Weekend Edition 14 – China Declares Victory, Meta Passes the Buck, and More

We 14.1 – China Declares Victory Over Childhood Gaming Addiction Problems

In true Chinese fashion, they simply limited kids to 1 hour of access to gaming services per day. Right... That is gonna do a TON of good in the long term. A total of 3 hours per week. So get this, now that winter is coming, along with an alleged uptick in COVID activity, parents are allowing their kids access to their gaming accounts to “keep them entertained”. That limitation really seems to be doing the trick, there, China.
Wow. Super easy. Barely an inconvenience. We’ll severely limit the kids’ accounts access to gaming servers, but now mom and dad are letting them use their accounts, to keep them placated. Sounds like they’ve really had great success in curbing the kids’ addiction problems. #smh.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63730316
#weekendedition #china #kiddiegamers #gamingaddiction #victory #lol #smh #TechFreedom

WE 14.2 – Meta Points the Finger at Pentagon

Noted a small network, based in the US, putting out very strongly pro-US propaganda and engaging in “inauthentic behavior”, took it down. Their focus was in former Soviet States mostly around the Baltics in Central Asia (Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen), and they used many of the same tactics to promote themselves and the content that they attempted to palm off as being theirs as propagandists use in campaigns against the West. This network consisted of 39 accounts, 16 pages, and two groups on Facebook, and 26 Instagram accounts. They used fake pictures, fake personas, cross-platform campaigns, and seem to have links to the US military. The article seems concerned that our military using the same tactics used against us would “further erode the public trust” in our government and military. Well, BBC, I hate to break it to you, but there is already a whole lot of “broken ‘public trust’” with our government, just as your people have with yours. The jig is nearly up for those who think that the people of the planet Earth will simply be content to sit by and lose everything that you led us to believe that we still had in life. You will see. It won’t end well for [them].
Needless to say, I am unsurprised that our military would be sloppy enough to get caught by Meta, who is a major contractor of our defense and intel agencies. Go woke, lose enough IQ points to no longer question your own choices, and consequently become far too sloppy.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63731751
#weekendedition #propaganda #potkettleblack #smh #USmilitary #militaryintelligence #gimmeabreak #publictrust #meta #TechFreedom

WE 14.3 – Foxconn’s Zhengzhou Campus Sees Unrest
I am in solidarity with these horribly mistreated workers who basically slave to produce Mr. Cook’s iPhones for the sheep who still buy them in droves. Both Beijing and Foxconn have abused these people. They have not been paid well, ever, and now they have missed being paid at all for a time. They also have not received food in the quantity that they need and deserve. They are also afraid of a potential COVID outbreak at the plant. These things all added up and some have been abandoning the factory since the latest lockdown began last month.
Do you have an iPhone still? Why? Do you enjoy your beautiful UI and well marketed devices that were made by such horribly treated people? Sorry, these sorts of stories raise my hackles. My compassion, coupled with my intense dislike for how Apple operates, just makes my blood boil. I don’t know of anything we can do, other than perhaps #boycottapple. This is not new news, really. There have been massive issues behind the poison Apple for many years. Just switch. I know you’ve been told that Android is terrible, and you are just so comfortable with your iPhones that you can’t hardly imagine leaving, but if you don’t want blood on your handsets, and you actually value your privacy, run away now. Never look back.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/violent-protests-reportedly-erupt-at-main-iphone-factory-in-china/
#weekendedition #apple #foxconn #china #iphone #boycottapple #TechFreedom

WE 14.4 – Remember Theranos?
They claimed to be able to test for a number of medical conditions with just a few drops of blood, rather than needing far more, as with conventional labs. Well, the founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was sentenced to 11 years, 3 months in prison, $400 in fines, and 3 years of supervision after release. She could have been sentenced to up to 20 years and $250000 per count of fraud, plus restitution, per count of fraud. How the mighty have fallen. She was the darling of the VC crowd in Silicon Valley, but then it was proven that the testing that they claimed to be able to do was a farce at best, with only dozens of the hundreds of promised tests carried out on their proprietary equipment. On paper, at the zenith of their infatuation with Theranos, she was a paper-billionaire. Oh, and she will still need to pay restitution, to be determined later. They hit some major investors, from the Waltons, to Larry Ellison of Oracle, to Rupert Murdoch of Fox. So of course these major players couldn’t let that slide. Even at that, this feels like a bit of a slap on the wrist. Then again, I haven’t spent much time looking at white collar crime and punishment, much less how rare jail time is for people like Holmes. I imagine that it is about as rare as hens’ teeth. All thanks to our banana republic in-justice system. Big money makes a way for certain individuals to walk almost Scot free, where those who do not have it get ground under the full weight of the law.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/tech/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentencing
#weekendedition #theranos #elizabethholmes #fraud #wristslapping #sentencing #TechFreedom

WE 14.5 – FCC to the Rescue, Effectively Ends UC Global’s Access to US Markets
What is UC Global, you ask? A company who has repeatedly refused to comply with US regulations regarding robocalls. Therefore, the FCC has seen fit to deny the company access to US telecom companies, shutting it out of the US market. Wow. That is harsh, but we’ll see if it is really effective at reducing those nuisance calls from computers or not. Heigh-ho silver, AWAAAYYYY!!!! As annoying as those infernal calls are, is a gov’t agency powerful enough to deny access to US markets a good thing? I am unsure. They ostensibly exist to protect us from fraud and from worse things, but do they actually serve that purpose? I’d have to look more closely at them before answering that question.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/22/tech/fcc-global-uc-robocalls-violations
#weekendedition #robocalls #fcc #banhammer #loneranger #lol #donttrustit #TechFreedom