Yeastar, a leading provider of some of the best SME PBX systems and communication solutions, recently announced a major firmware update. The latest version P-Series PBX System officially went live on January 20, 2021, offering an exciting range of updates to the already impressive P-Series environment.
The P-Series PBX system already helps companies enjoy seamless and reliable communications with an efficient, fully-fledged system. More than just a PBX, the solution provides SMEs with video communications, call management, call centre features, UC application layers, and more. Even better, everything is available in a versatile solution that works on any device.
The latest “PBX-Plus-More” firmware delivers even more crucial features, including web calling, remote access services, and enhanced video conferencing.
Get More from your PBX with Yeastar
The new major update of the Yeastar P-Series PBX system includes a host of much-anticipated features intended to make life easier for remote workers and their managers. As customer expectations continue to soar, organisations need a next-gen communications strategy. The Yeastar P-Series PBX system is a sophisticated and fully converged system. The solution provides a range of services, all optimised to improve the experience for users and customers.
Delivered as a “PBX-Plus-More” solution for the modern SMB, the P-Series PBX combines various high-level services and functionality together for a more versatile comms stack.
The most recent features to arrive with the latest update include:
Video conferencing: Video calls are a crucial part of the current communication ecosystem. Yeastar’s newly integrated video conferencing service supports web-browser video meetings for quick and convenient collaboration. There’s also team chat and screen sharing too
Remote Access Service: This new feature provides Yeastar supplied domain names and full backing for remote connectivity requirements common in the modern workplace. Remote Access Service reduces unnecessary configuration and provisioning headaches significantly
Improved Linkus UC: The UC Clients offered through Linkus make it easy to access a suite of calling, presence, voicemail, and enterprise collaboration tools from any interface. You can use desktops, smartphones, web browsers, and more. The updated Linkus web client supports 1:1 calling through audio and video to personal contacts, colleagues, and external customers too
Opening the Door to Rapid Growth
Yeastar’s unique approach to the comprehensive PBX system for SMBs helps businesses in an evolving workplace to innovate and adapt according to their budget. With the P-Series, companies get access to an infinitely scalable and flexible communication stack that grows with them. Not only is the system easy to use, but it’s optimised to unify all parts of the tech stack for the current SME.
According to the VP of Yeastar, Prince Cai, this upgrade aims to transform the way that people look at the PBX system forever. Yeastar wants to open the door to a future where PBX solutions are more versatile and suited to the agile workplace. Yeastar will continue to update and enhance the P-Series with new cloud-based and software deployment options in the future of the hybrid workplace. There are also plans for new UC capabilities and up-coming integrations.
A new Linux port allows Apple’s M1 Macs to run Ubuntu for the first time. Corellium, a security firm that offers a virtualized version of iOS for security testing, has successfully ported Ubuntu over to M1 Macs and released a tutorial for others to follow. The modified version of Ubuntu boots into the regular user interface and includes USB support.
The team at Corellium have detailed exactly how they managed to get Ubuntu running, and it’s a good in-depth read if you’re interested in the details. While a number of M1 components are shared with Apple’s mobile chips, the non-standard chips made it challenging to create Linux drivers to get Ubuntu running properly.
Apple hasn’t designed its M1 Macs with dual-boot or Boot Camp in mind....
A few days after inciting the attempted coup at the US Capitol, Donald Trump was finally banned from Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other online platforms.
Conservatives immediately began howling about how the president losing access to Twitter is akin to a First Amendment violation. But in reality, it’s conservatives who have been at the center of an ongoing effort to restrict speech online—specifically from sex workers, who depend on online platforms for their own safety and financial security.
Barely 48 hours after the Capitol attack, Twitter permanently banned Trump, Facebook suspended his account, and payment processor Stripe booted his campaign website. Parler, where rioters had been planning their attack in the open for months, lost access to the Apple and Google app stores, as well as web hosting on Amazon Web Services.
In response, conservatives have ramped up their ongoing freakout about online censorship, claiming “Free Speech Is Under Attack!” and “This censorship must stop.” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) likened being de-platformed to “beatings,” and said Twitter is promising they’ll continue “Until woketopia is achieved.”
Yet platforms have been censoring speech as long as they’ve existed—and more often than not, at the behest of conservatives. For example, wealthy agribusiness barons accused of human trafficking are funding disinformation campaigns to implicate porn in human trafficking. According to a 2017 United Nations report, about 19 percent of human trafficking victims are exploited for sex. Agriculture makes up 7 percent of human trafficking, with the rest spread between construction, manufacturing, and other purposes.
Last year, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced the EARN IT Act, which would have made platforms liable for user activity that involves sex and minors. Not only is this totally unnecessary, as platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law, but it’s also unlikely to help the problem. In 2019 alone, tech companies sent more than 45 million instances of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to the Department of Justice, most of which they declined to investigate. The EARN IT Act doesn't provide any resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. What it does do is threaten online speech and privacy.
But the main way conservatives are trying to force Big Tech to bend to their will is their campaign to kill Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which allows platforms to moderate user-generated content without being liable for that content.
Republicans in Congress like Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) have been attacking 230 and misrepresenting what it does. Realizing they’re no longer in the majority, conservatives want it gone in order to force online platforms to amplify their voices.
But making platforms liable for everything anyone posts if they do any moderation whatsoever would only lead to more online censorship. Since few people have the stomach to host 4chan, most platforms would opt for the latter, further restricting speech.
We don’t need to hypothesize about what getting rid of Section 230 would do to online speech, because we have an example in the last big legislative carve-out for Section 230.
Websites like Craigslist and Backpage once helped sex workers avoid police violence, identify and share lists of dangerous clients, and negotiate rates and boundaries online without pimps. In many cities, the launch of Craigslist Erotic Services coincided with a drop in all-female homicide by as much as 17 percent within a few years.
