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In 1995, Bill Gates, then CEO of one of the world's most successful companies, made some daring predictions about the future we're now living in. Most of those predictions were uncanny in their accuracy, although a few were completely off-base. Now, 25 years later, with a new book coming out next year, he's looking back at those predictions, grading his own younger effort, and looking ahead to what's next.Here are some of Gates' most amazing predictions from 1995.1. He foresaw smartphones almost exactly."I was thinking and learning about these things obsessively back then," Gates writes in a new blog post that looks back at his 1995 book The Road Ahead. That effort paid off when he looked ahead at what he called "the wallet PC." Aside from the name, he was describing today's smartphone in startling detail. Here's some of what he wrote back in 1995:It will be about the same size as a wallet, which means you'll be able to carry it in your pocket or purse. It will display messages and schedules and let you read or send electronic mail and faxes, monitor weather and stock reports, and play both simple and sophisticated games. At a meeting, you might…

LEWISBURG — Reaction was mixed to a photo posted on social media depicting a local State House member apparently after a state ban of on-premises alcohol sales went into effect.Rep. David Rowe (R-85) was photographed holding a cellphone at 5:01 p.m., Thanksgiving Eve at a tavern, one minute after a one-night state prohibition of sales for consumption in bars or restaurants took hold. A half-full glass of an amber liquid was in his other hand.“Happy Thanksgiving Governor Tom Wolf!” was the message over the photo posted Thursday, an apparent reference to the governor’s order that was meant to inhibit gatherings that could further the spread of COVID-19. The order stopped sales but permitted consumption on-premises through 6 p.m. Rowe was not wearing a facial covering, which was permissible during eating or drinking while seated. Kendra Aucker, Evangelical Community Hospital president and CEO, reportedly was among the sources of several thousand posts.“My team at the Hospital is working diligently with more sick people than you can imagine,” it read. “This type of post by a leader in our region at Thanksgiving is demoralizing.”Others called Rowe “a disgrace,” referred to the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 or were laced with profanities.…

SALT LAKE CITY — The Better Business Bureau has a warning as we head into Black Friday deals and the holiday season: Be careful what you purchase from social media advertisements.The ads you see scrolling on your phone may not be what arrives at your front door. Take it from Susan Stankye.Back in October, the Connecticut woman described coming across a beautiful sea glass miniature Christmas tree on Facebook."I go all out for decorating for Christmas, and they would look perfect in my bathroom which has other sea glass," Stankye told FOX 13.Buy two for just under $40, she indicated the advertisement said, and get free shipping."So I ordered them, and I figured, 'Wow, what a good deal!'" she recounted.Debbie Nuckols in Virginia figured the same thing when she set her eyes on an ad for a kid-sized dinosaur. For her, it was the perfect Christmas gift for her twin grandsons."It showed the little boy bouncing on it, and it interacting with the little boy like it could talk to it and it would react, you know, in certain ways," Nuckols said of what the ad video portrayed.While there weren't any reviews that Nuckols could find of the product, she…

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Gain a global perspective on the US and go beyond with curated news and analysis from 600 journalists in 50+ countries covering politics, business, innovation, trends and more. Choose your subscription Trial Try full digital access and see why over 1 million readers subscribe to the FT For 4 weeks receive unlimited Premium digital access to the FT's trusted, award-winning business news Read more Digital Be informed with the essentialnews and opinion MyFT – track the topics most important to you FT Weekend – full access to the weekend content Mobile & Tablet Apps – download to read on the go Gift Article – share up to 10 articles a month with family, friends and colleagues Read more Print FT print edition delivered Monday - Saturday along with ePaper access Delivery to your home or office Monday to Saturday FT Weekend paper – a stimulating blend of news and lifestyle features ePaper access – the digital replica of the printed newspaper Read more Team or Enterprise Premium FT.com access for multiple users, with integrations & admin tools Group Subscription Premium digital access plus: Convenient access for groups of users Integration with third party platforms and CRM systems Usage based pricing…

