Category: Networking

Tech billionaire Jack Ma emerges after months long disappearance with new video

Asia, Business, China, General, Government, Networking, Politics, Social Issues, Social Media, Technology

Tech billionaire Jack Ma has resurfaced online after an over three month long disappearance from the public sphere. Ma emerged again online in a short, roughly 50 second long video that saw him address a group of rural educators in an online conference on Wednesday 20th January 2021. The video was released on Twitter after the usually highly visible Ma had disappeared from the public sphere, and had even been replaced as a judge on a reality TV show he had been set to appear on. His period of time away from the public eye came in early November when stocks of his online retail service Alibaba were meant to go public in a deal that was suddenly halted by intervention from the Chinese government.  

The 56 year old Ma was born in 1964 in China. He rose to prominence with the growth of his online retail distribution site Alibaba, before developing a strong and recognisable personal brand as a TV personality, as well as being one of China’s most prominent philanthropists. Ma is known worldwide as an ambassador for Chinese business and an advocate for an open and market driven economy. He has however, been previously outed in 2018 as a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), with which he continues to have a slightly tense and volatile relationship. 

Last November’s events only added to the tension between Ma and the CPC as he spoke out in criticism of the Chinese government’s interventions with his business. Though most recognised for his Alibaba brand, Ma is also known as co-founder of the Ant Group – the group responsible for Alipay, China’s largest digital payment. Alipay is widely used throughout China with over one billion users and 80 million merchants. It’s total trade figures for June 2020 reached a staggering 118 trillion Chinese Yen, making it unsurprising Ma is cited as one of the world’s richest people.

Instagram turns 10 years old!

Communications, General, Networking, North America, Social Media, Start Ups, Technology, Technology News, USA

As the widely used social networking site Instagram turns 10 this year, we take a look at where Instagram started and how it has gone on to become a dominating tech player in the social media market. 

Humble beginnings

Originally started by two Standford graduates, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, it first launched in 2010 with an image posted of a dog and foot by Systrom. The dog in question was a stray in Mexico during a visit, and the featured foot was his girlfriends. Its grainy appearance hued by the dark edges of its filter epitomise what Instagram was for: finding a place for creativity in everyday life thanks to the rise of the mobile smartphone. Since then the founder has gone on to joke he might have ‘tried a little harder’ had he known that it would be the first photograph on the mega-popular social media giant that Instagram went on to become. 

Facebook buy-out

Instagram was barely a toddler and only 18 months old when it was acquired by Facebook in 2012 for an impressive price of $1 billion. The price tag was a talking point for many especially considering the young age of the company. For Instagram’s current 13 workers at the time, the news came as a relative surprise as their humble office migrated to Facebook’s famously large campus office site in California, USA. Facebook has since faced criticism for the acquisition and had to defend itself in the courts where it was accused of anti-competitive mergers and violation of trust laws amongst other tech giants, Google, Amazon and Apple.  

Turning the big 1 – 0 

Since its launch, Instagram has found a way into our daily lives – so much so that many agree they would be lost without it, and many others making their full income from the site. What started as a simple photo-sharing application has gone to become a site for commerce, activism, art, politics and more, with many people still engaging with the site’s primary mission to inspire creativity in its users.

5G network infrastructure on the rise, projected to rake in $4.2 billion in 2020

Digital Systems Technology, General, Networking

International research firm Gartner estimates that the global 5G network infrastructure market is expected to raise $4.2 billion in revenue in 2020. That would mark an 89 percent rise in revenue from 2019 ($2.2 billion). Moreover, the company anticipates that investments in 5G new radio (NR) infrastructure will make up 6 percent of communications service providers’ total wireless infrastructure revenue this year; in 2020, Gartner says, that figure will double to 12 percent.

According to Sylvain Fabre, senior research director at Gartner:

“5G wireless network infrastructure revenue will nearly double between 2019 and 2020. For 5G deployments in 2019, CSPs are using non-stand-alone technology. This enables them to introduce 5G services that run more quickly, as 5G New Radio (NR) equipment can be rolled out alongside existing 4G core network infrastructure.”

