Miscellaneous Tech News
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Google halts Play Store 'review bombing' by GameStop traders
Google has removed a wave of negative reviews of popular stock-market trading apps targeted by furious investors.
Platforms such as Robinhood have been hit after preventing independent traders buying GameStop and AMC shares. Users of a Reddit message board had managed to upset the market by buying the shares and inflating their value, hitting established hedge funds. Many online traders, feeling betrayed by Robinhood's restrictions, have hit back with critical reviews of the app. Google has removed tens of thousands of one-star reviews for the widely-used trading app - which had previously had a four-star average. It says it takes action when it sees "fake ratings", designed to manipulate a product's average score.AKA Google artificially inflates Robinhood ratings to make it look better than it actually is.
"Review bombing" isn't exactly what's going on, not when RH had a day of totally screwing things up, then people reviewed them. Yes, it's tons of bad reviews all at once, but for a lot of legit reasons. Google taking them out, to me, constitutes an attempt at securities fraud (and I wrote to the House oversight board last night stating the same thing.)
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Sangoma Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Star2Star
Combination Creates an Industry Leading Company with Full-Spectrum Integrated Cloud-Native Communications Services, Focused on Long-Term Profitable Growth, with Combined Revenue Approaching $250 Million
MARKHAM, ONTARIO, January 29, 2021 – Sangoma Technologies Corporation (“Sangoma”) (TSXV: STC), a trusted leader in delivering cloud-based Communications-as-a-Service (“CaaS”) solutions, today announced it has entered into a stock purchase agreement dated January 29, 2021 (the “Agreement”) to acquire StarBlue Inc. (dba Star2Star Communications, herein “Star2Star”). This acquisition represents a transformational milestone for Sangoma and positions it in the upper echelon of the industry’s leading companies.
Pursuant to the Agreement, Sangoma will acquire Star2Star (the “Acquisition”) for approximately US$437 million, consisting of US$105 million in cash and 110 million common shares of Sangoma. The transaction will be subject to approval by Sangoma shareholders at a special meeting of shareholders expected to be held in late March or early April 2021 (the “Special Meeting”), with closing expected to occur shortly thereafter.
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I don't know Star2Star
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
I don't know Star2Star
I had heard the name before, but never researched them, because the "Plans" page just went to a get a quote button.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Google halts Play Store 'review bombing' by GameStop traders
Google has removed a wave of negative reviews of popular stock-market trading apps targeted by furious investors.
Platforms such as Robinhood have been hit after preventing independent traders buying GameStop and AMC shares. Users of a Reddit message board had managed to upset the market by buying the shares and inflating their value, hitting established hedge funds. Many online traders, feeling betrayed by Robinhood's restrictions, have hit back with critical reviews of the app. Google has removed tens of thousands of one-star reviews for the widely-used trading app - which had previously had a four-star average. It says it takes action when it sees "fake ratings", designed to manipulate a product's average score.AKA Google artificially inflates Robinhood ratings to make it look better than it actually is.
"Review bombing" isn't exactly what's going on, not when RH had a day of totally screwing things up, then people reviewed them. Yes, it's tons of bad reviews all at once, but for a lot of legit reasons. Google taking them out, to me, constitutes an attempt at securities fraud (and I wrote to the House oversight board last night stating the same thing.)
Apparently it's not the fault of Robinhood they halted buying certain stocks. CEO of Webull explains why in here:
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Elon Musk grills Robinhood boss over GameStop row on Clubhouse
Tesla boss Elon Musk has grilled the co-founder of trading app Robinhood, Vladimir Tenev, about why it limited users buying shares in the US games retailer GameStop and other stocks.
Mr Tenev denied “conspiracies”, saying hedge funds and US financial regulators had tried to slow frenzied trading. And he instead blamed a demand from regulators for a $3bn (£2.2bn) security deposit from Robinhood at short notice. The interview was conducted on the audio-only social network Clubhouse. Mr Musk's 90-minute appearance was a major coup for Clubhouse, which is currently in a "beta" testing phase and requires users to be invited to access its platform. It allows people to join private rooms for conversations, but participants are capped at 5,000. However, fans streamed the interview on YouTube and overflow rooms on the platform, as Mr Musk's appearance attracted unprecedented attention. Mr Musk also spoke about travel to Mars, Bitcoin and brain implants during his session. -
Microsoft open sources the storage engine that powers Exchange Server, Office 365, and parts of Windows
Microsoft recently open-sourced the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE, once known as JET Blue).
ESE is a non-SQL database engine with more than 25 years of serviceable lifetime. It was started with Windows NT 3.51 and it still remains a core Microsoft asset to this day. Even today, Office 365 Mailbox Storage Backend servers, large SMP systems, and every single Windows client have ESE code. -
Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon chief executive
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is to step down as chief executive of the e-commerce giant that he founded in his garage nearly 30 years ago.
