Internet Archive. In all, there are about 560 programs to check out, including old favorites like DopeWars and SpaceTrader. Even if you don't have any nostalgia for Palm, it's well worth spending a few minutes with the collection to see how much - or, in some cases, little - things have changed since Palm OS was a dominant player in the market.
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) November
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Foxconn's largest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China has been hit by worker protests including violent confrontations, Bloomberg has reported. Videos show hundreds of workers marching and confronting a manager, along with several instances of violence. Employees are reportedly upset over lesser benefits and longer wait times for bonuses, according to videos posted on Weibo seen by Engadget Chinese.
One clip shows workers shouting "Defend our rights! Defend our rights!" while confronting police, while another shows a group of employees surrounding a manager in a conference room. In the latter, one person says "I'm really scared about this place, we all could be COVID positive," while another adds "you are sending us to death."
Other videos show white-suited individuals attacking someone with sticks, and workers surrounding and rocking an occupied police vehicle. In several clips, workers complained that they were never sure about receiving meals and about inadequate COVID protections. News agencies including Reuters have not yet verified the authenticity of some of the videos, though.
With continued COVID-19 outbreaks, Foxconn has implemented strict "closed loop" quarantine rules, forcing staff to work and live on-site, isolated from the outside world. "It's now evident that closed-loop production in Foxconn only helps in preventing COVID from spreading to the city, but does nothing (if not make it even worse) for the workers in the factory," a Hong Kong advocacy group told Reuters. Thousands of workers may have
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Twitter, Stripe, Coinbase, Salesforce, Zendesk, Tesla, Meta, and others have announced significant layoffs in recent months, even though unemployment rates are among the lowest in 50 years.
Facebook parent company Meta announced last week it would cut 13% of its staff or 11,000 workers, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying he overestimated how long the pandemic's e-commerce boom would last.
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Dan O'Dowd is on a one-man crusade to challenge what he sees as the cavalier development of dangerous technology, starting with Tesla's ‘Full Self Driving.'
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