Facebook has taken the EU to court for invading the privacy of its employees, Financial Times reported [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] Monday citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter. From the report: The social media company claims EU regulators have asked broad questions beyond the scope of two ongoing antitrust probes, and it has requested that the General Court in Luxembourg intervene. The EU is investigating both how Facebook collects and makes money from data and whether its Marketplace business has an unfair advantage over rivals in classified advertising. Since March, Facebook has provided the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, with 1.7m pages of documents, including internal emails, in response to multiple requests for information. The EU has made further requests for all documents containing key words and phrases such as "big question," "for free," "not good for us" and "shutdown," according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

In a report published today by the National Institutes of Science and Technology (NIST), a physical sciences laboratory and non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, researchers attempted to evaluate the performance of facial recognition algorithms on faces partially covered by protective masks. They report that even the best of the 89 commercial facial recognition algorithms they tested had error rates between 5% and 50% in matching digitally applied masks with photos of the same person without a mask. From a report: "With the arrival of the pandemic, we need to understand how face recognition technology deals with masked faces," Mei Ngan, a NIST computer scientist and a coauthor of the report, said in a statement. "We have begun by focusing on how an algorithm developed before the pandemic might be affected by subjects wearing face masks. Later this summer, we plan to test the accuracy of algorithms that were intentionally developed with masked faces in mind."

The study -- part of a series from NIST's Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) program conducted in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, the Office of Biometric Identity Management, and Customs and Border Protection -- explored how well each of the algorithms was able to perform "one-to-one" matching, where a photo is compared with a different photo of the same person. (NIST notes this sort of technique is often used in smartphone unlocking and passport identity verification systems.) The team applied the algorithms to a set of about 6 million photos used in previous FRVT studies, but they didn't test "one-to-many" matching, which is used to determine whether a person in a photo matches any in a database of known images. Because real-world masks differ, the researchers came up with nine mask variants to test, which included differences in shape, color, and nose coverage.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is prepared with what he sees as a compelling argument for lawmakers ready to grill him on antitrust issues: hindering American technological innovation only helps China. From a report: Zuckerberg plans to portray his company as an American success story in a competitive and unpredictable market, now threatened by the rise of Chinese social media apps around the world -- and increasingly, at home, with the popularity of TikTok, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the CEO's remarks aren't yet public. The Facebook CEO is scheduled to testify at a hearing of the House antitrust subcommittee with CEOs from Amazon.com, Alphabet's Google and Apple. The hearing, postponed from Monday, has been rescheduled for July 29 at noon Washington time. Facebook's second-quarter earnings, which were scheduled for that day, have been pushed to Thursday, July 30.

[...] The broader argument the CEO plans to make is that any weakening of U.S. companies will cede territory to Chinese companies abroad, particularly in high-growth markets like India. Zuckerberg made a similar argument at a 2019 hearing about Libra, the now-renamed cryptocurrency. "China is moving quickly to launch a similar idea in the coming months," he warned. "If America doesn't innovate, our financial leadership is not guaranteed." Later that year, he said that it was important not to let China set the rules for the internet in the rest of the world, arguing that the country's values aren't democratic.

ArchieBunker writes: In the streaming era, music is accessed from a variety of online services, ephemeral in nature and never living on board the device. However, the online audio revolution really kicked off with the development of one very special format. The subject of bitter raps and groundbreaking lawsuits, this development from Germany transformed the music industry as we know it. Twenty-five years on from the date the famous '.mp3' filename was chosen, HackADay takes a look back at how it came to be, and why it took over the world.

Twitter has struggled for years to police the growing number of employees and contractors who have the ability to reset users' accounts and override their security settings, a problem that Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey and the board were warned about multiple times since 2015, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing former employees with knowledge of the company's security operations. From the report: Twitter's oversight over the 1,500 workers who reset accounts, review user breaches and respond to potential content violations for the service's 186 million daily users have been a source of recurring concern, the employees said. The breadth of personal data most of those workers could access is relatively limited -- including such things as Internet Protocol addresses, email addresses and phone numbers -- but it's a starting point to snoop on or even hack an account, they said.

