The Huawei trade ban has now been lifted by President Trump as trade deal talks are set to re-open with China in the coming weeks.
Tag: politics
PewDiePie, arguably one of the biggest YouTube stars ever, has found himself in hot water after dropping the N-word during a live stream of Players Unknown Battlegrounds.
Never too far from controversy Pew-Dick-Pie is at it again. His most recent “gaff”, dropping the N-word during a live stream, was said with such flippancy observers now believe the word must be one used often as a part of the streamer’s English vocabulary.
Denounced by many, some are taking it even further. Campo Santo co-founder Sean Vanaman submitting a DCMA takedown request to have the streaming celebrity’s play-through of their indie darling “Firewatch” removed from Youtube.
The video, which currently has 5.7M views, is acknowledged by Vanaman as something they likely benefitted from by reaching PewDiePie’s large audience. He goes on to “urge other developers” to do the same and “cut him off from the content that has made him a millionaire”.
Sadly PewDiePie’s largest audience is a young one. The domino effect of his unfiltered “commentary” is large and it’s clear the YouTubers has little regard for his responsibilities in creating content for a youthful audience.
This all comes off the back of his recent comments to further distance himself from being a Nazi after the Charlottesville protests. In his video statement he promised to stop joking about such issues due to recent events. It would seem all he’s done is shift his focus and continues to be an alleged bigot.
Source: PewDiePie drops N-word weeks after distancing himself from Nazism | Metro News
The disputes between Airbnb and the hotel industry continue to be an ongoing battle, but things escalated last week when an ad campaign backed by the Hotel Association of New York City suggested that short-term rentals could be used to host terrorists like Salman Abedi, the bomber behind the Manchester attack in May.
The advert asks “Who’s in your building?” and makes reference to large packages that were delivered to the Manchester bomber’s rented accommodation.
The main flaw in their argument, the property rented by Abedi wasn’t through Airbnb, instead the scare campaign rightfully states it being rented through “a local online retailer”.
Source: NYC hotel industry claims Airbnbs are enabling terrorists – The Verge
The Australian government has emerged from two days of talks with its Five Eyes intelligence partners confident in its plans to have technology firms decrypt communications for law enforcement purposes.
[It was] also decided to try and engage with internet service providers and technology companies to secure co-operation through an agreed set of protocols, rather than law changes, he said.
He said these protocols would not amount to a specific request for implanted backdoors.
Forget for a moment that the Australian representative in all this is an incompetent dinosaur called George Brandis and see if you can come up with an solution to this problem.
On one side what Australian and the Five Eyes group are doing is a massive invasion of privacy and because of the few the many are adversely affected.
On the other essentially unbreakable encryption renders real-time monitoring of potential threats impossible.
The ability to access and view information is all too enticing. Just look at the latest in a long list of scandals involving a QLD police officer accessing private information on civilians when they shouldn’t.
One of the richest gems in the report is where Brandis tries to not call what’s being proposed a “backdoor”. What else would you call it mate?
He then tops it off with a comment that they’re looking for companies like WhatsApp and Signal to “volunteer” and cooperate with their ideas, but if they don’t it can easily be forced upon them by introducing “coercive powers” legislation similar to what already exists in the UK & NZ.
In other words, we want our fisheries department to be able to have access to your metadata AND decryption of your private messaging and we’ll force you to do it sooner or later.
Source: Australia pushes ahead with plans to pressure tech firms on encryption – Security – iTnews
Sensitive personal information on more than 198 million voters in the United States was stored unencrypted and with no access controls in the cloud, potentially creating one of the largest data leaks ever.
Measuring 1.1TB, the information was stored in an unprotected Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket as spreadsheet files.
Looks like no one needed to “hack” anything to affect the elections, it was all just sitting there waiting to be taken!
Source: Trump campaign data firms leak info on 200m US voters – Security – iTnews
One last thing about the Coalition’s backflip yesterday from Josh Taylor:
After this weekend’s election, if a future Coalition government had announced its internet filtering plan, all it would have had to do is to point to the original policy document uploaded yesterday and say that it was there for all to see.
Josh Taylor has been doing some absolutely outstanding tech journalism for ZDnet over the last 24 hours.
It’s entirely likely that if Josh hadn’t spotted this buried policy yesterday, it would’ve coasted through without a peep.
So please, if you appreciated knowing about this before the election, or if you’re glad this whole terrible idea seems to be dead and buried (yet again), go say thanks to him on Twitter.
(The Coalition has now seemingly backed down on this policy. See updates below)
Josh Taylor for ZDNet Australia:
A Liberal National government in Australia would adopt the opt-out UK approach to filtering the internet for all Australians.
…The announcement, buried in an AU$10 million online safety policy published online today announces that under a Tony Abbott government, Australians would have “adult content” filters installed on their phone services and fixed internet services unless they opt out.
Normally I stay out of the political news spectrum, but this news has absolutely crossed a line. This is an total backflip by the LNP–41 hours before an election–on a critical issue that many Australians would strongly oppose.
I joined the protests in Brisbane when the Labor party was trying to implement a compulsory internet filter. I opposed it then. I oppose this plan now.
If you vote for the LNP, you’re not only voting for a second-rate NBN, but you’re also casting a vote to actively filter the internet in Australia.
I urge you; if you care at all about having a fast, reliable, open internet services in Australia, please don’t vote LNP.
Update: Since this afternoon, the Coalition have issued a statement stating the incorrect policy was issued and that it does not support either a mandatory or opt-out filter:
The Coalition has never supported mandatory internet filtering. Indeed, we have a long record of opposing it.
The policy which was issued today was poorly worded and incorrectly indicated that the Coalition supported an “opt out” system of internet filtering for both mobile and fixed line services. That is not our policy and never has been.
The correct position is that the Coalition will encourage mobile phone and internet service providers to make available software which parents can choose to install on their own devices to protect their children from inappropriate material.
The policy posted online today is being replaced with the correct version.
The Coalition have not yet explained why this document was authored. This issued statement also runs contrary to what Coalition MP Paul Fletcher & Chair of the Coalition’s working group on Online Safety repeatedly confirmed to ZDnet journalist Josh Taylor this afternoon:
“The key thing is it is an opt-out, so it will be open to the customer to call up and say, ‘look, I don’t want this’, and indeed, we will work with the industry to make this a streamlined and efficient process,” he said.
Josh has backed up his article with audio of Paul Fletcher confirming this policy.
More damning still, Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull also went on to Triple J program Hack and defended this ‘incorrect’ policy.
Conversation about the policy starts at [26:18]. You can listen to the audio directly on Soundcloud.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the backdown by Malcom Turnbull:
In announcing the opt-out filter’s demise, Mr Turnbull later tried to explain his earlier defence of the “incorrect” policy.
‘‘I read the policy for the first time when it was released this afternoon,’’ he said.
‘‘I defended it as best I could and then as soon as I had an opportunity to ensure that it was withdrawn and corrected I did.’’
Both Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott have described the instance as ‘a failure of quality of control’ and defended the rest of the Coalition’s policies announced today.