Boots & Sabers

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Category: Technology

Oracle And HP Move to Texas

The flight from California is accelerating. Let’s just hope that they don’t turn Texas blue in the process.

Tech giant Oracle Corp. said Friday it will move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, and let many employees choose their office locations and decide whether to work from home.

The business software maker said it will keep major hubs at its current home in Redwood City, California, and other locations.

‘We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,’ the company said in a regulatory filing.

[…]

This month, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, one of the early companies in Silicon Valley, said it will move to the Houston area and build a campus with two five-story buildings by 2022.

‘HPE’s largest U.S. employment hub, Houston is an attractive market to recruit and retain future diverse talent, and is where the company is currently constructing a state-of-the-art new campus,’ the company said in a statement.

[…]

Texas also offers a lower cost of living and no state income tax, both of which may appeal Oracle as well as South Africa-born Musk, 49, who overtook Bill Gates to become the world’s second-wealthiest person last month as Tesla stock reached ever-greater heights.

I would point out that there is nothing stopping Wisconsin from attracting businesses like this. It’s a choice.

Disney Shifts to Streaming

The industry shift continues. I expect that this isn’t going to revert back.

Disney has unveiled plans for a major expansion of its Star Wars and Marvel franchises on its Disney+ subscription streaming service.

The company said that its upcoming films Peter Pan & Wendy and Tom Hank’s Pinocchio will be launched directly onto Disney+, skipping theatres.

Disney is the latest major studio to divert its focus from cinema to streaming.

Last week Warner Brothers said all its 2021 releases would debut on HBO Max.

And, of course, they are going to flood the zone with the same stuff until we’re all sick of it and the market cries uncle.

Disney said that it planned to offer 10 new TV series in Its Marvel and Star Wars franchises over the next few years.

 

States and Fed Sue to Break Up Facebook

Excellent.

The US government and a coalition of 48 states and districts have filed parallel lawsuits against Facebook in a major antitrust offensive that accused the social media behemoth of anticompetitive behavior and could ultimately force its breakup.

At the heart of both antitrust actions, announced on Wednesday, is Facebook’s dominance of the social media landscape, and whether the company gobbled up potential competitors and blocked market access to others that could have eaten into its staggering market share.

One lawsuit brings together nearly every state in the US, a coalition led by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. The suit accuses Facebook abusing its market power to quash smaller competitors.

Surveyor 2 Rocket Stage Enters Earth Orbit

Cool.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday.

Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September. But NASA’s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission. Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 32 feet (10 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter.

Chodas was proven right after a team led by the University of Arizona’s Vishnu Reddy used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe not only the mystery object, but — just on Tuesday — a Centaur from 1971 still orbiting Earth. The data from the images matched.

[…]

The object formally known as 2020 SO entered a wide, lopsided orbit around Earth last month and, on Tuesday, made its closest approach at just over 31,000 miles (50,476 kilometers). It will depart the neighborhood in March, shooting back into its own orbit around the sun. Its next return: 2036.

Predicting The Shape of Protein Folds

Wonderful!

Predicting how a protein folds into a unique three-dimensional shape has puzzled scientists for half a century.

London-based AI lab, DeepMind, has largely cracked the problem, say the organisers of a scientific challenge.

A better understanding of protein shapes could play a pivotal role in the development of novel drugs to treat disease.

The advance by DeepMind is expected to accelerate research into a host of illnesses, including Covid-19.

Their program determined the shape of proteins at a level of accuracy comparable to expensive and time-consuming lab methods, they say.

Dr Andriy Kryshtafovych, from University of California (UC), Davis in the US, one of the panel of scientific adjudicators, described the achievement as “truly remarkable”.

“Being able to investigate the shape of proteins quickly and accurately has the potential to revolutionise life sciences,” he said.

Warp Speed Vaccine

A lot of work went into this.

Every American will be able to get a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of June next year if they want one, according to Operation Warp Speed’s director of supply.

The first vaccine doses will be rolled out in December to the highest at risk after they get FDA approval, then they will slowly be dished out the remaining public.