The controls were so porous that at one point in 2017 and 2018 some contractors made a kind of game out of creating bogus help-desk inquiries that allowed them to peek into celebrity accounts, including Beyonce's, to track the stars' personal data including their approximate locations gleaned from their devices' IP addresses, two of the former employees said. Concerns about Twitter's ability to protect user data deepened this month after hackers hijacked the accounts of some of its most famous users, including political leaders, business titans and celebrities, as part of an apparent cryptocurrency scam. The pressure on Twitter to protect its users isn't limited to the personal data it collects on them -- which is minimal compared to some other social media sites -- but extends to the influence its users wield, especially world leaders or the political dissidents who oppose them.

Google will keep its employees home until at least next July, making the search-engine giant the first major U.S. corporation to formalize such an extended timetable in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: The move will affect nearly all of the roughly 200,000 full-time and contract employees across Google parent Alphabet and is sure to pressure other technology giants that have slated staff to return as soon as January. Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai made the decision himself last week after debate among Google Leads, an internal group of top executives that he chairs, according to a person familiar with the matter. A small number of Google staffers were notified later in the week, people familiar said. Mr. Pichai was swayed in part by sympathy for employees with families to plan for uncertain school years that may involve at-home instruction, depending on geography. It also frees staff to sign full-year leases elsewhere if they choose to move.

"I know it hasn't been easy," Mr. Pichai wrote in a note to staff Monday, after The Wall Street Journal reported the impending extension. "I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months." The new date plants Google firmly in the cautious camp of companies debating the efficacy and wisdom of remote work as coronavirus cases surge and employers try to balance workers' safety with efforts to reopen the economy. Some multinational firms are eager to bring employees back and return to normalcy. The extended timeline applies to company employees in most of its major offices, including the headquarters of Mountain View, Calif., and other offices in the U.S., U.K., India, Brazil and elsewhere. Until now, Google had told its employees to expect a return to the office beginning in January.

Dreamwidth is an online journal service based on the LiveJournal codebase, according to Wikipedia — "a code fork of the original service, set up by ex-LiveJournal staff Denise Paolucci and Mark Smith, born out of a desire for a new community based on open access, transparency, freedom and respect."

"I discovered, about an hour ago, that all of my posts on Facebook which were links to Dreamwidth had vanished. Suddenly gone as if they'd never existed," complained Dreamwidth user Andrew Ducker on Sunday morning.

Though that afternoon he posted "All working fine now," thousands had already seen his original post (quoted below): I checked with Denise (one of the owners of Dreamwidth) to find out if she knew about it, and discovered that Facebook have stuck Dreamwidth on a block list...

This is unbelievably frustrating. And the kind of centralised, autocratic, opaque decision making which I loathe. Tens of thousands of active users, unable to share blog posts with Facebook (which, let's face it, is where most of my friends go for their socialising)...
"This may be an overzealous spam filter at work," Slashdot reader JoshuaZ had argued. But even before Facebook adjusted their filtering, Dreamwidth co-owner Mark Smith was calling it "definitely a bit of a /shrug moment... 'Facebook gonna Facebook' I think is approximately how we feel about this...

"We do not have any goals around growth, we don't advertise, and we ultimately don't care that much what the other platforms do. Our goal is to give people a stable home where they don't have to worry about their data being sold, their writing being monetized..."

In 100 days the U.S. will vote on whether Donald Trump, Joe Biden or somebody else should be America's president. But both candidates are also running political ads attacking social media — on social media.

"They're shooting the messenger while giving it lots of money," reports the Associated Press: Biden has focused on Facebook, with a #MoveFastFixIt campaign that admonishes Facebook for not doing enough to protect users from foreign meddling or being duped by falsehoods, particularly those spread by Trump about mail-in voting. His campaign just last month spent nearly $10,000 to run ads scolding the company on its own platform. "We could lie to you, but we won't," says one of Biden's ads.... Despite criticizing Facebook, Biden's campaign said it's still purchasing millions of dollars in Facebook ads because it's one of the few ways to counter Trump's false posts — since Facebook won't fact check him. The ads are also a cheap and effective way for the campaigns to rally supporters who are unhappy with the platforms, said Kathleen Searles, a Louisiana State University political communications professor. "We do know that anger can be very motivating — it motivates them to get their name on an email list, or donate $20," Searles said...

