Monday, June 22, 2020
Thousands of teens rally together on TikTok to throw a wrench into Donald Trump’s rally plans in Tulsa, Adobe wants you to uninstall Flash soon, and NBA Players are being asked to wear a smart ring when they resume play again next month.
 |
 |
 |
President Trump’s Saturday rally in Tulsa, Okla. was supposed to draw huge crowds, but hundreds of teenage users on the popular social media platform TikTok had other plans. Those plans were exposed over the weekend. Joined by thousands of K-pop fans, the New York Times says these TikTok users registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Trump’s campaign rally as a prank. The news comes after reporters noticed hundreds of empty seats in the arena, despite Trump’s campaign spokesperson suggesting hundreds of thousands of tickets were purchased. Experts explained how TikTok users successfully spread the message about the prank in a matter of days by taking advantage of algorithms to boost their videos. Many users deleted their posts after 24 to 48 hours in order to conceal their plan and keep it from spreading into the mainstream internet. Impressive – very impressive.
Some big news in the world of software – Adobe says it plans to prompt users and ask them to uninstall Flash Player from their computers by the end of the year when the software is scheduled to reach End-Of-Life (EOL), on December 31, 2020. Adobe says that once Flash reached the EOL date, the company doesn’t plan to stop providing updates, but they also plan to remove all Flash Player download links from their website, preventing users from installing the software and continuing to use an unmaintained version. Reddit users pointed out how the steps taken by Adobe are pretty aggressive, but there’s a reason. Flash Player has always been targeted by hackers and malware authors, and once Flash Player reaches EOL Adobe doesn’t plan to provide new security updates, and that means, vulnerabilities and hackers galore.
NBA players will wear a ‘smart ring’ at Disney world, per https://t.co/UCLdrFVMWo
The Oura smart ring is capable of predicting COVID-19 symptoms up to 3 days in advance with 90% accuracy. The ring can measure body
temperature, respiratory functions and heart rate. pic.twitter.com/pYYIqOLDbZ— NBA Central (@TheNBACentral) June 18, 2020
And lastly, NBA players resuming the 2019-20 season at Disney World, Orlando will have the option of wearing a smart ring which tracks body temperature, respiratory and heart rate. While some argue that nurses and essential workers should have priority access to new tools which may detect COVID-19 early, there appears to be little research on whether these devices can help diagnose individuals. It’s also worth noting that as of this recording, The FDA has not yet approved any wearables for diagnosing coronavirus
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. I’m Alex Coop, thanks for listening.