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

  Facebook Soars Past $1 Trillion Market Cap After District Judge Dismisses FTC's Anti-Trust Case   BY TYLER DURDEN MONDAY, JUN 28, 2021 - 03:15 PM   Facebook stock soared to a new record high after a District judge dismissed two antitrust cases filed by the federal government and a coalition of states. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington on Monday granted Facebook’s request to dismiss the complaints filed last year by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general led by New York’s Letitia James. According to  Boasberg's opinion , the FTC didn't offer enough details to show that Facebook has a monopoly for social networking services. As Bloomberg notes, with the ruling, Facebook has escaped the most significant regulatory threat to its business to emerge out of the wider crackdown on U.S. technology giants. The decision also  delivers a blow to the FTC and the states, which claimed Facebook violated...

Facebook Could Be Held Liable For Sex Trafficking On Its Site, Texas Court Finds   BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY, JUN 27, 2021 - 10:30 PM   In what is hopefully the first step in a long road of accountability for the big tech giants, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Facebook can be held liable if sex traffickers use the platform to target children. The court said that Facebook is "not a lawless no-man's-land" and that it could be held accountable after 3 lawsuits that involved teenage sex trafficking victims,  Fox News  reported. The victims in the lawsuits were reportedly preyed on through the social media platform, which caused prosecutors to allege that the site was negligent in not blocking sex trafficking.  Facebook, as it does, tried to hide behind Section 230, which says that online platforms aren't responsible for third party content.  But the court disagreed, stating: "Holding internet platforms accountable for words or actions o...

​​​​Virginia's First 3D-Printed Home Under Construction Amid "Hyperinflating" Housing Market BY TYLER DURDEN SATURDAY, JUN 26, 2021 - 11:15 PM Last month, we  noted   "Screw Lumber, Just 3D-Print Your Next Home,"  which is precisely what one builder did in Virginia.  According to local news  NBC12 , history was made Thursday when the first house in the state, located in South Richmond, was constructed with a 3-D printer.  "It's a home where your walsl are made out of concrete instead of wood that's it," said Zachary Manngeimer, CEO of Alquist, a 3D printing construction firm from Iowa City. Printing walls out of concrete instead of stick building with lumber is a relief for homebuilders and homeowners. This year alone, a new single-family home cost had risen  at least $36,000  because of soaring lumber prices. The good news today is lumber prices are declining but remain well above pre-COVID levels.  "It's mixed in a mixi...

Microsoft Confirms New Cyberattack By Group Linked To SolarWinds Hack   BY TYLER DURDEN SATURDAY, JUN 26, 2021 - 11:30 AM Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times, Microsoft said on Friday that the hackers behind the notorious  SolarWinds   cyberattack  have launched a fresh campaign mostly focusing on U.S. interests that, while mostly unsuccessful,  managed to compromise three entities. The Russia-based hacking group, which goes by various names including Nobelium, launched the new campaign using “password spray and brute-force attacks,”  the Microsoft Security Response Center  said in an alert , noting that 36 countries in total had been targeted. The bulk of the attacks— 45 percent—targeted entities within the United States , followed by 10 percent in the UK, and smaller numbers in Germany and Canada. The activity targeted specific customers, Microsoft said, mostly IT companies (57 percent), government agencies (20 percent), foll...

"I'm Totally Screwed": Western Digital Tells Customers To Unplug Web-Connected Hard Drives After Data Mysteriously Deleted   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JUN 25, 2021 - 09:20 PM   Hard drive manufacturer Western Digital recommended that My Disk external hard drive owners  unplug them from the internet until further notice , after a flood of customers complained in a  support forum  that  all their data had been mysteriously deleted , according to  Ars Technica . "I have a WD mybook live connected to my home LAN and worked fine for years," wrote the person who started the thread. " I have just found that somehow all the data on it is gone today, while the directories seems there but empty . Previously the 2T volume was almost full but now it shows full capacity." "All my data is gone too," another user responded. " I am totally screwed without that data... years of it. " Multiple users reported that the data loss coincided with ...

Finding New Ways To Cool Data Centers Is Big Tech's Newest Arms Race   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JUN 18, 2021 - 04:15 AM   The debate over bitcoin's environmental footprint has shaken its price, and prompted a public discussion about the environmental footprints of various industries, from oil & gas to tech to Wall Street. In a gauge of the public's interest in the environmental footprint of various industries vs. crypto, one chart that sought to offer some context for the bitcoin network's energy usage went viral. Still, as  Bloomberg  concedes, all those emails, memes, videos, PDFs and photos need to be stored somewhere. And with most companies increasingly reliant on cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure, these companies are building data centers like crazy just to keep up with the demand. Right now, data centers consume between 2% and 4% of the world's electricity. However, engineers are scrambling to suppress costs as much as possible by finding ...