While Biden has focused on Facebook, Trump has honed in on Twitter, and occasionally Snapchat, with his campaign running online ads that accuse both companies of "interfering" in the election. Twitter became a Trump campaign target after the company rolled out its first fact check of his inaccurate tweet about voting in late May. Twitter has since applied similar labels to five other Trump tweets, including two that called mail-in ballots "fraudulent" and predicted that "mail boxes will be robbed" if voting doesn't take place in person... Republican leaders have since joined in railing against Twitter. This month, Rep. Jim Jordan, a firebrand conservative from Ohio, demanded Twitter hand over a full accounting, including emails, of how it decided to fact check the president...

Facebook could be next for a face-off with the president and his allies now that the company has vowed to label any posts — Trump's included — that violate its rules against voting misinformation or hate speech. Facebook has yet to take such action, though.

"Social media censorship is going to be a very potent campaign issue," Brooking said. "And there's going to be incentive from a number of folks running for office in 2020 to push the envelope still further, to try to invite more and more social media moderation because they see it as a potent political stunt."

An anonymous reader quotes Forbes: U.S. Navy submarines have spent years shadowing Russian warships, hoping to snap photographs of missile tests through the periscope. It is the stuff of Cold War legends, taking intelligence, skill, courage and patience. Now by pure chance, a commercial satellite flying 488 miles above the Earth has captured exactly that. The unusual event took place in the Barents Sea, in Russia's arctic north. You can clearly see the yellow fireball as the missile erupts from its launch silo.

That the satellite captured the missile launch was freak chance. That open-source intelligence defense analyst Frank Bottema found it wasn't. Bottema and others have been watching Russia's Northern Fleet closely over recent weeks. They have racked up an impressive list of Russian Navy movements visible on free satellite imagery. Bottema found the missile test, 17 miles from the nearest land, because he knew where to look and what he was looking for.

You can see it for yourself on Sentinel Playground at grid coordinates 70.09378, 32.75932 (70Â 5'37.61"N, 32Â45'33.55"E) on July 23...

A Russian Navy press release on July 23 stated (in Russian) that the Udaloy-I Class destroyer Severomorsk had "carried out anti-aircraft fire as part of a test tactical exercise."

IEEE Spectrum reports: There's still plenty that can disrupt radio communications... Rather than waiting for a human on Earth to tell the radio how to adapt its systems — during which the commands may have already become outdated — a radio with a neural network can do it on the fly. Such a device is called a cognitive radio. Its neural network autonomously senses the changes in its environment, adjusts its settings accordingly — and then, most important of all, learns from the experience... Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Penn State University, in cooperation with NASA, recently tested the first cognitive radios designed to operate in space and keep missions in contact with Earth. In our tests, even the most basic cognitive radios maintained a clear signal between the International Space Station (ISS) and the ground. We believe that with further research, more advanced, more capable cognitive radios can play an integral part in successful deep-space missions in the future, where there will be no margin for error...

Our own effort to create a proof-of-concept cognitive radio for space communications was possible only because of the state-of-the-art Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) test bed on the ISS. NASA's Glenn Research Center created the SCaN test bed specifically to study the use of software-defined radios in space. The test bed was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and installed on the main lattice frame of the space station in July 2012... Ours would be the first-ever cognitive radio experiments conducted in space...

During the tests, the cognitive radio clearly showed that it could learn how to maintain a communications link. The radio autonomously selected settings to avoid losing contact, and the link remained stable even as the radio adjusted itself...

Overall, the success of our tests on the SCaN test bed demonstrated that cognitive radios could be used for deep-space missions.

Eight weeks ago Arizona's attorney general sued Google for allegedly deceiving users about when location data would be collected from their phones, tracking them without their clear consent. .

Now an Arizona congressman and more than two dozen researchers from institutions including Yale, MIT, and Cornell are urging a judge to publicly release the documents collected during that investigation: The documents at issue relate directly to debates going on in Washington, Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs told a Maricopa County Superior Court judge... "All branches of our government exist to protect the fundamental liberties of our citizens — especially their privacy,'' Biggs said. "The public has a strong interest in transparency and learning the full extent to which Google and other tech companies may be spying and surreptitiously collecting information from Arizonans, including constituents whom I represent..."

[T]he judge will have to consider arguments filed Friday by Assistant Attorney General Beau Roysden asking Thomason to ignore a bid by Google to keep the documents secret or, at the very least, delay a decision while the company tries to have the entire lawsuit thrown out. "Google's requested delay would unconstitutionally impair the right of public access that is guaranteed by both the First Amendment and the Arizona Constitution,'' Roysden told the judge... He pointed out that the records at issue the records that Google provided to the Attorney General's Office under what's called a "civil investigatory demand'' are part of the complaint filed with the court...

