When Dave McKay first used computers, punched paper tape was in vogue, "and he has been programming ever since," according to his biography page at How-To Geek. It adds that "His use of computers pre-dates the birth of the PC and the public release of Unix."

Now long-time Slashdot reader sbinning shares McKay's "short history of UNIX and how Linux got its start," which ultimately asks if commercial Unix was killed by Linux: Unix is still out there, running mission-critical systems that are functioning correctly, and operating stably. That'll continue until the support for the applications, operating systems or hardware platform ceases. If something's genuinely mission-critical and it's working, you leave it working. I suspect someone, somewhere, will always be running a commercial UNIX or Unix-like operating system.

But for new installs? There are enough variations of Linux to make the case to go for a commercial Unix very, very difficult.

Scientific researchers worry that the capacity for spreading misinformation "goes far beyond the big-name social media sites," warns the Washington Post. Citing pre-print servers and unvetted "research repositories," they note that "Any online platform without robust and potentially expensive safeguards is equally vulnerable." "This is similar to the debate we're having with Facebook and Twitter. To what degree are we creating an instrument that speeds disinformation, and to what extent are you contributing to that?" said Stefano M. Bertozzi, editor in chief of the MIT Press online journal "Rapid Reviews: COVID-19...." Bertozzi added, "Most scientists have no interest in getting in a pissing match in cyberspace..."

Nonscientists also scan preprint servers for data that might appear to bolster their pet conspiracy theories. A research team led by computer scientist Jeremy Blackburn has tracked the appearance of links to preprints from social media sites, such as 4chan, popular with conspiracy theorists. Blackburn and a graduate student, Satrio Yudhoatmojo, found more than 4,000 references on 4chan to papers on major preprint servers between 2016 and 2020, with the leading subjects being biology, infectious diseases and epidemiology. He said the uneven review process has "lent an air of credibility" to preprints that experts might quickly spot as flawed but ordinary people wouldn't.

"That's where the risk is," said Blackburn, an assistant professor at Binghamton University. "Papers from the preprint servers show up in a variety of conspiracy theories...and are misinterpreted wildly because these people aren't scientists..."

[The executive director of ASAPbio, a nonprofit group that pushes for more transparency and wider use of preprint servers], added, in general, "Preprint servers do not have the resources to be arbiters of whether something is true or not."
MIT Press's new "Rapid Reviews: COVID-19" journal recently appended a scathing editor's note to its critique of articles that had been published on pre-print servers.

"While pre-print servers offer a mechanism to disseminate world-changing scientific research at unprecedented speed, they are also a forum through which misleading information can instantaneously undermine the international scientific community's credibility, destabilize diplomatic relationships, and compromise global safety."

From today's "This Week in Programming" column: Rejoice, long at last, all you Gophers, for the question of whether or not the Go programming language will adopt generics has finally, after many years of debate, been answered this week with the acceptance of a proposal made last month.

In this most recent proposal, Golang team member Ian Lance Taylor writes that generics have been "one of the most commonly requested language features" since the language was first released in 2009, but even then, it's adoption doesn't come without concerns. Taylor explains the idea of generics in the intro of his proposal:

"Generics can give us powerful building blocks that let us share code and build programs more easily. Generic programming means writing functions and data structures where some types are left to be specified later. For example, you can write a function that operates on a slice of some arbitrary data type, where the actual data type is only specified when the function is called. Or, you can define a data structure that stores values of any type, where the actual type to be stored is specified when you create an instance of the data structure."

It is precisely this value proposition — being able to write reusable code — that excites some developers and has been behind the push all along...

Generics wasn't the only controversial programming language addition this week, with the Python Steering Council making the decision to accept a number of Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs) collectively known as the Pattern Matching PEPs. "We acknowledge that Pattern Matching is an extensive change to Python and that reaching consensus across the entire community is close to impossible," the council writes, saying that, nonetheless, they "are confident that Pattern Matching as specified in PEP 634, et al, will be a great addition to the Python language."

One dissenter to the addition found their way to the pages of iProgrammer, with the snarky headline "Python Adopts Pattern Matching — Kitchen Sink Next."
In other news, Google increased its support for the Python Software Foundation with a donation of more than $350,000 to support three specific projects, and also says it will continue its donation of Google Cloud infrastructure to the foundation.

