Happy Thursday, TTN readers! My oh my, what a week has it been. I’m on with  Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week: Russia dominates tech news. The Hacktivists Strike Back against Russian military targets, Amazon plans to close physical store locations, and a plethora of companies quit Russia. 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 by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

HACKERS TARGET RUSSIAN INFRASTRUCTURE

Three days ago, Anonymous, that Anonymous asked the hackers of the world to attack Russian infrastructure. The world responded and a number of Russian military assets were hit. Hackers heeding Anonymous’ call have attacked Russia’s satellite infrastructure, other hackers have released the personal details of Russian military soldiers, and the hits keep coming. Parties in the US and other nations were getting prepared for any Russian cyber attacks that may come. This week’s events have prompted cyber warriors to unite and Hack the Russians. The Ukrainian government has encouraged hackers to take up their cause. 500 volunteers have signed on so far.

Bonus: Who is Anonymous?

No one knows for sure. Anonymous is a group of hactivists who use their computer skills to target popularly identified individuals, organizations, and nations that do heinous things or are not considered good public citizens. Who knows how Anonymous decides to carry out campaign. The key to understanding groups like Anonymous is that you may agree with their actions today, and may disagree with their actions tomorrow.

AMAZON TO CLOSE PHYSICAL STORES

Amazon announced plans to close 68 of its Amazon Books, 4-Star, and Pop Up stores across malls and locations in America. The company wants to focus its energies on grocery stores and fashion outlets instead of other stuff. The 4-Star locations specialized in selling curated 4-star rated products from Amazon.com and we have all seen Amazon Pop Ups in the mall during Christmas. As the nation’s largest bookseller, it is interesting Amazon decided to pull out of selling books in brick and mortar.

COMPANIES UNITE WITH CITIZENS IN RUSSIA BAN

Say what you want to say, but the power of the Internet is a mighty thing. A plethora of global corporations have taken action in protest of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The list of companies is spread wide across a number of industries and seems to be growing everyday. Apple has stopped sales of its products and services in Russia. Netflix has told Russian regulators it will not comply with new rules to carry state sponsored streams. Electronic Arts has removed Russia from its FIFA22 soccer game. What company hasn’t hopped on the bandwagon, Binance. Binance has ruled out banning ordinary Russian users from using their crypto exchange platform.

Bonus: The Internet is Forever

The state-backed Russian news agency, RIA-Novosti, deleted an editorial piece praising Russia’s victory of Ukraine. The editorial appears to have been posted on February 26, and its content expressed praise for Russia’s swift victory over Ukraine. The news agency tried to remove the article, but it was cached by the Internet Archive in time for Net snoops to find it. If anything, regardless of your political stripes, if you’re in America this should make you feel more appreciation for a free press. Regardless of your leaning.

Have an awesome weekend! Don’t forget to sign up and receive TTN in your inbox.

Happy Thursday, TTN readers! Chips (not chocolate) and privacy take center stage this week. I’m on with  Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week: Uber and Lyft get into the medical game, Russian hacker groups warm up as Ukraine crisis deepens, and Meta CEO unveils knew metatools. 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 by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

LYFT AND UBER GET INTO THE MEDICAL TRANSIT GAME

Regardless of where you fall politically you have to admit the US health system is broken beyond repair. Over the last couple of years the ridesharing companies have been giving rides to low-income medical patients in the Non-Emergency Medical Transportation market. The NEMT program is used by hospitals and other health providers to provide transit for non-emergency patients. NEMT services are normal provided through dedicated companies, but Uber and Lyft are vying for a slice of the $3 billion marketplace. On the surface, this isn’t a bad idea. The problem however arises when NEMT drivers have basic medical training to support their customers. Drivers who weren’t ready to pick up patients have reported having to support elderly patients in ways they were trained for. Cheap ain’t always better.

FACEBOOK, UH META, UNVEILS NEW TOOLS FOR THE -VERSE

Yesterday, Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced and demoed several new tools Metaverse users can use to build out their virtual worlds. One of the first tools is the Builder Bot. The Builder Bot can be used to build out an island or patch of virtual real estate. Zuckerberg also announced an AI-powered universal translator giving Metaverse denizens the ability to communicate with anyone in real time. Meta’ AI unit is led by none other than Yann LeCunn one of the early pioneers of AI and inventor of check bank account number scanning tech. Meta isn’t just receiving cheers however, women who have become early adopters of the met averse have already reported harassment which led to one of the first implemented features to be a Personal Boundary. Early Facebook investors are telling the company that it’s their responsibility to NOT build a dystopian virtual universe. I’m like, don’t we already have that in Facebook?

