Topic 1 - The Department of War returns…?
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Summary
Despite campaigning for and running on being the “no war” president, Trump announced that he would be signing an executive order today renaming the U.S. Department of Defense back to the U.S. Department of War. The department was originally renamed after the end of World War II in an attempt to reorganize the department and reflect a broader focus on defense than just military operations.
This follows the yaoi relationship between President Trump and Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. Trump originally called Hegseth his “secretary of war” and would present the idea of renaming the department a month later. They jointly claim that “wokeness” has and continues to ruin the morale within the military.
As for feasibility, the Department of Defense and the secretary of defense were originally named through acts of congress, so it may be possible given the republican held majority throughout both the house and senate.
Topic 2 - Literally ANYTHING but gun control.
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Following the mass shooting that took place in a Minneapolis Catholic church around a week ago, resulting in the death of two children and the injuring of 21 other individuals, the U.S. Department of Justice are looking to take action in any way that isn’t proper gun control.
The Department of Justice is reportedly weighting proposals into legislature limiting transgender individuals from owning firearms. The reasoning behind their justification is that “gender dysphoria” is listed as a mental disorder - as such, any transgender individual would not be seen as how they choose to identify, but rather the sex they were assigned at birth.
While the Trump administration, so far, has made many several moves in restricting the rights of transgender individuals. Most notably, the barring of trans people from serving in the military, and the banning of trans women participating in women’s sports, this specific idea has obviously sparked backlash from many individuals. But also from their own party members. Many conservatives highly disagree with the restricting of gun rights for any U.S. citizen, so we’ll have to see how this plays out.
Topic 3 - So, what airline company lobbied for this?
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During the Biden administration, the Department of Transportation announced a plan that would require airlines to compensate their passengers accordingly for disruptions or delays caused by carriers.
As of yesterday, the Trump administration has unshockingly decided to kill off the legislation, citing that the withdraw of the plan was “consistent with department and administration priorities.”
Sneakily, the DOT also indicated through Federal Reserve filings that it would also intend to drop a plan that would require airlines and ticket agencies to disclose service fees.
A department spokesperson said that they intend to create a replacement for these consumer protections, that would include a “requirement to refund ticket prices to passengers in the case of airline canceled or substantially delayed flights when consumers choose not to travel” - as for what is classified as a substantial delay is unknown.
It’s unknown whether any of these plans will see the light of day, as the Trump administration plans to entirely dissolve the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Topic 4 - Google ordered to pay $425 million class action suit.
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Following their precedence setting antitrust lawsuit that they won, Google has been ordered to pay $425 million in another lawsuit regarding the handling of consumer data. The class action lawsuit, was brought upon Google in July of 2020 by a group of users that alleged the company had “unlawfully accessed their devices and data, including app activity data on their mobile devices.”
The users claim that Google had breached their privacy by continuing to collect data from millions of users despite turning off a tracking feature within in their Google account settings.
The users originally sought out over $31 billion in damages, and covered over 98 million users and 174 million devices.
Google intends to appeal the ruling. Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson, claimed that “This decision misunderstands how our products work” and followed up by saying “Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice.”
Topic 5 - The (Silk)song that killed everything.
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Following the global release of one of the most coveted and long awaited video games of all time, Hollow Knight: Silksong was released yesterday at 10:00 AM Eastern Time. As I’m sure you’re all well aware.
The game was so highly anticipated, that it’s release ended up crashing almost every single major digital storefront. Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo’s eShop all struggled to load their interfaces properly, with some stores displaying error messages for several hours past the release.
Retailing at a stunning $20, in an industry where games are becoming $80 or $90, this is proving to be an incredible success for Team Cherry.
Topic 6 - Another big company sues Midjourney.
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Another company has filed a lawsuit against the AI image and video generation platform, Midjourney. Earlier this year back in June, the Walt Disney Company and Universal Studios sued the platform, calling it a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.”
As of yesterday, Warner Brothers Discovery is also suing the company in a separate lawsuit, also “alleging” that their copyrighted content has been illegally plagiarized and stolen as training data.
That’s the whole topic.
Topic 7 - Look at my favorite browser dawg 😭😭😭
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This topic is interesting for me personally, as a former user of Arc Browser.
The Browser Company of New York, creator of the power user focused “Arc Browser”, and their new “AI browser” - Dia, announced that it is being acquired by the enterprise software conglomerate Atlassian.
The Browser Company originally rose to fame following the release of Arc Browser. Initially releasing exclusively to macOS, running on the Chromium engine. What made Arc Browser different was their unique approach to managing tabs and making web browsing less of a chore.
Arc would eventually release publicly on Windows, to much criticism. The browser released in a half-baked state where the vast majority of features from the macOS counterpart were completely missing.
You’ve definitely seen me use a similar looking browser, called Zen Browser. This is because Arc was essentially abandoned by The Browser Company, as they shifted all of their efforts to their new “AI browser” called Dia, that I’m not going to bother talking about. Long story short, this left dedicated users to Arc feeling abandoned and betrayed. This lead to someone branching off and creating a Firefox-based alternative called Zen - which is still being maintained and worked on to this day.
However, this new announcement of Atlassian acquiring The Browser Company has given some current and former users of Arc and Dia some hope, but the vast majority are in fear. While they have many resources to provide, Atlassian specializes in enterprise software.
https://x.com/browsercompany/status/1963579501129978167
Topic 8 - Samsung releases groundbreaking new hardware.
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Samsung releases the Galaxy Tab S11. This is huge for whoever still uses an Android tablet.