FOSTA muzzled these sites, forcing sex workers back into street work and using pimps. Within a month of FOSTA’s passage, thirteen sex workers were reported missing, and two took their own lives. Across the country, sex workers turned up missing and dead. According to a 2020 study on the law's impact, 99 percent of those who used the internet for sex work said FOSTA doesn't make them feel safer.
There are many good reasons to be concerned about censorship as a norm. Suppressing speech online makes it harder for law enforcement to track terrorists, rescue human trafficking victims, and find the sources of child sexual abuse material.
But the biggest reason is that online speech restrictions generally benefit the powerful at the expense of the marginalized. Having lost their majority in both houses of Congress, conservatives claim to want to expand free speech in order to be heard. But in reality they’re only interested in using government violence to bully websites into giving them a platform.
As we’ve seen with sex-related content after FOSTA, removing Section 230 protections would force platforms to choose between zero moderation or extremely heavy moderation. In the end, deplatforming would become as common for everyone else as its been for sex workers and sex educators since 2018.
We can't let the people who are leading the crusade against free speech co-opt the term in their quest to destroy the law that actually makes it possible online.
New Year's Day: a time for renewal. A time to start with a clean slate. I'm not one for resolutions, but I do take the time to clean up a bit: wipe down that grimy phone, dust off the monitor, and do some digital purging of unused apps, deleting history, that sort of thing. This year though, in a fit of sudden bravery, I did something I haven't done in years, maybe forever. Something that causes me great anxiety.
I closed my browser tabs. All 1,314 of them. There's no denying it: I'm a tab hoarder.
How did I get to this point? Not the closing, that was more an act (crime?) of passion than cold-blooded calculation. No, how did I end up with a dozen browser windows with ever scrolling tabs, spread across 4 devices? And will this really be part of a change to a life of, if not minimalism, than at least digital sanity? Is that what I even want?
My tab hoarding started around the turn of the millennium, when I was but a young college student discovering a little browser called Phoenix (later to become Firefox). The idea of having multiple sites open at the same time was amazing, and coupled with things like ad-blocking extensions, it was exactly the right time to be coming of age with the internet.
I started opening up new tabs: Here's a cool story to read later; oh that's a neat program to download; hey, it's some advice about how to not procrastinate…and on and on and on. My precious tabs all looked interesting or useful or weird at some point. I just didn't have time to look at them right away, or perhaps ever as it turns out. Looking back, all I've done is just open more and more, got more devices to open up more browsers on, always going to the limit of what my computers thought they were capable of. I got more RAM. A better CPU. And the main thing I would do with my upgraded computer? Open more tabs.
My computer would crash. I can still feel that sudden catch of breath, that sinking feeling when I think it could all be gone. All that information, I was saving it for just the right time, a modern retelling of that classic Twilight Zone episode.
I would not be deterred. More technology was the answer, not self-restraint.
I tried all sorts of browser extensions that would save open tabs and restore them, back them up, any type of insurance policy for my collection of websites. Sometimes I would make a massive list of bookmarks, and then look into making sure that got backed up or synced to other computers. Still, I lost tabs from time to time. Surely they were amazing websites or articles, lost to me forever in my thirst for more.
For a while I even had a good routine while I was living in Tokyo. Before I left for work I would skim through my feeds of frequently-read websites, discarding what wasn't interesting and saving the rest. I could then read these on my tablet without an internet connection on the train. My feed list was near zero, my read-it-later list quickly dwindled, I was even finishing a book every few weeks. I was on top of my information diet.
It all came crashing down when I moved back to the US. The lack of good public transportation has yet another downside. There is no reading while driving, and my enjoyable commutes by bike or foot also didn't give me opportunities to read. Things quickly spiraled from there. Combined with the ever increasing amount of content out there, it wasn't long before I became buried in tabs. Sometimes I would organize tabs into windows or try to make some order out of the chaos by dedicating an entire browser to a specific type of tab. It never really took.
I didn't realize how out of control it was until seeing my brother diligently working with just a handful of tabs. I couldn't understand it. Then I showed him how I lived, poor guy nearly collapsed from the stress of seeing me scrolling on and on through all my tabs. And that was just one window.
That is how I lived. It has gotten easier to be a tab hoarder. Browsers work better, they seem to embrace the lifestyle of people like me, asking to restore tabs when you re-open (even after a crash), keeping those tabs from hogging up resources until you are ready for them.
No more forced blank slates. I've kept my computers for longer too, and new devices simply sync up with where you left off.
Why do we do this? I know I'm not alone. I'm probably in the majority, if a bit on the extreme end. (I laugh when I see these articles about having "many" tabs open, "dozens." Please, that's not a knife.) There are several possible reasons we do this, which are familiar to any tab hoarder:
Digital FOMO: Clearly I suffer from this, after all I use a feed reader to make sure I don't miss a single story from some of my favorite websites.
Procrastination: It is easy to click on a bunch of links, and to feel productive while doing so. But often I never ended up reading them.
The messy desk: Our computers are our new desks—instead of having stacks of papers and books everywhere, it is files filling the desktop and browsers with half the internet open on them. In other words, it is a problem of information management.
Because we can: Just like we will pack to fill up whatever suitcase we choose, many of us are just wired to fill up whatever there is to fill up. As the inventor of browser tabs himself, Adam Stiles, said, "perhaps it gives some people too much freedom."
And then there were none.
I closed them all on New Year's Day, and so far have managed with just a few. I open what I need for what I am doing, and then close them. Novel, I know. I think it is easier right now because I have so few. Each one is significant in a way it can't be if it is one of a thousand. There is now an aesthetic to keep, a sense of order to maintain.
