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Parliament asks Facebook to explain political fact-checking exemption
Britain's parliament has formally demanded an explanation from Facebook for its decision that statements “with the primary purposes of expressing the opinion or agenda of a political figure” ineligible for fact-checking (The Guardian).
In a letter to Facebook's Nick Clegg that also raised questions about Facebook's plans for unified encrypted messaging, Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee chair Damien Collins asked: “Why was the decision taken to change Facebook’s policy regarding political adverts, given the heavy constraint this will place on Facebook’s ability to combat online disinformation in the run-up to elections around the world, and a possible UK general election in particular?”
Softbank now owns 80 per cent of WeWork
Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank has taken over an 80 per cent share of co-working space rental firm WeWork (The Verge). Former Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure will now head the company, and WeWork's famously erratic founder, Adam Neuman, will recieve $1.7 billion from the deal.
IBM deflates Google's quantum supremacy claims
IBM has cast aspersions on Google's recent claim that it achieved “quantum supremacy” when its 53-qubit processor took minutes to solve a problem that it said would take 10,000 years on a supercomputer (The Register). In a blog post IBM, itself a leader in quantum computing, argues that "that an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity."
The latest version of Firefox shows the wild scale of web tracking
Cookies are small pieces of code follow you around the web and help firms build up profiles about your interest, and we're being overrun by them (WIRED). Now Mozilla, the creator of the Firefox web browser, is increasing its stand against online cookies. With today’s release of Firefox 70, Mozilla is hoping to beckon in a culture of transparency around web trackers, by enabling users to physically monitor the scale of internet surveillance that permeates the web.
Lilium says England is ideal for its electric air taxis
Lilium has released another video of its forthcoming all-electric flying taxi and the German company's chief commercial officer, Remo Gerbe, says that England's closely-spaced hub cities are an example of the kind of transport ecosystem where the company's tiny aircraft could thrive (TechCrunch). Lilium plans to begin commercial services in 2025, with five-seater vertical-take-off-and-landing aircraft that have a range of 300km.
Boilers, porn and planes
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