So far, Roysden said, the company has presented no good reason for keeping most of these sealed. More to the point, he argues that it's really too late for Google to do anything about it as it is now part of the court record.

In an interview with CNN, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates responded to his prominence in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories that have spread online: CNN: There are 16,000 Facebook posts espousing conspiracy theories about you and the virus... They're liked or commented on 900,000 times. On YouTube the top 10 videos that spread lies about you had almost 5 million views. It's also pointed out that according to Zignal Labs, which is a media analysis company that tracks this, misinformation about you is the most widespread of all coronavirus falsehoods...

What do you say to people who believe this stuff? Because I'm sure you're inundated...

Bill Gates: The combination of having social media spreading things that are very titillating, to having this pandemic where people are uncertain and they'd prefer to have a simple explanation — it's meant that these things are really, you know, millions of messages a day. And people like myself and Dr. Fauci have become the target.

Often the clever thing they do — you know, our foundation has given more money to buy vaccines to save lives than any group. So you just turn that around — you say, "Okay, we're making money, and we're trying to kill people with vaccines, or by inventing something." And at least it's true — we are associated with vaccines — but you actually have, you know, sort of flipped the connection that we have there.

You know, I hope it doesn't create vaccine hesitancy. I hope this whole story of innovation that's going on, that we do get the benefit of that. It's really the only good news I'm bringing you today, is that diagnostic therapeutic and vaccine innovation, these amazing private-sector companies, without the coordination you would've liked — they are doing it... .
Gates told CBS News he expects some at-home, instant coronavirus tests to be approved in the next two to four months. "These are well-meaning people," Gates told CNN of the diagnostics innovators. "This is a time when people are doing great work.

"So I hope the conspiracy stuff dies down."

Steven Levy from Wired remembers the Power Mac G4 Cube, which debuted July 19, 2000. From the report: I was reminded of this last week, as I listened to a cassette tape recorded 20 years prior, almost to the day. It documented a two-hour session with Jobs in Cupertino, California, shortly before the launch. The main reason he had summoned me to Apple's headquarters was sitting under the over of a dark sheet of fabric on the long table in the boardroom of One Infinite Loop. "We have made the coolest computer ever," he told me. "I guess I'll just show it to you." He yanked off the fabric, exposing an 8-inch stump of transparent plastic with a block of electronics suspended inside. It looked less like a computer than a toaster born from an immaculate conception between Philip K. Dick and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. (But the fingerprints were, of course, Jony Ive's.) Alongside it were two speakers encased in Christmas-ornament-sized, glasslike spheres.

"The Cube," Jobs said, in a stage whisper, hardly containing his excitement. He began by emphasizing that while the Cube was powerful, it was air-cooled. (Jobs hated fans. Hated them.) He demonstrated how it didn't have a power switch, but could sense a wave of your hand to turn on the juice. He showed me how Apple had eliminated the tray that held CDs -- with the Cube, you just hovered the disk over the slot and the machine inhaled it. And then he got to the plastics. It was as if Jobs had taken to heart that guy in The Graduate who gave career advice to Benjamin Braddock. "We are doing more with plastics than anyone else in the world," he told me. "These are all specially formulated, and it's all proprietary, just us. It took us six months just to formulate these plastics. They make bulletproof vests out of it! And it's incredibly sturdy, and it's just beautiful! There's never been anything like that. How do you make something like that? Nobody ever made anything like that! Isn't that beautiful? I think it's stunning!"

For one thing, the price was prohibitive -- by the time you bought the display, it was almost three times the price of an iMac and even more than some PowerMacs. By and large, people don't spend their art budget on computers. That wasn't the only issue with the G4 Cube. Those plastics were hard to manufacture, and people reported flaws. The air cooling had problems. If you left a sheet of paper on top of the device, it would shut down to prevent overheating. And because it had no On button, a stray wave of your hand would send the machine into action, like it or not. In any case, the G4 Cube failed to push buttons on the computer-buying public. Jobs told me it would sell millions. But Apple sold fewer than 150,000 units.

