Govt, Huawei open 5G Ecosystem Innovation Centre to boost digital transformation
Sep 21. 2020
By The Nation
The country laid down foundations for its 5G on Monday with the launch of the Thailand 5G Ecosystem Innovation Centre (5G EIC) in Bangkok.
A collaboration between the Digital Economy and Society Ministry, Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa) and Huawei, the centre will serve as a sandbox for development of digital innovations for 5G applications and services across various industries in Thailand. These innovations will create new business opportunities for SMEs, start-ups and educational institutions.
The aim is to make Thailand a digital hub of the Asean region.
Located at the Depa, 5G EIC will serve as a testbed for 5G applications in medical care, smart agriculture, remote education, smart security, and other sectors.
It is designed to accelerate the 5G ecosystem and help local SMEs and start-ups embrace technologies such as the cloud, AI, and IoT for digital transformation. The centre will also cultivate Thailand ICT talent and upgrade digital skills to global standards.
During the opening ceremony, Depa also announced the “Thailand 5G Ecosystem Partnership Alliance”.
“Depa’s mission is to drive Thailand towards the digital economy,” said Depa president and CEO Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin.
“Thailand 5G EIC will bring together an international alliance network to drive Thailand digital innovations in the long run. Collaboration between Depa and leading global companies like Huawei in establishing the 5G EIC will greatly enrich the [5G] ecosystem,” he added.
The Depa chief also thanked Huawei for its “continued contributions towards Thailand’s acceleration in growth of sustainable ecosystems”.
Huawei will incubate over 100 local SMEs and start-ups annually to adopt 5G solutions for different vertical industries in three years, said Abel Deng, CEO of Huawei Thailand.
Tropical Storm Beta to bring heavy rainfall to coastal Texas, Louisiana as it crawls ashore early this week
Sep 20. 2020
By The Washington Post · Matthew Cappucci, Andrew Freedman · NATIONAL, SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT Tropical Storm Beta is poised to bring torrential rainfall to stretches of the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, with heavy downpours and flooding possible to kick off the week.
A half-foot or more of rain is likely in store for millions in the Lone Star State, with isolated double-digit totals possible near Houston and Galveston. Flash flood watches blanket the area as the slow-moving tropical storm nears.
“Flash, urban, and river flooding is likely,” the National Hurricane Center warned Sunday morning. “The slow motion of Beta will produce a long duration rainfall event from the middle Texas coast to southern Louisiana.” As the week goes on, heavy rains are forecast to spread into the Mississippi River Valley, prompting flood concerns there as well.
Wind and storm surge hazards are accompanying the system while Beta spins slowly towards landfall late Monday into Tuesday near Matagorda Bay, Texas, between Houston and Corpus Christi.
Tropical storm warnings are in effect from Port Aransas, Texas, to Morgan City, La., as a 300-mile stretch of real estate is set to be lashed by Beta’s waterlogged rain bands and expansive field of strong winds.
Storm surge warnings are also in effect from Port Aransas to Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, La., as the storm’s large wind field pushes water onshore. Tropical storm-force winds extend out to 195 miles from the center of Beta.
Heavy rain was falling in southwest Louisiana early Sunday, drenching some of the same areas still recovering from Category 4 Hurricane Laura in late August. Tropical storm-force winds of greater than 39 mph were occurring along the Louisiana coast Sunday morning, and are expected to spread southwest along the Texas coast with time.
As of 11 a.m. Sunday, Beta had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph and was located about 180 miles southeast of Galveston. The storm was moving west-northwest at just 3 mph.
Beta is the second tropical or subtropical cyclone in 15 years to be named after a Greek letter, following behind Alpha, a rare subtropical storm that brought damaging winds to Portugal on Friday. This hurricane season has been spawning storms at a record pace, well ahead of the most active season on record, which occurred in 2005.
Beta is located in an area of weak upper level winds, causing it to be slow-moving, which will exacerbate the flood threat. However, its poor organization and nearby dry air will help limit the flood potential.
The Hurricane Center indicates that while a few areas may see rainfall of up to 2o inches, primarily close to the coast in the vicinity of Galveston Bay, a more widespread swath from the middle Texas coast to southern Louisiana is likely to receive between 8 and 12 inches of rain.
However, it remains difficult to determine where the heaviest rain will fall. It appears that southwest Louisiana may see totals of one foot or greater, which is likely to cause flooding in already waterlogged areas hit hard by Laura.
More than 30,000 are still without power in parts of coastal Louisiana from that storm, and many still lack access to fresh water.
In the Houston-Galveston corridor, bands of rainfall will probably pivot into the area by early Sunday afternoon, becoming moderate to heavy at times. Rainfall rates of an inch per hour or more are possible late in the day, with even heavier rainfall arriving during the overnight into Monday.
