Coffee Briefing Mar. 5 – High speed internet access for 150 NWT households; Canadian small business owners slow in generative AI uptake; Mistral AI open source model now available on IBM’s watsonx; and more
Coffee Briefings are timely deliveries of the latest ITWC headlines, interviews, and podcasts. Today’s Coffee Briefing is delivered by IT World Canada’s editorial team! Missed the last Coffee Briefing? We’ve got you covered. Government of Canada invests over $2 million to connect 150 Northwest Territories households The federal government has announced
Read moreGoogle takes aim at SEO-optimized junk pages and spam with new search update
Google today took aim at the SEO industry which has gamified search rankings to destroy the value of Google Search results. Often, consumers’ web searches for product recommendations, reviews, deals, and discounts, return low-quality or spammy websites that don’t deliver the expert reviews or useful promotions they promise, despite their
Read moreLawmakers introduce bill that would punish app stores for hosting TikTok
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge After a long reprieve from serious congressional scrutiny, lawmakers are taking another crack at getting TikTok to sever ties from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. The leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, chair Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and ranking
Read moreOpenSea’s partnership with Coachella is a sign that NFTs can be more than profile pictures
The NFT sector has not yet returned to the glory of its 2022 heydays but that hasn’t stopped the evolution of the tech. For instance, OpenSea has partnered with the music and arts festival conglomerate Coachella to release three NFT collections that offer both virtual and tangible real-life VIP experiences
Read moreMeta and other sites down across North America this morning
Meta and its associated sites were reportedly taken down this morning. Cyberint (Cyberint.com) reported that three threat actor groups – Skynet, Godzilla, and Anonymous Sudan – claimed that they had shut down Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Although reports surfaced as early as 10 am Eastern Time, Ookla’s Downdector site showed
Read moreHamilton confirms ransomware is behind cyber attack
Ransomware is behind the cyber attack on the city of Hamilton, Ont., the municipality’s city manager says. Marnie Cluckie told reporters Monday afternoon that the attack, which was detected the evening of Sunday, Feb. 25, was the result of ransomware. She wouldn’t say what strain of the malware the city
Read moreYouTube is experiencing outages too, site confirms
Several social media websites are experiencing outages on Tuesday morning. YouTube confirmed that some users are having trouble loading videos on the platform; meanwhile, platforms like Discord and Meta’s Threads, Facebook and Instagram are down as well. According to a post on Google’s support page, users may be experiencing an
Read moreDiscord comes back online after widespread outage
Discord is back online after an outage this morning, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The outage came as Meta’s Instagram, Facebook and Threads all went down this morning. YouTube has also confirmed that its service is having issues this morning too, and that it’s working on a fix. “This incident
Read moreTesla’s Berlin factory to shut down for days after suspected arson attack cuts power
Tesla’s factory outside Berlin, Germany will likely be shut down for days and cost the automaker more than $100 million, after a suspected arson attack on the local power grid. The fire didn’t spread to Tesla’s factory and nobody was harmed, though employees were evacuated. Thousands of residents in the
Read moreNew geospatial data startup streamlines satellite imagery visualization
These days we have a ton of geospatial data coming off the increasing numbers of satellites circling in our atmosphere, but it takes some serious processing power and engineering prowess to turn that data into something useful. A couple of former Uber engineers, Sina Kashuk and Isaac Brodsky, who helped
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