"America is building a new weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear missile the length of a bowling lane," writes the contributing editor for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (in an article shared by Slashdot reader DanDrollette): It will be able to travel some 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a single shot.

The U.S. Air Force plans to order more than 600 of them...

Based on a Pentagon report cited by the Arms Control Association Association and Bloomberg News, the government will spend roughly $100 billion to build the weapon, which will be ready to use around 2029... The missile goes by the inglorious acronym GBSD, for "ground-based strategic deterrent." The GBSD is designed to replace the existing fleet of Minuteman III missiles; both are intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs... The official purpose of American ICBMs goes beyond responding to nuclear assault. They are also intended to deter such attacks, and serve as targets in case there is one. Under the theory of deterrence, America's nuclear arsenal — currently made up of 3,800 warheads — sends a message to other nuclear-armed countries. It relays to the enemy that U.S. retaliation would be so awful, it had better not attack in the first place...

Many of the missile's critics are former military leaders, and their criticism has to do with those immovable silos. Relative to nuclear missiles on submarines, which can slink around undetected, and nuclear bombs on airplanes — the two other legs of the nuclear triad, in defense jargon — America's land-based nuclear missiles are easy marks.

Facebook is blaming "technical issues" for its broken promise to the U.S. Congress to stop recommending political groups to its users, reports The Markup: Facebook made the pledge once in October, in the run-up to the presidential election, and then falsely reiterated it had taken the step after rioters overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a deadly event partially coordinated by users on the platform.

The Markup first revealed that Facebook was still recommending groups...in an investigation published on Jan. 19. Examining the top 100 groups recommended to roughly 1,900 users on our Citizen Browser panel, we identified 12 as political — including groups with posts calling for violence against lawmakers, spreading election-related conspiracy theories, and coordinating logistics for attending the rally that led to the Capitol riot.

Citizen Browser is a data-driven project examining the choices Facebook makes about what content to amplify.

A week after our report, U.S. senator Ed Markey sent a letter to the company, demanding an explanation, and on Feb. 10, Facebook replied in a letter to Markey. "The issue stemmed from technical issues in the designation and filtering process that allowed some Groups to remain in the recommendation pool when they should not have been," Facebook said in its response. "Since becoming aware of this issue, we have worked quickly to update our processes, and we continue this work to improve our designation and filtering processes to make them as accurate and effective as possible...." Following publication of our story, recommendations for political groups dropped precipitously, as our Citizen Browser panelist data shows...

The "technical issues" meant that, from Election Day on Nov. 3 to the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots to President Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, Facebook was still recommending political groups to its users. Our analysis found that Facebook particularly pushed political groups to more conservative users... Facebook's own internal research has consistently pointed to the danger posed by political groups on its platform. Researchers warned Facebook in a 2016 internal report that 64 percent of new members of extremist groups joined because of the social network's recommendations, according to The Wall Street Journal.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: News website Protocol ran an extensive piece on the history and status of the popular open source video player VLC, and the story includes new details about the next major version of the software. Among other things, VLC 4.0 will bring a complete user interface overhaul. "We modified the interface to be a bit more modern," VideoLAN foundation President Jean-Baptiste Kempf told the publication. Kempf had previously shown some version of a new interface about two years ago, but it's unclear at this point how much that one resembles the one the team plans to introduce with VLC 4.0.

While the article doesn't list every change coming, it does outline a couple other possible directions and priorities for VLC. The VideoLAN foundation has not generally sought ways to monetize VLC, but some source of funding or revenue could help ensure long-term support for the project. To that end, Kempf said VideoLAN is exploring a Plex-like business model, with ad-supported free video streams available in the player. "That is something that could work for VLC," he explained. But it was clear nothing is final on that front yet. VLC will also ultimately get support the AV1 and AV2 codecs; AV1 is gaining a great deal of traction for streaming services and other video products these days. Finally, VideoLAN is developing a new way to run VLC on the Web, using Webassembly and JavaScript. VLC 4.0 is expected "in the coming months," but we don't know any more than that at this stage.

Microsoft is calling for the US and the EU to follow Australia in introducing rules that require technology companies to share revenue with news organizations and support journalism. The Guardian reports: The company, which stood against Facebook and Google in supporting the proposal, argues that it is necessary to impose such a levy to create a level playing field between large tech firms and independent media organizations. Australia's proposal requires large technology companies to not only pay a fee for news content they use or link to, but to agree to partake in arbitration to determine that fee. In response, Facebook and Google threatened to pull services from the country, while Microsoft took the opposite tack: eagerly stepping up to promote Bing, which currently has fewer than one in 20 searches in Australia, as an alternative.