The Houston metro area is familiar with the risks of slow-moving tropical storms and hurricanes, having gone through Tropical Storm Alison in 2001, which caused at least $5 billion in damage, and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which delivered the heaviest rainfall associated with a tropical storm or hurricane on record in the United States, at 60.58 inches.
While Beta exhibits some similarities to those storms, such as its sluggish movement, the rainfall forecast does not look to be nearly as significant as those historic events.
There may also be heavy rainfall in northwest Louisiana, southwest Arkansas or southern Oklahoma, which would be associated with the interaction between moisture streaming northward from the storm and a stalled frontal boundary.
The greatest risk for this scenario to play out appears to be in south-central to southeastern Oklahoma, where a general 2 to 4 inches, with localized 6-inch amounts, is possible.
“(Beta’s) remnants will be the predominant influence on our weather, generally keeping high chances (of rain) in the forecast for much of the upcoming work week,” wrote the National Weather Service in Shreveport, La., which serves southeast Oklahoma.
In addition to heavy rainfall, a broad area of storm surge flooding is also likely along the immediate shoreline from coastal Louisiana to Texas. Storm surge refers to the storm-driven rise in water above normally dry land at the coast.
A general 1- to 3-foot increase in water levels is likely along much of the Texas and western Louisiana coastline, with 2 to 4 feet between Aransas Bay in Texas and Lake Calcasieu in Louisiana, which includes Galveston Bay. Because the storm is crawling along, the surge will come during multiple high tide cycles, which will exacerbate beach erosion. Coastal flooding was already being reported in Galveston on Sunday morning.
Strong wind gusts, probably topping 60 mph in some areas, will also move ashore, particularly near Beta’s center when it makes landfall overnight Monday into Tuesday.
Beta isn’t the only tropical storm in the Atlantic right now. Hurricane Teddy will sideswipe Bermuda on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, barely a week after Hurricane Paulette made landfall as a strong Category 1. Teddy will continue churning northwards, eventually transitioning into an extratropical cyclone and bringing strong winds to the Canadian Maritimes.
The remnants of Paulette, meanwhile, could attempt to redevelop in the coming days southeast of the Azores. (If it were to do so, it would not receive a new name for technical reasons.)
There is also Tropical Storm Wilfred, a struggling low-end tropical storm over the open tropical Atlantic that will probably weaken into a tropical storm depression by late Sunday.
This startup pushes technology into schools with paper and pen
Sep 20. 2020The website home screen for Bakpax is displayed on a laptop computer in an arranged photograph on Sept. 16, 2020. CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Gabby Jones.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jackie Davalos · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, WORLD, EDUCATION
Millions of kids in the U.S. headed back to school this month and most of them will be spending at least part of their class time remotely, relying on computers, tablets and fast broadband to connect with teachers.
In thousands of schools across the U.S., though, teachers are using a small technology startup to preserve some of the more analog aspects of classwork during the pandemic. Bakpax Inc. makes a mobile app that kids can use to take a picture of homework completed using pencil and paper then upload to get instant grades and feedback. Some 50,000 teachers are using the tool, including in Europe and South Korea.
“Paper is still the universal platform for learning,” said founder and Chief Executive Officer Jose Ferreira. “Until devices can cost a few dollars, that’s not going to change — even in rich countries like the United States.”
Bakpax, which also has an online interface, teaches itself to score, based on the various ways students arrive at the same answer. It also gives teachers a broad view of how the class is doing, what it’s struggling with and where students need more help.
The startup is part of a wave of companies that are using technology to try to ease the burden on instructors, harness data to improve teaching methods and even make learning more fun for students. But many educators — and parents — are wary of too much technology, arguing that it can’t replace face-to-face instruction. The covid-19 pandemic has forced technology into the classroom, however, and there are signs it won’t go away once kids are back in the building.
In the first half of 2020, investors poured $4.5 billion into education-technology startups globally, the second-largest amount over a six-month period in the past decade. Investment is poised to exceed the full-year record of $8.2 billion in 2018, according to research firm HolonIQ. The forced shift to remote learning has catapulted small ed-tech companies from obscurity to the front of the class, positioning them to benefit from a more digital learning environment that many teachers believe is here to stay.
Tools from startups like ClassDojo, EdPuzzle, Seesaw Learning, and Classkick made the remote learning shift easier, teachers said.
“People who haven’t been focused on ed-tech don’t understand how much enterprise value is being built behind the curtain,” said Tory Patterson, managing director at Owl Ventures, one of Bakpax’s backers. “That’s going to rapidly change as companies start going public or getting acquired for very big numbers– there’s a big wave coming.”
Bakpax, which Ferreira runs from his home in New Jersey while his 28 employees work remotely, has raised more than $6 million from education-technology fund Owl Ventures, Tribeca Ventures and Obvious Ventures. Ferreira, a former executive at Kaplan Inc., also founded an adaptive-learning company in 2008, called Knewton. The company built software into online classes to track how students learn, from what they clicked on to how long they sat idle.
