Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Is the internet falling apart? BY ROGER COCHETTI, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —  09/29/20 04:30 PM EDT   THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL The president’s two August Executive Orders banning the mobile app  TikTok  and the mobile app  WeChat , along with the State Department’s major foreign policy initiative for a  “clean” internet within the United States  are only the most recent signs that the once open, global internet is slowly being replaced by 200, nationally-controlled, separate internets. And, while these separate American, Chinese, Russian, Australian, European, British, and other “internets” may decide to have some things in common with each other, the laws of political gravity will slowly pull them further apart as interest groups in each country lobby for their own concerns within their own country. Moreover, we will probably see the emergence of a global alternate internet before long. Some o...

Judge Restores Uber's License To Operate In London, Its Biggest European Market by Tyler Durden Mon, 09/28/2020 - 06:19 In a decision that ends a years long battle with the taxi regulator in Uber's biggest European market, the American ride-hailing company has just had its license approved by a British judge who ruled that the company is "fit and proper" to hold a license after winning an appeals process. Deputy chief magistrate Tan Ikram said Uber had met the "fit and proper" standard to receive a license almost a year after the London transport regulator, Transport for London (otherwise known as TfL), refused to extend the company's prior license. That decision set in motion the second battle over Uber's London operating license, after an investigation by the regulator turned up evidence that Uber drivers were still driving under others' names, a security hole that the regulator immediately took issue with. A ban, of course, would have been ...

American sued in Thailand over negative Tripadvisor review Thailand's tourism sector has been hammered by the coronavirus pandemic, but some domestic tourism is still happening because of relatively low infections within its borders   AFP • September 26, 2020 An American has been sued by an island resort in Thailand over a negative TripAdvisor review, authorities said Saturday, and could face up to two years in prison if found guilty. Domestic tourism is still happening in Thailand, where coronavirus numbers are relatively low, with locals and expats heading to near-empty resorts -- including Koh Chang island, famed for its sandy beaches and turquoise waters. But a recent visit to the Sea View Resort on the island landed Wesley Barnes in trouble after he wrote unflattering online reviews about his holiday. "The Sea View Resort owner filed a complaint that the defendant had posted unfair reviews on his hotel on the Tripadvisor website," Colonel Thanapon Tae...

China Plans To Protect TikTok "At All Cost" Against "Mafia-Style Robbery" & US Threat To National Security by Tyler Durden Sat, 09/26/2020 - 23:15 It was a week ago that Beijing made clear it won't be signing off on the messy and mired in confusion proposed Oracle-TikTok deal, citing that it would harm its "national security interests," which is exactly the same reason given by Trump for trying to shut TikTok down in the first place. China's state-run Global Times is out with a new editorial Saturday indicating that Beijing will stick to protecting TikTok "at all costs". The theme of "compromised" national security is still being presented as the crux of the matter. "China is prepared to prevent Chinese firm TikTok and its advanced technologies from falling into US hands at all cost," Global Times introduces. This even if that should mean the hugely popular app "risks being shut down in the US, because allo...

"Anything Tesla Can Do, We Can Do": Huawei Set To Become Major Competition In Electric Vehicles by Tyler Durden Sun, 09/27/2020 - 08:45 Not only are EV makers seeking out ways to duplicate Tesla's "success" as an automaker, but many are also hoping to duplicate their success in the capital markets. There's nary a bigger success than taking a company that can't consistently turn a profit and fooling the capital markets to assign it a $400 billion valuation. So, naturally, we understand why other company are seeking out ways to be like Tesla. One of those companies is telecom giant Huawei. Xu Zhijun, a rotating chairman of Huawei is on record in 2019 as saying: "If you look at the stock price of Tesla, you will know where the future of automobiles lies." His comment was foreshadowing as to where Huawei's future business efforts may be directed, according to Nikkei . In April 2019, the company set up a "smart car solutions" segment...