On Monday, Lt. General Paul A. Ostrowski told CNBC that there would be enough to vaccinate everyone in the US by the end of June.

Will You Take the COVID Vaccine?

Well?

Pfizer said Friday it is asking U.S. regulators to allow emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine, starting the clock on a process that could bring limited first shots as early as next month and eventually an end to the pandemic — but not until after a long, hard winter.

The action comes days after Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech announced that its vaccine appears 95% effective at preventing mild to severe COVID-19 disease in a large, ongoing study.

The companies said that protection plus a good safety record means the vaccine should qualify for emergency use authorization, something the Food and Drug Administration can grant before the final testing is fully complete. In addition to Friday’s FDA submission, they have already started “rolling” applications in Europe and the U.K. and intend to submit similar information soon.

I am not one who rejects vaccines. I have taken all of the normal ones throughout my life and believe them to be a prudent way to prevent severe illnesses with minor risk. There’s no way I’m taking the first round of a vaccine that was rushed to market to prevent a disease that my immune system will almost certainly be able to fight of when I get it. For people who are in a higher risk category for COVID, y’all’s risk/benefit assessment may be different. But I would count on wide swaths of Americans taking a pass for a while until we see how the first few waves of vaccinations go.

The question will be… what will the government and businesses do to force it? We have already see several businesses jumping to find ways to force their customers to get a vaccine. We are in a dangerous transition point in our nation’s history. I’m not sure that we will ever get back.

Obama Says Social Media Companies are Acting Like Publishers and Not Platforms

I agree!

Former U.S. President Barack Obama said that the extent to which social media companies claim they “are more like a phone company than they are like The Atlantic” is not “tenable,” he told the publication in an interview published Monday.

“They are making editorial choices, whether they’ve buried them in algorithms or not,” the former president said in the interview. “The First Amendment doesn’t require private companies to provide a platform for any view that is out there. At the end of the day, we’re going to have to find a combination of government regulations and corporate practices that address this, because it’s going to get worse. If you can perpetrate crazy lies and conspiracy theories just with texts, imagine what you can do when you can make it look like you or me saying anything on video. We’re pretty close to that now.”

Obama’s statement that social media platforms should be considered more like publishers than public utilities would have significant implications on how the companies are regulated.

[…]

President-elect Joe Biden has harshly criticized Section 230 and Facebook itself in an interview with The New York Times editorial board published earlier this year.

“Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms,” Biden said at the time, referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, taking a more extreme position than many of the Democrats and Republicans currently seeking to tweak the laws’ protections.

In October, I said:

In purposefully, actively, and personally deciding to stomp on a negative story about Joe Biden that was published by a reputable newspaper in the midst of a political campaign, Facebook and Twitter have definitively and unmistakably crossed the line from being internet platforms to publishers. As such, the legal protections granted to them under Section 230 must be withdrawn so that they can be regulated like The New York Times, Fox News, MSNBC, and all of the other publishers that filter, edit, and curate the information they provide to their subscribers.

Facebook and Twitter can’t have it both ways. If they want the legal protections provided under Section 230, then they must allow all information to flow freely. If they want to be information gatekeepers, then those protections must be withdrawn so that people have legal remedies against abuse.

Another Possible COVID-19 Vaccine

Great news.

A new vaccine that protects against Covid-19 is nearly 95% effective, early data from US company Moderna shows.

The results come hot on the heels of similar results from Pfizer, and add to growing confidence that vaccines can help end the pandemic.

Both companies used a highly innovative and experimental approach to designing their vaccines.

Moderna says it is a “great day” and they plan to apply for approval to use the vaccine in the next few weeks.

However, this is still early data and key questions remain unanswered.

 

New Era in American Space Transport

Huzzah.

Four astronauts – three from the US and one from Japan – have launched from Florida on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The crew rode to orbit in a rocket and capsule provided by the SpaceX company.

It’s only the second time the firm has supplied the service.

The US space agency Nasa has said it is now entering a new era in which routine astronaut journeys to low-Earth orbit are being conducted by commercial providers.