Bakpax was started in 2017 and spent more than two years in testing mode. The app launched officially in March, just when thousands of schools sent their kids home to shelter in place and finish the academic year online. Many schools across the U.S. are continuing with either remote learning or a hybrid model. Bakpax, which normally would make money by charging a subscription fees — from $8.99 to $12.99 — decided to waive them for the rest of this year. Word of mouth among teachers helped spread appreciation for the app.
Carla Corbin, a math teacher at New Richmond High in Ohio said providing quick feedback to students is a challenge because of the grading burden. “When you have to grade seven problems for 100 students, it’s just not practical.” She’s been using Bakpax since July and says her students like the program too. They find the app less intimidating than Pearson Education’s MathXL platform which she used in the past. Though initially intended for math and science teachers, Bakpax can be used in other subjects including social studies, English, and foreign languages too.
For now Bakpax is working individually with teachers rather than through entire school districts, though it says about 10% of teachers refer it to principals or department heads that inquire about school-wide accounts. Bakpax’s software is compatible with the ubiquitous Google Classroom, which has seen users double during the pandemic to 100 million. With Google Classroom, kids can access their Bakpax account directly with their Google login. The software is also integrated with Microsoft Teams and will be compatible with other education platforms like Canvas and Schoology over time, Ferreira said.
Bakpax isn’t without its flaws and teachers say it can incorrectly grade problems, not recognize certain letters or numbers, or have difficulty with multiple choice questions. But the instantaneous grading and data on students’ performance overrides the “kinks and quirks,” said Kelsey O’Toole, another math teacher at New Richmond High.
While the school has re-opened with in-person instruction, O’Toole said she is adamant about keeping her classroom running with online tools so they can be prepared if they suddenly have to revert to remote learning again.
“It’s not our decision anymore, it’s happening,” O’Toole said. “Teachers are going get steamrolled if they can’t take a minute to learn something new.”
TikTok hopes three-party agreement between ByteDance, Oracle, Walmart to resolve US concerns
Sep 20. 2020
By China Daily
LOS ANGELES — Video-sharing social networking platform TikTok on Saturday voiced hope that an agreement reached by its Chinese parent company ByteDance with Oracle and Walmart will “resolve the security concerns of the US administration and settle questions around TikTok’s future in the US”
The Los Angeles-based company issued a statement Saturday afternoon, hours after US President Donald Trump said he had approved a deal between the three parties.
TikTok disclosed some details about the three-party agreement handed over to the authority Monday and weighted by the White House so far, saying Oracle will become its “trusted technology provider,” and Walmart will play a role in “commercial partnership.”
US Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross noted that Trump has provided until Nov. 12 for the national security concerns posed by TikTok to be resolved. “If they are, the prohibitions in this order may be lifted,” Ross said.
A TikTok representative said in a statement acquired by Xinhua on Friday that the Los Angeles-based tech company disagrees with the US Commerce Department’s decision and felt disappointed that it will block the download and update of the company’s popular app starting Sunday.
China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Saturday that it is resolutely opposed to the US move to block downloads of WeChat and TikTok apps, urging the United States to immediately stop bullying and safeguard international rules and order.
In the absence of any evidence, the United States has repeatedly used state power to suppress the two enterprises for unwarranted reasons, which seriously disrupted their normal business activities, undermined the confidence of international investors in the US investment environment and damaged the normal global economic and trade order, the MOC said in a statement.
The Commerce Department’s statement came following Trump’s Aug 6 executive order banning any US transactions with ByteDance, starting in 45 days. A similar order was issued for WeChat, which is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent.
Mnuchin pushes forward on TikTok deal despite opposition
Sep 18. 2020
By The Washington Post · Ellen Nakashima, Rachel Lerman, Jeff Stein · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, WORLD, TECHNOLOGY, POLITICS, NATIONAL-SECURITY, ASIA-PACIFIC WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is determined to push through a TikTok deal that would enable the wildly popular app to retain some Chinese ownership, despite significant national security concerns from some lawmakers, other agencies and President Donald Trump’s own skepticism.
The president signed an executive order banning undefined transactions with the app in the U.S. starting Sept. 20, as well as another order requiring its divestiture. But Mnuchin has been lobbying hard for a deal in which TikTok outsources data management to Oracle while allowing TikTok to keep ties with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, according to people familiar with the talks who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The deal would require extensive outside oversight of TikTok in the U.S., including a plan for the company to go public within the next year or so to increase transparency into its operations, one of the individuals said.
Mnuchin called Department of Defense officials Wednesday and briefed them on the deal but told them it was going to get done regardless, according to some of the people familiar with the talks.
His message was, “Give me your concerns and I will try to address them, but we are doing this,” said one former U.S. official briefed on the call.
Oracle chief executive Safra Catz has developed a close relationship with the White House, including serving on Trump’s transition team as he took office. Nonetheless, Trump met with Oracle on Wednesday and expressed concerns with the deal, a senior administration official said.
