When I recently helped a friend with his PC, I found he had Office 365, Netflix and the current Photoshop on his machine - and he talked about his leased car. As I looked around, I saw no DVD player and no books even though he's a total media junkie. When asked about it, he remarked owning stuff was so yesterday and that he'd rely on streaming, renting or subscriptions for his entertainment needs. This would also make moving homes a lot less stressful. Is this the end of ownership?
Recently, the IT landscape was shuck at its core when Bloomberg Businessweek reported that mainboards from market leader Supermicro came with tiny spy chips no bigger than the size of a grain of rice. If this turned out to be true, most data centers would be at risk of data theft or computer sabotage. The main potential victims were said to be US cloud service providers with their gigantic databases. And while fierce debate rages on, there's also a political side. So who's deceiving whom?
2010 was a special year: Google voluntarily gave up money. After Chinese censorship authorities had tightened the thumbscrews, the US company faced the consequences and withdrew from the Chinese market, leaving the field to their competitors. This also meant services like Gmail, Google Drive or Playstore were no longer welcome in the Middle Kingdom. This move earned Google a lot of respect, further underpinning their "Don't be evil" mentality and their quest for freedom of information. Eight years later, both their noble mindset and scruples have seemingly gone up in smoke. Enter Dragonfly
You might have noticed I've been out of commission for a couple of weeks. I had broken my ankle at a classical music concert and was facing a long recovery period, aside from surgery. Dull times, some of which I naturally spent online digging through social networks. After two days with Facebook, and on pain medicine, I kept asking myself why people couldn't just shut up for once.
Have you heard of Alex Jones? While US residents might be rolling their eyes, he's fairly unknown to the rest of the world. Alex Jones is a right-wing journalist, radio presenter and entrepreneur who makes a living off crude conspiracy theories. In his view, the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks, the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was staged and various politicians are child-devouring satanists. Hard views that naturally polarize. Still, it got me thinking when he was suddenly banned from various areas on the internet.
