President Joe Biden will direct his administration to conduct a review of key U.S. supply chains including semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, medical supplies and rare earth metals. From a report: The assessment, which will be led by members of both Biden’s economic and national security teams, will analyze the “resiliency and capacity of the American manufacturing supply chains and defense industrial base…
Tag: Business
How Oracle Sells Repression in China
In its bid for TikTok, Oracle was supposed to prevent data from being passed to Chinese police. Instead, it’s been marketing its own software for their surveillance work. From a report: Police in China’s Liaoning province were sitting on mounds of data collected through invasive means: financial records, travel information, vehicle registrations, social media, and surveillance camera footage. To make sense…
Facebook Blocks All News In and From Australia
Facebook said Wednesday that it would no longer allow Australian publishers to share news on Facebook or allow Australian people to view or share international news sources. From a report: The change comes as Australia prepares to pass a law that would require companies like Facebook and Google to pay news publishers to carry their stories. “The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands…
Chromebooks Outsold Macs Worldwide in 2020, Cutting Into Windows Market Share
New numbers show 2020 was the first year that Chromebooks outsold Macs, posting impressive market share gains at the expense of Windows. From a report: Computers powered by Google’s Chrome OS have outsold Apple’s computers in individual quarters before, but 2020 was the first full year that Chrome OS took second place. Microsoft’s Windows still retained majority market share, but also…
Sennheiser Says It’s Open To Selling Its Consumer Audio Business
Sennheiser announced on Tuesday it’s looking for a new partner to buy its consumer audio business, which consists of headphones and soundbars. From a report: It’s going to shift its focus entirely to professional audio, including its Neumann microphone division and what Sennheiser calls business communications. In a press release, Sennheiser says it wants to increase visibility in the competitive headphone…
Microsoft Urges America to Force Google and Facebook to Pay for News
“Microsoft has said the USA should copy Australia’s plan to force Google and Facebook to pay for links to news content,” reports The Register, “and suggested that doing so will help improve social cohesion and strengthen democracy.” But Google has fired back with a statement asserting that Microsoft’s motives are impure. “Of course they’d be eager to impose an unworkable levy…
‘We Need to Inflict Pain’: Mark Zuckerberg’s War on Apple
When Tim Cook told an interviewer that Apple wouldn’t get in a Facebook-style data-collection controversy, “Mr. Zuckerberg shot back that Mr. Cook’s comments were ‘extremely glib’ and ‘not at all aligned with the truth,'” reports the Wall Street Journal. But “In private, Mr. Zuckerberg was even harsher. ‘We need to inflict pain,’ he told his team, for treating the company so…
Miami City Council Agrees to At Least Study Mayor’s Bitcoin Proposal
Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez is trying to attract tech talent to his city. (The New York Times recently noted he’s joined by “a few venture capital influencers trying to tweet the city’s startup world into existence.”) So he’s still pushing a proposal to use bitcoin in a few city operations as “part of a larger play if you will to position…
VLC Will Get a New UI This Year With 4.0 Launch
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: News website Protocol ran an extensive piece on the history and status of the popular open source video player VLC, and the story includes new details about the next major version of the software. Among other things, VLC 4.0 will bring a complete user interface overhaul. “We modified the interface to be…
Nevada Department of Education Has No Direct Say In Who Gets Tesla’s $37.5 Million K-12 Donation
theodp writes: The Nevada Legislature in 2014 approved a $1.3 billion tax break — the largest tax break in the history of the state — to woo Tesla into locating its battery factory in Northern NV. In return, Tesla made a $37.5 million pledge to support K-12 education ($7.5M annually, for 5 years, beginning in 2018). Lawmakers are now expressing surprise…