I am liberated. Free of the baggage of all those things I was going to do, read, learn about. I declared tab bankruptcy. I've let go, accepted that there is a never-ending and overwhelming torrent of information in our online world.
I am also lost. A blank slate is intimidating. I also know that I'm just a few clicks away from letting it all unravel again, from the dam breaking. There used to be the comforts of those old tabs waiting for me, the things I took time to find and open, that I knew I'd get to one day. Gone.
Are there benefits to this lifestyle? Maybe? My computer feels a bit snappier possibly, but that could be in my head. I think a bit more about what I open: am I going to use this right now? Should I save this somewhere for later? I don't think I want to adopt any strict rules and limits. That feels like a poor proxy for control, avoiding the issue of why I feel the urge to open tabs, what is truly valuable to read, and how to spend my time. I dipped a tiny bit into my old read-it-later list, which I've mostly not added to in the last few years.
It has 2,537 items.
But at least those tabs are gone, right? Well, not quite, I must confess. Before I closed them, I bookmarked them in a bunch of folders. They are there with the other times I've had to save some tabs, as an unorganized mess. The name of that top folder, where I hide my shame?
"Temp," of course. There's a Greek proverb my father once told me: nothing is more permanent than the temporary.
A Trump supporter holds a sign opposing President-elect Joe Biden in Olympia, Washington. | Ted S. Warren/AP
Some might even describe them as “low energy.”
In the days following the violent Trump-inspired insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, the FBI warned all 50 states that similar “armed protests” were being planned by right-wing extremists around their capitol buildings. But on Inauguration Day, at least, those protests turned out to be complete duds.
Not only have there been no incidents of violence at state capitols on Wednesday as of 4 pm ET, but at many of them, the number of MAGA protesters could be counted on one hand.
At the New York Capitol in Albany, Spectrum News reporter Morgan Mckay documented the presence of a single pro-Trump demonstrator.
“He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed,” Mckay tweeted. (Thanks to Elie Mystal of the Nation for his helpful Twitter thread putting the tweets that follow in one place.)
Mark Leggiero is the one lone Trump supporter out in front of the NYS Capitol. He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed. He said he drove 45 minutes for a peaceful protest pic.twitter.com/hDtCLYFpLq
A similar scene unfolded at the California Capitol in Sacramento, where one man in a Trump cap protested as President Joe Biden was sworn in, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (Later in the day, more sizable protests took place around the California Capitol, but they were left-wing protests calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for immigration reform.)
At the State Capitol in Sacramento, a lone Trump supporter wearing a red MAGA hat protested as President Biden took the oath of office Wednesday.
There were three times as many pro-Trump protesters at the capitol in New Hampshire — but that still only amounted to three of them. And one-third of the group took off early, telling reporters “he was leaving to go skiing,” according to Dan Tuohy of New Hampshire Public Radio.
A dozen or so protesters, some of them armed, did show up at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix, but Ryan Mac of BuzzFeed reported that it remained peaceful.
The Trump supporters are now having a picnic. One guy is milling about reading 1984. Some have put up Confederate flags here in Arizona, the 48th state admitted to the Union. pic.twitter.com/8HODm1rzLy
And a pro-Trump demonstration some 700 miles north of there at the Nevada Capitol in Carson City was similarly underwhelming, according to Colton Lochhead of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The scene just outside Nevada’s capitol complex in Carson City ~ half hour until the Biden’s inauguration kicks off. So far, just two older guys - Brandon and Matt - with signs\flags who are frustrated that more people have not showed up. pic.twitter.com/rq2P0opYcs
The demonstrations in Jefferson City are modest, at best. A handful of Trump supporters, two guys with upside down flags on the Capitol steps, a few people with a non-partisan group calling for healing. pic.twitter.com/SydjDcDi48
Only a few people outside the Texas Capitol Building in Austin. Thomas Jones (Hawaiian shirt) said he and friends drove from Crockett to protest the Inauguration. He expected more people to be here, but was banned from Facebook so didn’t know if anything was planned. pic.twitter.com/HuLbUbNnT3
There’s only been one protester outside Capitol in Frankfort today. His sign alludes to how well Hitler and Stalin got along. pic.twitter.com/9HOCIkIx5H
Trump fans were also scarce in downtown Washington, DC, which is heavily militarized following the insurrection. In fact, Tess Owen of Vice reported that Nickelback fans were better represented on streets around the US Capitol than Trump supporters.
Of course, that Biden’s inauguration went off without a hitch in DC and at state capitols across the country doesn’t mean the threat posed by armed right-wing extremists has passed. But it does highlight how Trump’s months-long campaign to overthrow the election results descended from tragedy to farce in the weeks following the January 6 riot. It also hints at one way the bans from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms of Trump and right-wing conspiracists and instigators in the wake of the Capitol insurrection, which was largely organized online, are working.
For his part, Trump not only didn’t attend Biden’s inauguration, but he managed to leave DC without ever properly acknowledging the legitimacy of his loss or officially conceding. He took off for Florida on Wednesday morning following a final speech as president at Joint Base Andrews in which he told a modest crowd of his supporters “we will be back in some form ... have a good life.”
Coming as it did exactly two weeks after he delivered a fiery speech that culminated in five people dying during a riot at the US Capitol in a failed bid to overthrow the election outcome, Trump’s resigned tone was notable. And, at least for one day, his followers took the hint.
"Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today concluded his four years as Chairman, eight years as a Commissioner, and twelve years as an employee of the agency,” the agency said.
His official FCC Twitter account, where he antagonized people who criticized him, has been deleted.
Pai stood out among the sea of Trump’s corrupt political employees because he was effective and he survived the entire administration. The former Verizon lawyer fought against net neutrality and won, then danced the Harlem Shake on its grave in one of the biggest cringe videos ever posted online.
