Researchers discover 30,000 Apple Macs have been infected with mysterious malware, Trudeau and Biden are set to meet virtually today, and we find out why Youtube has been blocking chess videos.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! We hope you had a good weekend. It’s Tuesday, February 23, and I’m your host Baneet Braich.
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San Francisco, Security researchers have discovered that 30,000 Apple Macs have been infected with some mysterious malware. The malware called ‘Silver Sparrow’ can destroy itself which experts have pointed out is something many top-tier stealth attacks can do as well. There are no reports of the malware self-destructing, a common trait among Silver Sparrows.The malware has been found in 153 countries with heavy detection reported in the US, the UK, Canada, France and Germany.
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Prime minister Justin Trudeau will be meeting USA President Joe Biden virtually later today. It will be Biden’s first meeting with a foreign head of government. Some of the main topics of discussion include pandemic-related issues, fixing their economies and stopping climate change. Both leaders took to Twitter to tweet about the upcoming meeting and how they are looking forward to working on shared challenges. Virtual conferencing has become the norm since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Zoom alone had over 300 million meeting participants per day in 2020. [LinkedIn]
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YouTube AI Blocked blocked a chess channel after confusing ‘Black’ and ‘White’ for racist slurs. Late last year, a YouTuber who creates videos on chess, found that his channel was blocked over charges of ‘harmful and dangerous content. The channel was restored in 24 hours but Youtube didn’t explain why. Experts suspect that it was words like “black” and “white” that confused Youtube’s AI filters. They concluded that 80 per cent of chess videos that were flagged for hate speech actually had terms like ‘black,’ ‘white,’ ‘attack’ and ‘threat.’ Based on this, researchers suggest social-media platforms should revisit the algorithms and incorporate chess language to avoid future incidents.
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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 Briefing 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 mailbox every day. I’m Baneet Braich, thanks for listening!