United News of Bangladesh

Walton Digi-Tech Industries launched a laptop packaging design contest Saturday. This contest, which is open to all, will run till November 30. The contestants will be able to submit multiple designs. A panel of judges will select 13 winners. "The top three winners of the 'Walton Laptop Packaging Design Contest' will get Tk2 lakh, Tk50,000 and Tk30,000, respectively. The other 10 winners will get Tk10,000 each," according to a media statement. Read: vivo announces the visual creator short film contest in Bangladesh Professor Nisar Hossain, dean of the Faculty of Fine Art of the University of Dhaka, was present as the chief guest at the launching programme in Dhaka. Professor Sheikh Afzal Hossain, chairman of the Department of Drawing and Painting of the University of Dhaka, Professor Shishir Bhattacharjee of the same department and Walton Digi-Tech Chairman SM Rezaul Alam were also present. Read: Walton CEO, CMO score Bangladesh C-Suite Awards

The discourse was never all that civil on Twitter. The loudest voices have often drowned out softer, more nuanced takes. After all, it’s much easier to rage-tweet at a perceived enemy than to seek common ground, whether the argument is about transgender kids or baseball. In the chaos that has enveloped Twitter the platform — and Twitter the company — since Elon Musk took over, it has become clear this isn’t changing anytime soon. In fact, it’s likely to get much worse before it gets better — if it gets better at all. Musk, with his band of tech industry loyalists, arrived at Twitter just over a week ago ready to tear down the blue bird’s nest and rebuild it in his vision with breakneck speed. He quickly fired top executives and the board of directors, installed himself as the company’s sole director (for now) and declared himself “Chief Twit,” then “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” on his bio. Read: Influencers debate leaving Twitter, but where would they go? On Friday, he began mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, letting go about half of of its workers via email to return it to staffing levels not seen since 2014. All the while, he’s continued to tweet a mix of crude memes, half-jokes, SpaceX rocket launches and maybe-maybe not plans for Twitter that he seems to be workshopping on the site in real time. After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the “blue check” and some extra features, for instance, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted, “If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied. On Saturday, the company announced a subscription service for $7.99 monthly that allows anyone on Twitter to pay a fee for the check mark “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow” as well as some premium features — not yet available — like getting their tweets boosted above those coming from accounts without the blue check. The billionaire Tesla CEO also has repeatedly engaged with right-wing figures appealing for looser restrictions on hate and misinformation, received congratulations from Dimitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top associate and tweeted — then deleted — a baseless conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was attacked in his home. More than three dozen advocacy organizations wrote an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, calling on them to commit to halting advertising on the platform if Twitter under Musk undermines “brand safety” and guts content moderation. “Not only are extremists celebrating Musk’s takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree,” the letter said. One of Musk’s first moves was to fire the woman in charge of trust and safety at the platform, Vijaya Gadde. But he has kept on Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, and has taken steps to reassure users and advertisers that the site won’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape” that some fear it might. Read: Musk fires Twitter's board of directors becomes board's sole member On Friday, he tweeted that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline (asterisk)below(asterisk) our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press.” A growing number of advertisers are nevertheless pausing spending on Twitter while they reassess how Musk’s changes might