UK politicians frown upon the resale of goods purchased with automated bots, top investors in SolarWinds sold millions of dollars in stock days before the attack, and Twitter is tapping into Amazon Web Services a little more.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Thursday, December 17, and I’m your host Baneet Braich.
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U.K. politicians are calling for the resale of goods purchased using an automated bot an illegal activity. The motion aims to outlaw resellers’ usage of automated bots and make it difficult to sell in-demand tech prices that exceed the manufacturer’s recommended retail price. The motion also says that new releases of gaming consoles and computer components should be available to all customers at no more than the Manufacturer’s Recommended Retail Price, and not be bought in bulk by the use of automated bots which often circumvent maximum purchase quantities imposed by the retailer. Fifteen Members of Parliament have signed the motion. But so far there is no set debate for the motion in the House of Commons.
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Top investors in Solarwinds, whose software was breached through a major Russian cyberattack, sold millions of dollars in stock in the days before the intrusion was revealed, according to the Washington Post. These trades are making others wonder the timing of them and if investors used insider information to avoid major losses. Since the breach, SolarWind’s share price has plunged 22 per cent. Their spokesperson did not comment about the trades when the Washington Post reached out. It is unknown if execs and insiders first knew about the hack but one enforcement official at U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the trades would likely spark an investigation by federal security watchdogs.
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Twitter is expanding its Amazon Web Services partnership to the cloud. Before Twitter used AWS for storage, database, and content delivery services to support images, videos, and ad content. However, it’s main feed was run on wholesale data centers, according to Data Centre Dynamics. With AWS Twitter hopes to build a space for on-prem and cloud hosting. Twitter says the collaboration with AWS will improve performance for people who use Twitter by enabling the company to serve Tweets from data centers closer to customers.