Facebook’s Meta fined 265 million euros, a new study finds that smartphone addiction is linked with low self esteem and other negative cognitive outcomes, and the FCC bans the sale and imports of certain Chinese technology.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Tuesday November 29 and I’m your host, Ashee Pamma.
On Monday, Facebook’s Meta was fined 265 million euros for not better protecting over half a billion users’ phone numbers and other information from so-called data scrapers. According to The Wall Street Journal, the fine issued by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, Meta’s main privacy regulator in the EU, is the latest indication of how authorities within the region are becoming more aggressive in applying the bloc’s privacy law to big tech companies. A Meta spokesman said the company will examine Monday’s decision but has yet to decide whether it intends to appeal. “Unauthorized data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules,” he said. This is the third time Ireland has fined Meta and its subsidiaries ,such as WhatsApp and Instagram, in a privacy case over the past 15 months, bringing the combined financial penalties to the equivalent of over $900 million.
New research reveals that problematic smartphone use is linked with low self-esteem as well as negative cognitive outcomes. The study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, shows that people who have a smartphone addiction tend to report more loneliness and experience self-regulation deficits. Those with phone addictions are also more likely to experience withdrawal symptoms when their smartphone use is restricted. An experiment of 111 participants aged 18 to 65 showed that participants with higher levels of smartphone addiction tended to exhibit worse working memory, visual reaction time, auditory reaction time, ability to inhibit motor response, and behavioural inhibition compared to participants with lower levels of smartphone addiction.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has banned the import and sale of certain Chinese technology equipment, saying it poses “an unacceptable risk to national security.” In a statement on Twitter, FCC Commissioner Brandan Carr noted that the commission’s unanimous decision is the first time in U.S. history that it has voted to prohibit the authorization of equipment based on national security concerns. According to an article from The Hill, the ban bars equipment from Huawei and ZTE from approval, and equipment from Dahua, Hikvision and Hytera can be approved for import and sale only if they assure the FCC that their equipment won’t be used for public safety, security of government facilities or other national security purposes.
Bionaut Lab, the team responsible for creating Apple’s Face ID is in the process of creating a new medical development – tiny robots injected into the skull to deliver drugs directly to the brain. Robots only a few millimeters long will be shot into patients’ craniums. Using magnetic propulsion, they will navigate to the affected area of the brain, release medicine, and then make their way back to the needle site for extraction. According to Nasdaq, the co-founder of the lab ,Michael Shpigelmacher, told the Financial Times that the idea came to him when he thought about how most pills and inoculations are circulated throughout the entire body, occasionally causing nasty side effects.
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 briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Ashee Pamma.