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Tech News Today for August 17, 2017

Tech News for Thursday August 17, 2017

More tech leaders are speaking out against President Donald Trump's response to the racist violence in Charlottesville and donating to non-profits. In an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press, Apple’s Tim Cook says "I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights." He also says he will give $1 million each to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League as well as matching employee donations to human rights groups. Meanwhile, Facebook's Sheryl Sanberg has transferred just under a 100 million dollars worth of Facebook stock to her non-proftis and other charities. Sanberg has also spoken out against white supremacists. Read more at recode.net.

The tech fallout for tech companies and services post-Charlottesville has been like a row of dominoes toppling over one by one. Early on, GoDaddy and Google… then Faceook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit worked to remove hateful content that could potentially incite more violence. Airbnb, Wordpress and Mailchimp also limited their services accordingly. Apple cut off Apple Pay support for a number of sites selling Nazi clothing and memorobilia. Spotify even began removing “hate bands” from its catalog. Yesterday, shortly before the show, the CEO of Cloudflare decided he had enough and pulled the plug on DDoS protection for the Daily Stormer, a move that goes counter to the company’s long-time policy of staying neutral when it comes to the content its services touch. Read more at gizmodo.com.

If you've ever wanted to wander around inside stranger's homes, now you can with Google Earth. Today Google Earth updated its “This is Home” feature with new traditional and indiginous home walkthroughs all over the world. So walk in someone else's shoes for a while, sit on the bench of Nepalese Sherpa, and crouch in the corner of an Inuit igloo. Looking at people's homes in places across the globe can show how others have adapted to their own varying landscapes. The feature is also designed to digitally preserve different cultures facing economic, environmental and population pressures. Read more at qz.com.

We now know what a top of the line Android phone bearing Nokia’s name is like. HMD Global unveiled the Nokia 8, a 5.3” smartphone with the top of the line Snapdragon 835 processor, 4 gigs of RAM, a 13 megapixel dual camera array, and a new camera mode with a name that might give you nightmares. Bothie mode will combine the front and rear cameras into an image simultaneously. Read more at theverge.com.

Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Kerry Davis of Engadget to talk about robot farming. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and get it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.

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