Facebook has finally decided to ban notorious hate spreading dickheads Alex Jones, Infowars, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen from all platforms, including Instagram (they were already banned from Facebook). Infowars was hit harder, with Facebook set to remove anything containing Infowars content. Facebook justify it "under their policies against dangerous individuals and organizations". Maybe Facebook can work on the tsunami of anti-vax bullshit next?
After removing all the NSFW material we loved from Tumblr, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Verizon is looking to offload Tumblr as it's not making enough money (gee, I wonder why). It's all far from confirmed, but among the noise, PornHub said they're "extremely interested in buying Tumblr", disappointed with how a sexuality safe space was removed from the internet and that they could return Tumblr to its hedonistic former glory.
Valve has started to take pre-orders for its "next generation" Index VR headset. Valve's ditched HTC and made the Index on their own. I won't bore you with specs, as it's pretty much an Oculus Rift/HTC Vive but better - same style of unit. So if you want to drop a chunk of cash on a beefcake PC and an additional US$999 the Index VR kit (headset, controllers, base stations), this is the highest quality unit you'll get. The Valve Index VR will start shipping in June. Hopefully there's some info on compelling games by then.
Over 6,000 disgruntled taxi drivers across Australia have filed a class action against Uber in the Victorian Supreme Court today. Their argument is that in the period before state governments capitulated and legalised UberX, Uber was operating illegally. That illegal operation crushed their businesses unfairly (it was illegal!) and they want to be compensated. Four Corners did a good episode about the underhanded tactics Uber used to operate illegally, which regardless of what you think about taxi drivers, was still a dog act. I hope the taxi drivers get billions off Uber.
Fans of Harry Potter (or parents of fans of Harry Potter) will be excited to learn that an augmented reality game called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is now available to play, exclusively in Australia & NZ while it's in beta. The game is developed by Niantic, who also made Pokemon Go and unsurprisingly, two are very similar, but different. You run around meatspace looking for "artifacts to collect, characters to rescue, and an intricate set of skills to level up". Kotaku has some tips for Pokemon Go players looking to get some Harry Potter action.
Creative Commons has launched a new one-stop-shop to find CC licensed images. There's 300 million images in the database, from sources like "the Cleveland Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, DeviantArt, Behance, Flickr, and Thingiverse". Type in some keywords and get presented with heaps of high quality images you can legally use in presentations, brochures, websites and more. Just double check that the specific Creative Commons license allows for your use case!
Jess Dodson has published a great blog post about what it's like to be a woman working in IT. It isn't fun reading. Dozens of stories from women all over the industry who have been treated like absolute shit for no other reason than they're a woman. It's sad and pathetic men act like this. Jess' blog post also goes into detail about how men can listen, give credit where credit is due, be inclusive, call out bad behavior when you see it and how to respect women in the first place. I'd like to think this is all common sense, but obviously, it isn't for many men.
That's it, see ya Monday!
--Anthony
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