In a blog post, Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, said that he felt the Australian rule "deserves serious consideration, including in the United States." "Democracy has always started at the local level. Today, far too many local communities must nurture democracy without a fourth estate," Smith wrote. "As we know from our own experience with Microsoft's Bing search service, access to fresh, broad and deep news coverage is critical to retaining strong user engagement." "Our endorsement of Australia's approach has had immediate impact," Smith argued. "Within 24 hours, Google was on the phone with the prime minister, saying they didn't really want to leave the country after all. And the link on Google's search page with its threat to leave? It disappeared overnight. Apparently, competition does make a difference."

Smith says the change in U.S. government could be a chance for Washington to switch its position. "Facebook and Google persuaded the Trump administration to object to Australia's proposal. However, as the United States takes stock of the events on January 6 [the attack on the Capitol in Washington], it's time to widen the aperture. The ultimate question is what values we want the tech sector and independent journalism to serve. Yes, Australia's proposal will reduce the bargaining imbalance that currently favors tech gatekeepers and will help increase opportunities for independent journalism. But this a defining issue of our time that goes to the heart of our democratic freedoms."

Amazon has for years been using an app called "Mentor" to monitor and track delivery drivers' behavior on the road. "The app, which Amazon bills as a tool to improve driver safety, generates a score each day that measures employees' driving performance," reports CNBC. From the report: Just like the AI-equipped cameras rolling out to contracted delivery companies, Mentor is framed as a "digital driver safety app" to help employees avoid accidents and other unsafe driving habits while they're en route to their destination. But multiple delivery drivers who spoke to CNBC described the app as invasive and raised concerns that bugs within the app can, at times, lead to unfair disciplinary action from their manager.

The scores generated by the Mentor app are used in more ways than just evaluating an individual's job performance, drivers say. Amazon also looks at the scores, in part, when ranking a delivery partner's status, according to the drivers, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from Amazon. The ranking system for DSPs ranges from "Poor" to "Good" to "Fantastic" to the top tier, referred to as "Fantastic+." A surplus of poor Mentor scores among a delivery partner's workforce can drag down the DSP's ranking, which can potentially jeopardize their access to benefits provided by Amazon, such as optimal delivery routes, the drivers said. The app also features a dashboard for drivers to "see how they stack up against the rest of their team." Mentor's score-based system raises concerns that the app intensifies the pressure of the job, pitting drivers and competing DSPs against each other to an unhealthy degree. Amazon spokesperson Deborah Bass told CNBC in a statement: "Safety is Amazon's top priority. Whether it's state-of-the art telemetrics and advanced safety technology in last-mile vans, driver-safety training programs, or continuous improvements within our mapping and routing technology, we have invested tens of millions of dollars in safety mechanisms across our network, and regularly communicate safety best practices to drivers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Frontier Communications is raising its sneaky "Internet Infrastructure Surcharge" from $4 to $7 later this month, widening the gap between its advertised broadband prices and the actual prices customers pay. Telecom providers love to advertise low rates and then sock customers with bigger bills by charging separate fees for things that are part of the core service. In cable TV, that means customers see one advertised rate for a bundle of channels and then pay way more after the addition of "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees that supposedly cover the costs of certain channels that are part of the bundle. With Frontier Internet service, customers pay the advertised rate for Internet service and then get hit with fees including the Internet Infrastructure Surcharge. While some fees cover costs that providers must pay to the government, the Internet Infrastructure Surcharge is decidedly not one of them.

The Internet Infrastructure Surcharge began at $1.99 in 2017 and rose to $3.99 the next year. It's going up again this month, Frontier told customers in a message on their billing statements, the company confirmed in a new FAQ on its website. "Effective February 21, 2021, the Internet Infrastructure Surcharge will increase to $6.99," Frontier's message on customer billing statements said. (Thanks to Stop the Cap for pointing out the change.) Frontier's advertised first-year prices range from $50 to $80 a month for its fiber service, while the regular rates are $10 higher once promotions expire. Slower DSL plans start at $35 a month during the first year. "We have worked hard to keep our rates for broadband services unchanged. However, Internet use has grown significantly and so have our related costs," the company said in its new FAQ.