increase objectionable material on the platform. Musk also met with some civil rights leaders “about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies,” according to a tweet he sent Nov. 1. But representatives of the LGBTQ community were notably absent from the meeting, even though its members are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside of such communities. Twitter did not respond to a message for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with LGBTQ groups. The mercurial billionaire has said he won’t make major decisions about content or restoring banned accounts — such as that of former President Donald Trump — before setting up a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints. The council, he later added, will include “the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.” But experts have pointed out that Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory council to address moderation questions. “Truly I can’t imagine how it would differ,” said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia law professor who sits on the council and has been working with Twitter since its infancy in 2009 to tackle online harms, such as threats and stalking. “Our council has the full spectrum of views on free speech.” Some amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings. But Musk’s murky plans for Twitter — especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies — are raising alarms about where one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems is headed. All that seems certain is that for now, at least, as Elon Musk goes, so goes Twitter. Read: Musk says Twitter blue tick being revamped “I hope that responsibility and maturity will win the day,” said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter civic integrity team leader who left the company before Musk took over. “It’s one thing to be a billionaire troll on Twitter and to try to get laughs with memes and to yuk it up. You are now the owner of Twitter and there’s a new level of responsibility.” For now, though, the memes appear to be winning. This concerns experts like Perez, who worry Musk is moving too fast without listening to people who have been working to improve civility on the platform and instead using his own insular experience as one of the platform’s most popular users with millions of fawning fans who hail his every move. “You have a single billionaire that is controlling something as influential as a social media platform like Twitter. And you have entire nation states (whose) political goals are inimical to our own, and they are trying to create chaos and they are directly courting favor” with Musk, Perez said. “There’s just no world in which all of that is normal,” he added. “That should absolutely concern us.” Twitter didn’t start out as a cesspool. And even now there are pockets of funny, weird, nerdy subgroups on the platform that remain somewhat insulated from the messy and confrontational place it can appear to be if one follows too many hotheaded agitators. But as with Facebook, Twitter’s rise also coincided with growing polarization and a measurable decline in online civility in the United States and beyond. “The big understanding that occurred between 2008 and 2012 is that the way to get traction, the way to get attention on any social media, Twitter included, was to use incendiary language — to challenge the basic humanity of the opposition,” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center. Things continued to devolve as the 2016 U.S. presidential election approached and passed, and the new president cemented his reputation as one of Twitter’s most incendiary users. After it was revealed that Russia used social media platforms to try to influence elections in the U.S. and other countries, the platforms found themselves became central figures in the political debate. “Do they have too much power? Do their content moderation policies privilege one side or another?” Rainie said. “The companies themselves found themselves in the thick of the most intense arguments in the culture. And so that’s the environment that Elon Musk is entering now.” And beyond the bluster and the outsized personality, Musk’s own description of his new job — “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” — may turn out to be his biggest challenge yet.