Hedge Funds Flock To Florida As Wealthy Americans Seek Lower Taxes by Tyler Durden Thu, 09/24/2020 - 22:20 Carl Ichan isn't the only mogul moving to Florida for tax reasons. According to Bloomberg , a flood of hedge funds are planning to expand their presence in the Sunshine State, as wealthy residents from northern states contend with the threat of higher taxes. Paul Singer's Elliott Management Corp. is reportedly considering opening a Florida office, as is Chicago-based Balyasny Asset Management, which has approximately $8 billion in AUM and plans to open an outpost in MIami, according to people familiar with the matter. Adding to the list of firms which have already made the move is Bluecrest Capital Management, which just opened a Miami office for approximately 10 portfolio managers. Notably, Miami is offering companies up to $50,000 if they relocate downtown and employ at least 10 high-wage workers as part of their "Follow the Sun" campaign. The moves to Flor...

GOOGLE CRUMBLES Every Google service including Gmail YouTube and Hangouts CRASHES sparking chaos online Mollie Mansfield Sep 24 2020, 21:27 ET Updated: Sep 24 2020, 22:39 ET EVERY Google service including Gmail, YouTube and Hangout crashed on Thursday evening, sparking chaos online. Monitor "Downdetector" confirmed the multi-platform outage at roughly 9pm.3 Other applications include fast-food delivery service Doordash and their smart home Nest services. Playstation , Hulu and CBA All Access also started crashing for some users. Students have even been left complaining on social media as the Google Classroom feature is unable to load. One Twitter user wrote: "when google docs is down and you lost your whole essay so you go to email your professor that you might not be able to turn it in but gmail is also down." An outage map shows that users in the United States' East and West coast were most affected. Downdetector recorded over 22,000 reports of problems ...

China Is Spying On Millions Of People: And They Aren't In China by Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2020 - 19:25 Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog, After years of constant media fear-mongering, a sizeable number of Americans continue to believe in the disproven “Russiagate” conspiracy theory. Putin, the story goes, owns Donald Trump and engaged in a massive propaganda campaign via social media, hacking elections, and other collusion forms to ensure that Trump was elected. Now, Putin sits like Cobra Commander in the Kremlin, directed Trump’s actions, and Trump does what he is told. Yet these same Americans harbor little fear of China, the nation to which America’s economy was sold decades ago and the only real aggressive empire (though admittedly the Russian bear is beginning to wake up) outside of the United States. Despite China’s imperial ambitions, leftists all across the United States reacted in outrage and mockery when Donald Trump announced plans to ban TikTok...

Facebook Will Restrict Certain Users If US Election Gets "Extremely Chaotic Or Violent" by Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2020 - 09:11 Earlier this week, Facebook gave us a welcome break from the virtue-signaling by threatened to pull its business from Europe should courts uphold an EU-wide ban on transfering European user data to US-based servers (something Washington is desperately trying to stop TikTok from doing, in a sense). But that didn't last long. On Tuesday, the social media giant's head of global communications, former deputy PM Nick Clegg, told the Financial Times that the company is developing contingency plans should the US election lead to an outbreak of chaos and uncertainty. Though he didn't go into too much detail, the implication is clear: Facebook is planning to significantly curtail speech on its platform, echoing the Internet blackouts utilized by authoritarian regimes including Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere. Clegg preferred to call them the ...

"The Virus Isn't Going Away... Campuses Need To Reopen", Northeastern Uni President Warns by Tyler Durden Wed, 09/16/2020 - 20:10 Authored by Leana Dippie via Campus Reform, With many colleges and universities across the country shifting to remote learning for the fall semester, and even the spring semester, one college president is arguing that campuses need to reopen. Joseph Aoun , president of Northeastern University in Boston wrote in a Washington Post op-ed titled, "The virus isn’t going away. That’s why campuses need to reopen," that he believes schools need to reopen, and explained why he himself worked tirelessly to ensure Northeastern students could return to their classrooms this fall. He argues that the coronavirus is going to be a constant threat, and states that the world cannot hit the pause button. “The pandemic, we realized, is going to be endemic: an ongoing threat to manage, not a brief blip in history, cleanly wiped out by a miracle vaccine. ...