Jon Brodkin, writing for ArsTechnica: When 90-year-old Aaron Epstein bought a Wall Street Journal print ad to complain about his slow AT&T Internet service, the impact was immediate. Reporters like me called him and wrote articles, talk of his plight went viral on the Internet, his ad made an appearance on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, TV networks interviewed him for nightly news broadcasts, and AT&T executives sprang into action to minimize the public-relations damage. Now, barely a week later, Epstein's home in North Hollywood, California, has AT&T fiber service with unlimited data and advertised speeds of 300Mbps in both directions. In a speed test yesterday, download speeds were 363Mbps and upload speeds were 376Mbps. It's a gigantic upgrade over the "up to" 3Mbps DSL he and his wife, Anne, struggled with before.

In a 2018 paper, researchers said they found evidence of an elusive theorized particle. A closer look now suggests otherwise. From a report: In March 2018, Dutch physicist and Microsoft employee Leo Kouwenhoven published headline-grabbing new evidence that he had observed an elusive particle called a Majorana fermion. Microsoft hoped to harness Majorana particles to build a quantum computer, which promises unprecedented power by tapping quirky physics. Rivals IBM and Google had already built impressive prototypes using more established technology. Kouwenhoven's discovery buoyed Microsoft's chance to catch up. The company's director of quantum computing business development, Julie Love, told the BBC that Microsoft would have a commercial quantum computer "within five years." Three years later, Microsoft's 2018 physics fillip has fizzled. Late last month, Kouwenhoven and his 21 coauthors released a new paper including more data from their experiments. It concludes that they did not find the prized particle after all. An attached note from the authors said the original paper, in the prestigious journal Nature, would be retracted, citing "technical errors."

Two physicists in the field say extra data Kouwenhoven's group provided them after they questioned the 2018 results shows the team had originally excluded data points that undermined its news-making claims. "I don't know for sure what was in their heads," says Sergey Frolov, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, "but they skipped some data that contradicts directly what was in the paper. From the fuller data, there's no doubt that there's no Majorana." The 2018 paper claimed to show firmer evidence for Majorana particles than a 2012 study with more ambiguous results that nevertheless won fame for Kouwenhoven and his lab at Delft Technical University. That project was partly funded by Microsoft, and the company hired Kouwenhoven to work on Majoranas in 2016. The 2018 paper reported seeing telltale signatures of the Majorana particles, termed "zero-bias peaks," in electric current passing through a tiny, supercold wire of semiconductor. One chart in the paper showed dots tracing a plateau at exactly the electrical conductance value that theory predicted. Frolov says he saw multiple problems in the unpublished data, including data points that strayed from the line but were omitted from the published paper. If included, those data points suggested Majorana particles could not be present. Observations flagged by Frolov are visible in the charts in the new paper released last month, but the text does not explain why they were previously excluded. It acknowledges that trying to experimentally validate specific theoretical predictions "has the potential to lead to confirmation bias and effectively yield false-positive evidence."

Apple's upcoming iOS 14.5 release will ship with a feature that will re-route all Safari's Safe Browsing traffic through Apple-controlled proxy servers as a workaround to preserve user privacy and prevent Google from learning the IP addresses of iOS users. From a report: The new feature will work only when users activate the "Fraudulent Website Warning" option in the iOS Safari app settings. This enables support for Google's Safe Browsing technology in Safari. The Safe Browsing technology works by taking an URL the user is trying to access, sending the URL in an anonymized state to Google's Safe Browsing servers, where Google accesses the site and scans for threats. If malware, phishing forms, or other threats are found on the site, Google tells the user's Safari browser to block access to the site and show a fullscreen red warning. While years ago, when Google launched the Safe Browsing API, the company knew what sites a user was accessing; in recent years, Google has taken several steps to anonymize data sent from user's devices via the Safe Browsing feature. But while Google has anonymized URL strings, by sending the link in a cropped and hashed state, Google still sees the IP address from where a Safe Browsing check comes through. Apple's new feature basically takes all these Safe Browsing checks and passes them through an Apple-owned proxy server, making all requests appear as coming from the same IP address.

