Believe it or not, we don’t cover every piece of tech news here at SnapMunk. In an effort to keep you apprised of all things relevant in the world of technology and startups, here are some noteworthy tech news items that didn’t get a full column this week but certainly deserve a glance.
Twitter Now Supporting Videos 140 Seconds Long. Twitter continues to try to be Facebook, now allowing users to post videos up to 140 seconds long. This change will also soon come to Vine, which kind of seems to defeat the point of Vine, right? Honestly, I miss the days when Twitter was solely text. So much more fun back in those days. #FeelingNostalgic
New FAA Regs Let You Fly A Drone Without A License. The world just got more dangerous (again). Before today, any for-profit entity had to have a pilot’s license in order to fly a drone. That rule is no longer. New FAA regulations now only require passing a knowledge test in order to fly a drone. Now realtors, surveyors, and any other business owners can begin using drones with much less red tape to tear. Because we need more things randomly flying around in the sky.
Image via theverge.com
Brain Training Industry May Just Be A Big Sham. It turns out that brain training companies, such as Lumosity, may be nothing more than a sham. A recent study has shown that positive effects resulting from brain training exercises are probably the result of the placebo effect, not your brain actually getting stronger or smarter. Dang it! First Trump University and now this! Can any learning institutions be trusted?
Battle Over MS-DOS Rages In Australia. The South Australian Government maintains health patient records on a system called “CHIRON” which runs on…wait for it…MS-DOS. Yes, that old, antiquated, stopped-being-supported-in-2000, MS-DOS. The company that developed CHIRON, Working Systems, no longer supports CHIRON and is taking legal action in an effort to get the government to update to a modern system. The government is fighting back because they like floppy disks. Or maybe because switching systems would be bad for their health.
Mark Zuckerberg Fights Hackers With Tape. How do you fight against hackers when you’re one of the world’s richest people and owner of one of the biggest tech companies in the world? Elaborate firewalls? Uncrackable antivirus software? Nope. Tape. A recent photo of Mark Zuckerberg showed that both his webcam and audio jack are covered in tape, presumably in an effort to thwart hackers. Not that I’m as important as Zuck, but maybe I should consider this too.
Image via TechWorm.net
Reddit Tracks Down National Park Graffiti Artists. Never underestimate the power of an Internet mob. Casey Nocket, a NYC based graffiti artist, was banned from all U.S. National Parks for acts of vandalism. How was she caught? Reddit, of course. After she posted her vandalism on her social media accounts (which was really dumb), Reddit users caught wind of it and then reported her to U.S. park authorities. Turns out screwing with Reddit is a REALLY bad idea.
Yosemite subreddit
Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments!
Stephen Altrogge is a freelance writer based in Tallahassee, Florida. He writes about tech, marketing, faith, and lots of other things. He’s married to Jen and has three young girls. Every day he consumes more coffee than the entire population of Colombia. He knows more about Star Wars than any respectable man should, and he runs more than any sane man would. He once attempted to eat a 2 pound hamburger in under an hour. He failed.
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A few comments I felt inspired (or POSSESSED by my devilish sense of humor) to post. 1. For the spying through your computer thing, I periodically stick out my tongue and verbalize bad political rhetoric like “Reagan really did have Alzheimers you Republican dolts” and “Screw you NSA” and “Nixon was a real paranoid but Trump is worse!” And with my grown up daughters I periodically taunt the NSA and say similar things and they all respond with variations of anxious “Dad stop saying things like that!” 2. On drones I think that in this area, western NC, where every household is armed to the teeth (even daughters have pink long range sniper rifles) to ward off the Taliban, this will be a boon to the upper class sport of skeet shooting and “democratize” it and bring it to the angry ever falling behind middle class that the talking heads yak on and on about. Everybody will just be able to shoot any drone that comes over their pastures or yards while riding their John Deer monster lawn mowers. This has actually already happened for real, a teen’s drone got blasted out of the air. The local magistrate ruled against a legal complaint citing I am sure laws back to Medieval England when he supposedly said something like “that thing shoulda never been over the man’s yard.” Stand Your Ground defense and all that. 3. The MS-DOS thing with their CHIRON EHR is hilarious. An equivalent is that the American VA Hospital system uses a text nonGUI based EHR called uh oh….”Vista” and apparently there are reasons why Microsoft never sued over the use of the name, but anyway it is in MUMPS language that few people know.
Reddit can do anything!
I am not too keen on how Twitter is changing things. What is making the site usage fall these days, other than the fad apps that are around? Does the company feel this change will help?
Can you imagine the security risks that Mark Zuckerberg deals with on a daily basis?
I am totally fine with the new drone rules. Did you know what you had to go through to get a license to fly commercially?