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Tag: #TechMonopolies

The Odd Timing of the CrowdStrike ‘Error’

The Odd Timing of the CrowdStrike ‘Error’

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

“In what will go down as the most spectacular IT failure the world has ever seen, a botched software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. crashed countless Microsoft Windows computer systems around the world on Friday,” Yahoo!finance (and all other publications on the planet) reported. “The catastrophic failure underscores an increasingly dire threat to global supply chains: The IT systems of some of the world’s biggest and most critical industries have grown heavily dependent on a handful of relatively obscure software vendors, which are now emerging as single points of failure.

Total recovery from CloudStrike failure ‘could take weeks’ amid more flight delays, said The Independent.

Those are the facts. And then there’s CrowdStrike itself, emerging again as a problem in yet another election year, and if ever there was a company appropriately named… Read More...

Apple Antitrust Suit: Let the Games Begin – Again.

Apple Antitrust Suit: Let the Games Begin – Again.

Let’s face it: the good people at Apple believe that they’re just smarter than the rest of us. When Epic Games sued the company over their monopolistic practices – taking such a huge vig from products in the app store, Apple did win most of the civil suit, but had to make concessions to comply with California law.

Apple attempted to block Epic from starting a competing app store. Until Apple Reverse(d) Course and Allow(ed) Epic Games to Start (One), said the New York Times. “Days after Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, complained publicly that Apple had blocked it from starting a competing app store in Europe, the technology companies said Apple had reversed course and would allow Epic to go ahead with its plan.” But only did so to comply with a new European tech competition law.

Think Different might not always be such a good idea after all and damn those pesky laws! What’s a mother – or monopoly – to do? Read More...

On Apples, Oranges and Mangos: An End of Summer Compote

On Apples, Oranges and Mangos: An End of Summer Compote

This week is the last hurrah of summer, so something different this time: a look at what’s been happening in Big Tech at large, primarily with  a number of the FAANG companies – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google, for those playing the home version – or more appropriately now MAANG, since Facebook is now Meta – and for our purposes here, MAANGO, as we’re including Oracle and some information that recently came to light. Plus, mangos are very much a summer fruit, after all.

Oracle

Speaking of just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water (not!):  Class-Action Lawsuit Accuses Oracle of Tracking 5 Billion People. “Oracle stands accused of collecting detailed dossiers on 5 billion people, with the information gathered including names, home addresses, emails, purchases online and in the real world, physical movements in the real world, income, interests and political views, and a detailed account of online activity,” PC Mag reported.

“This claim is backed up by a video on the ICCL website(Opens in a new window) of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison describing how the company’s real-time machine learning system collects this information and confirms the 5 billion profiles stored in the “Oracle Data Cloud.” The profiles are referred to as a “Consumers Identity Graph.”” Read More...