Australia Pushes New Measure To Detain COVID "Conspiracy Theorists" by Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2020 - 02:45 Weekend demonstrations have flared up in Australia over the last month, as Aussies have vented their frustrations and attempted to take back control of their communities after a surge in virus cases prompted the government to re-implement some of the world's most draconian social-distancing measures. And if there is one thing that terrifies increasingly tyrannical governments, it's a loss of control of the narrative, which is why the Australian government is getting a jump start on curbing any so-called "conspiracy theorists" daring to spread information that questions the fear-mongering being used to keep Aussie citizens under lock and key. A new bill is expected to be debated by the Victorian government in the State Parliament this week. It gives local authorities the power to detain "conspiracy theorists" and people who refuse to self-...

Facebook Sued In Federal Court For "Spying" On Instagram Users Through Camera by Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2020 - 14:50 In August, Facebook was accused of illegally harvesting the biometric data of users from its photo-sharing app Instagram. Now the social media giant is being sued again, this time for spying on Instagram users through their smartphone cameras, reported Bloomberg . The new lawsuit, filed Thursday (Sept. 17) in federal court in San Francisco by Instagram user Brittany Condi, claims Facebook gained access to Instagram users' smartphone cameras without their permission. She alleges Facebook spied on users to collect "lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to." By "obtaining extremely private and intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes," Instagram and Facebook collected "valuable insights and market research," the complaint said. The suit follows...

A DARPA-Funded Implantable Biochip To Detect COVID-19 Could Hit Markets By 2021 by Tyler Durden Fri, 09/18/2020 - 21:40 Authored by Raul Diego via MintPressNews.com, The most significant scientific discovery since gravity has been hiding in plain sight for nearly a decade and its destructive potential to humanity is so enormous that the biggest war machine on the planet immediately deployed its vast resources to possess and control it, financing its research and development through agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and HHS’ BARDA. The revolutionary breakthrough came to a Canadian scientist named Derek Rossi in 2010 purely by accident. The now-retired Harvard professor claimed in an interview with the National Post that he found a way to “reprogram” the molecules that carry the genetic instructions for cell development in the human body, not to mention all biological lifeforms. These molecules are called ‘mess...

Facebook Moves To Censor Internal Debate As More Employees Quit In Protest by Tyler Durden Thu, 09/17/2020 - 16:20 After a handful of employees quit so they could speak out about Facebook's insufficient internal 'woke'-ness, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finally decided how he's going to handle what has been described as an internal rebellion. The surge of anti-management sentiment within the company was likely provoked by accusations, spread by the mainstream press, about Facebook's alleged role in spreading "Russian" disinformation to help sway the election to President Trump, a narrative that the New Yorker - a publication that's almost revered by American intellectuals - quietly admitted was b***s*** just a few days ago. Though Facebook has, like other social media companies, picked on conservatives, there's little question that conservative voices are given more space on the company's platform. That's not wrong; it's simply i...

Amazon Plans to Put 1,000 Warehouses in Suburban Neighborhoods Spencer Soper September 16, 2020 (Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. plans to open 1,000 small delivery hubs in cities and suburbs all over the U.S., according to people familiar with the plans. The facilities, which will eventually number about 1,500, will bring products closer to customers, making shopping online about as fast as a quick run to the store. It will also help the world’s largest e-commerce company take on a resurgent Walmart Inc. Amazon couldn’t fulfill its two-day delivery pledge earlier this year when shoppers in Covid-19 lockdown flooded the company with more orders than it could handle. While delivery times have improved thanks to the hiring of 175,000 new workers, Amazon is now consumed with honoring a pre-pandemic pledge to get many products to Prime subscribers on the same day. So with the holidays approaching, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is doubling down by investing b...

Doctors Are Preparing to Implant the World’s First Human Bionic Eye  The same implants could potentially treat paralysis as well. VICTOR TANGERMANN September 15, 2020 A team of researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has built a bionic device that they say can restore vision to the blind through a brain implant. The team is now preparing for what they claim will be the world’s first human clinical trials of a bionic eye — and are asking for additional funding to eventually manufacture it on a global scale. It’s essentially the guts of a smartphone combined with brain-implanted micro electrodes, as TechCrunch reports . The “Gennaris bionic vision system,” a project that’s more than ten years in the making, bypasses damaged optic nerves to allow signals to be transmitted from the retina to the vision center of the brain. The system is made up of a custom-designed headgear, which includes a camera and a wireless transmitter. A processor unit takes care of data crun...