By DJ Simmons Published 6:00 am EST, Wednesday, November 25, 2020 Westport native Remi Ray helped spearhead a Facebook campaign to spotlight Black-owned businesses for the month of November. Westport native Remi Ray helped spearhead a Facebook campaign to spotlight Black-owned businesses for the month of November. Photo: DJ Simmons/Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: DJ Simmons/Hearst Connecticut Media Westport native Remi Ray helped spearhead a Facebook campaign to spotlight Black-owned businesses for the month of November. Westport native Remi Ray helped spearhead a Facebook campaign to spotlight Black-owned businesses for the month of November. Photo: DJ Simmons/Hearst Connecticut Media In the wake of George Floyd’s death, which sparked protests across the country this summer, a Westport native helped spearhead a campaign at Facebook to promote Black-owned businesses and to help the Black community. “During the racial reckoning that took place this summer a lot of us at the company were thinking of ways we could help the Black community,” said Remi Ray, small business marketing lead on the Global Customer Marketing Small Business Group at Facebook. Ray, a Staples graduate, said 41 percent of Black-owned small businesses have already closed this year due to the coronavirus — twice the rate of white-owned…

OAKLAND, Calif. — (AP) — For the past four years, President Donald Trump has enjoyed the special status of a world leader on Twitter and Facebook, even as he used his perch atop the social media pyramid to peddle misinformation and hurl abuse at his critics. While regular users could have faced being suspended or even booted from the platforms, Trump's misleading proclamations and personal attacks have thus far only garnered warning labels. But could his loose leash on the platforms be yanked on Jan. 20 when his successor, Joe Biden, is inaugurated? Here are some questions and answers about what the companies have done — and not done — why Twitter's response has been stronger than Facebook's and what, if anything we might see from the platforms in the coming weeks and months, once their most high-profile user is no longer in the White House. WHY ARE SO MANY OF TRUMP’S TWEETS LABELED? Ever since he lost his reelection bid, Trump has been spreading falsehoods about purported election fraud and otherwise trying to delegitimize Biden's win. For the most part, Twitter and Facebook have responded by adding what look like warning labels to his statements, gently guiding people to…

Employees and executives are battling over how to reduce misinformation and hate speech without hurting the company’s bottom line.VideoCreditCredit...Alvaro DominguezNov. 24, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETSAN FRANCISCO — In the tense days after the presidential election, a team of Facebook employees presented the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, with an alarming finding: Election-related misinformation was going viral on the site.President Trump was already casting the election as rigged, and stories from right-wing media outlets with false and misleading claims about discarded ballots, miscounted votes and skewed tallies were among the most popular news stories on the platform.In response, the employees proposed an emergency change to the site’s news feed algorithm, which helps determine what more than two billion people see every day. It involved emphasizing the importance of what Facebook calls “news ecosystem quality” scores, or N.E.Q., a secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.Typically, N.E.Q. scores play a minor role in determining what appears on users’ feeds. But several days after the election, Mr. Zuckerberg agreed to increase the weight that Facebook’s algorithm gave to N.E.Q. scores to make sure authoritative news appeared more prominently, said three people with knowledge of…

Vietnam is threatening again to shut down Facebook due to official perceptions the US social media giant isn’t doing enough to censor content critical of the ruling Communist Party. With an estimated 60 million users, nearly two-thirds of the Vietnamese population is on the social media platform. Facebook releases a biannual transparency report, which indicates that it restricted 834 posts at the request of the Vietnamese government between January and June 2020. The figure represents a big jump from the 121 items Facebook took down at Hanoi’s request during the same six-month period in 2019 and the 77 it censored from July to December 2019. Over that period, popular Facebooker and pro-democracy advocate Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison under the 2005 Criminal Code for posting allegedly “anti-state” material. According to the 88 Project, an independent rights group that keeps a thorough database of Vietnamese political prisoners, there has been a surge of similar arrests and prison sentences handed to Vietnamese Facebook users, known locally as “Facebookers”, for “anti-state” posts over the past year. Facebook’s aid to Vietnamese authorities in erasing dissent from its platform has been well documented in recent years. Bloggers…