TikTok

So the TikTok ban came and went in less than 24 hours. There are still a lot of points of discussion around this and a lot of things that could potentially be decided could have some major knock on effects to the rest of the tech industry as a whole.

People beginning to use VPNs and all is certainly something that people have been doing for years to get around restrictions. It is a fine line and something that really shouldn't be done as you never know how these things will come back to haunt you.

Downloading a random different app that is in a language you don't speak is also a terrible idea. You don't understand what you are agreeing to and how your data is going to be used or collected.

Overall I am glad to see that TikTok is back and it seems to have a few paths to continuing to be back. From my Security background I would like to see it being owned by a US based company, but I don't think this completely removes all tracking concerns.

Flutter

So I have recently been starting to work with Flutter to build some mobile applications in my free time. I have previously worked with React Native and certainly fought many different parts of it. Overall Flutter is seeming really nice and overall more performant than React Native.

One of the biggest problems I had with React Native was the whole Expo piece and then having to eject the app and doing all of these things to just make it work. Ultimately I am writing the code and I want to be able to just work with it. React Native always felt like Electron for the phone which is just not great.

I do want to continue to provide more Flutter items as I work through them so certainly watch for some videos of working with Flutter.

T-Mobile and Starlink

So T-Mobile is starting to Beta Test using StarLink satellites to help expand their coverage. I signed up for the Beta, but haven't been added yet. Overall this is an interesting approach. It sounds like all it will really support initially is texting. Which still is an amazing leap forward. I would hope that phone calls would be close behind, but we shall see.

Hopefully I will be able to get in and go to some place to really test it out and see how well it works.

Colossal Biosciences

If you haven't heard of this company they are attempting to bring back the Woolly Mammoth (cue Jurassic Park Theme Music). They just finished another round of funding and are supposedly making good progress towards accomplishing their goal. Overall it would be a super interesting thing to see happen. However it also begs the question of, "Are we ready for the Woolly Mammoth to come back?"