“By the time I turn in my badge, I will have spent a total 4,557 days working here,” Pai said in a goodbye video posted to his personal Twitter account. That’s almost 4,500 days of a giant coffee cup, embarrassing posts, and bad policy.
The consequences of his leadership will be with us for decades. He rolled back decades of regulation and transferred power to broadband companies on an unprecedented scale.
BT is facing a £600m lawsuit over claims it failed to compensate overcharged customers.
Ofcom found in 2017 that BT was charging customers too much for its landline-only service, with BT ultimately reducing its landline prices by £7 a month.
But this lawsuit claims that BT should compensate customers who had been paying too much in the years prior to the reduction.
The lawsuit is specifically focused on the period from 1 October 2015 onwards.
A high proportion of affected customers are over 75, according to law firm Mishcon de Reya.
Rob Murray, Partner at the firm, said: “The claims of customers directly harmed by BT’s exploitative behaviour are precisely the type of claims the collective actions regime is designed to deal with.
“We hope very much that a settlement can be reached to resolve them in line with BT’s acceptance of the need to avoid overcharging when investigated by Ofcom”
Mishcon de Reya is working on behalf of Justin Le Pataourel – a telecoms expert who previously worked for Ofcom.
They hope to represent over two million affected BT customers, via the Collective Action on Land Lines (CALL) campaign group.
The BBC reported that BT rejects the claims, arguing that it was never actually found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour and therefore should not have to pay out.
A BT spokesperson said: “We take our responsibilities to older and more vulnerable customers very seriously and will defend ourselves against any claim that suggests otherwise.
“For many years we’ve offered discounted landline and broadband packages in what is a competitive market with competing options available, and we take pride in our work with elderly and vulnerable groups, as well as our work on the Customer Fairness agenda.”
CALL said it believes 2.3 million customers could be owed up to £500 each in compensation.
Users of far-right social media platform Parler included people who posted from inside U.S. military facilities and bases, according to a Motherboard analysis of GPS locations scraped from Parler.
The data is not conclusive evidence of active military members using the platform, and the overlap comes with several important caveats. Some of the people who are on a military base at a given time can include civilians who work there as well as the families of active service members. Motherboard has not confirmed the identities of any of the Parler posters and has also not analyzed the specific content posted from within the bases. But the news comes as prosecutors press charges against current and former military personnel for participating in the Capitol Hill event, and after a massive archive of Parler data showed that Parler users attended the riots.
Do you know anything else about the Parler data? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat onjfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or emailjoseph.cox@vice.com.
Before Amazon cut-off Parler, a team of archivists managed to scrape a vast quantity of publicly available Parler data, including posts, images, videos, and usernames.
"I hope that it can be used to hold people accountable and to prevent more death," donk_enby, the hacker who led the archiving project, told Motherboard on Monday.
As Motherboard previously reported, a wave of hobbyists and computer scientists then pored over the data. One technologist took that wealth of information and filtered the GPS locations and some associated metadata and provided that information to Motherboard.
Motherboard then plotted these coordinates of where Parler users had posted from onto a map and overlaid the location of U.S. military bases using an official dataset published by the Department of Transportation.
The overlay shows dozens of examples of Parler users posting from within military facilities.
A Parler user posting from inside a military facility, with the green dot representing the GPS coordinates, and the red are representing the facility itself.
Although much of the content on Parler is vitriolic, racist, or directly inciting violence, having an account on the social network does not mean that a user is necessarily far-right. And mapping Parler posts to military sites is not evidence that any military users of Parler attended the Capitol Hill riots. GPS coordinates can also not necessarily be reliably accurate depending on where the user posted from. Nonetheless, it does suggest that at least some of the users of Parler, which is a right-wing site, have ties to the military.
"The dataset depicts the authoritative boundaries of the most commonly known Department of Defense (DoD) sites, installations, ranges, and training areas in the United States and Territories," the data description reads. "This dataset was created from source data provided by the four Military Service Component headquarters and was compiled by the Defense Installation Spatial Data Infrastructure (DISDI) Program within the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment, Business Enterprise Integration Directorate," it continues.
"For inventory purposes, installations are comprised of sites, where a site is defined as a specific geographic location of federally owned or managed land and is assigned to military installation. DoD installations are commonly referred to as a base, camp, post, station, yard, center, homeport facility for any ship, or other activity under the jurisdiction, custody, control of the DoD," the description concludes.
A Parler user posting from inside a military facility, with the green dot representing the GPS coordinates, and the red are representing the facility itself.
The Army is doing additional security screening to determine which National Guard troops will be deployed during the upcoming Inauguration because of concerns that military members could be sympathetic to the ideologies of Capitol rioters, Army Times reported earlier this week. Heavily armed members of the National Guard are currently in Washington D.C. protecting the Capitol building.
Congress has demanded an investigation to determine the extent to which white supremacist ideology has penetrated military ranks.
"It's terrifying and revolting that members of the military and veterans could be involved in an insurrection in an attempt to violently overthrow the government," Senator Richard Blumethal said in a statement on Thursday. White supremacy has become more popular with troops in the past year, according to a senior Defense official told reporters.
Neo-Nazis are trying to recruit active service members and have called for assassinations, VICE News reported this week.
The Associated Press found at least 21 current or former members of the U.S. military of law enforcement as being at or near the Capitol riot. On Wednesday authorities arrested Jacob Fracker, an infantryman with the Virginia National Guard and Thomas Robertson, an Army veteran, Military.com reported.
This week, Tam Pham, a Houston Police Department officer, resigned after Chief Art Acevedo reviewed social media posts appearing to show Pham inside the Capitol during the January 6 riots. The Chief contacted the FBI and expects federal charges to be filed, The Houston Chronicle reported.