Trump told reporters Wednesday that he would not be happy if ByteDance maintained its majority stake in the business.
“Conceptually, I can tell you I don’t like that,” said Trump. “If that’s the case, I’m not going to be happy with that.”
TikTok confirmed this week that it has chosen Oracle as its “trusted technology partner” after two months of confusion and harried dealmaking, as Trump moved to ban the short-form video app in the country, citing national security concerns. Suitors including Microsoft, Walmart and Oracle were interested bidders, but as government requirements conflicted in the District of Columbia and Beijing, TikTok eventually presented a deal that marked a significant step back from a full sale.
Instead, the proposed deal would make TikTok’s U.S. user data entrusted “exclusively” to Oracle and give Oracle oversight over all TikTok’s technical operations in the country, according to the person familiar with the talks. The entire deal is designed to quell officials’ fears that TikTok poses a national security threat because of its Chinese parent company. TikTok has said repeatedly it does not share U.S. customer information with the Chinese government.
U.S. officials say, however, Chinese laws require Chinese companies to share data with the government if directed and give the companies no discretion to refuse.
The Treasury Department sent the proposal back to the companies Wednesday with revisions on how the security structure would work, and ByteDance accepted the changes, one of the people said.
The deal still may hit a roadblock. “I don’t think anybody has the ability to push something through if the president is opposed to it,” said a senior administration official.
Under the proposed deal, the U.S. government would be able to approve the board members of the new TikTok entity, which would probably include Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon. Walmart would invest in the company, one of the people said.
TikTok would also prepare for a U.S. IPO in the next year. And it would allow a third-party organization to conduct audits and oversight of its operations.
Oracle, Walmart and TikTok did not comment beyond previous public statements earlier this week.
The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pentagon spokeswoman Jessica Maxwell had no comment.
TikTok’s saga with the U.S. government heated up this summer when Trump threatened to ban the app and eventually issued an order that takes effect Sunday, though the government hasn’t said exactly what that ban would look like. The Commerce Department will issue an order Friday spelling out what transactions will be subject to the ban.
“We’re not interested in going after the college kid in his dorm room taking videos,” the senior administration official said. “We are focused on the corporate level transactions, the business-to-business relationships. If people have TikTok on their phones, they’re not going to find themselves before a judge.”
Trump issued a second order that would require ByteDance to essentially divest from TikTok in the U.S. under a process by the Committee of Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency organization that oversees mergers with foreign companies for national security risks.
The irony, said the former U.S. official, is that the administration had a potential answer to its concerns through a deal in which Microsoft would buy TikTok, including its valuable algorithm, which determines what users see on the app. But that deal fell through.
Longtime CFIUS staff are upset about how the deal is being handled and have expressed concerns that what is supposed to be a walled-off national security process is being increasingly politicized, according to a former CFIUS official.
By law, the Treasury Department “is the chair of CFIUS and therefore the ‘first among equals,'” said another former official, “but it does not grant them authority to blatantly steamroll other CFIUS member agencies and ignore legitimate national security concerns. Unfortunately, the system has drifted off course.”
The companies and government have been working to finish the deal before the ban is set to take place in just a few days. Mnuchin previously said on CNBC that the deal would also require TikTok to establish a U.S. headquarters for the newly created company and hire an additional 20,000 people here. Currently, TikTok runs its U.S. operations from Culver City, Calif.
Oracle was a somewhat surprising choice to win the TikTok deal after weeks of speculation that Microsoft was the front-runner in the bidding process.
Oracle, which provides database and other services to large companies, does not have a consumer business. But its executives have close ties to Trump, and TikTok is probably an attractive target to boost Oracle’s cloud technology business, which has failed to break into the top of the pack.
TikTok could also bolster Oracle’s data brokerage business, which collects detailed information on consumers to sell to advertisers. TikTok has a growing U.S. base of about 100 million users quarterly.
Untangling the PlayStation 5 preorder mess, and where to get one
Sep 18. 2020
By The Washington Post · Gene Park · TECHNOLOGY, ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS, VIDEO-GAMES Sony seemingly had a game plan for preorders, but it quickly turned into online mayhem and confusion.
After Sony unveiled the Nov. 12 launch date and prices for the PlayStation 5 devices, people were armed with less information than ever on how to get it. Sony said after the event that retailers would begin accepting preorders on Thursday, Sept. 17, and PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan told The Washington Post that the decision on when preorder websites would go live is up to the retailers.
The retailers then apparently decided to do what they do on Black Friday: Open up earlier than expected and let the mayhem commence. Geoff Keighley, the former journalist who now runs The Game Awards, shared breaking news about retailers opening preorder sites early Wednesday night. Sure enough, within the hour, Walmart’s site opened up for preorders, which were gone within minutes. Other retailers like Best Buy, Target and GameStop followed suit.
