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The biggest losers of 2016
Last week we broke down the biggest winners of 2016. This week, we're taking a look at the biggest losers. Yahoo has clearly had one of the worst years in history for a company. And, unless something changes soon, this whole mess with the NSA and 1.5 billion hacked accounts could become the problem of Engadget's parent company Verizon. So, there's that. Of course there was Samsung's parade of exploding gadgets and Twitter... well, Twitter just couldn't seem to get its act together. It's now known as the platform of choice for trolls and white supremacists as much as it is for forcing you to distill complex thoughts into 140-character fragments. Of course, between the explosion of fake news and the continued hostility towards the science of climate change, the biggest loser of 2016, might just be the American public. Check out all of Engadget's year-in-review coverage right here.
Trump is prepared to start a nuclear arms race
Yesterday president-elect Donald Trump tweeted, "the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." This is direct conflict with the policies of former presidents both republican and democrat. Both sides of the aisle have worked to dismantle the world's nuclear stockpile. In the 1980s president Reagan made it his mission to have a "world free of nuclear weapons." Today, Trump double downed on his tweet.
FCC Republicans promise to limit net neutrality when 'possible'
If you're worried that the US government will stomp on net neutrality the moment Trump becomes President, your concerns are well-founded. The FCC's two Republican Commissioners, Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly, have sent a letter to carrier lobbying groups promising to "revisit" net neutrality rules "as soon as possible" -- that is, once Chairman Tom Wheeler leaves and the right wing gets majority control of the agency. They write that the requirements for traffic fairness and transparency create "unjustified burdens" for providers, and previously said that they intended to "undo" net neutrality and other policies opposed by their party.
Obama uses 1953 law to block Arctic drilling under Trump
President Obama has blocked any attempts at drilling for oil off the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. This would "indefinitely" stop oil and natural gas extraction in the areas, according to a report by CNBC. And unlike executive orders that've been signed into place over the past eight years, this apparently can't be easily undone by President-elect Trump when he takes office.
Apple's new solar-powered campus, and more in the week that was
As the founder of Tesla, Elon Musk is a proponent of clean technology and renewable energy. That's why it's so surprising that Donald Trump has selected Musk to serve as a strategic advisor -- here's hoping Musk can convince the President-elect to take climate change seriously. In other news, Chevrolet just delivered its first batch of Bolt EVs to customers in the San Francisco Bay Area, beating Tesla's Model 3 to the punch. Steven Hawking is working with NASA to launch a self-healing starship that will search for habitable planets in Alpha Centauri. And Japan Airlines has developed a way to transform old clothing into jet fuel.
Fact-check Trump's next tweetstorm as it happens
President-elect Donald Trump is an active Twitter user and has over 17.4 million followers. Those are facts. The contents of his tweets usually aren't. Or they aren't whole truths. As a way of fact checking our nation's next leader's online musings, The Washington Post created a Chrome extension that does just that. Called "RealDonaldContext," it takes his 140-character thoughts and, as the name suggests, gives context to what he's saying.
Obama administration says Putin orchestrated US election hacks
Russian president Vladimir Putin personally oversaw the cyber attacks on the United States' political infrastructure this year, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said today in a press conference attended by the AP. This follows yesterday's report from NBC News claiming US intelligence officials had evidence that Putin was involved in the hacks. The White House has not offered evidence for its claims, though intelligence officials first revealed Russia's involvement in the cyber attacks in October.
Google's 2016 was defined by 'Pokémon Go,' Olympics and Trump
Google's Year in Search summaries have a knack for capturing the cultural zeitgeist, and that's truer than ever in 2016. The company has published its top search trends for the year, and it clearly mirrors a tumultuous 12 months defined by the unexpected, the tragic and the rise of technology. Notably, the biggest global search trend was for Pokémon Go -- yes, the wildly popular mobile game did more to captivate the world's attention than political upheaval or sports triumphs. Apple's iPhone 7 was the runner up, followed by President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump adds CEOs of Tesla, Uber to his presidential policy forum
US President-elect Donald Trump has been crafting a Strategic and Policy Forum to ask business leaders for advice on economic decisions, but it has mostly drawn from conventional corporate heavyweights like General Motors, JPMorgan Chase and IBM. However, he's shaking things up a bit today: the future leader has announced that Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will join the Forum. Trump sees them as broadening the reach of his advisor group, adding "innovative and vibrant" companies that will help create jobs "from Silicon Valley to the heartland."
