Quick hits: March 2019

SpaceX launches Crew Dragon: an historic test flight SpaceX - the space company of Elon Musk - launched Crew Dragon, the space taxi that brought the Ripley mannequin to the ISS (International Space Station). The Crew Dragon, the space capsule for the transportation of NASA astronauts, has successfully joined the International Space Station. And it brought the Ripley mannequin, named after the character of the Alien saga played by Sigourney Weaver, into space. With the launch, SpaceX has reached another milestone. To announce the achievement of this milestone is ISS itself in a tweet. Subsequently the objective of the capsule will be to transport the astronauts, as if it were a space taxi.

Facebook: Instagram sue China-based firms over sales of fake accounts Facebook has sued four Chinese companies accusing them of selling fake accounts, followers and ‘likes’ that were used for disinformation campaigns and other prohibited activities. That was announced by the social network, which filed the papers at the Federal Court of San Francisco. The case involves fake accounts of both Facebook and Instagram. The company requests an injunction and damages of 100.000 $. From 2017 the companies would have advertised and sold fake account packages through six websites with domain names similar to Facebook, like ‘my-facebook.cc’.

The companies, linked together, proposed the offer of services to ‘increase likes, comments, friends’, and presented themselves as ‘Chinese strategic partner of Facebook’. For them the charge is of trademark infringement, terms of service and related crimes. To be involved - explained Facebook - are also other platforms such as Amazon, Apple, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter. YouTube CEO: disabling comments on minor videos was ‘trade-off’ for child safety Youtube disables comments on videos with minors. The portal reacts to reports of pedo pornographic content and to the reduction of investments by advertisers.

‘During the last week - explains the portal owned by Google in a post - we have disabled comments from tens of millions of videos that may be subject to predatory behavior. These efforts are focused on children’s videos and we will continue to identify those at risk. In the coming months, we will expand this action on videos that may be at risk.’ Only ‘a small number’ of users who publish content will be able to keep comments enabled. But ‘they will be required to actively moderate their comments’. They will therefore have to ensure a strong control and will be supported by the platform to achieve the goal. Foldables phones at MWC: the new Foldable Mate X The WMC presented two different ways of interpreting the same concept, that of folding smartphone: the Samsung Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate X.