5G trials are currently being run in the United States, South Korea, the United Kingdom and other countries. These are expected to expand into larger projects as technology develops. For instance, companies in Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Spain, Sweden, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have stated that they intend to make 5G services more widely available in 2020. Gartner suggests that 7 percent of communications service providers are already employing 5G technology.

There remains a lot of work to be done, however. “National 5G coverage will not occur as quickly as with past generations of wireless infrastructure,” Fabre explained, according to InformationAge. “To maintain average performance standards as 5G is built out, CSPs will need to undertake targeted strategic improvements to their 4G legacy layer, by upgrading 4G infrastructure around 5G areas of coverage.

“A less robust 4G legacy layer adjoining 5G cells could lead to real or perceived performance issues as users move from 5G to 4G/LTE Advanced Pro. This issue will be most pronounced from 2019 through 2021, a period when 5G coverage will be focused on hot spots and areas of high population density.”

Facebook admits it collects users’ audio data and has it reviewed

Data Management & Networks, General, Mobile Security, Networking, Social Media

Facebook pays hundreds of contractors to transcribe bits of audio taken from its users, according to a report in Bloomberg.

Disturbing enough, but get this: the people contracted by Facebook to do this … shady work have no idea what the purpose of such work is. These contractors, who spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity lest they face some kind of disciplinary action, have no information about where the recordings come from, how they were collected, nor why Facebook wants them transcribed. They are simply given audio of Facebook users’ conversations and told to write it down.

After hearing of the practice, the Irish Data Protection Commission announced that it would be performing an investigation to see whether Facebook is in violation of the European Union’s privacy laws.

Caught red-handed (like Apple was in recent weeks), Facebook said it has already stopped the activity. Surprise, surprise. “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the tech giant said, the operative word being “human.” In another surprise (not), Facebook claims its users consented to having their audio recorded and transcribed. I’m sure they did so freely, voluntarily and knowingly, and not because they didn’t understand the implications of such a policy.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg was grilled about this, and many other things, during his testimony to the US Congress in 2018. He didn’t have answers of the lawmakers then, but his company submitted a few after the fact. With regard to the audio collection, Facebook said it “only accesses users’ microphone if the user have given our app permission and if they are actively using a specific feature that requires audio.”

Here’s a question for Facebook: if this is such an innocuous thing, to which users are voluntarily submitting, why discontinue it? Maybe because, as Bloomberg reports, “Facebook hasn’t disclosed to users that third parties may review their audio.”

It’s high time people initiated a mass boycott of Facebook. The company needs us far more than we need it.

Cloudflare drops 8chan following El Paso mass shooting

Data Management & Networks, Networking

Cloudflare, a leading internet infrastructure and security website, has announced that it’s kicking 8chan off its service after the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas which killed 20 people and wounded many others. According to media reports, the alleged shooter posted a racist “manifesto” on 8chan just minutes before opening fire inside a Walmart.

8chan is a forum where ultra-right-wing cranks can share their psychopathic views about race, religion, immigration and gender relations, among other things. Prior to El Paso, 8chan was serviced and protected by Cloudflare, which ensured the site wouldn’t be taken down as a result of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

In a blog post, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince explained the reasoning behind the company’s decision to pull the plug on 8chan, which Prince described as a “cesspool of hate.”

“Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident,” he wrote. “Nearly the same thing happened on 8chan before the terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. The El Paso shooter specifically referenced the Christchurch incident and appears to have been inspired by the largely unmoderated discussions on 8chan which glorified the previous massacre. In a separate tragedy, the suspected killer in the Poway, California synagogue shooting also posted a hate-filled ‘open letter’ on 8chan.”

He continued:

“They [8chan] have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.”

Prince also emphasized that booting websites off Cloudflare’s platform is not an easy decision to make, given the free speech implications involved. However, he stated that while his company puts up with plenty of questionable content, “we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design. 8chan has crossed that line. It will therefore no longer be allowed to use our services.”

None of which is to say that 8chan will suddenly vanish from the internet. Indeed, Prince points out that the site will almost certainly be picked up by another provider, just as the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer was upon being dropped by Cloudflare.

“They are no longer Cloudflare’s problem,” Prince said of the Daily Stormer, “but they remain the Internet’s problem.” Ditto for 8chan.