Here are a few of the stories I found interesting over the weekend. Apple’s “One More Thing” event is Tuesday, I’ll be writing about that event soon after it concludes.
Canadian Government Adds to Universal Broadband Fund, Opens it to Applications
The Canadian Government has set a goal of getting 98% of Canadians access to high speed internet by 2026, and 100% by 2030. This includes the difficult to reach rural parts of the country that telecoms have been hesitant to build infrastructure in. The Universal Broadband Fund will offer subsidies to those telecoms to connect all Canadians. Most projects will be able to apply for a 75% subsidy, and some projects to the most remote areas may be able to get a 90% subsidy. The government added an additional $750 million to the $1 billion already pledged.
High Speed internet has become a utility as vital as electricity to our daily lives, and I genuinely hope this efforts gives more people something approaching an equal playing field.
https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/11/09/government-launches-universal-broadband-fund/
Bioware Edmonton Announces Mass Effect Trilogy Remastered
EA’s Bioware Edmonton studio, well known for developing the first three Mass Effect games, has announced that it is working on a HD remaster of that trilogy, updating it for new consoles and PC.
I shamefully have never played these games, but I think once the remaster hits I’ll be diving in.
Phillips Hue Losing Works With Nest Integration Next Week, But Has a Replacement
Google announced previously that it is winding down the “Works With Nest” program, which allowed internet of things smart services integrate with Nest products. So there are on occasion scary headlines saying that such and such a product is losing the integration. This week, it is Phillips Hue smart lights.
But, all is not lost. While “works with nest” is being wound down, much of the functionality is being replaced with the Google Home app and Google Assistant. So users of this system may have to change how they use the works with nest workflows in the Google Home app, but most of what people did will be there.
Tik Tok Users Overloading Trump Campaign Election Fraud Hotline
Over the weekend the Trump Campaign set up a telephone hotline for supporters to report supposed cases of voter fraud. This could possibly be because there is no evidence of such fraud taking place and this is more a PR stunt grasping at straws to drum up a base and make someone feel good, but I digress.
The Tik Tok teens have struck again. A few months after Tik Tok users embarrassed the Trump campaign by claiming over 1 million tickets to a Trump rally that ended up resulting in a half full arena, users of the platform have flooded the hotline with unrelated calls.
The first time Tik Tok users disrupted President Trump, he threatened to ban the platform in various methods which have all been struck down by courts, and there still may be some kind of sale of some of Tik Tok operations to Oracle, where a major donor to the Trump Campaign, Larry Ellison, is CEO.
Lastly, I’ll just point out that in the last 5 days almost 40% of Donald Trump’s tweets have been labelled as misinformation or fraudulent. Twitter is also on the record stating that as of 12:01pm ET on January 20th, once Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States, his Twitter account will lose the protections that Twitter has allowed it to have. Twitter does not remove specific tweets or suspend accounts of world leaders that may violate its rules repeatedly and spread information that is provably false. Once Donald Trump is no longer President he will no longer have those protections.
I have yet to check on the Vegas odds of how many days it will take until his account is taken down.