The four individuals making their way up to the ISS are the Americans Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and the highly experienced Japanese space agency (Jaxa) astronaut Soichi Noguchi.

By participating in this mission, Noguchi becomes only the third person in history to leave Earth in three different types of space vehicle, having previously flown on Soyuz and shuttle hardware.

Pfizer Vaccine Results Looks Positive

Cautiously hopeful.

Pfizer announced Monday that a COVID-19 vaccine developed with its partner, BioNTech, has proved to be more than 90% effective and that it plans to ask regulators for permission to sell the shot before the end of this month if pending data shows it is safe.

“Hopefully now we can move on and get this vaccine out there and make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to do and stop” the virus, said Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development, reports The Wall Street Journal.

According to Pfizer, the vaccine proved to be more than 90% effective in the first 94 subjects who had both been infected by coronavirus and had developed at least one of the disease’s symptoms, according to the companies. The companies say no serious safety issues have come up in its study, which includes almost 44,000 subjects in the United States and in other countries.

However, health regulators say it will take some time to review the vaccine. The Food and Drug Administration requires that safety assessments include at least two months of monitoring for half of the study’s subjects.

Time to regulate Facebook, Twitter like the publishers they are

Here is my column that ran in the Washington County Daily News this week.

The New York Post, the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton, broke a story last week about Joe Biden’s family. The story was supported by credible evidence and implicated Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in a long-term scheme to shake down foreign entities for money in exchange for favorable American government action. It is the kind of story that, if true, is the most serious kind of government corruption imaginable — the selling of American foreign policy for cash.

The bombshell story was instantly quashed and hidden by Twitter and Facebook. Both companies actively censored the story, blocked accounts that attempted to share the story, and disabled links under the faux-truistic cover that they were upholding journalistic standards by insisting on stronger sourcing. This is despite a lengthy history of allowing every conspiracy theory and liberal fake news story to propagate unmolested. In choosing to put their digital thumbs on the Biden story, both companies crossed the line from internet platforms to publishers and require a different regulatory treatment.

Twitter and Facebook both benefit from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is credited with providing the legal umbrella that allowed the internet to flourish into what it is today. Section 230 simply states, in its entirety, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

While simple, the distinction has massive implications in law. By not being deemed a publisher, internet companies are protected against liability for libel or defamation for what appears on their platforms. Section 230 is an evolution of an ancient English common law practice of “common carriage” or common carrier. The crux of common carriage is that private enterprises who are engaged in something imperative to the common good are granted some special protections by the government in exchange for certain obligations. In the case of internet companies, the free exchange of ideas these platforms facilitate is considered the lifeblood of a free, self-governing society and a common good worthy of such protections.

In the 20th century the common carrier that dominated technology for the better part of 70 years was AT&T. In exchange for a monopoly on long-distance lines and the ability to use eminent domain, AT&T agreed to let the government regulate their rates and, what was critical, to not discriminate against what was said on those lines. This was a stark contrast to the great monopoly of the telegraph, Western Union, which might have helped sway the presidential election of 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes by secretly providing the Hayes campaign the Democrats’ telegrams and suppressing others. AT&T’s great bargain was to agree to be regulated in exchange for a monopoly.

Section 230 took the grand bargain a step further by providing all of the benefits of legal absolution in exchange for nothing. Under this law, companies like Twitter and Facebook grew up into dominant natural monopolies because their users provided petabytes of content for other users to consume without having to police the content for accuracy or even sanity.

Make no mistake, if you are not paying for it, you are what is being sold. In the case of Twitter and Facebook, their business model is to collect incredible amounts of personal data about their users and sell that data for the purpose of target marketing, research, and whatever other moneymaking purpose they can divine. Their algorithms target people for specialized content and might have already broken the common carrier trust that the public bestowed on them.

