Why AWS Is Forking Elasticsearch and Kibana

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes at ZDNet: When Elastic, makers of the open-source search and analytic engine Elasticsearch, went after Amazon Web Services (AWS) by changing its license from the open-source Apache 2.0-license ALv2) to the non-open-source friendly Server Side Public License, I predicted “we’d soon see AWS-sponsored Elasticsearch and Kibana forks.” The next day, AWS tweeted it “will launch new forks…

Chrome 88 Released, Removing Adobe Flash — and FTP

Google released Chrome 88 this week — and besides improving its dark mode support, they removed support for both Adobe Flash and FTP. PC World calls it “the end of two eras.” The most noteworthy change in this update is what’s not included. Chrome 88 lays Adobe Flash and the FTP protocol to rest. RIP circa-2000 Internet. Neither comes as a…

Federal Judge Blocks Parler’s Bid To Be Restored on Amazon Web Services

A federal judge has denied Parler’s request for a court order blocking Amazon from kicking the social media app off its platform, marking yet another setback in Parler’s efforts to get back online. From a report: Judge Barbara Rothstein issued a ruling on Thursday saying that Parler had not met the legal requirements for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction….

Twitter’s Decentralized Social Network Project Takes a Baby Step Forward

Bluesky, Twitter’s decentralized social networking effort, has announced its first major update since 2019. The Verge reports: The Bluesky team released a review of the decentralized web ecosystem and said it’s hoping to find a team lead in the coming months. The review follows Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussing Bluesky earlier this month, when he called it a “standard for the…

Pandemic Paved the Way for Sim Racing, but Will It Last?

It takes more than gasoline to make a racecar run. It requires money. And money requires sponsors. And sponsors require spectators who they hope will become customers. Which became a problem for motorsports when Covid-19 shut down tracks worldwide early last year. The cash drought put teams, tracks and race series in danger of extinction. From a report: The industry turned…

Opera Now Has a Game Engine To Go With Its Gamer-Focused Browser

Opera has acquired YoYo Games, a British game development platform best known for GameMaker Studio 2, and is launching its Opera Gaming division. Engadget reports: Opera has bought the company for a simple reason: Opera GX. The gamer-focused web browser was launched in early access back in June 2019. Its headline feature is a slide-out control panel that lets you limit…

Tim Cook: Why I Kicked Parler Off Apple’s App Store

Charlotte Web shares a report from CNN: Apple, along with Amazon and Google, effectively kicked Parler off the internet in the wake of the January 6 US Capitol siege. Despite criticism that Big Tech wields too much power over speech, Apple CEO Tim Cook defended his decision. “We looked at the incitement to violence that was on there,” Apple CEO Tim…

How Tim Berners-Lee Will Fix the Internet

“Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who was knighted for inventing the internet navigation system known as the World Wide Web, wants to re-make cyberspace once again,” reports Reuters: With a new startup called Inrupt, Berners-Lee aims to fix some of the problems that have handicapped the so-called open web in an age of huge, closed platforms such as Facebook….

Google Employees Try Baking Recipes Created by AI

“Behold the cakie: It has the crispiness of a cookie and the, well, ‘cakiness’ of a cake.” So says a triumphant blog post by Google Cloud’s developer advocate and an applied AI Engineer for Google’s Cloud AI. “We also made breakies, which were more like fluffy cookies, almost the consistency of a muffin” (or bread). Food and Wine explains the project…

Is Letterboxd Becoming a Blockbuster?

Early last decade, Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow, web designers based in Auckland, New Zealand, were seeking a passion project. Their business, a boutique web design studio called Cactuslab, developed apps and websites for various clients, but they wanted a project of their own that their team could plug away at when there wasn’t much else to do. From a…