A U.S. Army spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement that "The Army is committed to working closely with the F.B.I. as they identify people who participated in the violent attack on the Capitol to determine if the individuals have any connection to the Army. Any type of activity that involves violence, civil disobedience, or a breach of peace may be punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or under state or federal law. For any further questions, please contact the DOJ."
This piece has been updated to include a statement from a U.S. Army spokesperson.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – January 12, 2021 – Inference Solutions today announced that its virtual agent development platform, Inference Studio, has won a 2021 BIG Innovation Award presented by the Business Intelligence Group. This annual business awards program recognizes organizations, products and people that are bringing new ideas to life in innovative ways.
Inference Studio makes it easy for businesses of any size to automate their customer care workloads with conversational self-service, empowering human service agents to focus on the highest-value activities. The code-free SaaS platform allows non-technical business users to build and manage omnichannel Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) that leverage leading conversational AI technologies by Google, Amazon, IBM Watson, and more.
Businesses and service providers can customize pre-built IVA templates from Studio’s Task Library or build applications from scratch using drag and drop tools. The platform gives organizations greater choice, flexibility, and control in launching applications that deliver highly engaging and efficient customer experiences.
“The Studio platform is democratizing conversational AI by removing the biggest barriers to deploying natural language technology: cost, complexity, and the dependence on highly skilled developers,” said Callan Schebella, Five9 VP and General Manager, and founder and CEO of Inference Solutions. “We thank Business Intelligence Group for recognizing this innovation as we continue shaping the future of customer service.”
Organizations from across the globe submitted their innovations for consideration in the BIG Innovation Awards. Nominations were then judged by a select group of business leaders and executives who volunteer their time and expertise to score submissions.
“More than ever, the global society relies on innovation to help progress humanity and make our lives more productive, healthy and comfortable,” said Maria Jimenez, chief operating officer of the Business Intelligence Group. “We are thrilled to be honoring Inference Solutions as they are one of the organizations leading this charge and helping humanity progress.”
About Business Intelligence Group
The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry award programs, these programs are judged by business executives having experience and knowledge. The organization’s proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and then rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers.
WhatsApp on Friday announced a three-month delay of a new privacy policy originally slated to go into effect on February 8th following widespread confusion over whether the new policy would mandate data sharing with Facebook.
The update does not in fact affect data sharing with Facebook with regard to user chats or other profile information; WhatsApp has repeatedly clarified that its update addresses business chats in the event a user converses with a company’s customer service platform through WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is trying to clear up confusion about its privacy practices
“We’ve heard from so many people how much confusion there is around our recent update. There’s been a lot of misinformation causing concern and we want to help...
After years of waiting, it looks like Microsoft now has a true answer to Chrome OS. A new and near-final version of Windows 10X has leaked, and it offers a first look at the changes Microsoft has made to the upcoming operating system to get it ready for laptops. Windows 10X first started off life as a variant of Windows 10 designed for dual-screen devices. It was supposed to launch alongside Microsoft’s Surface Neo, a tablet-like device with two separate nine-inch displays that fold out to a full 13-inch workspace.
Microsoft revealed last year that Windows 10X is now being reworked for “single-screen” devices like laptops, and Surface Neo has been delayed. While the company has spent years differentiating Windows 10X for foldable and...
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a new rule that drops the hammer on people who want to do anything other than quietly sit in their seats and follow crewmember instructions during the flight. Specifically, the ruling puts new, stricter penalties in place for people refusing to wear masks or otherwise being extremist assholes in the unpleasant close quarters of an aircraft. Most notably, such people will no longer even get warnings.
"Historically, the agency has addressed unruly-passenger incidents using a variety of methods ranging from warnings and counseling to civil penalties," the FAA's statement said. "Effective immediately, however, the FAA will not address these cases with warnings or counseling. The agency will pursue legal enforcement action against any passenger who assaults, threatens, intimidates, or interferes with airline crew members. This policy will be in effect through March 30, 2021."
Anyone found to be violating the FAA's rules against physical assault or verbally threaten anyone on an aircraft could face fines up to $35,000 and imprisonment, according to the FAA.
“Flying is the safest mode of transportation," said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson in the statement, "and I signed this order to keep it that way."
Approvals in Microsoft Teams enables everyone, from frontline workers to corporate headquarters employees, to easily create, manage, and share approvals directly from your hub for teamwork. Approvals in Teams is currently rolling out and should be generally available by mid-January. Once the Approvals apps is automatically installed, you can seamlessly:
Create an approval request You can quickly start an approval flow in Microsoft Teams from a chat or a channel conversation. You can also create an approval from the Approvals app. Simply fill in the name of the request, who needs to approve it, any additional information, and add an attachment if needed. Additionally, you can create custom responses to tailor your request to the needs of your business.
Approve or reject a request Once an approval is submitted, approvers are notified. They can quickly review the details of the request and any files included in the approval. If the request was submitted in a chat or a channel, an approvals card will be displayed with all the relevant actions you can take.
Track and manage your approvals You can see and manage all your approvals from one place, the Approvals app in Teams. Each request is displayed along with key details such as the status, source, requestor, and approvers. You can also select a specific approval to see some more information and track progress.
Bring all your approvals in one place Approvals in Teams is built on top of Power Platform so you can bring all your approval flows across the company together in one place using the simple workflow and extensibility capabilities of Power Automate.
From the Power Automate design studio, you can create a new flow and select a trigger such as a system driven event from one of our 350+ connectors including the Azure DevOps and ServiceNow connectors that were recently updated to easily be plugged into the Approvals App in Teams.
Add a workflow step to create a Start and Wait Approval by using the Approvals block as an action and fill in the relevant approval details like approvers, attachments, etc. By adding this step, you will automatically start seeing approval status updates and notifications directly in Teams via the Approvals hub.
Add a condition to monitor whether the request was approved or denied to complete the next step in your workflow.
