Broadcasting giants CBS and Viacom set to merge; hi-tech warfare is underway in Hong Kong protests; Save icon in Word called into question
We had a bit of a slow news day, but our first story is a big story in the broadcasting world. Apparently due to fears of streaming services cornering the television market, broadcasting giants CBS and Viacom are in the process of finalizing a merger, and it is trending on LinkedIn. The two companies, who were at one point actually a single entity, will be helmed by National Amusements chief Shari Redstone as chairman and Viacom’s Bob Bakish as CEO. Between the two of them, they own some of the biggest media assets in the world such as Paramount Pictures, MTV and Nickelodeon.
For those that have been following the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, this may not be news to you. But the situation there has unfolded into what almost equates to dystopian style high tech warfare. And trending on Reddit is a story about the means that the protesters have had to go to to avoid being detected by the governments high tech facial recognition software, for fear of persecution for taking part in the protests. To combat this, the protesters have begun using laser lights to confuse and in some cases disable the functionality of the facial recognition camers. These protests have continued and in fact were even the cause of the Hong Kong international airport, one of the busiest in the world, being shut down yesterday.
Our last story may make some of you, myself included, feel a bit older than we thought we were. For those of us, we remember the floppy disk and can easily recognize it as the basis for the save button that is so iconically used on Microsoft Word. But for the younger population who were not alive or fully aware of the world around them at the time, they seem to have no idea what the icon is. And one younger Microsoft Word user even took to Twitter to find out. Funnily enough, she thought that the icon was that of an image of a vending machine with a beverage can sitting at the bottom of the dispensing compartment. And of course, Twitter users could not get enough of this hilarious story.