According to The New York Times, a secretive task force called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force is expected to release new and alarming findings that may involve vehicles made of materials not of this plant. From the report: Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway -- renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, where officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles. Pentagon officials will not discuss the program, which is not classified but deals with classified matters. Yet it appeared last month in a Senate committee report outlining spending on the nation's intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was "to standardize collection and reporting" on sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles, and was to report at least some of its findings to the public every six months. While retired officials involved with the effort -- including Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader -- hope the program will seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds, its main focus is on discovering whether another nation, especially any potential adversary, is using breakout aviation technology that could threaten the United States.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told a CBS affiliate in Miami this month that he was primarily concerned about reports of unidentified aircraft over U.S. military bases -- and that it was in the government's interest to find out who was responsible. He expressed concerns that China or Russia or some other adversary had made "some technological leap" that "allows them to conduct this sort of activity." Rubio said some of the unidentified aerial vehicles over U.S. bases possibly exhibited technologies not in the U.S. arsenal. But he also noted: "Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out."

Apple has begun assembling the current generation of iPhones in its plant near Chennai, India. TechCrunch reports: A small batch of locally manufactured iPhone 11 units has already shipped to retail stores, but the production yield is currently limited. Apple, in general, has ambitions to scale up its local production efforts in India. The local production of current iPhone 11 models illustrates Apple's further commitment to India, the world's second largest smartphone market, as it explores ways to cut its reliance on China, which produces the vast majority of iPhone models today. Apple's contract manufacturing partner, Taiwan-based Wistron, first began assembling older iPhone models in 2017. But until now, Apple has not been able to have an assembly partner produce the current generation iPhone model in India. Assembling handsets in India enables smartphone vendors -- including Apple -- to avoid roughly 20% import duty that the Indian government levies on imported electronics products. Foxconn, the manufacturing company Apple has partnered with to assemble the iPhone 11 units, plans to invest $1 billion in its operations in India.

Two decades after Japan rolled out an ambitious plan to go digital, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the government's deeply rooted technological shortcomings as ministries remain stuck in a paper-driven culture that experts say is hurting productivity. Reuters reports: While Tokyo has made "digital transformation" its main policy plank this year, the switch may not prove so easy as bureaucrats from different ministries still aren't able to hold teleconferences together and little of their administrative work can be done online. Analysts say the lack of government digitalization could reduce the incentive for the private sector to go digital in a blow to Japan's efforts to boost productivity.

Much of the problem stems from Japan's preference for paper documents and seal for approval at government offices. "Paper documents and seal are still prevalent. Politicians whom I deal with also prefer face-to-face meetings," a government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Adding to its digital woes is Japan's vertically structured bureaucracy: each ministry as well as local governments, for instance, have developed their own computer systems that aren't compatible with each other. Currently, each ministry has developed its own LAN network with various vendors, making it difficult to hold teleconference with each other because of differences in their on-line security policy, a Cabinet Office official in charge of IT strategy told Reuters. Currently, each ministry has developed its own LAN network with various vendors, making it difficult to hold teleconference with each other because of differences in their on-line security policy, a Cabinet Office official in charge of IT strategy, who declined to be named, told Reuters. Overall, it could cost the government 323 million working hours per year if it doesn't go digital, translating into personnel costs of nearly $8 billion, a government regulatory reform panel estimated in a report released in July last year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a release on Friday barring new international students from entering the U.S. for their fall terms if their courses are entirely online. "In accordance with March 2020 guidance, nonimmigrant students in new or initial status after March 9 will not be able to enter the U.S. to enroll in a U.S. school as a nonimmigrant student for the fall term to pursue a full course of study that is 100 percent online," ICE said Friday. "Additionally, designated school officials should not issue a Form I-20 to a nonimmigrant student in new or initial status who is outside of the U.S. and plans to take classes at an [Student and Exchange Visitor Program]-certified educational institution fully online."

Several U.S. colleges and universities have announced plans to hold most or all classes online because of the coronavirus pandemic. Many universities rely on tuition from international students, and the directive could dissuade some foreign students from enrolling this coming semester. The rule won't affect international students already enrolled at American colleges and universities.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: President Trump's re-election campaign has accused Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile of "suppression of political speech" over the carriers' blocking of spam texts sent by the campaign. The fight was described Wednesday in an in-depth article by Business Insider and other reports. "The Trump campaign has been battling this month with the biggest US cellphone carriers over an effort to blast millions of cell users with texts meant to coax them to vote or donate," Business Insider wrote. "President Donald Trump's adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, didn't appreciate it when AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile blocked mass campaign texts to voters. He called the companies to complain, setting off the legal wrangling."