Capture electronic signatures (Coming soon) There may be times when you need something approved and recorded with more formal attestation, and adding signatures to the approval process is necessary. We’re working closely with key partners to allow you to create an electronic signature approval using Adobe Sign, DocuSign, and other 3rd party providers natively within the Approval app. Simply choose your electronic signature provider and add the details. Once submitted, signers are notified with an email and can easily review and sign. Approvals will keep track of the entire workflow right in context within Teams.
Resources Get the most out of approvals in Microsoft Teams using these resources:
Razer claims to have made the world’s smartest mask: its new reusable N95 respirator called Project Hazel. It’s a concept design with a glossy outside shell made of waterproof and scratch-resistant recycled plastic, which is transparent to allow for lip-reading and seeing facial cues when you chat with people.
Currently, there isn’t a price or release date attached. Razer refers to Project Hazel as a surgical N95, but it hasn’t yet earned any of the necessary approvals and certifications from the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In a statement to The Verge, Razer said it is working with a team of medical experts and scientists who are helping...
Ring is starting to add support for end-to-end encryption to its cameras. The feature will keep video streams encrypted from the camera all the way to the device it’s being streamed to, so it won’t be accessible to anyone in between. The feature, which was first announced in September, will start rolling out today as a “technical preview” on nine Ring cameras, including doorbell, indoor, and outdoor models.
“End-to-end encryption is really about user choice, to create that advanced layer of security,” Josh Roth, Ring’s chief technical officer, told The Verge. “Some people like a second or third deadbolt on their house.”
“Some people like a second or third deadbolt on their house.”
Footage from Ring cameras is currently encrypted when...
The last we heard from Luther.ai, the startup was participating in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in September. The company got a lot of attention from that appearance, which culminated in a $3.2 million seed round it announced today. While they were at it, the founders decided to change the company name to Human AI, which they believe better reflects their mission.
Differential VC led the round, joined by Village Global VC, Good Friends VC, Beni VC and Keshif Ventures. David Magerman from Differential will join the startup’s board.
The investors were attracted to Human AI’s personalized kind of artificial intelligence, and co-founder and CEO Suman Kanuganti says the Battlefield appearance led directly to investor interest, which quickly resulted in a deal four weeks later.
“I think overall the messaging of what we delivered at TechCrunch Disrupt regarding an individual personal AI that is secured by blockchain to retain and recall [information] really set the stage for what the company is all about, both from a user standpoint as well as from an investor standpoint,” Kanuganti told me.
As for the name change, he reported that there was some confusion in the market that Luther was an AI assistant like Alexa or a chatbot, and the founders wanted the name to better reflect the personalized nature of the product.
“We are creating AI for the individual and there is so much emphasis on the authenticity and the voice and the thoughts of an individual, and how we also use blockchain to secure ownership of the data. So most of the principle lies in creating this AI for an individual human. So we thought, let’s call it Human AI,” he explained.
As Kanuganti described it in September, the tool allows individuals to search for nuggets of information from past events using a variety of AI technologies:
It’s made possible through a convergence of neuroscience, NLP and blockchain to deliver seamless in-the-moment recall. GPT-3 is built on the memories of the public internet, while Luther is built on the memories of your private self.
The company is still in the process of refining the product and finding its audience, but reports that so far they have found interest from creative people such as writers, professionals such as therapists, high-tech workers interested in AI, students looking to track school work and seniors looking for a way to track their memories for memoir purposes. All of these groups have the common theme of having to find nuggets of information from a ton of signals, and that’s where Human AI’s strength lies.
The company’s diverse founding team includes two women, CTO Sharon Zhang and designer Kristie Kaiser, along with Kanuganti, who is himself an immigrant. The founders want to continue building a diverse organization as they add employees. “I think in general we just want to attract a diverse kind of talent, especially because we are also Human AI and we believe that everyone should have the same opportunity,” Zhang told me.
The company currently has seven full-time employees and a dozen consultants, but with the new funding is looking to hire engineers and AI talent and a head of marketing to push the notion of consumer AI. While the company is remote today and has employees around the world, it will look to build a headquarters at some point post-COVID where some percentage of the employees can work in the same space together.
Weber has acquired June, a smart oven startup that sells countertop ovens with a camera and temperature sensor built in so that they can automatically bake, roast, and otherwise cook foods in a variety of ways.
June, founded in 2013, has introduced three generations of its smart oven, with the latest being announced in October 2020. You can’t actually buy one currently — June’s website says they’re only available on a waitlist.
Weber wants to offer digital products that “make grilling more dynamic and exciting”
Development of the June Oven and other June products will continue after the acquisition, Weber says. June will operate as a distinct business unit within Weber, led by Matt Van Horn, a June co-founder and the current CEO. Weber...
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) before the joint session of Congress and Capitol riot on January 6. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Republican Section 230 reform is dead. Long live Democrat Section 230 reform.
Big Tech companies from Facebook to Apple took swift action in the wake of the attack on the US Capitol, banning the people and content that helped incite and organize a violent mob that left at least five people dead and dozens injured. The most prominent ban was of President Trump, who arguably got elected because of the very platforms that have now turned against him.
But those measures came too late for some Democratic lawmakers who have sounded the alarm about misinformation and extremist content on the internet for months, even years. And soon they’ll have the power to do something about it. Section 230 reform, which President Trump tried and failed to enact, is back on the table. This time, it will likely look a little different from what he wanted.
Section 230 is the law that gives internet platforms immunity from what their users post on them. It arguably allows the internet as we know it to exist, but this protection has become a source of concern for members of both parties who believe those platforms cause harm. Where they diverge is what those harms are. While Republicans believe platforms are unfairly censoring conservative speech, some Democrats believe platforms are amplifying misinformation and extremist content.
