Vox
DirecTV is moving one of its satellites to a safer orbit over fears of explosion (Vox)
Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Fri, 01/24/2020 - 08:18House Antitrust Chairman David Cicilline: Tech companies are 'too big, and we've allowed them to exercise monopoly power' (Vox)
Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Thu, 01/23/2020 - 15:34Google's new look for desktop search results blurs the lines between ads and search results. Critics see it as a dark pattern. (Vox)
Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Thu, 01/23/2020 - 10:106 reasons smaller companies want to break up Big Tech (Vox)
Submitted by benton on Wed, 01/22/2020 - 06:39Facebook accused of shutting out mobile competitors in lawsuit (Vox)
Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Fri, 01/17/2020 - 12:56
House Speaker Pelosi calls Facebook an accomplice for ‘misleading the American people’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ripped into Facebook during her weekly press briefing and accused the social media company of “schmoozing” the Trump administration out of tougher regulation. She said:
Bloomberg to make a secret pitch to Silicon Valley billionaires, showing he’s not afraid to schmooze Big Tech (Vox)
Submitted by benton on Thu, 01/16/2020 - 09:31Senator Wyden calls for an investigation of the ad-blocking industry
Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the ad-blocking industry for anti-competitive behavior. For years now, some of the largest tech firms have paid ad-blocking companies like Eyeo, which owns Adblock Plus, to avoid the software’s restrictions and have their ads displayed on devices. In 2015, a report showed that companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google were paying out ad blockers so that they could be added to a whitelist to avoid the software’s filters.
SpaceX Continues to Blast Satellites Into Orbit as the Space Community Worries
Early in 2020, SpaceX became the operator of the world’s largest active satellite constellation, with 180 satellites orbiting the planet. The milestone is a mere starting point for Starlink, SpaceX’s ambitious project to provide internet capabilities to every inch of the globe. To get that kind of connectivity, the company wants the option to launch up to 42,000 satellites over the next decade. That’s about 21 times the number of operational satellites currently in space — and the true impact of the company’s nascent mega-constellation is still very much a mystery.