In purposefully, actively, and personally deciding to stomp on a negative story about Joe Biden that was published by a reputable newspaper in the midst of a political campaign, Facebook and Twitter have definitively and unmistakably crossed the line from being internet platforms to publishers. As such, the legal protections granted to them under Section 230 must be withdrawn so that they can be regulated like The New York Times, Fox News, MSNBC, and all of the other publishers that filter, edit, and curate the information they provide to their subscribers.

Facebook and Twitter can’t have it both ways. If they want the legal protections provided under Section 230, then they must allow all information to flow freely. If they want to be information gatekeepers, then those protections must be withdrawn so that people have legal remedies against abuse.

Time to regulate Facebook, Twitter like the publishers they are

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. I know what you’re thinking… what the heck did President Hayes do to make the news this week? You’ll have to read and see.

In the 20th century the common carrier that dominated technology for the better part of 70 years was AT& T. In exchange for a monopoly on long-distance lines and the ability to use eminent domain, AT&T agreed to let the government regulate their rates and, what was critical, to not discriminate against what was said on those lines. This was a stark contrast to the great monopoly of the telegraph, Western Union, which might have helped sway the presidential election of 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes by secretly providing the Hayes campaign the Democrats’ telegrams and suppressing others. AT& T’s great bargain was to agree to be regulated in exchange for a monopoly.

Disney Reorganizes Around Streaming Content

The world has changed.

Seemingly absorbing some growing advice from industry pros, Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) is announcing a major reorganization where it will be making streaming its “primary focus” for entertainment.

Shares are up 3.1% after hours.

The company will rearrange its media and entertainment divisions into a single organization responsible for content distribution, ad sales, and Disney Plus.

[…]

“Under the new structure, Disney’s world-class creative engines will focus on developing and producing original content for the Company’s streaming services, as well as for legacy platforms, while distribution and commercialization activities will be centralized into a single, global Media and Entertainment Distribution organization,” the company says.

Justice Department Builds Antitrust Case Against Google

This could have far-reaching implications.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is expected to bring an antitrust action against Google in coming weeks, focusing on its dominance in online search and whether it was used to stifle competition and hurt consumers, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press Thursday.

The department also is examining Google’s online advertising practices, said the person, who could not discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Antitrust officials at the department briefed state attorneys general Thursday on the planned action against Google, seeking support from states across the country that share concerns about Google’s conduct.

The anticipated lawsuit against Google could be the government’s biggest legal offensive to protect competition since the groundbreaking case against Microsoft almost 20 years ago.

Lawmakers and consumer advocates accuse Google of abusing its dominance in online search and advertising to stifle competition and boost its profits.

Xbox Financing Options

If you are financing your game console, you suck at personal finance. You are paying $840 for a $500 piece of technology for purely entertainment purposes. The fact that this option will be so popular is a window into America’s inability and unwillingness to control government spending and debt.

The high-end Xbox Series X will cost $499 while the entry-level Xbox Series S will cost $299. Microsoft will also offer a financing plan that allows customers to pay for either console over 24 months.The Xbox Series S costs $24.99 per month on that plan while the Xbox Series X will cost $34.99 per month.

Microsoft said the financing plans also include access to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play, which allows you to download or stream more than 100 games to Xbox or PC. It will also include Microsoft’s new mobile streaming services that lets you stream from the cloud to an Android phone. You’ll have to buy a Game Pass subscription plan separately, which starts at $9.99 per month, if you don’t finance.

Twitter and Facebook Are Actively Campaigning

They have been for some time, but now they aren’t even pretending. Since these platforms have taken ownership of the content submitted by their users by actively curating it, I’m all in favor of removing their legal protections.

For the first time, Facebook has taken down a post from Donald Trump’s personal page on Wednesday for making false claims about the coronavirus.

Trump had uploaded a video of an interview he gave to Fox News earlier Wednesday, in which he falsely stated that children are ‘almost immune’ from COVID-19.

‘They have much stronger immune system than [adults],’ Trump said in the video, which the official account for his presidential campaign also tweeted.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Facebook said the president’s post was removed for violating the social media platform’s ‘policies around harmful COVID misinformation.’