Now, Democrats have an example with which to make their case, one that directly affected almost every member of Congress.
Tech companies took action. Democrats say it’s not enough.
Several tech companies have either cleaned up their own platforms, removing users and posts that promoted violence and conspiracy theories, or shut off the ability of other “free speech” platforms to do the same.
Nevertheless, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who sponsored a bipartisan Section 230 reform bill last March, told Recode that the Capitol attack will “renew and focus the need for Congress to reform Big Tech’s privileges and obligations. This begins with reforming Section 230, preventing infringements on fundamental rights, stopping the destructive use of Americans’ private data, and other clear harms.”
Big Tech’s self-imposed reforms, Blumenthal argues, are both too late and politically convenient.
“It took blood and glass in the halls of Congress — and a change in the political winds — for the most powerful tech companies in the world to recognize, at the last possible moment, the profound threat of Donald Trump,” he said. “The question isn’t why Facebook and Twitter acted, it’s what took so long and why haven’t others?”
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), who co-sponsored the Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act with Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) last October, which takes away immunity protections from platforms that amplify certain types of hateful or extremist content, is also ready to take action on Section 230 reform. She’ll be updating and reintroducing her bill “early this Congress,” she told Recode.
“Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and many smaller platforms gave violent rioters a platform to organize and share dangerous misinformation, while allowing President Trump to inspire and encourage insurrection and sedition against our republic,” Eshoo told Recode. “These companies’ reckless actions and inactions played a colossal role in Wednesday’s attack on our nation’s Capitol that must be addressed.”
She added, “Congress and the incoming administration must prioritize taking swift and bold action on reforming Section 230 to hold these companies accountable and protect our democracy ... These companies have shown they won’t do the right thing on their own.”
They aren’t alone in their calls to reform Section 230 to address the violent content and misinformation social media companies have allowed to proliferate on their platforms.
Joe Biden said a year ago on the presidential campaign trail that he wanted Section 230 to be repealed, calling Facebook “totally irresponsible” in regards to how it handled misinformation and privacy and saying the company should be subject to civil liability just like anyone else. Biden hasn’t commented on Section 230 since, but a campaign spokesperson told Recode last November that his feelings on the subject hadn’t changed.
Last October, members of the Senate Commerce Committee met with CEOs from Facebook, Google’s Alphabet, and Twitter to discuss the law. Republicans took that time to rail against those platforms for perceived censorship of conservative voices. Democrats, however, worried that the platforms were helping extremists incite and organize — concerns that seem prescient now.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) said right-wing militias on Facebook were an “ongoing issue.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) pointed out that the platforms had a financial incentive to keep users on them for as long as possible, and that Facebook did this by amplifying politically divisive content and conspiracy theories. And Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) cited a foiled plot to kidnap his state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, part of which was planned in a private Facebook group, as an example of harmful content on the website.
“Here’s the truth: violence and hate speech online are real problems,” Sen. Ed Markey (D- MA) said. “Anti-conservative bias is not a problem.”
He added, “The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down. The issue is that they are leaving too many dangerous posts up.”
The failed Republican case for Section 230 reform
Section 230 proponents surely breathed a sigh of relief once the Republican Party that pushed for its repeal lost much of its power to make good on its promises when it lost the presidency and then the Senate.
Not too long ago, Section 230 reform was a bipartisan issue. The two parties came together in 2018 to amend the law with FOSTA-SESTA, which removed Section 230 immunity from platforms used for sex trafficking. That said, some Democrats who voted to pass FOSTA-SESTA have since changed their minds, citing the law’s unintended consequences of endangering consensual sex workers. And as Republicans made their vision of Section 230 reform into their rallying cry, it may have become less palatable to Democrats, who turned to antitrust legislation as a way to check Big Tech’s power.
Republicans increasingly politicized Section 230 reform during the second half of President Trump’s single term, seeing it as a way to punish social media platforms for perceived biased moderation and censorship of conservative voices. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) frequently cited Section 230 — and the Big Tech companies it protected — as the “single greatest threat to our free speech and democracy.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introducedmultiplebills that targeted Section 230 as part of his anti-Big Tech push.
Repealing Section 230 became a sort of white whale for President Trump; he tried to repeal it through his Attorney General Bill Barr, executive orders, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Trump ended 2020 demanding that Congress include Section 230 repeal in unrelated bills for stimulus checks and military spending — even going so far as to veto the latter because it didn’t include it.
Trump failed: Congress overrode his veto; Barr walked away before Christmas; and FCC chair Ajit Pai, with one foot out the door, told Protocol that he would not move forward with any FCC rule-making on the law. Meanwhile, Republicans will soon be the minority party in both houses of Congress, and Cruz and Hawley, Section 230 reform’s loudest cheerleaders, have become pariahs. It’s doubtful that many will listen to what they have to say about Big Tech or anything else for a while.
The case against Section 230 reform
While laws that target extremist content on social media may seem like an especially attractive prospect immediately after the riot, free speech advocates warn that, like FOSTA-SESTA, any change to Section 230 may have unintended consequences.
“We understand the desire to permanently suspend [Trump] now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier,” American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) senior legislative counsel Kate Ruane said in the statement. “President Trump can turn to his press team or Fox News to communicate with the public, but others — like the many Black, Brown, and LGBTQ activists who have been censored by social media companies — will not have that luxury.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has long championed Section 230 as the most important law that protects free speech on the internet. Unsurprisingly, the digital rights advocacy group is opposed to changing it.
“Even before last week’s shocking events, it was so strange to watch the way that both sides of the aisle had taken to blaming Section 230 for everything they didn’t like about the big social media companies, and often making contradictory claims about how undermining Section 230 would change online speech,” Elliot Harmon, EFF’s interim senior activist, told Recode. “The government can’t require companies to remove lawful speech from their platforms, and Section 230 has no bearing on that.”