Some of the world's largest technology companies are complaining to U.S. antitrust regulators about Nvidia's acquisition of Arm because the deal will harm competition in an area of the industry that is vital to their businesses. Alphabet's Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm are among companies worried about the $40 billion deal and are asking antitrust officials to intervene, Bloomberg News reported Friday, following up on CNBC's report from earlier today that talked only about Qualcomm's efforts. At least one of the companies wants the deal killed, Bloomberg added. From the report: The acquisition would give Nvidia control over a critical supplier that licenses essential chip technology to the likes of Apple, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Amazon.com and China's Huawei Technologies. U.K.-based Arm is known as the Switzerland of the industry because it licenses chip designs and related software code to all comers, rather than competing against semiconductor companies. The concern is that if Nvidia owns Arm, it could limit rivals' access to the technology or raise the cost of access.

Supermicro chips and software were tampered with by Chinese operatives in the past decade, Bloomberg reported Friday, doubling down on its 2018 report that was widely disputed by several tech giants and government agencies. Today's report says that U.S. security and defense officials knew of the hack but kept it secret in an effort to learn more about China's hacking capabilities. From the report: Bloomberg Businessweek first reported on China's meddling with Supermicro products in October 2018, in an article that focused on accounts of added malicious chips found on server motherboards in 2015. That story said Apple and Amazon.com had discovered the chips on equipment they'd purchased. Supermicro, Apple and Amazon publicly called for a retraction. U.S. government officials also disputed the article.

With additional reporting, it's now clear that the Businessweek report captured only part of a larger chain of events in which U.S. officials first suspected, then investigated, monitored and tried to manage China's repeated manipulation of Supermicro's products. Throughout, government officials kept their findings from the general public. Supermicro itself wasn't told about the FBI's counterintelligence investigation, according to three former U.S. officials. The secrecy lifted occasionally, as the bureau and other government agencies warned a select group of companies and sought help from outside experts. Some stories from 2018 that capture the reaction of the industry to Bloomberg's earlier piece:

Amazon Has Pulled Ads From Bloomberg Over Controversial 'Big Hack' Chinese Spy Story; Apple Has Not Invited Outlet's Reporters To a Product Event;
In an Unprecedented Move, Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls For Bloomberg To Retract Its Chinese Spy Chip Story;
Bloomberg is Still Reporting on Challenged Story Regarding China Hardware Hack.

Tokolosh writes: On February 13, 2018 the FreeBSD Foundation posted its Code of Conduct. This included a system for reporting offenders, plus a Code of Conduct Committee to review charges and issue sanctions. The resulting story on Slashdot on February 17 triggered 859 comments. Needless to say, it was controversial.

In 2020, a survey indicated that some 35% of the FreeBSD developer community was dissatisfied with their 2018 Code of Conduct, 34% were neutral, and only 30% satisfied. So they set out to adopt a new CoC. A second survey asked which code of conduct should FreeBSD adopt? 4% favored keeping the 2018 code of conduct, 33% favored the Go-derived code of conduct, 63% favored the LLVM-derived code of conduct. The LLVM Project code was thus adopted.

My pragmatic question back in 2018 was, will this CoC lead to a better FreeBSD, more engagement, a larger, more productive community, and more market share for FreeBSD? In other words, does the CoC give FreeBSD an evolutionary advantage? If a different or no CoC had been imposed, would the FreeBSD of today be different? If so, in what way? The answer is not clear, so I am submitting this story to gather input.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google is adding some of its fancy, Pixel-exclusive editing features to Google Photos today for all Android users to enjoy, but there's a catch -- if you don't have a Pixel, you'll have to be a paying Google One subscriber to use them. The paywalled editing features have been rumored for some time, but today marks the official announcement of the new program. Specifically, Google is offering some of its more recent machine-learning powered editing tools, like its enhanced Portrait Blur, Portrait Light, and Color Pop features that it started offering alongside the Pixel 5 last fall to a broader audience.

As Google clarified to The Verge when the paywall was first discovered, the company isn't taking away existing versions of features like Portrait Blur or Color Pop from free Google Photo users. The current iteration of those features -- which work with newer photos that offer depth data, such as a portrait mode shot -- will still work for everyone. But the new Pixel- and subscription-only version promises to take things a step further and allows users to apply those effects (through the power of machine learning) to older photos that don't have that existing depth data. Pixel users will still get access to the features for free, whether or not they subscribe to Google One.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Google is rolling out its virtual private network (VPN) service for subscribers of its Fi network that should help people when they're using online services on public Wi-Fi. "We plan to roll out the VPN to iPhone starting this spring," Google notes. Google is also bringing its privacy and security hub to Android devices, offering users a shortcut to features available to Android users, such as its VPN.

