data

In keeping with the strict General Data Protection Regulation laid down by the European Union, Valve has rolled out a new data portal to Steam users that can only be described as "exhaustive." This portal puts pretty much every piece of information about your Steam account in one place, serving up boatloads of data you probably never even cared to look at in the first place. While some of this data was accessible in one way or another before GDPR became law, this new portal organizes it and makes it easier to find specific information.

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Several years ago, Microsoft got the ball rolling on a very interesting project: undersea data centers. It's been a while since we last heard from this initiative, called Project Natick, but now Microsoft has announced a major milestone for it. The company has sunk a new data center off the coast of Scotland's Orkney Islands, and assuming everything goes smoothly, it'll be on the ocean floor for at least the next five years.

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Back in 2015, Apple announced plans to build a new data center in Athenry, Ireland. The small town was an attractive destination for Apple because of West Ireland's green energy resources, and the company planned to invest as much as $1 billion in its construction. It's been a while since we last heard about this data center, but more news about the project is surfacing today and it isn't good.

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Google's going to present themselves as a responsible force for good at Google IO 2018. They'll be rolling with a message that centers on not just the responsible handling of data, but the measured, reasonable use of smart devices. They're going to do this in several ways - one of which is with the concept "Federated Learning."

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Today Mark Zuckerberg publicly denied knowledge of the term "Shadow Profile" at a congressional hearing. Zuckerberg did not deny knowledge of the definition of Facebook's shadow profiles, but he did attempt to cut ties between the definition and the commonly-known name for the subject. Today we've got a quick primer on the Facebook-made Shadow Profile.

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Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal seems unending, but this week, users are finally getting some answers about whether or not their data was shared. Yesterday, Facebook began surfacing links at the top of News Feeds to help users understand what kind of data they're sharing with third-party apps. Today, the company took things one step further and launched a new tool that allows users to see if their information was shared with Cambridge Analytica.

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In the near future on the Chrome web browser on Android there'll be a feature called Blink LazyLoad. This feature stops webpages from loading until the parts of the webpage the user needs are requested. Questions remain about how this will affect users looking to read webpages offline, but for everybody else, this might well be the next big step in saving on unwanted and unnecessary mobile data use. Until you scroll down, everything below the cut will be FROZEN.

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Friday a report was released about a clipboard issue in OnePlus smartphones - today it's been fixed and clarified. The first report cites Elliot Anderson, whose known for digging up data in smartphone apps. His report was meant to be a first investigation, but was reported as a major privacy invasion - which we've been on alert for in OnePlus devices before. Turns out this situation wasn't anything to get too pumped up about.

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T-Mobile USA appears to have dominated the latest batch of mobile data tests from the folks at OpenSignal, beating out bigger names like Verizon and AT&T in the process. How could this have happened, and at what point did T-Mobile begin delivering more reliable and speedier mobile data than their competitors? If T-Mobile's service is so good, why don't they have more customers than their competitors? Is it the advertising, maybe the phones they've got available - or is it something more subtle, like the shade of pink they're using?

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Google app Datally was released on November 30th, 2017, to make a big, sweet attempt at helping users understand data use. Right in time, too - just as we're about to destroy Net Neutrality and all of our data bills go irreparably skyward. "Mobile data is expensive for many people around the world," said Google, "And what’s worse, it’s hard to figure out where it all goes."

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If there’s anyone who’d know how much mobile data smartphone users consume, it’d be Google. From the myriad Google services to the millions of Android phones, Google has got the the means to calculate your mobile data consumption. Now the tech giant is giving users the ability to see that information for themselves with its new Datally app for Android. But, even better, it’s also giving users the ability to have more control over which apps use that data.

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Today Trump-installed FCC chairman Ajit Pai released his plan to destroy Net Neutrality. It's worse than we thought it might be. Yesterday we went over the Trump Administration's 3-point plan to steal internet from poor people and cut all rules from internet provider businesses. Today we're seeing that the plan cuts much more than what we assumed it would.

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