Alright, y’all!! We’ve been through COVID-19 since mid-March and we’re winding down the last few weeks of summer. Alas, I had planned an amazing summer this summer, and not it’s gone. BUT, It’s another Thursday which means another week of tech talk with Mark Starling and the First News 570 crew. This week…NASA shows Perseverance counts, $5 trillion of tech leadership sit before Congress, and the TikTok says other social networks should share. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.

EX-GOOGLE CAR EXEC SENTENCED, THEN SUES

Man, the people who just go around suing give me the heebie-jeebies. Anthony Levandowski, the former Google-Waymo executive who founded Otto, who then sold to Uber has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets and then selling them to Uber. He was originally sentenced to 27 months in jail, but his sentence was dialed down to 18 months. He’ll serve his time later on, because of COVID. According to Levandowski, he’s, “come to terms with what he did,” and wants to apologize to his Google comrades. And for his trouble, he wants to sue Uber for $4.1 billion after the company hadn’t paid up for Otto.

[Read more…] about EX-GOOGLE EXECUTIVE SENTENCED TO JAIL, SAMSUNG ANNOUNCES NEW DEVICES, AND THE NSA ISSUES A PRIVACY ADVISORY

It’s another Thursday which means another week of big tech news talk with Mark Starling and the First News 570 crew. This week…NASA shows Perseverance counts, $5 trillion of tech leadership sit before Congress, and the TikTok says other social networks should share. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.

TECH HEAD HONCHOS APPEAR BEFORE CONGRESS

The CEOs of Amazon, El Goog, Apple, and Facebook all appeared before Congress yesterday with Jeff Bezos making his first appearance. The stakes, Congress is now scrutinizing these companies because they are being deemed too big to fail. The four companies are worth a combined $5 Trillion, that’s Trillion with a ‘T’ and are considered the Internet’s utilities. While other sectors have struggled during the pandemic, these companies are doing gang busters. Congress is scrutinizing these companies under the guise of anti-trust law, but it’s a lot trickier this time around. The anti-trust laws of the early 20th century were written for consumer protections. It’s hard to understand how consumers need protection when these services are free (Google and Facebook) are fast, easy, and cheap (Amazon), and down right convenient and easy to use (Apple). The stakes are different now, however. These companies punish smaller companies, and Amazon is known to buy companies and then crush their acquisition’s competitors using newly found information. I wouldn’t hold my breath, with need many enterprises in the mix.

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NASA PERSEVERES DURING COVID AND LAUNCHES ITS LARGEST ROVER

This morning, NASA will launch it’s latestest and largest rover, Perseverance at 750 am ET. The Perseverance rover checks in at 1,025 metric tons and is larger than Curiosity the last rover to visit Mars. Perseverance will launch from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas V rocket. This rover is carrying a new experiment that will be used to determine if humans can survive on Mars. The experiments will comprise tests to determine if oxygen can be produced from Mars’ CO2 rich environment. It’s exciting seeing NASA continue exploring our local cosmos. I think we should always keep pushing the limits. You can watch the launch on NASA Live.

TIKTOK RESPONDS TO CRITICISM AND SHARES ALGORITHM

After being labeled spyware for the Chinese government by the Senate, The TikTok’s CEO, Kevin Mayer, took to the blogosphere to say that his company isn’t the enemy. Mayer has stated that without TikTok, companies would have fewer choices to advertise their wares, and in a show of good faith, will be sharing their algorithm. (I’m interested) He also called on the other social giants to share their algorithms as well. Again, I won’t hold my breath, and I won’t download their app, but I’ll certainly try to get an invite to TikTok’s Transparency Center.