The US Justice Department files an antitrust lawsuit against Google’s advertising business, Microsoft wants to find out the number of unsupported Microsoft Office installed on Windows PCs and China is a leader in facial recognition technology exports.
All these technology related news are trending right now. Welcome to trending hashtags. January 25 is Wednesday. And I am your host, Asi Pamma
The US Justice Department has filed its second antitrust lawsuit against Google in just over two years, this time seeking to break up its advertising business. Google’s advertising business has drawn critics, CNBC explained, because the platform operates on several sides of the market — buying, selling and an advertising exchange. The company has long denied that it dominates the online advertising market, pointing to the market share of competitors including Meta’s Facebook. The states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia joined the DOJ. latest case. The department’s earlier lawsuit, filed in October 2020 under the Trump administration, accused Google of using its alleged monopoly power to cut competition for Internet search through exclusion agreements. The matter is expected to come up for hearing in September.
source: cnbc news
Microsoft intends to track how many out-of-support copies of Office are installed on Windows PCs, by pushing out patches via Microsoft Update, The Register wrote. The update, quietly mentioned in a support post, is targeting Office 2007 and 2010 versions that have been out of service for several years. Office 2013 is also being asked after as it is due to lose support this coming April. “This update will run silently once without installing anything on the user’s device,” Microsoft said. Microsoft’s Show or Hide Updates troubleshooter for Windows 10 and 11 can be used to disable unwanted ones from being installed but unexpected results are unknown.
source: register
According to a report by academics from Harvard and MIT, China is the world’s largest facial recognition dealer. The report found that Chinese companies account for 201 face recognition export deals, followed by US firms with 128 deals. China also generally leads in AI, with 250 involving some form of AI out of a total of 1,636 export deals. The second largest exporter was the US with 215 AI deals. The report argues that these exports may enable other governments to conduct greater surveillance, potentially harming the human rights of citizens. In recent years, US lawmakers and presidents have expressed concern that China is gaining an edge over the US in AI technology. Wired reported that the report provides strong evidence that change has already occurred.
source: wired
SpaceX Starlink has entered into a coordination agreement with the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to reduce light pollution emanating from its satellite network and interfering with ground-based astronomy observations. The agreement was invoked by Biden’s FCC, which would not approve Starlink’s 30,000 satellite launches until such a deal was reached. As part of that settlement, Starlink said it would continue to work to make its satellites no brighter than 7th magnitude, which would render them invisible to the naked eye and reduce their effect on sensitive astronomical instruments. But will not finish. The agreement is voluntary, as no law or policy requires SpaceX or other satellite operators to minimize the impact of their constellation on astronomy beyond the FCC requirement for such an agreement.
source: space news
According to LiveMint, after massive layoffs at Google, Microsoft and Amazon last week, around 80,000 Indian IT professionals on H-1B and L1 visas are now jobless and scrambling to find solutions to stay in the US. Those working on these non-immigrant visas now have a specified number of months to find a new job or change their visa status. H-1B visa holders will have to find a new job within 60 days or return to India. The Global Indian Technology Professionals Association (GITPRO) and the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS) launched a community-wide effort to try and help these IT professionals by connecting job seekers with job referrers. They also seek to influence policy makers and decision makers at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
source: livemint
This is all the tech news that is trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast Network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home Daily Briefing. Be sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get important news straight to your inbox every day. Plus, check out the next episode of Hashtag Tendence, our weekly hashtag trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have any suggestion or tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thanks for listening, I’m Aashi Pamma.