What government can do, Harmon said, was pass antitrust and privacy legislation that would create more online platforms and reduce Big Tech’s dominance of the marketplace.
“If there were 50 major players in the online social networking market rather than five, then the speech moderation decisions Facebook or Twitter make would not have the outsized influence they have today over online speech,” Harmon said.
And there is at least one Democrat who remains opposed to Section 230 reform: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the law’s co-author.
“Once again, I remind my colleagues that it is the First Amendment, not Section 230, that protects hate speech, and misinformation and lies, on- and offline,” Wyden told Recode. “Pretending that repealing one law will solve our country’s problems is a fantasy.”
Wyden called for rioters to be prosecuted, politicians who egged them on to resign, law enforcement agencies that ignored their threats to be investigated, and said that every outlet — online and off — that “gave oxygen to Trump’s lies about the election” bore some responsibility for the result. But he warned against taking too much action too quickly.
“Congress needs to look no further than 9/11 to remember how badly knee-jerk reactions to tragedies can backfire, and end up harming the least powerful racial, religious and ideological groups in our country,” Wyden said. “It would be a terrible mistake to use this event as an excuse to increase government surveillance, suppress free speech online, or limit the rights of legitimate protesters. In particular, I am certain that any law intended to block vile far-right speech online would inevitably be weaponized to target protesters against police violence, unnecessary wars, and others who have legitimate reason to organize online against government action.”
In one way, Cruz’s attacks on Section 230 were right: with Trump booted from the biggest websites in the world, and alternative platforms like Parler kicked off the services and distributors they need to function, Big Tech has indeed proven to be the arbiter of what speech is allowed on most of the internet. It remains to be seen what that will lead to.
The complete repeal of Section 230 that Trump screamed for on his now-banned Twitter account isn’t likely — that would upend the entire internet — but the kind of reform many Democrats called for is very possible. Ironically, what Trump couldn’t achieve as president may well happen under his successor, and it will be due, in part, to Trump’s own actions.
It won’t be the reform Trump wanted, and he won’t be on most social media platforms to see how they change. He’s no longer welcome on the sites he loved and hated the most.
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
Rioters breached security at the Capitol on Wednesday January 6th | Photo by Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is asking mobile carriers and social media platforms to preserve “content and associated metadata” that may be connected to the attack on the US Capitol. Warner said in a statement Saturday that he contacted the CEOs of AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Apple, Facebook, Gab, Google, Parler, Signal, Telegram, and Twitter.
“The United States Capitol is now a crime scene,” Warner wrote in his letters. “The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are currently investigating the events of that day, and trying to piece together what happened and the perpetrators involved. The prospect of litigation on behalf of the victims of the mayhem also is highly likely....
John Legere, former T-Mobile CEO and aspiring Batman, has reacted to the mob that attacked the Capitol like many other political and business leaders by calling for President Donald Trump to step down. But he’s also going a step further by considering a run for political office himself. Legere left his post as CEO and member of T-Mobile’s board after successfully negotiating the merger between the company and Sprint, so he very well could be looking far and wide for his next gig.
Legere’s time as T-Mobile’s CEO turned the company into the “Un-Carrier,” a plan that came with an end to contracts, revamped mobile plans, and a variety of freebies and perks for customers designed to set T-Mobile apart from its longtime rivals AT&T and...
Microsoft Teams, easily one of the most popular collaboration tools on the market, will soon receive an update to enable Outlook integration within the service. This could be an incredibly useful update for business users, specifically when they’re conducting internal meetings. Currently, the feature is still in development, but it should be available to users soon, well, this year anyway.
According to an update on the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the Outlook integration will allow users to send copies of conversations and email messages, including their attachments to channels and chats on Teams. Users can also start a chat with a specific email message. When sharing to Teams from Outlook, popup windows will appear to confirm which person or channel you want to share the content with, and you can also select if you want to include attachments.
New Productivity for Teams
Tools like Microsoft Teams have gained massive attention and popularity in a world where employees need to stay connected outside of the office. However, there are still companies facing challenges with their switch to remote working landscapes. For those still using email, the Outlook integration will make it easier to continue collaborating.
This is just one impending update in a series of changes that Microsoft is making to its Teams environment to boost productivity. Microsoft has been working hard to maintain its position as the leading collaboration tool and UCaaS solution for many modern companies. One of the things that makes Microsoft so compelling is its ability to take the feedback of users into account.
The market sector has become more competitive lately, of course, with virtually every vendor seeing a massive boost in the number of users available. In addition to the Outlook integration on the horizon, Microsoft has also announced new optimisations for mobile apps, and stronger Microsoft Teams Phones features too.
Supporting All Kinds of Work
As the move to remote and digital working continues to grow in the months and years following the pandemic, there’s no doubt that companies will continue to rely on services like Microsoft Teams. However, during this initial transition stage, all organisations need to be able to access a simple way of moving to the new landscape. The arrival of new features like this Outlook integration on Microsoft Teams will make a huge difference to companies that would otherwise struggle to make the move to remote work.
Crucially, the Outlook integration will ensure that employees with different styles of working, and those from different generations can continue to work together seamlessly.
Photo by Christoph Dernbach / picture alliance via Getty Images
Encrypted messaging app Signal says it’s seeing a swell of new users signing up for the platform, so much so that the company is seeing delays in phone number verifications of new accounts across multiple cell providers.
As for what or who is responsible for so many new users interested in trying the platform, which is operated by the nonprofit Signal Foundation, there are two likely culprits: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Signal competitor WhatsApp.
Verification codes are currently delayed across several providers because so many new people are trying to join Signal right now (we can barely register our excitement). We are working with carriers to resolve this as quickly as possible. Hang in there.
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