The court ruled that the evidence presented at trial was “legally sufficient” to support the murder conviction. “That evidence did little if anything to answer the key question of Appellant’s intent when he walked away from Cooper,” the opinion said, “but it was likely to lead the jurors to conclude that Appellant was the kind of man who would engage in other morally repulsive conduct (like leaving his child to die painfully in a hot car) and who deserved punishment …” Justin Ross Harris trial: Jury to weigh fate of dad in boy's hot-car death The Georgia Supreme Court evidently agreed, with the majority writing in their opinion Wednesday that prosecutors presented “extensive evidence” that “convincingly demonstrated that Appellant was a philanderer, a pervert, and even a sexual predator.” But the state, his attorney said in closing arguments, was using it to paint his client as “so immoral, he is so reprehensible that he can do exactly this.” On the day Harris was accused of intentionally leaving his son in the hot car, he was sexting with six women, including a minor, according to phone records.ĭefense attorneys rejected this, maintaining Harris’ sexual behavior was unrelated to his son’s death. But he was also engaged in online sexual communication with multiple women - including two underage girls - while also carrying on extramarital sexual encounters in public. To make their case, prosecutors pointed to what they described as a “double life.” In one, Cooper was a loving father and husband to his wife, family and friends. While witnesses at the scene said Harris appeared distraught, Cobb County prosecutors argued at trial he intentionally left Cooper locked inside his car that day so he could be free of family obligations.ĭefense attorneys, meantime, argued Cooper’s death was a tragic accident caused by his father’s lapse in memory.Įvidence did little to answer question of intent, court rules He pulled into a shopping center parking lot, pulling the child’s body from the SUV. But it wasn’t until that afternoon while he was driving to a nearby movie theater that Harris claimed to notice his son was still in the car. He stopped by the car early that afternoon, purportedly to put away some light bulbs he had purchased. Instead of dropping his son off at day care afterward, he went to work, parked and went inside, leaving Cooper strapped in the car for the next seven hours. On a hot summer day in June 2014, Harris strapped Cooper into his rear-facing car seat in the back of his car and drove from his family’s home to a nearby Chick-fil-A. The office declined further comment when contacted by CNN, saying “the opinion is an extensive one and we are still in the review process.”ĬNN reached out to attorneys for Harris for comment but did not immediately hear back. The Cobb County District Attorney’s Office plans to file a motion for the court to reconsider its ruling, the office said in a statement Wednesday. Harris was sentenced to 12 years in all on those three charges: Ten years for one count of attempt to commit sexual exploitation of a child, and one year each for two counts of dissemination of harmful material to a minor, according to the court’s ruling. Per its ruling, the Georgia Supreme Court only reversed Harris’ convictions regarding the crimes against his son Harris had not challenged the others in his appeal, the ruling said, and they remain in place. In addition to three counts of murder, Harris was found guilty of two counts of cruelty to children for Cooper’s death, and guilty of three counts related to his electronic exchanges of lewd material with a minors. “Because the properly admitted evidence that Appellant maliciously and intentionally left Cooper to die was far from overwhelming,” the court’s opinion said, “we cannot say that it is highly probable that the erroneously admitted sexual evidence did not contribute to the jury’s guilty verdicts.” READ: Georgia Supreme Court overturns hot car death conviction Justin Ross Harris, who prosecutors said intentionally left his 22-month-old son strapped inside a hot car to die because he wanted to live a child-free life, sits in Cobb County Magistrate Court in Marietta, Georgia, U.S.
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If we find more, we will add them.LightShot allows you to select any area on a desktop and to do its screenshot by 2 clicks. There are still many free applications to take a screenshot for Windows 10 on the market. Share your screenshot to all social media or upload and save them to cloud storage or personal server via FTP.ĭownload Screenpresso from download page or use this direct link. Capture Android device screen that connected to your PC/Laptop.Convert image and comments into HTML, PDF, or Microsoft Word with extension.Libraries and workspace to track your capture history.Core Screenpresso Features Based on Free Editions: For personal use, the free version has core features that suit for daily use. Screenpresso has three editions: Free, Pro, and Enterprise. Screenpresso was available on the installer and portable version. Capture your screen with various modes: Full-screen, selected region only, capture mouse cursor position, delay time before capture active, and more. To start, press your Screen Print key, and you will see how the Screenpresso work. This tool is easy to use even you never use it. For the Business and Enterprise level, there are custom deployment options, where the MSI installer is provided to disable specific policy features. Translated into 19 languages and support 圆4 Windows OS. Screenpresso designed for personal and enterprise-grade. Customizable hotkeys for each task mode.ĭownload Screenshot Captor from official site.Support multiple screenshot mode: Scrolling Capture, Multimon (multiple monitors), Active Window, Desktop, Windows Object, Region. Easy upload and share screenshot result.Easy edit images with built-in image editor and tools.Support capturing screens from webcams easily. Add ESR add-ons, and you can record videos with this tool. Easy to edit your images: add text, arrow, add effects, and more. This advanced screenshot app has many tools that help you optimize your screenshot. Screenshot Captor is not for novice users. Check on this page for full Lightshot hotkeys list.ĭownload Lightshot here. To track your screenshot history you need an account and sign in into. You can save the captured image to local disk, copy to clipboard, share with social media, print it, and more features and tools to edit your image. Easy to use, press your Print Screen key or click Lightshot icon on the taskbar, then start to select the area that you want to capture. Lightshot is another popular screenshot app that supports social media sharing. – Lifetime free upgrades all future version. Adjust image quality, control your hotkey for easy use, and other customizable advanced settings and options.