Twitter followed suit a short while after, ordering Trump’s campaign account, @TeamTrump, to remove its ‘misleading’ post featuring the same video and banning it from tweeting again until it agreed to do so.

Government Asks Tech Companies to Forbid Advocating Crime

This whole censorship thing gets a bit slippery, eh?

As protests against police brutality and racism stretch into their fourth week across the US, the Trump administration is pressuring tech companies to take action against posts that encourage the toppling of statues, describing them as “criminal activity.”

Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf sent letters to companies including Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Snapchat Friday. They claim that social media sites have enabled “burglary, arson, aggravated assault, rioting, looting, and defacing public property,” according to copies of the letters obtained by Business Insider.

Evers’ record(ings)

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News on Tuesday. Since I wrote this, there have been some very serious developments and it looks more and more like Evers might be covering up for a felon. I wonder… the Dane County DA and AG won’t investigate, but couldn’t the Jefferson or Racine County DAs (or wherever Vos and Fitzgerald were when they took the call)?

After the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Governor Tony Evers’ unconstitutional lockdown order, our state government leaders needed to figure out what, if anything, the state should do in its continuing effort to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Dutifully, Governor Evers and the two leaders of the Legislature, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, got on a phone call to discuss the path forward. What the legislative leaders did not know what that Governor Evers’ staff secretly recorded the conversation for dubious reasons and then released the recording to the media. Such a breach of trust, and his reaction to it, tells us a lot about our governor.

The rough details of the transgression are known. There were five participants in the call: Governor Evers, Speaker Vos, Majority Leader Fitzgerald, Evers’ Chief of Staff Maggie Gau, and Evers’ attorney Ryan Nilsestuen. The call was recorded and given to the media. Vos and Fitzgerald were shocked to learn that it was recorded. Evers claimed that he did not know it was being recorded, but wouldn’t say who did it. Gau and Nilsestuen have not admitted to anything.

Wisconsin law allows a call to be legally recorded if one participant of the call knows. The law does not require that all participants be notified that the call is being recorded, but it is considered both impolite and unethical to not make such a disclosure. However, if one of Evers’ other non-participant staffers recorded the call, it would be a crime. Since Evers will not disclose who recorded the call, he is either covering up for a staffer’s unethical behavior, crime, or both. What does all of this tell us about Governor Evers? Quite a bit. If we believe that Evers is telling the truth that he was ignorant of the recording, then he does not have any control over his staff. Whether a CEO, general, governor, or any other person of great responsibility, it would be unthinkable for a staff member to record the boss’ phone call with other leaders without the boss’ knowledge and consent. If Evers truly did not know, then he is not managing his staff. They are managing him.

Further, Evers’ refusal to disclose or discipline the perpetrator tells us more about him. It tells us that he is either afraid to hold his staff accountable for bad behavior, or he condones it. Recall that we do not yet know if the perpetrator committed a crime or merely violated ethical boundaries. Either way, Evers is allowing staff members to run rogue with no consequences.

Whether Evers knew or just condoned his staff’s recording of the call, it also shows that his administration is willing to use slimy tactics for political gain – even on an official call that was supposed to be about working together to respond to a pandemic. They recorded the call and released it to the media in an effort to embarrass political opponents. Despite the Evers administration’s claims of innocent motives, the results speak for themselves. Look at what they do — not what they say.

Finally, since the disclosure of the recording, Governor Evers has not seen fit to apologize to Vos and Fitzgerald for recording their conversation. He may have not known that the call was being recorded at the time, but he knows it now. His stubborn refusal to even do the simple mannerly thing and apologize for the breach of trust shows his inability, or unwillingness, to build relationships with people with whom he disagrees politically. His lifetime as a bureaucrat has not equipped him with the skills and he lacks the natural acumen to develop personal relationships outside his rigid ideological sphere.

After almost a year-and-a-half in office, Governor Evers has not made any progress in learning how to govern in a divided government. He has lurched from insults to partisan attacks to cursing to violating trusts. Is it any wonder why he resorts to unconstitutional dictatorial actions instead of working with the Legislature on behalf of the people of Wisconsin?

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