The year is winding down, but the movie selection at the local cineplex is heating up with several sizzling releases this month. Also in the hot seat: Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, who got to have his belated chat with Congressional members, and social-media companies who missed the massive amount of misinformation spread across their platforms in 2016 and beyond. And for those don’t want to burn a lot of cash on wireless headphones, El Kaiser has a a review for you. Fire up Episode 295!
Links to Stories Discussed on This Week’s Show
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won the box office with a $35 million opening weekend (Vox)
- How Peter Jackson Made WWI Footage Seem Astonishingly New (The New York Times)
- Can Aquaman and Wonder Woman save the DC superhero universe? (The Independent)
- Aquaman (Official Movie Site)
- New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep (The Washington Post)
- Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Withheld Russia Data, Reports Say (The New York Times)
- Russian disinformation teams targeted Robert S. Mueller III, says report prepared for Senate (The Washington Post)
- Russian Trolls Came for Instagram, Too (The New York Times)
- Russian 2016 Influence Operation Targeted African-Americans on Social Media (The New York Times)
- Google Hudson Square: our expanded New York campus (Google Keyword blog)
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai grilled by Congress on privacy, bias and China plans (CNN)
- Amazon Is Reportedly Sick of Hawking You Cheap ‘Crap’ That Doesn’t Make It Any Money (Gizmodo)
- A Year Without Net Neutrality: No Big Changes (Yet) (Wired)
- Huawei Hemorrhages Allies in Europe on Growing Security Concerns (Bloomberg)
- France to introduce digital tax in new year (BBC News)
- SQLite bug impacts thousands of apps, including all Chromium-based browsers (ZDNet)
- Kiwibot delivery robot catches fire after ‘human error‘ (BBC News)
- Students set up candlelight vigil for delivery robot that caught on fire (Mashable)
The El Kaiser Hardware Review