When contacted by Ars, a Trump campaign spokesperson said that "any effort by the carriers to restrict the campaign from contacting its supporters is suppression of political speech. Plain and simple." The Trump campaign statement also said it "stands by the compliance of its texting programs" with the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and Federal Communications Commission guidelines. Business Insider wrote that "the showdown got serious at the start of July when Trump's team sent a blast of texts to people who hadn't signed up for them," and "a third-party firm hired to screen such messages for the major cellphone companies blocked the texts." The article said that campaign lawyers and the carriers "are still fighting over what kinds of messages the campaign is allowed to send and what the companies have the power to stop." Politico wrote about the dispute on Monday. "People familiar with the chain of events said Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T flagged potential regulatory problems with the peer-to-peer messaging operation, which differs from robo-texting in that texts are sent individually, as opposed to a mass blast," Politico wrote. "But within Trump's orbit, the episode has further fueled suspicions that big tech companies are looking to influence the election." The Trump campaign has not explained why the texts are legal and shouldn't have been blocked. They also didn't say how many people they tried to send the texts to, or whether the texts were unsolicited or sent to people who had signed up for campaign communications.

Carriers "viewed the texts as a possible violation of federal anti-robocall laws and Federal Communications Commission rules that come with hefty fines," Business Insider reported, citing information provided by "two Republicans familiar with the effort." Trump "campaign operatives" contend that its texting "exists in a legal gray area that allows campaigns to blast cellphone users if the messages are sent manually," Business Insider also wrote.

Yahoo has replaced the comments section under its articles with a survey. Now, there's a message that reads: "Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting. In the meantime, we welcome your feedback to help us enhance the experience."

Many readers who frequently comment on Yahoo News articles are quite upset. Some feel as though they're being censored and that Yahoo has made a huge mistake. "Yahoo News nuked all of their comment sections! Guess they were tired of people pushing back against their narratives," one person wrote. "Yahoo just block[ed] their comment section as well. When you read thru them it was 90% conservative veiws [sic]. Guess they can't allow that type of 'free speech,'" said another. Others were thrilled to see Yahoo finally do away with a comment section that often contained messages of hate and vitriol. "Kudos to Yahoo for finally doing something about the comment threads on their articles," one person wrote. "I support the removal of comments. Share articles as is and people can share/comment on their preferred platform," another said.

Do you agree with Yahoo's decision to temporarily disable comments?

Few people outside their home country have heard of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies or Tech Mahindra, India's five biggest information technology (IT) consultancies. Yet even when enterprise software to manage marketing, production, inventory and the like comes from Oracle of America or Germany's SAP, it is often the Indian companies that install and maintain software for clients. But for all their tech nous, the Indian giants have also been unable to keep pace with technological change. The Economist (may be paywalled): Corporate software is becoming easier to use, reducing demand for their services. The lucrative legacy business of running mainframes is evaporating. Helping clients shift to the cloud makes money but not nearly as much. Despite some interesting pilot projects -- such as Tech Mahindra's use of artificial intelligence to tell apart 1,645 Indian languages or Infosys's covid-19 contact-tracing in Rhode Island -- the consultancies have not come up with a killer app, let alone powerful platforms like those of America's big tech firms.

Worse still, multinationals are increasingly reluctant to outsource their IT. Rather than hire the consultants, many are creating subsidiaries in India to do the job in-house -- sucking away both custom and workers from the consultancies. Before the pandemic India hosted more than 1,400 of these so-called "captive centres", employing a total of more than 1m people, according to an analysis by the Ken, an Indian news website; around 70% of them were owned by big American firms. Walmart Labs India, owned by the American supermarket chain, is reportedly on course to double its staff numbers to 7,000 in the next year or two. The popularity of such in-house operations has to do with the changing economics of technology. This once required armies of people, so spreading costs among many clients made sense. With falling prices of hardware and software, and more skilled workers around, a captive centre can pay for itself with just 50 employees, says Peter Bendor Samuel of the Everest Group, a research firm.