A big day for the internet in the states as the House of Representatives voted to reinstate net neutrality. Amazon releases hardware to turn any speaker into a smart speaker. And the first ever picture of a black hole has been released.
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It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Thursday April 11th, and I’m your host, Buckley Smith.
It was a big day for the internet in the US today, and 2 stories trending on Reddit highlight the issues at play. The biggest news was the House of Representatives voting to reinstate net neutrality. For those that do not know, net neutrality would make it illegal for internet service providers to block consumer access to the internet or specific websites. While this vote was a big step towards what Nancy Pelosi described as “honoring the will of the people”, there were many who believe this is the end of the road for net neutrality. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that it would be “dead on arrival” once it is brought before the senate. On top of this, two US senators introduced a bill called The DETOUR Act, which would prohibit internet firms with over 100 million monthly users from gathering your personal data in deceptive ways, as well as some other shady practises that were named in the bill.
Trending on Google, Amazon has announced it will begin selling its Echo Link Amp device. This device will allow you to bring your internet connected music streaming, as well as voice control to your favourite sound system. By enabling voice control, it also allows for the use of Amazon Alexa with your preferred speaker set.
Our final story comes from Reddit and is a story that has had the eyes of much of the world on it today. Astronomers released the first ever image of a black hole. While we have seen many renderings of what experts believe it would look like, thanks to the efforts of Professor Heino Falcke, who has been advocating for this to happen for over two decades, we now know they were pretty darn close in their estimations. It took a team of 200 scientists and a network of telescopes, but it worked. With that being said, the image that has been released is rather blurry, but this is sure to be just the first step in the furthering of human understanding of black holes.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. I’m Buckley Smith, thanks for listening.
