Techlife News #521

Virginia has received a record number of local and private sector applications to match state investments in broadband connectivity and the state expects more than $2 billion in total broadband funding, Gov. Ralph Northam announced this week. Virginia aims to expand high-speed internet access to more than 250,000 homes and businesses, using federal emergency aid to close a gap in opportunity for remote work and study during the COVID-19 pandemic, news outlets reported. Virginia has received requests for $943 million in grants to fund 57 projects to expand access to broadband telecommunications, Northam said. The state expects to use $850 million in federal and state budget funds, mostly American Rescue Plan Act aid. It would be matched by $1.15 billion in private and local government funds. Not all projects will be funded this…

Nine months after being expelled from social media for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, former President Donald Trump said this week he’s launching a new media company with its own social media platform. Trump says his goal in launching the Trump Media & Technology Group and its “Truth Social” app is to create a rival to the Big Tech companies that have shut him out and denied him the megaphone that was paramount to his national rise. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced,” he said in a statement. “This is unacceptable.” Conservative voices actually do well on traditional social media. On Wednesday, half of Facebook’s 10 top performing link posts were from…

The senator leading a probe of Facebook’s Instagram and its impact on young people is asking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before the panel that has heard far-reaching criticisms from a former employee of the company. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who heads the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection, called in a sharply worded letter Wednesday for the Facebook founder to testify on Instagram’s effects on children. “Parents across America are deeply disturbed by ongoing reports that Facebook knows that Instagram can cause destructive and lasting harms to many teens and children, especially to their mental health and wellbeing,” Blumenthal said in the letter addressed to Zuckerberg. “Those parents, and the twenty million teens that use your app, have a right to know the truth about the safety of Instagram.” In the…

Record electric vehicle sales last summer amid a shortage of computer chips and other materials propelled Tesla Inc. to the biggest quarterly net earnings in its history. The company said Wednesday that it made $1.62 billion in the third quarter, beating the old record of $1.14 billion set in the second quarter of this year. The profit was nearly five times larger than the $331 million Tesla made in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue of $13.76 billion from July through September also set a record, but it fell short of Wall Street expectations of just over $14 billion, according to FactSet. Excluding special items such as stock-based compensation, Palo Alto, California-based Tesla made $1.86 per share, beating analyst estimates of $1.62. CEO Elon Musk has said he’s moving the headquarters to…

A driver was behind the wheel when a Tesla electric car crashed and burned last April near Houston, killing two men, neither of whom was found in the driver’s seat. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board announced the findings in an investigative report update released Thursday on the April 17 crash on a residential road in Spring, Texas. Although first responders found one man in the back seat and the other in the front passenger seat, the NTSB said both the driver and a passenger were in the front seats with belts buckled at the time of the crash. The agency said the car was traveling up to 67 mph in the five seconds leading up to the crash, and the driver was accelerating. Data from the car’s fire-damaged event data recorder revealed…

Drug cartels in Mexico are recruiting youths through contacts made on multiplayer online video games, officials said this week. Ricardo Mejía, Mexico’s assistant public safety secretary, said an apparent cartel recruiter had already bought bus tickets for three boys between the ages of 11 and 14. He said the boys met the recruiter in the online game platform “Free Fire,” also known as “Garena Free Fire.” The recruiter promised the boys $200 per week to work in northern Mexico as drug cartel lookouts. The boys were found before they could board the bus in the southern state of Oaxaca. Mejia said other cartels have operated in a similar way by contacting players through online games and game platform chats, including “Call of Duty,”“Gears of War” and “Grand Theft Auto V.” While there have been…