Posts and Telecommunications Minister Mustafa Jabbar on Sunday urged mobile operators to come up with a fixed rate for the internet packages they provide. Currently, the package rate is not acceptable and mobile data should be provided at a fixed rate, he said after inaugurating the latest benchmarking system at the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) to monitor the quality of service of mobile operators in the city. Read more: 5G internet within December: BTRC “Operators introduce and sell packages as they wish, there must be an acceptance when you sell the package,” Jabbar said. The minister also said the operators are unable to meet customer demand because 2018 spectrum and 2022 spectrum purchases are yet to be rolled out, he added. “And so, the customer service has to be questioned. We have put the operators under pressure. They have never before been under such pressure,” he added. Read more: Palak calls for Global Internet Governance Council & Frontier Technology Guidelines under UN The minister urged the BTRC to take steps to resolve the data package rate issue.

Pariss Chandler built a community for Black tech workers on Twitter that eventually became the foundation for her own recruitment company. Now she’s afraid it could all fall apart if Twitter becomes a haven for racist and toxic speech under the control of Elon Musk, a serial provocateur who has indicated he could loosen content rules. With Twitter driving most of her business, Chandler sees no good alternative as she watches the uncertainty play out. “Before Elon took over, I felt like the team was working to make Twitter a safer platform, and now they are kind of not there. I don’t know what’s going on internally. I have lost hope in that,” said Chandler, 31, founder of Black Tech Pipeline, a jobs board and recruitment website. “I’m both sad and terrified for Twitter, both for the employees and also the users.” Those qualms are weighing on many people who have come to rely on Twitter, a relatively small but mighty platform that has become a digital public square of sorts for influencers, policy makers, journalists and other thought leaders. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, took over Twitter last week in a $44 billion deal, immediately making his unpredictable style felt. Read: Musk fires Twitter's board of directors becomes board's sole member Just days later, he had tweeted a link to a story from a little-known news outlet that made a dubious claim about the violent attack on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their California home. He soon deleted it, but it was a worrying start to his tenure for those concerned about the spread of disinformation online. Musk has also signaled his intent to loosen the guardrails on hate speech, and perhaps allow former President Donald Trump and other banned commentators to return. He tempered the thought after the deal closed, however, pledging to form a “content moderation council” and not allow anyone who has been kicked off the site to return until it sets up procedures on how to do that. Yet the use of racial slurs quickly exploded in an apparent test of his tolerance level. “Folks, it’s getting ugly here. I am not really sure what my plan is. Stay or go?” Jennifer Taub, a law professor and author with about a quarter million followers, said Sunday, as she tweeted out a link to her Facebook page in case she leaves Twitter. For now, Taub plans to stay, given the opportunity it provides to “laugh, learn and commiserate” with people from across the world. But she’ll leave if it becomes “a cesspool of racism and antisemitism,” she said in a phone call. “The numbers are going down and down and down,” said Taub, who has lost 5,000 followers since Musk officially took over. “The tipping point might be if I’m just not having fun there. There are too many people to block.” The debate is especially fraught for people of color who have used Twitter to network and elevate their voices, while also confronting toxicity on the platform.

Instagram is rolling out new features, including a tool for making and selling digital collectibles, to help content creators earn revenue directly from their Instagram audience. Users of the Meta-owned online photo-sharing and social networking service can soon support content creators by buying their non-fungible tokens (NFTs) directly within the platform. "Creators will soon be able to make their own digital collectibles on Instagram and sell them to fans, both on and off Instagram. They'll have an end-to-end toolkit – from creation (starting on the Polygon blockchain) and showcasing, to selling," Meta said. "We're testing these new features with a small group of creators in the US first, and hope to expand to more countries soon," it added. Read more: Is your Instagram crashing?Meta said it is also expanding the types of digital collectibles that the users can showcase on Instagram to include video and adding support for the Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet, in addition to the blockchains and wallets that it already supports.  Also, Instagram creators can now earn money from fans who love their Reels. To support their favourite creators, fans can send gifts on Reels by buying Stars on Instagram.  Read more: Restricted from Twitter, Instagram; Kanye to buy conservative social network Parler Meta has been adding features for content creators to help them reach an audience, grow their communities, and make money on its social media apps as it competes with TikTok and others at a time when influencers are driving revenue to these platforms through advertising.

Global ICT infrastructure and solutions provider Huawei, has come up with a 5G network, 4L autonomous driving and other technological innovations to make ports smart, safer and efficient. Recently, a smart terminal was built by Tianjin Port Group (TPG), together with Huawei and other partners. This initiative was taken to deal with port congestion that caused severe disruptions in global supply chains, goods handling problems and other port-related issues resulting in a decrease in overall efficiency. At the Tianjin Port, under the guidance of the BeiDou navigation satellite system, the whole process of moving the container trucks to the automatic locking and unlocking stations can now be completed in one go. "The intelligent and digital transformation of the port has led to tangible benefits and increased efficiency. Now, each container at the Tianjin Port consumes 20 percent less energy, and cranes are 20 percent more efficient on average, with each crane operating 39 container units per hour," Huawei said in a statement. Read: Huawei launches all-band 5G solution series Jason Li, board member of Huawei Bangladesh, said: "Smart ports and terminals can be the focal point in the next few years for realising the Smart Bangladesh vision. If Bangladesh can turn Chattogram and Mongla ports into smart ones, it will have very positive impacts on the economy and also help to address the problems in daily operations at ports." Tianjin port is one of China's most technologically advanced ports and a vital hub for the One Belt One Road initiative. It has a 300000-ton-class wharf with a channel depth of 22 meters. It has 192 berths of various types and 128 berths above the 10,000-ton-class. By the end of 2021, the port's cargo throughput reached 435 million tons, ranking ninth in the world, while the container throughput exceeded 18.35 million TEUs, ranking the eighth port in the world.

