government News of 01/16/21

DOT Evaluated 11 GPS Replacements And Found Only One That Worked Across Use Cases

The United States’ GPS system, which is operated by the Defense Department, offers every one of us critical infrastructure around what is known as positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). Positioning and navigation is obvious every time we open up a ...

Grab-Singtel And Ant Group Win Digital Bank Licenses In Singapore

Singapore on Friday granted four firms including Ant Group and Grab the licenses to run digital banks in the Southeast Asian country, in a move that would allow tech giants to expand their financial services offerings. The nation’s central ...

China’S Internet Regulator Takes Aim At Forced Data Collection

China is a step closer to cracking down on unscrupulous data collection by app developers. This week, the country’s cybersecurity watchdog began seeking comment on the range of user information that apps from instant messengers to ride-hailing ...

WH’S AI EO Is BS

An executive order was just issued from the White House regarding “the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Government.” Leaving aside the meritless presumption of the government’s own trustworthiness and that it is the ...

Space Startup Aevum Debuts World’S First Fully Autonomous Orbital Rocket Launching Drone

Launching things to space doesn’t have to mean firing a large rocket vertically using massive amounts of rocket-fuel powered thrust – startup Aevum breaks the mould in multiple ways, with an innovative launch vehicle design that combines ...

Trump’S Odd New Attack On Section 230 Is Probably Doomed

Trump’s crusade against a key internet law known as Section 230 tends to pop up in unlikely places. His Twitter feed on Thanksgiving , for one. Or at times you’d think the nation would be hearing from its leader on the matter at hand: a ...

Find Out How We’Re Working Toward Living And Working In Space At TC Sessions: Space 2020

The idea of people going to live and work in space, outside of the extremely unique case of the International Space Station, has long been the strict domain of science fiction. That’s changing fast, however, with public space agencies, ...

EveryAction Acquires Mobilize, The Democratic Volunteering Platform

Nonprofit donor management platform EveryAction is buying Mobilize , a company that connects Democratic campaigns to volunteers and helps marshal activists toward progressive causes. Mobilize, formerly known as MobilizeAmerica, grew out of Higher ...

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Will Step Down To Make Way For The Biden Administration

The Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, has announced he will leave his position on January 20 as President-elect Biden is sworn in. Pai’s tenure has been a controversial one, and while he would almost certainly like to be remembered for his ...

The Trump Administration Will Add SMIC, China’S Largest Chipmaker, To Its Defense Blacklist: Report

SMIC , one of largest chip makers in the world, is among several companies that the Department of Defense plans to designate as being owned or controlled by the Chinese military, reports Reuters . Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed ...

The Supreme Court Will Hear Its First Big CFAA Case

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday in a case that could lead to sweeping changes to America’s controversial computer hacking laws — and affecting how millions use their computers and access online services. The Computer Fraud ...

India Sets Rules For Commissions, Surge Pricing For Uber And Ola

Ride-hailing firms such as Ola and Uber can only draw a fee of up to 20% on ride fares in India, New Delhi said in guidelines on Friday, a new setback for the SoftBank-backed firms already struggling to improve their finances in the key overseas ...

TikTok’S Epic Rise And Stumble

TikTok’s rise in the West is unprecedented for any Chinese tech company, and so is the amount of attention it has attracted from politicians worldwide. Below is a timeline of how TikTok grew from what some considered another ...

The FCC Rejects ZTE’S Petition To Stop Designating It A “National Security Threat”

The Federal Communications Commission has rejected ZTE’s petition to remove its designation as a “national security threat.” This means that American companies will continue to be barred from using the FCC’s $8.3 billion Universal ...

Ignore The Social Media Echo Chambers

Bernard Moon Contributor Share on Twitter Bernard Moon is co-founder and partner at SparkLabs Group , a graduate of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and is an alumni of the Coro ...

Australia’S Spy Agencies Caught Collecting COVID-19 App Data

Australia’s intelligence agencies have been caught “incidentally” collecting data from the country’s COVIDSafe contact tracing app during the first six months of its launch, a government watchdog has found. The report, ...

India Bans Another 43 Chinese Apps

India is not done banning Chinese apps. The world’s second largest internet market, which has banned over 175 apps with links to the neighboring nation in recent months , said on Tuesday it was banning an additional 43 such apps. Like with the ...

Biden-Harris Team Finally Get Their Transition .Gov Domain

Finally. It only took almost three weeks, but the Biden-Harris transition has officially begun. On Monday, the General Services Administration gave the green light for the Biden-Harris team to transition from political campaign to government ...

Trump Didn’T Concede, But He Will Move Biden’S Transition Forward

With an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots, election results took a bit longer this year than usual. But if Americans were expecting an election week, November stretched on into a month of election drama, with President Trump mounting an ...

Relativity Space Raises $500 Million As Its Sets Sights On The Industrialization Of Mars

3D-printed rocket startup Relativity Space has closed $500 million in Series D funding (making official the earlier reported raise ), the company announced today. This funding was led by Tiger Global Management, and included participation by a ...