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                            Saturday bulletin.


dog Put It There. Sometimes, you just want to hug a dog. Watch this pup offer a handshake and then pivot to full embrace. We could all use a hug right now. | via Twitter

pushpin Location Access Denied. In a win for consumers, Apple and Google are cracking down on apps that include software from X-Mode, a location data-collecting data broker. Apple is giving iOS developers two weeks to rid their apps of X-Mode's trackers while Google is offering Android devs one week. Apps that don't comply risk losing access to the companies' mobile operating systems. | via Wall Street Journal

silhouettes Facebook Facing Pressure. 40 out of 50 U.S. states and the country's Federal Trade Commission have called out Facebook, describing the social media powerhouse as a monopoly. New York Attorney General Letitia James led the investigation, noting that gobbling up competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp has limited proper competition. Prosecutors are demanding the three apps separate. | via NY Times

cookie Cookie Crumbled. Amazon and Google are being fined by France's Commission Nationale de L'informatique et des Libertés for placing tracking cookies on users' devices without their consent. Google is expected to pay $121 million while Amazon is being fined over $42 million. France is offering the tech giants 90 days to comply, after which France will fine both an additional $121,000 for each day they resist. | via CNBC

ballot-box Misinfo No More. When videos claiming President-elect Biden lost the U.S. election started to spread on YouTube, the service defended the decision to leave them on the site (saying discussion of election results was fair game). Now, YouTube is reversing that decision in order to limit the spread of misinformation, stating, "enough states have certified the election results to determine a President-elect." | via The Verge

roll-tp Year in Review. Is it just me or did this year feel like five years in one? Every December, Google gives us the top search terms of the year via an annual report, but 2020's list is extra interesting. Top search terms like "election results," "coronavirus" and "Kobe Bryant," join searches from (seemingly) eons ago, like "Where to buy toilet paper?" | via Engadget

woman-facepalm Encoded Racism. Mozilla fellow Debroah Raji offers a look into how technology is biased against those who don't have a say in creating it. From self-driving cars that are more likely to hit pedestrians with darker skin to hiring tools that exclude women from technical roles, the technology entering every facet of society currently reinforces bias. | via MIT Technology Review

envelope The Email. When Dr. Timnit Gebru, co-lead of Google's Ethical AI team, sent an email to an internal work group about a pending research paper and also criticized Google's lack of diversity and treatment of workers from underrepresented groups, she later found her work email account switched off — Google had severed ties with the researcher. Now, over a thousand Google employees are joining more than 1,500 academic researchers to stand by her side, in protest of the company's decision. Google says it will investigate Dr. Gebru's exit. | via The Guardian

memo The Paper. In addition to Dr. Gebru's now infamous email, the researcher also drew ire for refusing her manager's request to remove her name from a research paper on AI and ethics. What was so contentious about the paper? According to WIRED, not much. Here's WIRED's take: the paper's findings are uncontroversial, and, considering the paper didn't attack Google or its technology, the chances it would have hurt the company's reputation are small. | via Wired

syringe Vaccine Hacks. As the U.K. receives its first shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, hackers continue to target vaccine providers. On Wednesday, partner Pfizer BioNTech said documents on European Medicines Agency (EMA) servers were unlawfully accessed — the latest in a string of cyberattacks targeting groups involved in the vaccine's distribution. BioNTech notes that neither its, nor Pfizer's, systems were breached and experts do not expect the hack to slow down the vaccine's rollout. | via BBC
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