Tech Nuggets with the Technology

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Alibaba, JD.com say US was top seller to China during Singles' Day event

Alibaba and JD.com said the United States was the top seller of goods to China during the Singles' Day shopping extravaganza that generated about $116 billion in merchandise volume for the pair. https://ift.tt/3pfFDjj

Tech companies tied to US lawsuit against Google get more time to propose protective order

Microsoft Corp , Oracle Corp and other companies that have provided information to the U.S. government for its antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet's Google were granted more time on Wednesday to propose a protective order for their confidential data. https://ift.tt/3piLu7j

US Treasury seeks 'resolution' with ByteDance on security concerns

The U.S. Treasury Department said it wants to reach a resolution of national security risks it has raised over ByteDance's 2017 acquisition on Musical.ly, which it then merged into the TikTok video-sharing app. https://ift.tt/2Ijx1rj

Netflix Says Ready to Pay Tax After Vietnam Complaint

Netflix insisted it was prepared to pay tax in Vietnam after a minister accused the streaming giant of dodging its obligations to the communist nation. https://ift.tt/32DclBs

TikTok Asks US Court to Intervene as Trump Order Looms

The popular video-sharing app TikTok, its future in limbo since US President Donald Trump tried to shut it down earlier this fall, is asking a federal court to intervene. https://ift.tt/32DTOVH

Facebook Extends Post-Election US Political Advertisement Ban

Facebook said its post-election ban on political advertisements would likely last another month, raising concerns from campaigns and groups eager to reach voters for key Georgia races in January that... https://ift.tt/2ItyUSb

YouTube is back after brief outage worldwide

YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc's Google, said it had fixed a glitch that led to a worldwide outage of the video-streaming service. DownDetector.com, a website which monitors outages, showed nearly 286,000 incidents of people reporting issues with the service. https://ift.tt/35neqmL

Amazon sale: Air purifiers from Philips, Blueair, Xiaomi and others to buy at discounted prices

https://ift.tt/36pv2d2

How to shoot Night mode portrait photos with the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max

With iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone Pro Max, the company has taken both Portrait mode photography and Night mode photography to a new level https://ift.tt/3lsXFw4

Apple Silicon M1 Mac buying guide: 2020 MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro vs. Mac mini

Apple's Macs with the Apple Silicon M1 processor will the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. Here's how to pick the right one for your needs.

Bruce Willis returns to space to kick some alien derriere in Breach trailer

Bruce Willis battles an alien life form aboard an interstellar ark en route to a New Earth in Breach.

An interstellar ark transporting the last humans on Earth to a new home inadvertently brings along a shape-shifting alien stowaway in Breach, a new sci-fi action film starring Bruce Willis and directed by John Suits. The trailer just dropped, and the film looks like a fairly generic mix of elements from Alien, The X-Files, and Event Horizon. But anything that lets Willis "yippee-ki-yay" his gun-toting way to saving humanity from aliens in space is okay by me.

Suits is best known for 2016's Pandemic, essentially a zombie horror thriller shot entirely from a first person point of view, like a video game. He also directed the recently released short Diehard is Back, a fun Willis-starring commercial for Diehard batteries that pays tongue-in-cheek homage to the franchise, including a few cameos that should delight fans. ("From fighting his way to Advance Auto Parts to racing against the clock to install his new DieHard Battery—McClane will stop at nothing, to start his car again.") So I'm hopeful that Suits can bring a fitting mix of suspense, action, and humor to Breach, and just let Willis be Willis.

Originally titled Anti-Life, the film's premise is that a devastating plague has wiped out much of Earth's population, and the survivors are being evacuated via an interstellar ark to "New Earth." Willis plays Clay Young, described as a hardened mechanic who is part of the crew selected to stay awake and maintain the ark for the six-month journey. But then he discovers a shapeshifting alien (or "a malevolent cosmic terror," per the early press materials) has also stowed away on the ark, and it seems to be intent on killing everyone on board.

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https://arstechnica.com

President-elect Joseph Biden reportedly plucks Revolution’s Ron Klain as new chief of staff

President-elect Joseph Biden has plucked Ron Klain, a longtime colleague and confidant and the current executive vice president of the venture capital firm Revolution, as his White House chief of staff, reports The New York Times.

Klain was Biden’s chief of staff for two years during the Obama administration and left his post as chief of staff in 2011 to join Revolution, the firm founded by former AOL chief executive and founder Steve Case. Revolution did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If Klain makes his second entrance into the White House, Biden will be bringing on a chief of staff he’s known for more than 35 years. The duo first worked together in 1989, when the president-elect was a senator and Klain was a newly graduated law student from Harvard Law School. He most recently worked as the White House Ebola Response coordinator from October 2014 to February 2015, and helped as a debate advisor to President Obama and President Clinton, as well as nominees Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

Klain’s appointment could pacify some of the presumed tension that could occur between startups and the government under the Biden-Harris administration. Biden has been vocal about pursuing aggressive regulation on the tech industry, which could negatively impact behemoths like Google, Apple and Facebook. Klain has spoken up (in TechCrunch!) about how regulatory hurdles could hinder key innovation in startup-land. Klain also helped lead efforts for Higher Ground Labs, an incubator and accelerator focused on politically-focused (and Democrat-loved) startups. While that likely wouldn’t impact Big Tech, it doesn’t hurt that, reportedly, one of Biden’s closest confidants will have a soft spot for startups.