California Energy Commission invests billions of dollars in EV, Google to introduce end to end encryption to Gmail, Twitter reinstates suspended accounts.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Monday December 19 and I am your host, Samira Balsara.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) will spend $2.9 billion to accelerate the state’s zero-emission transportation strategy. In a report by Reuters, the agency detailed an investment plan that would result in the state building 90,000 new chargers over the span of four years, a move that would more than double the number of chargers available across the state. $900 million of the fund will go towards chargers designed for light-duty EVs, with another $1.7 billion set aside for infrastructure that supports medium and heavy-duty zero-emissions vehicles, including those powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The commission says it expects California to hit its goal of deploying 250,000 chargers by 2025.
Google is adding end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to Gmail on the web, allowing enrolled Google Workspace users to send and receive encrypted emails within and outside their domain. According to BleepingComputer, once enabled, Gmail client-side encryption will ensure that sensitive data delivered as part of the email’s body and attachments will not be decrypted by Google servers. Google said that users can use their own encryption keys to encrypt their organization’s data, in addition to using the default encryption that Google Workspace provides.
Twitter has announced via its Safety account that it has found “several policies where permanent suspension was a disproportionate action for breaking Twitter rules.” The website has started reinstating accounts that were suspended for violating those rules, and Twitter plans to lift more suspensions every week over the next month. The company didn’t specify the policies it’s talking about and which accounts will be reinstated but some of the journalists who were recently banned due to the website’s new doxxing rules are up again. Last week Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists who report on Elon Musk and the social network itself. Following the journalists’ suspensions, Musk posted a poll asking people whether he should reinstate the accounts of users who doxxed his exact location in real time “now” or “in 7 days.”
The private Adelson Educational Campus in Las Vegas is using an artificial intelligence system to detect school security threats. The school which runs from preschool to 12th grade is contracting with SparkCognition, a Texas-based company. A Government Technology report said that SparkCognition said it integrates with the school’s existing cameras to process information in real time. “If we can prevent one shooting, one tragedy, I think this has done its job,” a spokesman for the company said. The “Visual AI Advisor” system enables “instantaneous alerts, alarms, and designated actions like initiating lock-down procedures,” according to a news release. The Adelson School is in the implementation phase of the project.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Samira Balsara.