  Jeff Bezos-Backed Company To Build Fusion Plant In UK   BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JUN 18, 2021 - 05:00 AM Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com, Canadian General Fusion, a company backed by Amazon, is  set to build a demonstration nuclear fusion reactor in Oxfordshire,  the BBC reports, adding the facility will be 70 percent the size of a commercial reactor. The news comes a couple of weeks after the UK government  said  it would start work to create a regulatory framework for supporting research and development of nuclear fusion technology to enable the delivery of clean and safe energy. Nuclear fusion has been garnering growing attention amid government efforts to pursue an energy transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable sources of energy. To date, the biggest project aiming to recreate the process by which the Sun generates energy is ITER in France, which is planned to begin operation in 2035, after a series of delays. Anothe...

Outrage After FBI Subpoenas IP Addresses Of All Individuals Who Accessed USA Today Child Porn Article   BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY, JUN 06, 2021 - 05:30 PM   In the latest surreal and brazen example of federal government overreach,  the FBI is demanding that  USA Today  turn over the IP addresses of all individuals who accessed a public online article during a specific time period .  The subpoena was issued in April but is only in recent days being made public after the newspaper's parent company Gannett sought to fight it in court. It's being widely condemned as an outrageous instance of abuse not only of press freedom, but of the public's right to access information and media as well as breach of both the 1st and 4th Amendments. Underscoring this,  WikiLeaks  was among the first to highlight the case which seeks to  sweep up info on all individuals who accessed the article in question during a 35-minut...

TikTok Goes For A Biometric Grab Of 66 Million US Users BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JUN 04, 2021 - 04:40 PM   TikTok quietly rolled out its new  US privacy policy  earlier this week, allowing the Chinese company to automatically " collect biometric identifiers and biometric information"  from its users' content. TechCrunch  first pointed out the policy change introduced in the recently added section,  "Image and Audio Information,"  located under the section titled  "Information we collect automatically ." It states:  "We may collect information about the images and audio that are a part of your User Content, such as identifying the objects and scenery that appear, the existence and location within an image of face and body features and attributes, the nature of the audio, and the text of the words spoken in your User Content. We may collect this information to enable special video effects, for content moderation, for demographic classi...

United Airlines Orders $3 Billion Worth Of Supersonic Airplanes     BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, JUN 04, 2021 - 10:42 AM   United Airlines, Inc. is flying into the world of supersonic travel and has announced a commercial agreement with Denver-based aerospace company  Boom Supersonic  to add 15 supersonic passenger jets with the option to purchase 35 at a later date.  At $200 million a pop, the deal is valued at more than $3 billion. Both companies will work together to ensure commercial operations of the plane, called "Overture," are ready by 2029.  "The companies will work together on meeting those requirements before delivery. Once operational, Overture is expected to be the first large commercial aircraft to be net-zero carbon from day one, optimized to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). It is slated to roll out in 2025, fly in 2026 and expected to carry passengers by 2029. United and Boom will also work together to accelerate p...

Twitter Launches Premium Service With New Features Like "Undo Tweet"   BY TYLER DURDEN THURSDAY, JUN 03, 2021 - 10:12 AM   Just as thousands of Twitter power-users feared, the company is breaking ranks with other social media giants and introducing a premium subscription service that will initially cost $2.99 per month. The service, dubbed "Twitter Blue", will include tools to help users undo and organize posts. The stock whipsawed on the news as kneejerk gains were almost immediately undone amid a broader market selloff. The decision isn't a surprise. Twitter has previously  confirmed to the press  that it is considering launching premium features available to power users like brands and journalists. In a statement to  the Verge  announcing the launch, Wwitter said it’s launching Twitter Blue first in Australia and Canada “to gain a deeper understanding of what will make your Twitter experience more customized, more expressive, and generally sp...

Now Is Your Last Chance To Opt-Out Of Amazon Sidewalk    BY TYLER DURDEN TUESDAY, JUN 01, 2021 - 05:40 PM   Amazon Sidewalk, the company's new shared mesh network that helps devices like Amazon Echo devices, Ring Security Cams, outdoor lights, motion sensors, and Tile trackers work better around the house and beyond, will be switched on next week. Tens of millions of Americans own Amazon devices, and the experimental network will turn users into guinea pigs next week, according to  ArsTechnica . On June 8, users who don't opt-out will be automatically enrolled in " Sidewalk ." The mesh network, created by Echoes, cameras, and other smart devices under the Amazon brand, will use a small amount of bandwidth and broadcast to nearby neighbors and or city streets.  "Amazon Sidewalk creates a low-bandwidth network with the help of Sidewalk Bridge devices, including select Echo and Ring devices. These Bridge devices share a small portion of your internet bandwi...