When Sony and retailers weren’t communicating the relevant information, Twitter users flocked to the account of Wario64, renowned as one of the best deal hunters on the Internet, for up-to-date preorder info. Reddit users began sharing preorder links angrily, one stating, “Boyz I am straight up not having a good time.”
Microsoft took a jab at Sony Thursday morning, tweeting, “don’t worry – we’ll let you know the exact time preorders start for you soon.” While the next-gen Xbox preorders aren’t up yet, Microsoft announced its pricing with a payment plan structure similar to shopping for smartphones, which has given the appearance that at the very least, Xbox is the more organized console manufacturer for the moment.
This is undeniably a huge egg on Sony’s face, particularly since PlayStation marketing head Eric Lempel told Keighley in July that preorders are “not going to happen within a minute’s notice.” That is precisely what happened.
Unfortunately, this is a reality that many consumers of pop culture face when it comes to buying products online. Concertgoers, Apple enthusiasts and even people who want unlimited Olive Garden pasta are all familiar with this pain.
For what it’s worth, PlayStation’s Ryan told us that there will be more PlayStation 5 units available for the holidays than there were PlayStation 4 units in 2013. That’s encouraging, and they’re going to need to hold to that assurance considering the communications misfire around the preorder process.
The only thing for early adopters to do for now is to keep tabs on social media sites and accounts that track live preorders, and set notifications live. My advice is to not jump in early to reward the hundreds of preorders already being sold by scalpers on eBay for ridiculous, marked-up prices.
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For now, here are some bookmarks if you’re hoping to get a PlayStation 5 preorder in the U.S.
Sony’s store (not yet open to the public)
Amazon for physical and digital edition
GameStop
Walmart
Target
Best Buy
Sam’s Club
We also recommend bookmarking the PlayStation 5 subreddit’s thread for preorders, which includes links to international retailers. While retailers are not accepting preorders at the time of publication of this post, they’re expected to restock through the holidays.
Firms face weeks of bugs after launch of Brexit border app
Sep 18. 2020
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Joe Mayes · BUSINESS, WORLD, TECHNOLOGY, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS, EUROPE Businesses handling billions of pounds of exports risk having to grapple with bugs in the U.K.’s key border IT system for weeks after it launches at the end of this year.
The government expects it will have to fix technical problems with the system, which will allow truckers to check if they have the correct papers to cross the border, until the end of January, according to an official document seen by Bloomberg News. It anticipates making essential updates to the system as late as March.
There will be a “regular release of minor and essential updates based on live feedback and testing” until then, according to the briefing note. “We will continue to discuss with stakeholders whether further changes need to be made as a result of that feedback and make further tweaks if required.”
It’s a sign of how the rush to prepare Britain’s border for the return of full customs checks on Dec. 31 risks disruption and delays. Avoiding border chaos when the Brexit transition period ends is a top priority for Boris Johnson’s government, which fears major traffic queues and widespread disruption to corporate supply chains.
Earlier this week, Britain’s largest logistics trade group, Logistics U.K., criticized the state of the government’s preparations, saying it was a “crushing disappointment” the new IT system wouldn’t be fully tested and stable until April.
“To find out, with only 14 weeks to go, that there will not be a ready, workable solution for those moving goods to the EU is a massive blow to U.K. businesses and the economy,” said Elizabeth de Jong, the group’s director of policy.
The U.K.’s “Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border” web service will be made available as a demo in October, and will then become fully operational in December, the document said.
The government is also building special Brexit lorry parks to hold trucks that don’t have the right documentation, and is planning to fine drivers up to 300 pounds ($388) if they attempt to drive to a channel port like Dover without the correct papers.
Crucially, the measures will be needed regardless of the outcome of ongoing trade talks between the U.K. and EU. Even with a free-trade agreement, the U.K. will be outside the EU’s customs union and therefore goods crossing the border will need customs declarations.
Asked about the government’s Brexit planning on Wednesday, Johnson said a “huge amount of work” is being done to keep trade flowing smoothly from January.
“I believe we will get through it,” the prime minister told a panel of lawmakers in Parliament. “Of course there may be difficulties, but we will get through it very well.”
On Thursday, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove met with representatives of the freight and logistics industry to discuss their concerns. The Road Haulage Association, one of the groups present, described the meeting as a “washout.”
“I was hopeful that today’s meeting would result in a mutually effective co-operation,” Richard Burnett, chief executive officer of the RHA, said in an e-mailed statement. “Sadly, this hasn’t happened, and there is still no clarity regarding the questions that we have raised. Although I don’t think we’re quite back at square one, we’re certainly not much further ahead.”
Facebook focuses on small businesses, ignores celebrity pause
Sep 18. 2020Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook Inc., during a Bloomberg Television interview at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Jan. 30, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Sarah Frier · BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY
Civil rights groups escalated their campaign to encourage boycotts of Facebook this week.
Their #StopHateForProfit initiative, which already convinced scores of top-tier companies to pull advertising in July, rallied celebrities to stop posting on Facebook-owned Instagram on Wednesday.
But Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, appears unfazed. She’s been spending the last few months worrying about a bigger advertising problem: the covid-19 crisis, and how it threatens to shutter small businesses.
The majority of Facebook’s advertising revenue doesn’t come from the major brands, like Verizon Communications and Unilever that joined the summer boycott and grabbed headlines. Instead, it’s driven by smaller companies — the hair salons, bakeries and gyms most severely affected by public health restrictions around the world.
Facebook didn’t make any major changes to satisfy the #StopHateForProfit brands. “We agreed with their premise,” Sandberg said. “We don’t want hate on our platform.”
Meanwhile, the company was scrambling to come up with solutions for more vulnerable companies. Facebook, with more than 3 billion users on its properties around the world, isn’t immune to global economic swings.In the early days of the pandemic, Facebook quickly built ways for small businesses to solicit donations to continue paying their employees, to distribute gift cards and to build online storefronts with e-commerce tools.
On Thursday, the company announced Facebook Business Suite, which makes it possible to post, see notifications and receive messages from Facebook and Instagram accounts at the same time. The tool will be available only to small businesses first, before expanding to larger companies next year.
“The more businesses or small businesses thrive online, the more small businesses become advertisers,” Sandberg said.
The choice to focus on small businesses, instead of appeasing the big guys, is working out for Facebook so far. The #StopHateForProfit campaign continued, with celebrities Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, Naomi Campbell and others pausing their Instagram posts for a day. But among major brands, “most of our advertisers are back,” Sandberg said. “Most of them who had paused have unpaused.”
Trump alleges ‘left-wing indoctrination’ in schools, says he will create commission to push more ‘pro-American’ history
Sep 18. 2020
By The Washington Post · Moriah Balingit, Laura Meckler · NATIONAL, POLITICS, EDUCATION
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump pressed his case Thursday that U.S. schools are indoctrinating children with a left-wing agenda hostile to the nation’s Founding Fathers, describing efforts to educate students about racism and slavery as an insult to the country’s lofty founding principles.
Trump, speaking before original copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence at the National Archives, characterized demonstrations against racial injustice as “left-wing rioting and mayhem” that “are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long.”
The federal government has no power over the curriculum taught in local schools, and the notion that public school curriculums are too secular or too critical of the nation’s legacy has been a frequent complaint of conservatives. Trump said he would create a national commission to promote a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history,” which he said would encourage educators to teach students about the “miracle of American history.”
Trump is calling the panel the “1776 Commission,” in what appeared to be a barb at the New York Times’s 1619 Project. The project, whose creator won a Pulitzer for its lead essay, is a collection of articles and essays that argue that the nation’s true founding year is 1619, the year enslaved Africans were brought to the shores of what would become the United States. Trump said Thursday the 1619 Project wrongly teaches that the United States was founded on principles of “oppression, not freedom.”
“Patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country,” he said. “American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work or the repression of traditional faith, culture and values in the public square. Not anymore.”
As he campaigns for reelection, Trump has repeatedly cast education that examines the nation’s failures as a betrayal, seeking to rally his base and tap into hostility toward protesters who have taken to the streets to denounce racial injustice and police brutality.
His argument casts any criticism of the United States, even of slavery, as unpatriotic. It stands in sharp contrast to American leaders such as President Barack Obama, who spoke more frankly of the nation’s shortcomings, painting it as a country constantly striving to perfect itself.
Trump’s speech Thursday was a continuation of a message he has pushed since the Fourth of July, when he declared at Mount Rushmore, under the gaze of George Washington and other titans of the presidency, that public schools are “teaching children to hate America.”
In a lengthy speech to the Republican National Convention, he pledged to restore “patriotic education.” And last month, when reflecting on the unrest that had erupted in U.S. cities over police brutality, he also blamed schools.
“What we’re witnessing today is a result of left-wing indoctrination in our nation’s schools and universities,” Trump said at a news conference. “Many young Americans have been fed lies about America being a wicked nation plagued by racism.”
– – –
Yet educators and students say that Trump is wildly out of touch with what happens in public school classrooms, where the United States is still held up as a beacon of freedom and democracy, and a moral leader.
Trump’s gambit seeks to turn local schools – already beset by a global pandemic and many other problems – into another front in the culture war he champions, positioning history teachers as opponents of American greatness along with kneeling football players, police misconduct protesters and racial-sensitivity trainers. It fits neatly into his argument that presidential rival Joe Biden and other Democrats want to “Abolish the American Way of Life,” as Trump tweeted in July.
The president also has worked to rewrite what federal employees learn in racial sensitivity trainings. The White House compelled agencies to cancel trainings that mentioned the words “White privilege” or frame the United States as “an inherently racist or evil country.”
Trump’s campaign defending American history arrived as protests against police brutality and racial injustice began roiling the country. While many Americans work to reckon with the nation’s racist past, Trump and other conservatives are working to preserve a narrative that casts the United States as a moral leader, as virtuous and as exceptional.
