Alright, y’all!! We’ve been through COVID-19 since mid-March and we’re winding down the last few weeks of summer. Alas, I had planned an amazing summer this summer, and not it’s gone. BUT, It’s another Thursday which means another week of tech talk with Mark Starling and the First News 570 crew. This week…NASA shows Perseverance counts, $5 trillion of tech leadership sit before Congress, and the TikTok says other social networks should share. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.
EX-GOOGLE CAR EXEC SENTENCED, THEN SUES
Man, the people who just go around suing give me the heebie-jeebies. Anthony Levandowski, the former Google-Waymo executive who founded Otto, who then sold to Uber has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets and then selling them to Uber. He was originally sentenced to 27 months in jail, but his sentence was dialed down to 18 months. He’ll serve his time later on, because of COVID. According to Levandowski, he’s, “come to terms with what he did,” and wants to apologize to his Google comrades. And for his trouble, he wants to sue Uber for $4.1 billion after the company hadn’t paid up for Otto.
SAMSUNG ANNOUNCES PLETHORA OF PHONES, EL GUAPO SMILES
Yesterday, Samsung announced a batch of new devices in the marketplace. Samsung has announced two Galaxy Note 20s, two new Galaxy Tab S7s, a new Galaxy Watch, new Galaxy Ear Buds Live, and a Galaxy Z Fold 2. Samsung’s folding phone, the Fold 2, is probably the most anticipated device with the Twitterverse saying it’s some real hype shit. I’m also looking forward to the fold, as I’ve been wanting a Westworldian device. I think phones have already approached the point of saturation and phone makers are looking for the latest hook to sell more devices. Samsung, Motorola, and Microsoft are all hinging their hopes on foldable devices, and the fold might be the one that’s not a gimmick.
THE NSA, AHEM, ISSUES CONSUMER PRIVACY ADVISORY?
The Agency, no, not that one, No Such Agency has issued a consumer privacy advisory. I know, it seems strange that the spy organization that invented streaming tech, and can sniff signals out of the air, has issued an advisory alerting consumers of the dangers of geolocation, bluetooth, and ad tracking technologies. The NSA has shared a huge list of safeguards users can take including disabling location technologies on our devices. The NSA stated that automatic WiFi connection, fitness trackers, location, and BlueTooth devices exposes to all sorts of people who mine and sell individual location data. NSA did admit that for most consumers, disabling these features are impractical for most users as these technologies are used everyday to to navigate, monitor health, and…communicate.