The Audet family that owns Cogeco has opposed Altice’s $10.3 billion offer to buy Cogeco and sell Canadian assets to Rogers, Microsoft tackles disinformation in two new ways, and India bans more Chinese apps.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Thursday, Sept. 3, and I’m your host Baneet Braich.
Some big news today. The Audet family that controls Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco communications won’t support a bid from U.S firm Altice that offered $10.3 billion. Altice offered the deal with another arrangement where Rogers Communications Inc. would buy Cogeco’s Canadian assets for $4.9 billion. If the deal were to happen, Altice would own Cogeco’s U.S. assets, including Atlantic Broadband. Analysts are also saying it would greatly benefit Rogers as it merges Ontario cable assets.
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Microsoft has announced two new ways that it’s combating disinformation. The Microsoft Video Authenticator will target deep fakes by analyzing the photo or video to provide a percentage chance or confidence score that it is fake. In a video, it provides the percentage in real-time. The second way is new technology that can detect manipulated content and assure people that the media they are viewing is authentic. In Microsoft Azure, content producers will be able to add digital hashes and certificates to content which will travel with the metadata online. Then a reader which can be a browser extension will let users know whether the content they are viewing is authentic. As the U.S presidential election comes up, technologies like this may prove useful.
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India is really not having it with certain Chinese-apps. It has banned 100 more apps including PUBG and VPN for Tik Tok and WeChat Work. The cause for the bans is cybersecurity concerns, according to TechCrunch. The country’s ministry said in a press release that there have been several reports of misuse of apps for stealing and transmitting data in servers outside of India. India had also banned Tik Tok and We Chat in June.
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. I’m Baneet Braich, thanks for listening.