Companies Get a Competitive Edge, and Racial Injustice Continues to Impact the Tech World
Emerging Tech Roundup — June 26
The Quantious team’s top picks for timely trending news in the tech world.
This week in tech: Facebook faces an ad boycott, Amazon acquires an autonomous vehicle company, a sociologist describes how tech impacts racial issues, Twitter apologizes for data breach, the Oculus platform gets an update, Apple changes its product line, Snapchat plans to launch a new scanning feature.
George Floyd: US Phone Giant Verizon Joins Facebook Ad Boycott
(BBC, June 26)
The Stop Hate for Profit campaign has been launched by several advocacy groups in response to Facebook allowing racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform for years. The campaign asks advertisers to stop all spending on Facebook advertising throughout July to apply pressure to the company to adopt stricter measures against racist and hateful content. Companies like Ben and Jerry’s, The North Face, Patagonia, and REI have already joined the campaign, with Verizon recently following in their footsteps.
Amazon Is Acquiring Self-Driving Car Startup Zoox
(The Verge, June 26)
Amazon is acquiring autonomous startup, Zoox, for an unconfirmed amount, though valued lower than the $3.2 billion valuation it received in 2018. Amazon will have control of the 1,000 Zoox employees, and Amazon will be helping the company carry out its goal to “imagine, invent, and design a world-class autonomous ride-hailing experience.” Rumors believe that Amazon will be using the acquisition for autonomous deliveries and ride-hailing fleets in order to compete with companies like Alphabet’s Waymo.
Why Tech Made Racial Injustice Worse, and How to Fix It
(CNET, June 25)
CNET’s series, “Now What,” interviews sociologist, Ruha Benjamin, about the impact of tech on racial issues. In the interview, she explains how technology is worsening the racial and social justice issues in America. Benjamin dives into topics like how facial recognition systems give false positives more often to people of color than Caucasians, and she explores other topics like biased hiring screening systems. She discusses possible reasons for why the technology may act “racist,” and she suggests solutions to remove biases from current and future technology.
Twitter Apologizes for Data Security Incident
(Tech News World, June 24)
Earlier this week, Twitter notified business clients that their personal information may have been compromised. The breach occurred when Twitter updated the instructions it sends to browser caches to prevent things like this from occurring. Small and medium businesses were greatly affected, exposing things like email addresses, phone numbers, and the last four digits of their credit card numbers. The issue occurred in May, but it took Twitter a month to notify its customers due to how many departments have to get involved to carry out protocol, according to their Enterprise Risk Program.
An Update on the Evolution of the Oculus Platform
(Oculus, June 23)
Facebook’s virtual reality headset, Oculus Go, launched two years ago. Since then, virtual reality technology has improved greatly. As a result, the company has decided to end sales for Oculus Go and improve their offerings for Oculus Quest and Rift. Oculus Go headsets will still be usable after the end of sales, and system software will continue to be maintained with bug fixes and security patches through 2022. In the future, Quest and Rift will be heading down new distribution paths, offering a new way for developers to distribute Quest apps.
Apple Silicon for Mac Machines Announced at WWDC 2020, Ditching Intel: Here’s All You Need to Know
(Gadgets 360, June 23)
Apple intends to move their entire Mac lineup to its own in-house processors. The first Apple-owned, silicon Mac will be shipped by the end of this year. Rumors claim that these completely redesigned iMacs and Macbook Pros will have brand new architecture. Apple believes it will take two years to fully transition all of their Mac products, and they’re hoping that with the updated architectures, they’ll be able to develop new kinds of computers.
You Can Now Use Snapchat’s Augmented Reality Camera to Identify Dog Breeds and Plant Species
(Business Insider, June 21)
For years, Snapchat has invested in augmented reality and object recognition technology. In 2017, Snapchat announced that they were working on a way to scan objects in the real world and receive information. Recently, the company accomplished their goal of creating a new scan feature. Later this year, users will be able to use the app’s camera to identify dog breeds, plant species, tree species, and nutritional facts for packaged food.
