TLDR 2019-04-15

Amazon has entered into discussions to launch a free, ad-supported music service. The service will be marketed through Amazon’s Echo speakers and may be available as early as next week. Amazon plans to initially pay record labels per stream to obtain licenses. Spotify is the only major music subscription service with a free tier, but shareholders require the company to make a continual profit, whereas Amazon can afford to make a loss with its music service in order to attract customers into supporting its core retail business.

Facebook will hold its annual shareholder meeting on May 30 and has confirmed the investor proposals that will be voted on during the event. There are eight proposals to be voted on, including one that makes the case for Mark Zuckerberg to be removed as chairman and replaced with an independent executive. Zuckerberg has more than 50% of the voting power at Facebook, so changes are unlikely, but that is why shareholders are submitting the proposal in the first place.

Democratic candidate Andrew Yang plans to use a 3D hologram in his campaign for the presidency. The use of technology will highlight his message that times have changed and that the way we do things also needs to change. Yang has proposed to introduce universal basic income if he is successful in his candidacy. The hologram will play a pre-recorded speech, after which Yang will take questions live. Elizabeth Warren is another Democratic presidential candidate who is focused on technology, and she plans to break up large tech companies in order to generate competition.

hina’s large citizen surveillance network is being used to target the Uighur people, a largely Muslim minority. Facial recognition technology is being used to identify Uighurs and track their movements. This is the first time this kind of technology has been applied to the persecution of a certain type of person. China has an advantage when it comes to developing AI as scientists are less concerned with moral consensus. While using technology to target ethnic minorities is not new in China, it is a topic that can not be discussed in public.

The Front-End Developer Handbook is a guide for anyone to learn about the practice of front-end development. It was designed for potential and current front-end developers to equip themselves with learning materials and development tools. The handbook can also be used by managers and other people to gain insights into the practice of front-end development.

Space Cloud replaces tradition backend servers and simplifies app development. It is essentially a web server that integrates with new or existing databases to provide instant real-time APIs over REST, web sockets, gRPC, and more. Space Cloud provides many functionalities, security, and flexibility to work with the tech stack of your choice without having to write a single line of backend code.

China’s business practices and technology theft are costing the American economy more than $57 billion a year. While the government has been criticized for not taking more action over this behavior, it has been revealed that it is the businesses themselves who are quiet on this issue as there is too much at stake. When former US Attorney David Hickton tried to gather plaintiffs for a case against China’s hacking, he found that no companies would come forward. Even companies like Google have been hacked, but when Google tried to make a case against the Chinese government, no other companies wanted to participate, leaving Google to challenge China alone. The cyber attacks are likely to continue as companies remain silent, leaving the government with nothing to fight with.