Finally, Fi users can expect free spam call warnings and blocking to stop identified robocalls and scams and the company is stepping up its game to protect users from SIM swapping scams. "Your Fi number is tied to your Google Account and comes with security features that protect your phone number from threats like SIM swaps -- that's when bad actors try to take someone's phone number and assign it to another SIM card without their consent," Google said. "On Fi, you receive extra layers of protection by default, including a robust account recovery process and notifications for suspicious activity. You can also enable 2-step verification for more protection."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Eui Jeong Lee and three of her friends sit in an otherwise empty 200-seat cinema auditorium and play a video game on the giant screen. As Ms Lee blasts her gaming opponents with her wireless controller, the sound whips loudly around the dark room from the numerous cinema speakers. "The sound quality is particularly amazing," says the 25-year-old student. "The sound of the gunshots is just so vivid, and when something flew directly at me from the screen I even screamed." Ms Lee and her mates had hired the screen for two hours at a branch of South Korea's largest cinema chain, CGV. With many cinemas across the country closed due to coronavirus restrictions meaning that they can only open with 50% capacity, and far fewer movies being released to tempt cinemagoers, CGV came up with the idea of renting out its auditoriums to gamers to bring in a new revenue stream.

Before 6pm up to four people can hire a screen for two hours for around $90. This then rises to $135 in the evening. Users have to bring their consoles, games and controllers with them. The auditoriums being hired out have between 100 and 200 seats, and by comparison CGV movie tickets cost around $12 each. So a 100-seat screen half filled for a film would bring in revenues of $600, rising to $1,200 for a 200-seat one at 50% capacity. And that is before the filmgoers buy their drinks and popcorn. Yet while CGV isn't making anywhere as much money from the gamers, it is bringing in some additional income. The scheme is called Azit-X after "azit", the Korean word for hideout. CGV employee Seung Woo Han came up with the idea after he realised that films and video games share many similarities.

Cyber-security powerhouse Proofpoint has filed a lawsuit this week against Facebook in relation to the social network's attempt to confiscate domain names the security firm was using for phishing awareness training. From a report: The case is a countersuit to a Facebook filing from November 30, 2020, when the social network used a UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution) request to force domain name registrar Namecheap to hand over several domain names that were mimicking Facebook and Instagram brands. Among the listed domain names were the likes of facbook-login.com, facbook-login.net, instagrarn.ai, instagrarn.net, and instagrarn.org.

In court documents filed on Tuesday, Proofpoint said the UDRP should not apply to these domains, which it should be allowed to keep and continue using. Proofpoint argues that UDRP requests should only be used for domains registered in bad faith. The security firm instead says its use of the Facebook and Instagram lookalike domains "has been in good faith and for a legitimate purpose." Proofpoint claims its phishing awareness tests are crucial for the security of its customers, but also for the security of Facebook itself, as the phishing awareness tests teach users to recognize Facebook and Instagram lookalike domains and phishing attacks -- something that Facebook also benefits from, although indirectly.

Microsoft approached Pinterest in recent months about a potential deal to acquire the $51bn social media company popular with hobbyists posting home decor, food and wedding collages, Financial Times reported Thursday [alternative source], citing people briefed on the matter. From the report: The talks were currently not active, said one of the people briefed. Microsoft has been pursuing an acquisition strategy aimed at amassing a portfolio of active online communities that could run on top of its cloud computing platform. Pinterest, whose market value has increased more than 600 per cent during the coronavirus pandemic, has signalled in the past that it desired to remain an independent company. Its soaring stock price would present a hurdle to Microsoft, whose shares have risen nearly 80 per cent from a pandemic low, though Pinterest's market value is only about 3 per cent of Microsoft's $1.83tn.

A purchase of Pinterest, which would have amounted to the largest deal ever for Microsoft, would also have tested the Biden administration's appetite for allowing powerful technology companies to strike deals. However, Microsoft, which mainly sells to businesses and governments rather than consumers, has avoided most of the political backlash that has made it more difficult for Facebook and Google to make big acquisitions. Microsoft first revealed its interest in acquiring a prominent social media company last year when it tried to buy the US operations of TikTok, a popular Chinese video app that was under pressure to divest its US business over the Trump administration's national security concerns. The bid for TikTok failed after rival Oracle gatecrashed the talks.