He will become executive chairman, a move he said would give him "time and energy" to focus on his other ventures. Mr Bezos, the world's richest man, will be replaced by Andy Jassy, who currently leads Amazon's cloud computing business. The change will take place in the second half of 2021, the company said. "As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions," he said in an letter to Amazon staff on Tuesday, "I've never had more energy, and this isn't about retiring. I'm super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have." -
He has endured a public divorce, become a target for labour and inequality activists, and got involved in other businesses, such as space exploration firm Blue Origin and the Washington Post newspaper.
He has endured a public divorce, become a target for labour,
andinequality, and free speech activists, and and got involved in other businesses, such as space exploration firm Blue Origin and the Washington Post newspaper.Fixed that for them
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Synology to enforce use of validated disks in enterprise NAS boxes.
And guess what? Only its own disks exceed 4TB
NAS spinner's drives are Toshiba tin with custom firmwareSynology has introduced its first-ever list of validated disks and won’t allow other devices into its enterprise-class NAS devices. And in a colossal coincidence, half of the disks allowed into its devices – and the only ones larger than 4TB – are Synology’s very own HAT 5300 disks that it launched last week .
https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/02/synology_enterprise_nas_drives/
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Greens float publicly owned search engine
The Greens are calling on the government to establish a publicly owned search engine if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from Australia.
https://www.forbesadvocate.com.au/story/7110893/greens-float-publicly-owned-search-engine/?cs=9676
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@warren-stanley said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Greens float publicly owned search engine
The Greens are calling on the government to establish a publicly owned search engine if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from Australia.
https://www.forbesadvocate.com.au/story/7110893/greens-float-publicly-owned-search-engine/?cs=9676
NOTE - "The Greens" are a political party in Australia
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@warren-stanley said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Greens float publicly owned search engine
The Greens are calling on the government to establish a publicly owned search engine if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from Australia.
https://www.forbesadvocate.com.au/story/7110893/greens-float-publicly-owned-search-engine/?cs=9676
Will the government then shell out the public's tax money to the newspapers? This sounds like a call for a huge scam to forcibly tax the public to fund news outlets that can't produce what people need. That's some serious corruption once the taxpayers are forced to pay the media outlets!
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@warren-stanley said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@warren-stanley said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Greens float publicly owned search engine
The Greens are calling on the government to establish a publicly owned search engine if Google makes good on its threat to withdraw from Australia.
https://www.forbesadvocate.com.au/story/7110893/greens-float-publicly-owned-search-engine/?cs=9676
NOTE - "The Greens" are a political party in Australia
Where "political party" = "lobbyist for the news media conglomerates" it sounds like.
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@scottalanmiller the taxpayer only pays taxes, very little say on how they are spent :expressionless_face:
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@warren-stanley Interesting decision and one that might be good or bad but man forcing it might be too much.
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@dbeato said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@warren-stanley Interesting decision and one that might be good or bad but man forcing it might be too much.
If the gov't does it, I see only one choice....
The gov't decided what is true or important and changing concepts like freedom of speech and press into "the government says so."
It's similar to countries having only state-run news and media outlets. In this case, there might be competing outlets but if the government doesn't prioritize you, your news doesn't matter because no one can find it. It's definitely on par with the most corrupt things we see from places like North Korea. But at least in NK they don't seem to pretend that they are doing it for the good of the citizens. So in many ways, this could be worse.
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@warren-stanley said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Synology to enforce use of validated disks in enterprise NAS boxes.
And guess what? Only its own disks exceed 4TB
NAS spinner's drives are Toshiba tin with custom firmwareSynology has introduced its first-ever list of validated disks and won’t allow other devices into its enterprise-class NAS devices. And in a colossal coincidence, half of the disks allowed into its devices – and the only ones larger than 4TB – are Synology’s very own HAT 5300 disks that it launched last week .
https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/02/synology_enterprise_nas_drives/
Can't find any media release other than the article you pointed to. Looking at the Synology site, while it's true they have removed a ton of drives from their compatibility list, I'm not yet seeing anything suggesting they would not work without a "compatible" drive. Will have to keep an eye out.
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@NashBrydges I'm also watching this space a little more closely. Not that we need "Enterprise" level NAS but I have some ageing Synology 4 bay units that should really have a succession plan. The convenience is nice and they've been reliable (some Syno-isms), but I've provided clean, consistent power, regularly removed dust (ESD precautions taken), upgraded RAM* and HDDs** etc
* RAM - So far I've avoided needing to pay the inflated price and limited availability for the vendor's labeled RAM
** HDD upgrades are meant to be a no-brainer in these devices..... but I do wonder if pushing the proprietary drive concept into the top end, might have some trickle down before too long. the RAID acronym might not be applicable for these products at that pointJust my 2c
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@scottalanmiller it's pretty scary that GovOzle
(I should trademark this now!) has even been tabled
