Ethereum, the decentralized world computer, pioneered the now-commonplace smart contract technology, and is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap behind Bitcoin. The transition to Ethereum 2.0 will greatly expand the scalability of the blockchain network, but more importantly, it introduces staking to Ethereum for the first time. The rush to gain a place on the new platform has seen over 1 million ETH tokens staked on Ethereum 2.0 already, worth $600 million at current prices, and has seen the value of ETH climb over 350% since the beginning of 2020.
The list of tech giants include Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings, Baidu, Suning Ltd. and JD.com. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said that the tech companies violated anti-monopoly legislation and “failed to declare illegal implementation of operating concentration.” Each violation carries a penalty of 500,000 yuan ($78,000) under China’s 2008 Anti-Monopoly law. “With the in-depth advancement of anti-monopoly law enforcement, the awareness of corporate operators’ concentration declarations has continued to increase, proactively sorting out and reporting concentration that has not previously been declared illegally, and actively cooperating with investigations,” the market regulator said in a statement.
The free event, #webcreators2021, gets underway on June 16 at 11am (EST) and is pitched at web creators, marketeers, and digital designers. Serial entrepreneur and digital marketer Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of New York-based communications firm VaynerX, will be a keynote speaker at the conference while Seth Godin, best-selling author of marketing bible This is Marketing, will make an appearance to discuss the importance of future-proofing your business. Each of the thought leaders will welcome questions from virtual attendees after back-to-back presentations.
In a blog post on Thursday, Facebook said that it has scaled its infrastructure significantly covering over 98% of people in the mainland United States and is on track to hit 100% by the fall of this year. The company has started the rollout in Canada and Mexico, and it will reach Western and Central Europe by early 2022. “Over 1.5 million people are playing cloud-streamed games on Facebook Gaming every month.
Group Effects are new AR (augmented reality) experiences that can augment everyone on a video call at the same time, enabling a more fun and immersive way to connect with friends and family. “We’re excited to see how creators, like Ross Wakefield who designed the “Blow the Dandelion” effect, expand their creativity with Group Effects, while also helping you deepen connections with friends and family in real-time,” Facebook wrote in a blog post.
The major changes of the Pages mainly include Redesigned layout, Dedicated News Feed, Easy navigation, Updated task-based admin controls, Actionable insights, and Safety and integrity features. However, one of the prominent change is the removal of the “Like” button from redesigned Public pages. Facebook Pages will now instead show “Followers” that will give public figures a stronger indication of their fan base. “We are removing Likes and focusing on Followers to simplify the way people connect with their favorite Pages,” Facebook said about the redesign in a blog post.
This will be part of Facebook’s policy to remove misinformation about the virus that could lead to imminent physical harm, which could include false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of the vaccines. The social media giant on Friday has announced that it has modified its ads policies to highlight the ability of a COVID-19 vaccine to prevent someone from contracting the virus, as well as ads promoting ways to safely access a COVID-19 vaccine.
In a memo circulated by top Google officials, the employees were given time until December 3rd to declare their vaccination status and upload documentation showing proof, or to apply for a medical or religious exemption. After December 3rd, the company said that it would start contacting employees whose status wasn’t uploaded or were unvaccinated, and also those employees whose exemption requests weren’t approved. As per the documents, employees who do not comply with the vaccination rules by January 18th will be placed on “paid administrative leave” for 30 days, followed by “unpaid personal leave” for up to six months, and then termination.
Google developers are quietly working on an HTML5 video player, known as Shaka Player that can function on bandwidth involving low internet connections. Not more than a simple JavaScript library, Shaka Player can be used with projects that are compatible with HTML5. Basically a DASH client, the library once started after loading, lets videos to be played automatically depending on the user’s local internet bandwidth conditions. DASH stands for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP.
The search giant said that it plans to stop selling ads based on people’s browsing histories and tracking users across the internet once it begins implementing a new system for targeting ads without the use of so-called “cookies.” Earlier this month, Google had announced that it is planning to phase out support for third-party cookies in the widely used Chrome browser within the next two years. It had also earlier unveiled its plans to release a “privacy sandbox” to replace the use of “cookies.