Kids have a knack for messing up a weekend. After, a busy week I’m in the saddle with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: Tesla joins the trillion dollar club, Intel pushes for supercomputer supremacy, and Apple rattles app developers with new privacy tool. 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.

TESLA JOINS THE WORLD’S MOST EXCLUSIVE CLUB

Yesterday, Hertz announced a $4 billion deal to purchase 100,000 Tesla vehicles for its rental fleet. (Hertz screwed me on a rental yesterday) The deal announcement pushed Tesla’s shares past $1,000 to push it to a $1 trillion market value. That’s TRILLION with a ‘T’. Tesla joins Apple, El Goog, Microsoft, and Amazon as the only trillion dollar valued companies in the world. After the announcement, Elon Musk went on a Twitter rampage urging non-billionaires to speak out against President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan which is funded by taxing billionaires as he saw his stake in Tesla increase to $230 billion. The Hertz order is the largest ever electric vehicle order by a rental car company.

APPLE’S PRIVACY REPORT APP HITS BETA

Coming soon in iOS15, Apple will be shipping a Privacy Report app which prevents certain websites and apps from tracking users across websites. The app will report which apps and websites are using cookie data to serve you advertisements and allow users to block the activity. The app has caused some consternation with app developers and Apple has blocked Google and Snapchat from launching App Store updates. Furthermore, Facebook and Snapchat have both reported Apple’s new privacy controls have made them miss revenue targets. Apple has been telegraphing the move for increased privacy for a couple of years now. Services that make money primarily off of ads will have to adapt in new ways. Meanwhile, Amazon is applauding the moves.

INTEL WILL SHIP NEW SUPERCOMPUTER WITH MORE FLOPS

Get ready to FLOP! Intel is building a new supercomputer with the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory for AI called the Aurora. The Aurora will be using its latest processor designs to create a $500 million computer that can perform 2 exaFLOPS or 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 (2 quintillion) – calculations per second. If the project is successful, the Aurora (my daughter’s name), will be the world’s fastest supercomputer. This machine will best 2021’s fastest, the Japanese made Fugaku supercomputer which tops out at 442 petaFLOPS. 2 exaFLOPS are 2,000 petaFLOPS for those counting at home. I don’t know why we’re still geeking out about supercomputers, we all know the future is quantum.

Whoa! It’s been a week. I made it back home alive after Mark’s visit to DC. It’s another Thursday, and I’m back in the saddle with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: US takes BitCoin mining lead after Chinese ban, William Shatner blasts off and boldly goes where others have gone before, and Twitter embeds ads in tweet replies. 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.

US TAKES LEAD AS CHINA BANS ALL BITCOIN TRANSACTIONS

China might be besting us in AI and chip development right now, but the US has taken the lead in BitCoin mining. In June, the Chinese government instructed banks to no longer process BitCoin transactions. Chinese mining fell from 3/4 of the world mining compute to effectively zero now that the ban has taken effect. This has led to Chinese BitCoin miners moving to Texas. The Chinese ban has caused a ripple effect. BTC is now trading below $30,000 per coin way down from its last year high of $65k. The new leaders in mining are the US, Kazakstan, and Russia. I’m not sure that’s the company we want to keep, but the Chinese rejection of BTC reflects attitudes of many non-speculators around the world. The Chinese declaring all BitCoin transactions illegal is probably a precursor to their promotion of the e-Yuan as a new digital currency. The ban has also encouraged some outrageous behavior, the CEO of Chinese mining company Poolin hopped on a flight to Texas and exclaimed, “we decided to move out once and for all. We’ll never come back again.”

SCRUFFY NERF HERDER OLDEST MAN IN SPACE

Yesterday, William Shatner, the man better known as James Tiberius Kirk, became the oldest person to travel in space. He blasted off in a Blue Origin craft for an 11-minute trip with four other passengers. Kirk’s capsule traveled passed the Karman Line the internationally recognized boundary for crossing into space. Richard Branson’s space plane, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s Inspiration4 missions are ushering in the beginnings of commercial space travel and I’m here for it. Congratulations, Scruffy Nerfherder!

TWITTER IS EMBEDDING ADS IN TWEET REPLIES

In a new money grab for eyeballs, Twitter is experimenting with a new way to position advertising. Twitter will be embedding ads in tweet responses after the 2nd, 3rd, or 8th responses. I know y’all know how I feel about these free services. I’m already annoyed by them, but hey, what are you going to do. Twitter is already an agitating application, what’s to stop them now. The new ad placement will be featured to a test community on iOS and Android users.

