Facebook sued by Rohingya for $150 bln; AWS had an outage; Microsoft adds dark mode to Notepad; 5G may interfere with aeroplane altimeters

Facebook, now called Meta, is being sued for more than $150 billion by dozens of Rohingya refugees in the UK and US, accusing the social media giant of allowing hate speech against them to spread, BBC reports. They are demanding this compensation, claiming Facebook's platforms promoted violence against the persecuted minority in Myanmar and that the internet company didn’t do enough to safeguard against being used as a platform for spreading hate in the country. An estimated 10,000 Rohingya Muslims were killed during a military crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar in 2017, according to BBC. Amazon Web Services, the world’s biggest cloud services provider, had an outage on Tuesday centred around its US-East-1 region (data centre), taking down Netflix, Disney+, some news sites, and affecting businesses and services around the world. The company’s status page reported increased error rates across multiple services that have now mostly all been resolved. Outside the US, AWS’s management console and support centre were affected. 5G is being touted as a game-changer around the world, but one of the first potentially serious problems with 5G has already surfaced in the aviation industry. Aeroplanes rely on radio altimeters to tell how high they are above the ground to safely land when pilots can’t see. The US Federal Aviation Administration is instructing 6,834 of them to not do that at certain airports because of 5G interference, The Verge reports. The FAA ruled that those thousands of US planes (and some helicopters) won’t be able to use many of the guided and automatic landing systems—that are designed to work in poor visibility conditions—if they are landing at an airport where there’s deemed to be enough 5G interference that their altimeters aren’t reliable, according to The Verge. Microsoft is rolling out a dark mode for its Notepad app, the company said in a blogpost. The feature is being rolled out to Windows Insiders in the Dev channel. Other additions include a redesigned find and replace experience and support for multi-level undo—another top community feature request, Dave Grochocki, Principal Program Manager Lead – Windows Inbox Apps, said in the blog post. In more Microsoft news, the company has launched a cybersecurity skilling programme in India that aims to skill over 100,000 people in 2022. The programme is designed to provide hands-on experience in the fundamentals of security, compliance, and identity, and includes certification. Microsoft will conduct these courses with its partners, including Cloudthat, Koenig, RPS, and Synergetics Learning. The course modules are designed to support all levels of learners. Grip Security, a Tel Aviv-based startup that helps companies protect their data in SaaS applications, has raised a $19 million Series A funding round led by Intel Capital, TechCrunch reports. YL Ventures, which led the company’s $6 million seed round earlier this year, also participated in this round, which brings Grip's total funding to $25 million. MoEngage, a customer engagement platform provider, has raised Series D funding of $30 million led by Steadview Capital, with participation from the company’s existing investors Multiples Alternate Asset Management, Eight Roads Ventures, F-Prime Capital and Matrix Partners India, according to a press release. MoEngage will use the money to continue to invest in AI-powered and insights-driven cross-channel engagement solutions.

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Every week day, Forbes India's Hari Arakali, Editor - Tech & Innovation, brings you his take on one piece of tech news that caught his attention, covering everything from big tech to India's growing tech startup ecosystem.