Meta-owned messaging service WhatsApp rolled out “Communities” — a new feature offering larger, more structured discussion groups — today. The feature will bring together separate groups under bigger umbrellas where administrators can send alerts to a community of thousands. Designed to help organisations, clubs, schools, and other private groups communicate better, this latest feature will allow people to receive updates sent to the entire community and easily organise smaller discussion groups. Read: WhatsApp services restored after longest reported outage "Today we're launching Communities on WhatsApp. It makes groups better by enabling sub-groups, multiple threads, announcement channels, and more," Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message today. “We're also rolling out polls and 32-person video calling too. All are secured by end-to-end encryption so your messages stay private,” Zuckerberg added. WhatsApp will now allow chat groups to have up to 1,024 users, much higher than the 256 participants restriction it had until recently, according to a company statement. Read: WhatsApp pushes privacy update to comply with Irish ruling Telegram and Discord, rivals of WhatsApp, allow thousands of members in group chats. According to Meta's Twitter handle, WhatsApp's new feature will be available to everyone over the next few months.

Indian-origin IT executive Sriram Krishnan is “helping out” Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk as he makes changes to the social media platform. At the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Krishnan is a general partner, according to an NDTV report.   Krishnan tweeted, “Now that the word is out: I’m helping out @elonmusk with Twitter temporarily with some other great people. I (and a16z) believe this is a hugely important company and can have a great impact on the world and Elon is the person to make it happen.” Read: Musk fires Twitter's board of directors becomes board's sole member Krishnan invests in early-stage consumer startups, and, according to his profile on Andreessen Horowitz’s website, he sits on the boards of Bitski, Hopin, and Polywork. Krishnan held a number of senior product positions before joining a16z, and according to his profile, most recently he “led core consumer teams at Twitter where he was responsible for products including the home timeline, new user experience, search, discovery, and audience growth”. According to his profile, he previously established and directed a number of mobile ad products for Facebook and Snap, including the Facebook Audience Network, one of the biggest networks for display advertising, and Snap’s Direct Response advertisements business. Read: Musk says Twitter blue tick being revamped

