Winds of change: U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will significantly change U.S. government policy focused on the Internet, Vox.com says. A Biden administration is likely to bring back net neutrality rules and push for policies that widen Internet access and make it more affordable. The Biden team may also provide more subsidies to lower-income people and open up more radio frequency bands for high-speed 5G networks.
Accessing growth: The growth of Indonesia’s digital economy depends on equal access to the Internet, but 12,000 villages across the country still lack access, Kompas.com reports. Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati is pushing for digital infrastructure to be distributed throughout the country. The government has a 2021 budget of 30 trillion rupiahs ($2.1 billion USD) to develop information and communication technology infrastructure.
Lowering the Zoom: Video-conferencing service Zoom has settled a U.S. Federal Trade Commission complaint saying that it overstated its encryption protections for several years, TechCrunch says. “Zoom’s misleading claims gave users a false sense of security … especially for those who used the company’s platform to discuss sensitive topics such as health and financial information,” the agency said. Zoom has agreed to start a vulnerability management program and implement stronger security across its internal network.
300,000 warnings: Twitter has flagged about 300,000 tweets related to the recent U.S. election for misleading or disputed content during a two-week period, CNet reports. Several of those tweets came from outgoing President Donald Trump, including claims he won the election.
Pay the man: The Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications has accused video streaming companies like Netflix and Apple of not paying taxes there, Taipei Times says. The failure to pay taxes creates unfair competition to local companies, the ministry said. Foreign streaming firms, which have combined revenues of nearly 1 trillion dong ($43.15 million USD) from 1 million subscribers, have never paid tax in Vietnam, the ministry added.
You can take the AI train: Israeli researchers have figured out a way to train artificial intelligence to create improvised and personalized jazz solos, The Jerusalem Post says. To build their initial data set, the researchers used hundreds of original jazz solos performed by saxophone luminaries such as Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, and Dexter Gordon.
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