Recording industry writes Trump on the eve of tech CEO visit
According to multiple reports, on Wednesday a number of high-profile tech execs will visit President-elect Donald Trump. The list includes Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook, Sheryl Sandberg, Jeff Bezos, Brian Krzanich and a number of others. Before that meeting goes down, however, the "music community" consisting of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and friends decided this was the time to speak up. In a letter (PDF) to Trump, the industry made its case for how valuable music is, and how that value (for their member companies) is being siphoned away by tech companies that don't do enough to make sure every note is paid for.
Wall Street wants algorithms that trade based on Trump's tweets
President elect Donald Trump's ability to move the stock market with a tweet became readily apparent yesterday after an early morning tweet about Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jet program caused the company to lose $4 billion in market value. While that's a major loss for the company, it actually presents an opportunity for traders on Wall Street, some of whom have already started looking for ways to easily cash in on the volatility Trump brings to the market.
Scientists copy climate change data in fear of a Trump crackdown
Donald Trump's incoming presidency won't be kind to climate change science, and that's making both scientists and government divisions nervous -- to the point where they're taking unusually drastic actions. Researchers at multiple North American institutions, including the Universities of Pennsylvania and Toronto (as part of the Internet Archive's Trump response), are hoping to save as much public environmental data as possible in case the Trump administration orders its removal. There's also an independent Climate Mirror project that aims to copy public data before Trump takes office in January.
Trump could convert government news agencies to propaganda machines
One more thing President-elect Trump will inherit when he takes office next month: a large, state-run media operation with little or no impartial oversight. As the Washington Post's editorial board wrote this weekend, the United States' official external news sources Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and others are about to lose the buffer that keeps the content they project to the world fair and objective.
Washington Post: CIA concluded Russia intervened to help Trump
President Obama has reportedly opened an investigation into cyber attacks and foreign influence on the recent election, however, according to the Washington Post, a CIA assessment has already pointed the finger. The Post claims a CIA shared its latest report with senators in a briefing last week, telling them it was "clear" that Russia had a goal of electing Donald Trump. This differs from previous reports, where intelligence agencies said interference occurred to undermine US confidence in the election.
Trump defense secretary pick serves on Theranos' board
President-elect Trump's rapidly growing circle of advisers and cabinet members continues to raise eyebrows among the tech-savvy. The incoming leader has picked retired General James Mattis as his Secretary of Defense, and the Marine has been a devoted champion of Theranos -- you know, the blood testing firm facing both a criminal investigation and a slew of lawsuits over its technology claims. He's on the company's board of directors, but email obtained by the Washington Post shows that Mattis bent over backwards to support Theranos in the years when he was leading US Central Command.
The Internet Archive doesn't feel safe in Trump's America
The Internet Archive collects the history of the internet, one webpage at a time, in order to power services like the Wayback Machine, the free e-book site Open Library and the Political TV Ad Archive. It's a non-profit based in the United States, but today, staffers announced plans to establish a copy of the Internet Archive's digital collections in Canada. The decision is fueled by concerns over President-elect Donald Trump's statements about the First Amendment and net neutrality.
The US tech industry will suffer if Trump tightens immigration laws
As Nov. 8th came to a close, and it became clear that America had elected Donald Trump as its next president, a familiar feeling crept over me. It was a deep sense of anxiety that arises every year or so as I begin preparing the documents I need to renew my work visa. I never know for sure if I'll still be in the country next year, but I've never felt quite so unsure about whether I would be able to continue working here.
Trump's new tech adviser wants to gut the FCC
On Monday, President-elect Trump named two advisers to his tech policy transition team. One of those experts, director of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida Mark Jamison, wrote a blog entry last month explaining his position on the FCC -- namely, that the country could do without it. In his opinion, the nation should almost completely dissolve the antiquated agency and farm out many of its regulatory duties to the FTC and local officials because the telecom industry is competitive enough to require far less oversight.
Signal makes it easier to verify the privacy of your chats
One of Signal's privacy advantages is that it not only encrypts your conversations, but gives you simple proof that those discussions are truly secret -- you just have to compare a set of digits or scan a QR code. Those safety numbers aren't always easy to use, however, and that has led to people inadvertently putting themselves at risk -- especially when they switch devices. Developer Open Whisper Systems is fixing that by altering how safety numbers work in terms of both simplicity and practicality.
Twitter bots were rampant during the US election
If you believe one study, it's not just fake news that polluted the internet during the US election... it's bogus accounts, too. Researchers at the international Project on Computational Propaganda report that the use of politically minded Twitter bots reached an "all-time high" during the 2016 presidential campaign. Out of 18.9 million studied tweets using political hashtags, 17.9 percent of them came from "highly automated" accounts that post 50 or more tweets per day. That ratio only grew higher during the debates, peaking at over 27 percent during the final Clinton/Trump showdown -- and it conveniently tanked after the election was over.
