Category: Technology

Aurélia Gilbert is a survivor of the Bataclan. In the summer of 2020, she took a stand on Twitter in favor of the repatriation of the children of French jihadists in Syria, a tweet that earned her a wave of hatred. “I was told it was a shame that the terrorists missed me in the November 13 attacks at the Bataclan. The night that followed someone hacked my Twitter account and posted a message that contained my phone number. private staff. I decided to file a complaint because this limit had been crossed “.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office opens an investigation. But a few weeks ago, his complaint was dismissed. Twitter simply did not respond to the judicial requisition. Impossible, therefore, to identify the perpetrators of harassment. For Maître Éric Morain, lawyer for Aurélia Gilbert and two other victims of harassment, the social network is quite simply complicit in this hatred online: “In France when an authority issues a judicial requisition to ask you for information, you are required to do so otherwise you are committing an offense.”

“We will see what justice will decide but in any case we will have put on the public square the non judicial cooperation of Twitter”.

Master Éric Morain

to franceinfo

According to Éric Morain, who also defends thejournalist Nicolas Hénin, taken hostage in 2013 by the Islamic State group and Georges Salines, who lost his daughter in the Bataclan attack, this Twitter attitude, shows “that we clearly let monsters create themselves”. The lawyer believes in this strategy of battering, recalling that Facebook ended up cooperating with French justice. “We do not imagine for a moment that if a bank or a telephone operator refused to answer [à une réquisition], that the prosecutor is satisfied and the case is dismissed. They would be immediately called to order and prosecuted “, concludes the criminal lawyer.

You can get a simple rotary wing aircraft made from Danish terminal blocks for around ten euros. Unclear what is meant by this? How about this: A Lego helicopter doesn’t always have to be expensive. That sounds a lot more understandable, doesn’t it? In everyday language, certain terms sometimes prevail better than others. In this case, that could mean that Lego is so well known for its colorful stones that the brand name has become a generic term for such toys – similar to Tempo for paper tissues or hairdryers for hair dryers. Actually something good for such a company, one might think, as it shows the success of its products and broad market power.

However, some companies see it very differently. Lego, too: The billion-dollar company sees its trademark rights at risk from a Frankfurt dealer and Youtuber who sells terminal block sets from various manufacturers, puts them together in videos and reviews them. His name is Thomas Panke, and he’s out and about in his shop and on the Internet as the “hero of the stones”. He now got mail from a law firm that represents the Lego group. Again, you have to say: Lego took action against Panke before, in 2019 he had to change his logo, on which the typical knobs of terminal blocks could be seen.

This time, according to Panke, Lego sent an urgent request to delete some videos: he discusses construction sets from various manufacturers and calls the small plastic bricks “Lego” in several places – he apparently uses the word as a generic term. But this misleads users, says Lego, and damages the brand. When asked, the company only announced that users, mistakenly assuming that they were branded Lego products, could buy “a security-endangering imitation”.

Well, Thomas Panke sees it a little differently. He has published a video about it that has been viewed more than 2.1 million times. In it, he deals with the allegations partly seriously, partly ironically: he will of course delete the videos in question and record them again without using the word “Lego” for the terminal blocks shown. But a risk of confusion is actually excluded, after all, buyers would notice just by looking at the price tag and quality that it was not Lego. And that’s not a compliment: Like many other long-term customers and fans, Panke repeatedly criticizes that new Lego sets are becoming more and more expensive, while quality is falling.

Lego often comes off badly in these reviews, which are clicked hundreds of thousands of times. Most recently, Panke compared two red sports car models – one from Cada Master, one from Lego Technic. His conclusion: the remote-controlled Cada model with LED lights not only looks better and is cleverly designed, it is also much better equipped than the Lego model without all these electronic functions – but both cost around 180 euros.

The video review of the Lego model was titled “The Worst Ferrari in the World”. Harsh criticism that the company has to take again and again. Are these disputes perhaps only superficially about trademark rights and the question of whether Lego is, so to speak, the pace of the terminal blocks? Panke prefers to leave the assessment to the audience before the next letter comes from the lawyer.

Lancé en mars 2019 à grands renforts de publicité, Stadia Games & Entertainment devait être un nouveau poids lourd du secteur. À peine deux ans plus tard, la direction de Google vient d’annoncer que ce studio de production, installé sur deux sites à Montréal et à Los Angeles, allait mettre la clé sous la porte.

La patronne recrutée à l’époque, Jade Raymond, une figure du jeu vidéo, quitte l’entreprise et les 150 salariés seront recasés. Stadia Games n’aura sorti aucun jeu, mais certains titres, qui étaient presque terminés, devraient voir le jour malgré tout. Son but était de développer des jeux exclusifs pour la plateforme en ligne Stadia qui, elle, poursuit son activité, mais elle fera finalement appel à des titres produits par d’autres éditeurs.

Dans un communiqué, la direction explique que le projet initial risque de coûter trop cher. “Créer des jeux de premier ordre à partir de zéro prend de nombreuses années et des investissements importants, écrit Phil Harrison, directeur général de Google Stadia, avec un coût qui augmente de façon exponentielle.” Comme quoi, même quand on s’appelle Google, il est possible de se tromper dans ses calculs et ses estimations.

Cette affaire rappelle la mésaventure d’un autre géant dans le jeu vidéo. Amazon, lui aussi, s’est cassé les dents avec son Amazon Games Studios, lancé il y a huit ans. Malgré des investissements se chiffrant en centaines de millions de dollars, ses jeux ont été des échecs commerciaux.

Tout cela montre que le secteur du jeu vidéo est un marché difficile, qui nécessite une grande expertise, avec de grosses barrières à l’entrée. À l’inverse les poids lourds du secteur pour lesquels, au contraire, tout va bien, comme Sony, Microsoft ou encore le franco-québécois Ubisoft, eux, doivent se frotter les mains.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos pass the hand. The founder of Amazon announced Tuesday, February 2, that he would cede the role of CEO of the e-commerce giant in the third quarter of this year, while remaining chairman of its board. His successor will be Andy Jassy, ​​current head of Amazon Web Services, the group’s cloud arm, which is one of the most profitable.

“I will remain involved in the big decisions of Amazon”, wrote Jeff Bezos in a letter to his employees, while having “time and energy” to focus on his philanthropic works (the Day One Fund and the Earth Fund), his aerospace company Blue Origin and the daily Tea Washington post, which he owns.

Amazon emerges greatly strengthened from a year of pandemic which has exploded online commerce and remote computing needs (cloud). Its net profit doubled in the fourth quarter of 2020 to $ 7.2 billion. Jeff Bezos was until recently the richest man in the world, before being overtaken by Elon Musk, boss of Tesla, according to calculations by the Bloomberg agency.