2021 year in review – IT under attack

Twitter tells its employees to work from home forever while announcing the launch of a misinformation index, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk stands his ground as he defines local shutdown orders.

Outlets are reporting massive drops in cable and satellite subscribers, new facial recognition tech is giving everyone the heebie-jeebies, and reports about Apple looking to set up more production plants in India has turned heads on social media.

Tesla sues Alameda County to try and force the reopening of their factory in California, a group of teen hackers are accused of stealing millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, and Goole and Facebook double down on work from home policies.

Sidewalk Labs officially pulled out of Toronto after years of controversy, hacker bribed a Roblox worker to reveal user account data, Telus’ revenue falls by nearly 20 per cent year over year.

Today Shopify’s latest earnings call turns heads; Airbnb says it’s cutting a quarter of its staff; and a hacker buys old Tesla equipment and finds them full of user data.

WeWork’s ex-chief sues SoftBank, a popular children’s computer game gets hacked, and IBM’s Think conference goes virtual this week.

Anti-quarantine protesters jumped onto other social platforms after being shut down by Facebook, Amazon Vice President Tim Bray said Amazon is designed to create a climate of fear and quits the company, Apple releases new MacBook 13 with an improved keyboard and more storage.

Facebook is rolling out a tool that lets users in the US and Canada transfer photos and videos from its platform to Google Photos, Amazon says it plans to spend all of its profit for the second quarter, an estimated $4 billion, on its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and NVIDIA’s chief scientist rolls out designs for a low-cost open-source ventilator.

Google makes Meet video conferencing app free for everyone, Raspberry Pi gets a new high-definition camera attachment, Intel’s new consumer processors have up to 10 cores!

The City of Toronto partners with tech giants to provide free temporary internet access for vulnerable Torontonians, Elon Musk is under fire for recent Tweets, and a bizarre conspiracy involving Bill Gates is circulating online.

The Canadian government holds its first virtual House of Commons session on Zoom amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom and Oracle pen a new deal, and the British National Health Service is ditching an app proposed by Apple and Google in favour of its own to perform contact-tracing.

Foodora says goodbye to Canada, Ontario’s frontline healthcare workers get a boost from Telus and Koodo, and there’s suddenly a lot of talk about how the CES event in January may have helped spread COVID-19 before quarantine efforts were underway.

Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos and videos on computers, It turns out Nearly 50% of Twitter Accounts Talking about Coronavirus Might Be Bots, and the Air Force wants you to hack its satellite.

Google comes out with some strict rules for advertisers, AT&T customers are jumping ship by the thousands, and Apple plans to sell Macs with its own chips from 2021.