Science, Technology, and Social Media

Conservative tech groups are cheering President Donald Trump’s move to dramatically expand fifth-generation development despite calls to nationalize the technology. Conservatives and free-market tech groups trumpeted the president’s decision Friday to auction off three big slices of millimeter-wave airwaves that experts argue are important to provide 5G network capability to rural areas. Trump and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai ...

On Thursday, April 11 at 6:35 p.m. EDT, Falcon Heavy launched the Arabsat-6A satellite from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The satellite was deployed approximately 34 minutes after liftoff. Following booster separation, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters landed at SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 and 2 (LZ-1 and LZ-2) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station ...

Political filmmaker Ami Horowitz tweeted Thursday that YouTube had banned his video displaying several examples of anti-Semitism at a University of North Carolina and Duke University Conference. WATCH: My new video has been banned by [email protected] and @DukeU sponsored open antisemitism! Filming at a major conference on campus antisemitism was all caught on film! This is truly shameful! Please share!#antisemitism ##CNN ...

Reports from Amazon employees reveal that Amazon employees are listening and recording conversations spoken after waking Alexa in the homes of thousands of people worldwide. Amazon’s Alexa needs more human assistance than the public may be aware of. Full-time Amazon workers spend their days “parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift,” reports from Bloomburg reveal. These clips may ...

Twitter’s algorithm suffered a glitch Wednesday that directed users to the The New York Times’ account when they composed a tweet with the words “Enemy of the People.” “This is a bug in our search typeahead system limited to desktop that we are working to fix. The issue is that for some search queries the word ‘People’ is linked to ...

A Twitter executive appeared to punt after Republican Sen. Josh Hawley asked him Wednesday during a congressional testimony whether the company would be willing to submit to an independent political audit. Carlos Monje Jr., Twitter’s director of public policy and philanthropy, evaded questions about whether the social media company is willing to subject itself to an independent audit. Republican Sen. ...

Elon Musk’s private space company has scheduled the second Falcon Heavy Rocket launch and this time, they’re getting paid to do it. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the Arabsat 6A communications satellite for Arabsat of Saudi Arabia. Arabsat 6A will provide Ku-band and Ka-band communications coverage over the Middle East and North Africa regions, as well as a ...

Two Oregon college students from China have been charged for conning Apple out of almost $1 million by returning hundreds of fake iPhones to Apple and selling the iPhones Apple sent back for profit. Yangyang Zhou and Quon Jiang are both students studying in the United States on legal foreign student visas, according to ABC News. The pair garnered almost ...

First Flight Hardware Being Manufactured and Launch on Track for 2021Centennial, Colo. (April 8, 2019) – Today, United Launch Alliance (ULA) CEO Tory Bruno gave an update on the continued progress of the Vulcan Centaur during a ULA media event at the 35th Space Symposium. “As the nation faces growing threats in the space environment, ULA is unleashing the energy ...

A New Zealand  public official accused Facebook Sunday of enabling a genocide in Myanmar as the Silicon Valley giant struggles to explain how a shooter was able to use one of the company’s features to videotape his killing spree. Facebook is a “morally bankrupt” company that “cannot be trusted,” New Zealand privacy commissioner John Edwards said on Twitter. The social ...

Twitter appears to be one of the only big tech companies to back out of an alliance with the Southern Poverty Law Center after the group’s long-time president was fired for unspecified conduct reasons, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. “The SPLC is not a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council or a partner the company has worked ...

Google announced Thursday night that the company will be dissolving an artificial intelligence ethics panel following internal backlash from employees who criticized one of the board’s conservative members. The company’s decision came after employees complained about Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James’ position on the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC). More than 1,000 “Googlers” signed a petition Monday claimingthat ...

It’s been more than a year since regulators repealed an Obama-era rule that beefed up regulations on the Internet, yet the web has not melted down as activists predicted. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and a handful of Republicans on the commission moved to rollback net neutrality in December 2017. Activists howled. And the Democratic Party’s official Twitter account ...

United Nation investigators believe Facebook is not doing enough to tamp down social media posts that promote hatred of a group of people who are being driven out of Southeast Asia, Gizmodo reported Thursday. “I think there has been meaningful and significant change from Facebook, but it’s not nearly sufficient,” Christopher Sidoti, a a member of a UN team that ...

In attempts to subvert media criticism, Facebook has now hired The Daily Telegraph to run a series of articles praising Facebook. Business Insider reports that Facebook has partnered with The Daily Telegraph to feature stories defending the company from topics it has recently gotten into hot water with, such as terrorist content, cyber bullying, and hate speech. This series of ...