Hashtag Trends Aug 30 – FTC sues data brokers. Solar panels installed on a waterway in California. NASA rocket launch delay

The FTC is suing data providers for selling sensitive location data, California wants to cover waterways with solar panels, and NASA is delaying rocket launches.

Welcome to hashtag trending. This is Tom Li, your host, on Tuesday, August 30th.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued a data provider for selling data that could track people in reproductive health clinics. The agency in question, Kochava Inc, purchases location information from mobile devices and packages them into custom data feeds. The data sold by Kochava Inc. also tracks people’s visits to addiction recovery facilities, homeless and domestic violence shelters, according to the FTC. The commission alleges that Cochaba exposes people to threats of stigma, stalking and discrimination by selling these data.

sauce: ViseFTC

California has announced an ambitious $20 million project to cover canals with a canopy of solar panels. The canopy, called Project Nexus, covers approximately 8,500 feet of the Turlock Irrigation District canal. In addition to providing solar power, the canopy blocks the sun and reduces evaporation in waterways. Project Nexus is an important proof of concept. If successful, its energy potential is enormous. If her 4,000 miles of public water systems in California were all covered, they could generate up to 13 gigawatts of electricity annually and save about 63 billion gallons of water. The project will start in the fall and is expected to be completed by 2023.

sauce: CBS news

The launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 rocket has been postponed due to engine problems. The rocket is NASA’s first Space Launch System rocket and carries a complete Orion spacecraft designed to carry a crew beyond Earth’s orbit. After waiting for the weather to improve, engineers discovered a leak in the rocket. The problem was eventually resolved, but the engineer discovered that one of the four engines he was not cooling enough. This was the final straw and the mission was aborted 40 minutes before his launch. According to WCCFtech, the next scheduled launch date for him is Sept. 2, but that possibility depends on his NASA research.

sauce: WCCF Tech

So a 30 terabyte portable solid state drive hit the shelves at Walmart for just $40. If that crazy deal is ringing your alarm bells, you’re right. Not only did the USB connector not meet the spec sheet, but the biggest con is its capacity. Inside the drive are two microSD cards glued together or a cheap USB pen drive. The seller then installs firmware that misreports the drive’s capacity, tricking the buyer into believing that they’ve actually won the deal. The message here is that if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is.

sauce: tom’s hardware

That’s all the tech news trending right now. Hashtag Trending is part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or Google Home Daily Briefing. Sign up for the Daily IT Wire newsletter and get all the important news straight to your inbox every day. Also, check out the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which airs every Thursday morning. If you have any suggestions or tips, let us know in the comments or email us. Thanks for listening, I’m Samira Bulsara.