Starting today, we’re trying something different and testing a new ad format in Tweet conversations. If you’re a part of this test (which is global; on iOS & Android only), you’ll see ads after the first, third or eighth reply under a Tweet. 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/kvIGeYt2vp

— bruce.falck() 🦗 (@boo) October 13, 2021

Whoa! It’s been a week. I made it back home alive after Mark’s visit to DC. It’s another Thursday, and I’m back in the saddle with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: Facebook was down for the count, small businesses lose out, and Windows 11 launches with new Start button. 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.

FACEBOOK WENT DOWN FOR HOURS: MEMES WIN

On Monday, the Big Blue App family went down for almost six hours. For an app where people check the screen several times an hour, it was an eternity. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were also down because all network paths travel to Facebook. The culprit? Somewhere in the bowels of Internetwork configurations, the Internet routing that points web browsers to Facebook.com were removed or misconfigured. Facebook issued a statement, “configuration changes on the backbone routers,” caused the outage. Computer networks need routers to point non-rememberable Internet addresses to Facebook.com. When these settings got messed up, your Facebook service did too. The conspiracy theorists believe the outage was prompted by Facebook whistle blower, Frances Haugen’s interview on 60 minutes. She was the person who left Facebook and delivered copies of internal memos to the Wall Street Journal. Honestly, this outage was caused by something stupid. Someone fat fingered something or uploaded the wrong configuration file. It happens ALL THE TIME.

since FB and IG is down, Twitter Party yall'!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/c1XKbCDtte

— domo (@D_Omogggg) October 4, 2021

FACEBOOK COST SMALL BUSINESSES REAL MONEY

It was estimated that Facebook lost about $100 million during Monday’s outage. The outage also removed $6 billion of Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune and $40 billion of the company’s market value. Today, many small businesses are using Facebook and Instagram as the sole source of their lead generation and sales. Many entrepreneurs were making hundreds and thousands of dollars per day on these social platforms. The outage made small business owners realize multiple sales channels are still a reality and relying on one company’s infrastructure isn’t the best practice.

WINDOWS 11 LAUNCHES WITH UPGRADED EXPERIENCE

Microsoft’s Windows 11 operating system launched on Tuesday. The latest operating system has a number of upgrades and changes with some changes making a comeback from Windows Vista. Windows has adopted rounded corners for icons and windows which users have become familiar with from phones and tablets. Widgets have made a comeback and are available via a retractable sidebar. And, the Start button has now been placed in the center of the screen. One new feature may keep users from upgrading. Microsoft has imposed a minimum requirement that a user’s PC must have a new TPM, Trusted Platform Module, security chip for the Windows 11 upgrade. If your computer doesn’t have it, you’ll have to buy a new PC. The TPM is a cryptographic chip used by security programs.

I’m ready for a wild night! Mark Starling is in the his-ouse and I wished work wasn’t bogging me down. I spent the last two days at the AWS Public Sector Summit and today I’m on the roof with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: Amazon asks you to apply to buy its latest product, Instagram for Kids is paused by Facebook, and brand influencers cuss out the industries they flaunt. 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.

NEW ASTRO MAY HAVE DEATH WISH CLAIMS DEVELOPERS

Not the mini-van. For the past two days, yours truly was one of the denizens of the AWS faithful and attended the AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, DC. I haaaddd a ball, but it was work. Yesterday, while I was getting my last hobnob in with AWS executives, the company with the Smile on the Box announced Astro. A $999 robot you have to apply to buy. Astro is a household robot for home monitoring. It’s an Alexa powered, motorized little gadget with cameras, speakers, and a microphone for you to keep an eye on your stuff. It has a detachable cupholder that can also be used for bringing you drinks, snacks, and other miscellaneous items. Despite being an Alexa powered monitoring device, Astro is built for data privacy according to Amazon and can have its cameras, microphones and other sensors turned off. I think Astro is adorable. Amazon’s developers on the other hand disagree with Amazon having to come to Astro’s defense even before its released. Amazon engineers have said Astro is actually terrible, and has been known to roll itself down the stairs ending its digital life. Furthermore, leaks as reported by Vice has said Astro’s parts are prone to breaking. Look, I think this is great. My parents bought my sister and I remote controlled robot with a serving tray and microphone. I loved the thing! I hope Astro thrives. Astro is available by invite only. You know what I’ve done. I bow down to our robot overlords.

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