Billionaire Elon Musk is already floating major changes for Twitter — and faces major hurdles as he begins his first week as the owner of the social-media platform. Twitter's new owner fired the company's board of directors and made himself the board's sole member, according to a company filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk later said on Twitter that the new board setup is “temporary,” but he didn't provide any details. He's also testing the waters on asking users to pay for verification. A venture capitalist working with Musk tweeted a poll asking how much users would be willing to pay for the blue check mark that Twitter has historically used to verify higher-profile accounts so other users know it’s really them. Read more: Musk says Twitter blue tick being revamped Musk, whose account is verified, replied, “Interesting.” Critics have derided the mark, often granted to celebrities, politicians, business leaders and journalists, as an elite status symbol. But Twitter also uses the blue check mark to verify activists and people who suddenly find themselves in the news, as well as little-known journalists at small publications around the globe, as an extra tool to curb misinformation coming from accounts that are impersonating people. “The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk tweeted Sunday in response to a user who asked for help getting verified. Read more: Musk tweets conspiracy theory about attack on Pelosi's husband, then deletes it On Friday, meanwhile, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said he and his Kingdom Holding Company rolled over a combined $1.89 billion in existing Twitter shares, making them the company’s largest shareholder after Musk. The news raised concerns among some lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. Murphy tweeted that he is requesting the Committee on Foreign Investment — which reviews acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreign buyers — to investigate the national security implications of the kingdom's investment in Twitter “We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting U.S. politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform,” Murphy tweeted. “There is a clear national security issue at stake and CFIUS should do a review.” Read More: Lay-off at Twitter: Elon Musk seeks list of staff according to report Having taken ownership of the social media service, Musk has invited a group of tech-world friends and investors to help guide the San Francisco-based company's transformation, which is likely to include a shakeup of its staff. Musk last week fired CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives. There's been uncertainty about if and when he could begin larger-scale layoffs. “I do think there will be a lot of layoffs,” said Matthew Faulkner, an assistant finance professor at San Jose State University. Faulkner noted the need for cost-cutting after Musk bought Twitter for a premium and the platform’s longtime struggles trying to turn a profit. But Musk might also want as quickly as possible to weed out employees who don’t believe in his mission so that those who stay feel more secure. “You don’t want to have frantically scared employees working for you,” Faulkner said. “That doesn’t motivate people.” Read More: Musk seeks US funds for satellite network in Ukraine Those who have revealed they are helping Musk include Sriram Krishnan, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which pledged back in the spring to chip into Musk's plan to buy the company and take it private. Krishnan, who is also a former Twitter product executive, said in a tweet that it is “a hugely important company and can have a great impact on the world and Elon is the person to make it happen.” Jason Calacanis, the venture capitalist who tweeted the poll about whether users would pay for verification, said over the weekend he is “hanging out at Twitter a bit and simply trying to be as helpful as possible during the transition.” Read More: Musk says Twitter deal could move ahead with 'bot' info Calacanis said the team already “has a very comprehensive plan to reduce the number of (and visibility of) bots, spammers, & bad actors on the platform.” And in the Twitter poll, he asked if users would pay between $5 and $15 monthly to “be verified & get a blue checkmark” on Twitter. Twitter is currently free for most users because it depends on advertising for its revenue. Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April but it wasn't until Thursday evening that he finally closed the deal, after his attempts to back out of it led to a protracted legal fight with the company. Musk's lawyers are now asking the Delaware Chancery Court to throw out the case, according to a court filing made public Monday. The two sides were supposed to go to trial in November if they didn't close the deal by the end of last week. Musk has made a number of pronouncements since early this year about how to fix Twitter, and it remains unclear which proposals he will prioritize. Read More: Looming Musk-Twitter legal battle hammers company shares He has promised to cut back some of Twitter's content restrictions to promote free speech, but said Friday that no major decisions on the content or reinstating of banned accounts will be made until a “content moderation council” with diverse viewpoints is put in place. He later qualified that remark, tweeting “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.” The head of a cryptocurrency exchange that invested $500 million in Musk’s Twitter takeover said he had a number of reasons for supporting the deal, including the possibility Musk would transition Twitter into a company supporting cryptocurrency and the concept known as Web3, which many cryptocurrency enthusiasts envision as the next generation of the internet. “We want to make sure that crypto has a seat at the table when it comes to free speech,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao told CNBC on Monday (October 31, 2022). “And there are more tactical things like we want to help bring Twitter into Web3 when they’re ready.” Read More: Elon Musk's $44 billion Twitter deal gets board endorsement He said cryptocurrency could be useful for solving some of Musk’s immediate challenges, such as the plan to charge a premium membership fee for more users. “That can be done very easily, globally, by using cryptocurrency as a means of payment,” he said.

The White House is bringing together three dozen nations, the European Union and a slew of private-sector companies for a two-day summit starting Monday that looks at how best to combat ransomware attacks. The second International Counter Ransomware Summit will focus on priorities such as ensuring systems are more resilient to better withstand attacks and disrupt bad actors planning such assaults. A senior Biden administration official cited recent attacks such as one that targeted the Los Angeles school district last month to underscore the urgency of the issue and the summit. The official previewed the event on the condition of anonymity. Read: G-20 summit could put Biden in the same room with Putin and MBS Among the administration officials planning to participate in the event are FBI Director Christopher Wray, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. President Joe Biden is not expected to attend. Participating countries are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, the European Commission, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. Read: Foundation of US democracy being called into question: Obama Companies that will take part include Crowdstrike, Mandiant, Cyber Threat Alliance, Microsoft, Cybersecurity Coalition, Palo Alto, Flexxon, SAP, the Institute for Security + Technology, Siemens, Internet 2.0, Tata – TCS and Telefónica. The previous summit took place virtually.