Technology

CBS News reports: Facebook announced Thursday it has blocked Australians from viewing and sharing news on the platform because of proposed laws in the country to make digital giants pay for journalism. Australian publishers can continue to publish news content on Facebook, but links and posts can’t be viewed or shared by Australian audiences, the U.S.-based company said in a …

The Observer reports: Astroscale is a space sustainability company headquartered in Tokyo that is committed to creating solutions for removing potentially dangerous space junk. As space tourism missions to the ISS (International Space Station) become more prevalent, even more attention will have to be paid to orbital highways to ensure their maintenance and cleanliness. It’s more than a courtesy, it’s …

The Associated Press reports: Struggling luxury car brand Jaguar will be fully electric by 2025, the British company said Monday as it outlined a plan to phase out internal combustion engines. Jaguar Land Rover, which is owned by Indian conglomerate Tata Motors, hopes the move will help turn around the fortunes of the 86-year-old Jaguar brand, which for many epitomizes …

Market Watch reports: The Department of Justice is withdrawing a lawsuit aimed at blocking California from establishing statewide net neutrality laws after the Federal Communications Commission repealed similar federal laws in 2018. The FCC’s repeal of net neutrality was controversial at the time, and opposed by Democrats on the commission, including Jessica Rosenworcel [photo], the current acting head of the …

Reuters reports: Freed from his daily obligations at Amazon.com Inc, Jeff Bezos is expected to turn up the heat on his space venture, Blue Origin, as it faces a pivotal year and fierce competition from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, industry sources said. Blue Origin has fallen far behind SpaceX on orbital transportation, and lost out to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance …

Via press release from Christian Newswire: New research suggests that even as churches and other religious gatherings have been closed during lockdown, there’s been a big increase in people turning to prayer and other forms of spirituality. The free ChatPray app is being launched today in response to those needs. The app has been specifically designed as an intuitive way …

Reuters reports: A SpaceX Starship prototype rocket exploded on landing after an otherwise successful high-altitude experimental launch from Boca Chica, Texas, on Tuesday, in a repeat of an accident that destroyed a previous test rocket. The Starship SN9 that blew up on its final descent, like the SN8 before it, was a prototype for the heavy-lift rocket being developed by …

Tech Crunch reports: Amazon founder and current CEO Jeff Bezos will be transitioning to Executive Chair of the company sometime in Q3 of this year, with current AWS CEO Andy Jassy taking over the top executive role at the commerce company. Amazon announced the news alongside its earnings results on Tuesday. Amazon initially rose after-hours as the market digested both …

The Detroit Free Press reports: General Motors “aspires” to have all of its global new light-duty vehicles, including full-size pickups and SUVs, be zero emission by 2035. It also targets 2040 for its global products and plants to be carbon neutral. GM made the announcements Thursday, stopping short of saying all of its vehicles will be zero emissions, which means …

The Independent reports: Microsoft has been granted a patent that would allow the company to make a chatbot using the personal information of deceased people. The patent describes creating a bot based on the “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages”, and more personal information. “The specific person [who the chat bot represents] may correspond to a past or …

Business Insider reports: Parler, the far-right social media service, is suing Amazon over antitrust violations, according to a court filing submitted on Monday. The move comes after Amazon knocked Parler off its cloud-hosting service after it said Parler failed to moderate threats of violence following last week’s deadly siege on the US Capitol. Parler alleges that Amazon’s decision was politically …

Yahoo News reports: The conservative social network Parler was forced offline Monday, tracking websites showed, after Amazon warned the company would lose access to its servers for its failure to properly police violent content. The site’s popularity soared in recent weeks, becoming the number one free app in Apple’s App Store after the much larger Twitter banned US President Trump …

Deadline reports: Parler CEO John Matze said today that his social media company has been dropped by virtually all of its business alliances after Amazon, Apple and Google ended their agreements with the social media service. “Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day,” Matze said. Matze conceded …

NBC News reports: Google suspended the social media platform Parler on Friday from its Google Play app store until the “Twitter for conservatives” adopts content moderation policies following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump supporters. “In order to protect user safety on Google Play, our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content …

The Verge reports: Boston Dynamics’ Atlas and Spot robots can do a lot of things: sprinting, gymnastic routines, parkour, backflips, open doors to let in an army of their friends, wash dishes, and (poorly) get actual jobs. But the company’s latest video adds another impressive trick to our future robotic overlords’ repertoire: busting sick dance moves. The video sees Boston …

Newsweek reports: Several Google services appear to be suffering outages, with widespread issues hitting Gmail, YouTube, Drive and Hangouts. An error on Gmail reads: “We’re sorry, but your account is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest trying again in a few minutes.” YouTube is also offline, with a warning that now reads: “Something went wrong…” According to …

CNBC reports: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will step down from his post on January 20, the day President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, he announced Monday. The announcement means that the FCC could reach a Democratic majority sooner than it would otherwise be able to. Pai’s term was slated to expire in June 2021, though Biden will be able …

CNBC reports: Amazon’s cloud-computing service on Wednesday was hit with an outage that took down some websites and services. A notice on Amazon Web Services’ status page said it was experiencing problems with Kinesis, its service that processes large streams of data, causing “increased error rates” for a number of websites. The outage also impacted its ability to post updates …

CNBC reports: Tesla co-founder Elon Musk is now the world’s second richest person after he leapfrogged Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, which tracks the wealth of the world’s 500 richest people. The 49-year-old entrepreneur, who is also the co-founder of space exploration firm SpaceX, saw his net worth rise by $7.2 billion to $128 billion …

Mediaite reports: This genius “through the looking glass” creation comes from the minds behind South Park, Trey Parker, and Matt Stone, who have created a YouTube series based on a fictional reporter to warn Americans of the perils of deep fakes. Oh, and their Fred Sassy is a deep fake of President Donald Trump. It’s a brilliantly hilarious, or hilariously …