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Uganda’s Regressive Social Media Tax Stays, at Least For Now

The Ugandan parliament referred a controversial new social media tax to a committee for further consideration on Thursday, after protesters took to the streets of Kampala last week. The tax, which went into effect July 1, charges 200 Ugandan shillings (or $0.05) per day of use for 60 mobile apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Critics say it puts an undue burden on the poorest members of society, and that it is an assault on freedom of expression.

“The primary motivation behind [the social media tax] is to silence speech, to reduce the spaces where people can exchange information, and to really be able to control, with the recognition that online platforms have become the more commonly used way for sharing information,” says Joan Nyanyuki, Amnesty International Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn, and the Great Lakes.

While Uganda’s social media tax is the first of its kind, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, it follows [...]  read more

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Waze now works with Android Auto’s phone display

The Waze app has long been available for Android phones. This new update, however, is specifically referring to Waze on Android Auto on phones. This means you don’t need a car display unit to be able to use Waze on Android Auto.

This news comes on the heels of Apple’s announcement that iOS will finally open CarPlay to third-party maps with iOS 12. Waze and Google Maps will likely both be available when the new OS version launches this fall.

social experiment by Livio Acerbo #greengroundit #engadget https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/19/waze-android-auto-phone-display-compatible/

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Jido Maps is building a ‘save button’ for persistent AR worlds

Augmented reality tech is in this incredibly weird position where it has the world’s biggest tech companies cheerleading consumer-facing products highlighting it but there are some very base issues that haven’t been solved yet.

Jido Maps, which just graduated from Y Combinator’s most recent class, is another startup aiming to deliver the backend technologies needed to give a great fundamental AR experience. They have just raised a $2.1 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures with participation from GREE, Seraph Group, Outpost Capital and others.

Persistence is a big part of what current consumer technologies are lagging in. Jido sees itself as a “save button” for the digital AR world where after gaining an understanding of the space, it can recall where your augmented reality session ended and how the objects within that experience were left in the space.

So, more practically, if you are holding a digital banana and you put that on the table, Jido may enable that to remain in [...]  read more