Their efforts sometimes overlap with those who seek to preserve monuments to Confederate military leaders and who cast them as heroes despite their fight to preserve the institution of slavery.
On Thursday, Trump said he would erect a statue of Caesar Rodney, who cast the tiebreaking vote to declare independence from Britain in 1776, in a “National Garden of American Heroes” that he hopes to establish. Rodney was also a enslaver, and a statue of him was removed from a city square in Wilmington, Del., in June.
For many on the right, any narrative that challenges American exceptionalism is by default, anti-American.
“Instead of emphasizing that America was built on slavery, we emphasize that America was built on liberty,” said Noah Weinrich, spokesman for Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.
Others say that leaves out the nation’s history of inhumane treatment of Black Americans, women and immigrants.
“They don’t want us talking too much about America’s flaws,” said Albert L. Samuels, chair of the history and political science department at Southern University. “Let’s not deal with the fact that many of the framers were slaveholders.”
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For schools, the pressure campaign is more about politics and the bully pulpit than federal policy. What issues get taught in classrooms are “always local decisions,” said Arne Duncan, who served as education secretary under Obama.
When it comes to setting curriculums, Trump “has no ability to do that. He’s a fraud.”
But Trump’s line of attack is part of a decades-long thread of conservative activism targeting public schools, said Andrew Hartman, an Illinois State University professor of history who studies culture wars. Conservative parent activists have attacked schools for teaching sex education they regard as immoral, for example, or assigning books they view as too lurid.
“This has become a bedrock of the conservative movement since the ’70s – that the public schools are secular, that the public schools are liberal or even radical and that the public schools are destroying the fabric of America,” Hartman said.
Albert Broussard, a professor at Texas A&M who specializes in Afro-American history and has written history textbooks, viewed Trump’s comments less as a serious policy proposal and more as an effort to stoke his base. Broussard believes it’s a backlash against recent efforts to present a more varied narrative of U.S. history.
“Trump plays to this idea of White grievance and White fear and White insecurity,” Broussard said. “The country’s population has changed racially and ethnically . . . I think that will continue to provoke anxiety among some people.”
Educators expressed bewilderment with many of the president’s comments.
“I am not teaching my students to hate America,” said Chris Dier, a high school teacher in Louisiana who was the state’s 2020 teacher of the year. “We are teaching our students to embrace our country, even the things that are negative. We’re choosing not to ignore the ghosts of our country’s past.”
Emma Chan, a 16-year-old student at a New Jersey private school who has had her history research published in a student journal, said her history courses had inspired neither love nor hate for her country. It was more complicated than that.
“I don’t think that there’s anything that’s so perfect or so evil that we can exclusively love or hate it,” Chan said, “especially with something as complex as a country with a history that’s so convoluted.”
To her, casting criticism of the United States as unpatriotic is unfair.
“You can love a country and feel it’s worth defending and still criticize it,” Chan said. “I think pressing for change is a patriotic things to do.”
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Trump’s fight for schools to emphasize American exceptionalism is running up against efforts by students and teachers to include more voices and perspectives in history education. Students have rallied around the country to urge their schools to teach more Black history, and to assign more books by Black authors.
Amina Salahou, a rising senior at Nottingham High in Syracuse, N.Y., is part of a campaign to “decolonize education.” As the daughter of African immigrants, she complained her history courses have been too myopic.
“We definitely just learned about White America,” Salahou said. On the contrary, Salahou and other students want to see courses that highlight the achievement and contributions of Black Americans and feature the voices of marginalized people.
“Decolonization curriculum means advocating for greater or equal representation of different perspectives,” Salahou said. “It means giving students a chance to see themselves in history.”
It is not the first time that debates over what is taught in history class have drawn national politicians into the fight. The College Board, which administers exams for Advanced Placement courses, in 2014 decided to update the framework it provided to those teaching its Advanced Placement United States History course.
The changes led to an explosive debate between conservative and liberal factions of school boards. It also drew the attention of the Republican National Committee, which condemned it because it “emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.” Conservative Ben Carson, now the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told an audience in 2014 that by the time students finish the course, “they’d be ready to sign up for ISIS.”
“A whole section of slavery and how evil we are. A whole section about Japanese internment camps. A whole section about how we wiped out American Indians with no mercy,” Carson said.
Educators said they have begun teaching a more inclusive version of history not because it’s mandated but because it’s what students want. Jennifer Hitchcock, a high school teacher in Virginia, once assigned an account by a Filipino soldier battling U.S. occupation during the Spanish-American War, describing what Filipinos endured as American forces attempted to pacify the island. Students were transfixed and wanted to know more.
“The whole adage of not repeating the mistakes of our forefathers is the one that I hear over and over from my students,” Hitchcock said. “They just don’t want to make the same mistakes.”
PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan says more PlayStation 5 units will be available than PS4s in 2013
Sep 17. 2020
PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan
By The Washington Post · Gene Park · BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, ENTERTAINMENT, VIDEO-GAMES The choice for buying a PlayStation 5 is simple. It’s $499, unless you don’t care about having a disc drive, then it’s $399.
That simplicity was by design, said Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and President Jim Ryan in an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday. PlayStation announced earlier that day the pricing of the next-generation machines, and a Nov. 12 launch date.
“We want to give gamers clarity, we want to give them certainty,” Ryan said. “We want to future proof them so that they know the console they buy will be relevant in several years time. It’s a considerable capital outlay, and we want to make sure people know they are buying a true next-generation console.”
This is in stark contrast to the Xbox series of consoles, S and X, which offer more nuanced differences (4K vs. 1440p resolution being one example), with an even greater price difference of $299 and $499 respectively. While the Xbox Series S will be the cheapest next-generation game console, Microsoft has caught some heat for a confusing branding strategy.
Ryan also claims that the pricing of the PlayStation 5 machines was decided “quite early this year,” and that Sony always intended to offer a version of the PlayStation 5 at the same price point as 2013’s PlayStation 4. The coronavirus pandemic hit, however, and new issues about distribution emerged. The canceling of the E3 event in June caused the entire industry to reconsider its plans.
For now, Ryan said Sony will have more PlayStation 5 units ready for sale than they had PlayStation 4 units in 2013. About 2.1 million PlayStation 4 units sold worldwide two weeks after its 2013 launch, with a million in the first day alone.
“For quite some time, in the early part of covid, that picture was far from clear,” Ryan said. “Just as the supply things was unclear, would there be any market? Would anyone be allowed to go outside? Would any shops be open? This has been a year like no other. But all of that just reinforced our resolve, and the path we determined at the start of the year was absolutely the right one.”
Ryan said he’s heard a lot of discussion about PlayStation’s more old-fashioned approach to the gaming business, betting on its suite of first-party developer studios to deliver exclusive titles on a generational basis.
“We’re not saying it’s perfect, but it’s our approach. We like it,” Ryan said. “We just like to be a bit more nuanced.”
No one can argue against the success of that approach. The PlayStation 4, with more than 112 million consoles sold over seven years, has had a stellar year with exclusive titles like “The Last of Us Part II,” “Ghost of Tsushima” and “Final Fantasy VII: Remake,” which take up three of the top five spots for best-selling titles in 2020 so far.
“We have quietly but very steadily been investing in those studios,” Ryan said. “We now have, I humbly submit, four or five of the best studios in the world.”
While it wasn’t mentioned in Sony’s official announcement, developers of certain games later confirmed that PS5 exclusives like “Horizon: Forbidden West” and “Spider-Man: Miles Morales” aren’t exclusive at all. They’re both releasing PS4 versions, which may irritate a few Sony fans who took to heart Sony’s commitment to “next gen” development. The belief is that developing games across generations stifles creativity, and hampers the technological ambitions of the game, since it has to cater to an audience with less powerful machines.
“No one should be disappointed,” Ryan said. “The PS5 versions of those games are built from the ground up to take advantage of the PS5 feature set, and we have an upgrade path for PS4 users to get the PS5 versions free. It’s about people having choice. I’m really quite pleased about the situation.”
Ryan also said that of the thousands of games tested for PS4 backward compatibility, “99 percent” can be played on the next console. Sony also announced a new service called PS Plus Collection, which will offer 18 PS4 first-party titles for download to subscribers to the PlayStation online service. It’s a tremendous freebie for anyone who plays their PlayStation online, and a good entry point for anyone new to Sony properties like “The Last of Us.”
Ryan said he expects up to four years for the PlayStation 4’s expected life span, which makes sense considering the console’s large install base. The PlayStation 2 had a life span of about 13 years, and developers continued to support it several years after the PlayStation 3 approached its middle age.
“The PS4 community will continue to be incredibly important to us for three or four years,” Ryan said. “Many will transition to PS5, we hope if we do our job well, but tens of millions will still be engaged with the PS4.”
Sony has also expressed increasing interest in porting games to the PC, as we saw earlier this year with the releases of “Death Stranding” and “Horizon: Zero Dawn.” Sony has also been pushing its brands and characters to film and TV shows, with an “Uncharted” Tom Holland vehicle and “The Last of Us” HBO show in the works.
“The vision is that while we very much respect the primacy of PlayStation as the principle resting place for the great gaming intellectual property we have, we kind of think it’s time to explore extending the IP,” Ryan said. “We think both of these steps are perfectly logical and rational things for us to do. We should be making that IP work a bit harder as an acquisition tool for the PlayStation community.”
The website home screen for Bakpax is displayed on a laptop computer in an arranged photograph on Sept. 16, 2020. CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Gabby Jones. 
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook Inc., during a Bloomberg Television interview at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Jan. 30, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris. 
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