RUSSIAN HACKERS WARM UP AS UKRAINE CRISIS HEATS UP

To be filed in the, We Knew This Was Coming Column, the Sandworm group, the Russian government’s hack-attack unit has been using a firmware hack to infiltrate home and small business routers. The malware called Cyclops Blink has infected 1 percent of the world’s small scale firewalls and routers. The overarching idea is that important people have home networks too, and someone will get caught in their snare. So far Cyclops Blink has only targeted WatchGuard brand of devices. Sandworm has a respectable pedigree as a hacking group. They’re exploits have shutdown parts of Ukraine’s power grid, wiped out billions of disk drives around the world, and knocked out parts of the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to sign up for Top Tech News of the week!

Happy Thursday, TTN readers! Chips (not chocolate) and privacy take center stage this week. I’m on with  Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week: regulators approve chip deal allowing AMD to gobble up Xilinx, Facebook is pissed at Apple once again because of latest iOS update, and TikTok is being scrutinized AGAIN for potentially sharing data to China. 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 by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

TIKTOK SCRUTINIZED AGAIN FOR POTENTIAL CHINESE INFORMATION EXTRACTION

A couple of years ago, President Donald Trump thought TikTok was a bane on US consumers. He claimed the app was sending personal information and usage to its parent company, ByteDance, in China. Former President Trump even tried to force a sale of the company, and as wacky tech deals go, WalMart was in talks. Fast forward to the present and the Biden administration is considering new rules to force foreign made app companies to undergo a source code review to determine if the apps send data back ‘home’. These rules are being considered after the Chinese government has cracked down on its local tech scene. TikTok is banned in China in favor of a competing app called Douyin. We’ll have to wait and see what happens next.

GLOBAL CHIP MARKET HEATS UP WITH AMD/XILINX MEGADEAL

As microchip supplies negatively impact every market from cars to computers, Chinese, US, and European regulators have approved the tech world’s latest megadeal, AMD’s purchase of Xilinx for $35 billion with a ‘B’. Xilinx makes a special kind of processor that’s specific for embedded applications like cars, appliances, and other devices that don’t require full-blown microprocessors like the Intel Pentium, Apple M1, or AMD’s K chips. The deal lets AMD compete in the market to supply chips to car manufacturers and others in a bid to best Intel. Government regulators have disliked semiconductor mega deals and have blocked Nvidia’s purchase of ARM (a maker of phone processors), and China’s blocking of Qualcomm buying NXP Semiconductor. Countries every are trying to protect semiconductor industries as supply is low an future depends on chips. The Chinese government allowed the sale as long as AMD continues to supply chips to the Chinese market and doesn’t discriminate against the country. For the first time, AMD surpassed Intel’s market cap this week.

FACEBOOK PISSED AGAIN AS APPLE INCREASES DEVICE PRIVACY

This week, Apple CEO, Time Cook, took a shot at Facebook by saying, “If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.” Tim shot his shot after announcing Apple will be increasing user privacy in its latest iOS 14.5 update. Apple will require apps to ask for permission before using the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) ID on iPhones. The IDFA is a special identifier that is baked into every iOS device and is used be advertisers to send targeted ads and measure ad effectiveness. According to Facebook, up to 80% of its users will opt to say, “no,” and could cut its ad revenues by half. Facebook is also saying small businesses will be hurt the most because they can’t get their ads pushed.

Bonus Analysis: I’m not so sure about that. Facebook’s algorithms are already gamed against small advertisers. The average small business doesn’t have a large budget to spend across many social networks. And real metrics proves that if you aren’t spending THOUSANDS of dollars a month, consistently, on these platforms your content isn’t being seen by a critical mass. The dollar-to-eyeballs ROI just isn’t there. So, so saying small businesses are going to get hurt the most plays well to the politicos who are itching to regulate Big Tech. The reality is that this change will hurt Facebook because they’ll get less impressions and maybe small businesses can spend their resources on more effective growth strategies.