Silicon Valley Tech News Roundup – November 14th
Biden signs law banning Huawei and ZTE from getting FCC licenses – 11/11
On Thursday, President Biden signed a law that prevents companies like Huawei and ZTE from obtaining new equipment licenses from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The new law is called the Secure Equipment Act of 2021. It requires the FCC not to approve or review authorization applications for equipment deemed a risk to national security. In October, the bill was approved in the Senate and later on in the US House.
In March, the FCC named five Chinese companies that pose a threat to national security. Apart from Huawei and ZTE, it includes Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co, Hytera Communications Corp, and Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. In June, the FCC voted to advance the plan to ban approvals for equipment in the US telecommunications network. Zhao Lijian, the Chinese Foreign Affairs spokesperson, stated at the time: “The United States, without any evidence, still abuses national security and state power to suppress Chinese companies.”
In October, the FCC voted to remove the authority for Chinese Telecom to operate in the United States due to national security concerns.
The new law comes just before the virtual summit between Biden and Xi Jinping. It is supposed to take place on Monday.
Instagram new bonus program offers Reels creators up to $35.000 – 11/12
Based on the reports from Business Insider and TechCrunch, Instagram is ramping up its efforts to establish Reels as a competitor to TikTok. Mark Zuckerberg announced the move in July. He said the company will be paying $1 billion to creators through 2022.
The reports shed more light on the benchmarks content creators need to earn maximum bonus payouts. The company offers smaller content creators more modest sums (between $600 and $1000). On the higher end, video creators can earn up to $35.000 per Reel based on the number of views.
At the moment, there are no firm rules on the number of followers content creators need to have and the bonuses they are offered. According to Instagram, since the program is in the early stages, there is no fixed format. The company stated: “We’re continuing to test payments as we roll out to more creators, and expect them to fluctuate while we’re still getting started.”
Bitcoin gets its first upgrade in four years – 11/14
On Saturday, Bitcoin got its first upgrade in four years and featured several improvements to the code. Taproot update ensures better transaction privacy and efficiency. Likewise, with the update, there is potential to unlock smart contracts and remove middlemen from the transactions.
The most important update is to the digital signatures. At the moment, Bitcoin uses Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. It creates a signature from the private key that controls the bitcoin wallet. This means only the rightful owner can spend the bitcoin. The new update will add Schnorr signatures to make multi-signature transactions unreadable. It ensures better privacy as keys will not have bigger exposure on the chain. Simple transactions will not be distinguishable from the more complex ones that require several signatures.
Taproot update also makes smart contracts smaller (in terms of taking up space on the blockchain) and cheaper and ensures better functionality and efficiency.
Initially, June was the date for the upgrade. However, the rollout did not happen until November. The additional time was used for testing and to prevent things from going wrong during the upgrade.
FBI email servers compromised – 11/13
Based on the report published by the Bleeping Computer, intruders compromised FBI servers on Friday. They used FBI systems to launch the attack and used email addresses scraped from several sources including The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). Over 100.000 email addresses got fake notifications that claimed they fell prone to a data breach. The attackers tried to pin the fake breach on Vinny Troia, the founder of Shadowbyte, a dark web intelligence company.
In a statement, the FBI confirmed the attack and that the agency was working on solving the issue. However, the FBI could not share any additional information since it was an ongoing situation.
Meanwhile, Vinny Troia confirmed he was aware of the spam campaign and named an individual “pompomurin” as the person behind it. According to Troia, the same person launched several attacks trying to discredit him.