Ī color palette, color picker, pixel ruler, magnifier, crosshair, whiteboard, protractor.Įasy to share your images on social media, send via web and email, or upload to cloud storage. Take the app control setting that suit your need. Add text, shapes, arrows and more.Įasy to add effects to your captured images such as watermark, drop shadows, mosaic, frames and you can control the brightness of the image. You can use this app to capture a specific region, full-screen, active windows only, or scrolling window to capture long page.Įdit your image with the built-in editor. More details about the PicPick described below. Free and Pro editions have all core functions and no hidden features. Installer and the portable version is available on both editions. PicPick was offering FREE and PRO (paid) editions. If you are looking screenshot tool with advanced features and functionalities, you may try and then choose one of them. We try to list the best free screenshot tool available on the market and actively developed. If you want to use an alternative third-party screenshot tool to take a screenshot for Windows 10, you have a lot of options. However, the default Windows 10 screenshot tool doesn't meet a requirement for some users. Windows 10 has a built-in screenshot tool that you can use. Navigational Waypoints that show in 3D world Extra Content now has free and paid options Very responsive, lots of options, great map creator and overall nice way to show what the iPad can do. I was so surprised at the level of detail in this game. Heck, even if you aren't into trains, if you like creating cities or nature scenes or whatever, you can get totally engrossed in this app. This is just scratching the surface of the library of objects you can choose from. I shaped every mountain, placed every tree, laid every track, and painted every texture. I created this mountain layout entirely from scratch. The process is actually akin to artistry as you glide, slide and stretch the on-screen elements in an effort to create your own masterpiece. allowing your fingers to directly select, move and manipulate objects and landscapes on the screen. Trainz is now available on the iPad – OMG, what a great app to have with you on the road or stuck somewhere. Build and customize your own living railroad using our advanced route creation tool called “Surveyor”.More Accessible! Take Trainz with you anytime, anywhere.Touch input makes driving Trains, laying tracks, creating layouts and completing scheduled tasks a breeze.You can build a fun layout in minutes, faithfully recreate a railroad from days gone by or develop a fully fledged prototypical route the choice is yours. Trainz Simulator is is packed full of content, routes and sessions and is a world first for iPad!Įverything you need to build and operate your own dream railroad is included. With Trainz custom built input system to get the most out of the iPad’s touch functionality you’ll find driving Trains, laying tracks, creating layouts and completing scheduled tasks a breeze. Top 5 Ranked Simulator iPad App in over 100 Countries.#1 Ranked Overall iPad App in 20 countries including USA, UK and Australia.Choose either easy or realistic driving modes, and take charge of your favorite trains from around the world. Build and operate the railroad of your dreams in an incredible 3D world. Snow Rider 3D can help you grow more gray matter in your brain. Special video games have also been used to help stroke victims regain control of their hands and wrists as a form of physical therapy. Researchers discovered that surgeons who played video games were faster at completing sophisticated procedures and made 37% fewer mistakes than those who didn't. Video games using controllers might be beneficial to your hands. Playing online games on our website can aid in the development of manual dexterity. Snow Rider 3D actually requires coordination between eyes and hands therefore, it is a great way to check your speed, noting several guidelines, tips, and even navigation to you about how to regulate and improve it. However, make sure that you need to play them with a suitable schedule to prevent unwanted consequences related to health and psychology. Therefore, regardless of level, background, grade, and age can experience those. games in general, Snow Rider 3D in particular. It’s not hard to control all types of io. In order not to be interrupted by unexpected troubles, you need to equip a not very old computer and a high-speed network connection. Nevertheless, it requires a lot of service resources. You can play Snow Rider 3D and other the newest or the most popular types in your browser. It is a wise choice to cooperate with other gamers as you can easily accumulate hands-on experiences and skills in order to become a master. You need to comprehensively understand all the rules before starting to play. We always make an effort to make the game thrilling and exhilarating to ensure that you can have a whale of a time during being on Tips for SuccessĪlthough almost Snow Rider 3D isn’t tough to get access to and play, it requires a great deal of concentration to become a good player or even master. It is not essential that you have some experiences or not, the most crucial thing is that you truly want something that can help you let your hair down instantly By dint of this, you can easily become masters. Make sure that you thoroughly understand them. You will have the opportunity to experience Snow rider 3D with no charge online at Īll rules are easy to comprehend. You are able to transform friends and family to have the ability to win the best score. When you have more than 10 sleighs, you can unlock them using gifts. Try to go as far as you can to get a high score, collecting all gifts to acquire sleighs. Make sure to jump over and prevent hitting any obstacles. As the obstacles are over the region, you ought to be really careful while sledding. The target is to avoid obstacles and accumulate as many presents as possible. You will ride a lead down the snowy mountain to avoid giant snowmen, rolling snowballs, and big trees and receive gifts. This game gives you an opportunity to slide down a giant mountain, immersing yourself in the world of beautifully white snow surrounding you. Snow Rider 3D is designed based on the idea to bring Christmas all year round. io games as you can see in the current day. This paved the way for a new gaming industry to develop, creating a variety of types of. Astonishingly, Agar.io exponentially became mainstream within several months, attracting thousands of gamers from four corners of the world thanks to its extremely exhilarating style. The io game genre all started out with the discharge of an insanely addicting game, namely Agar.io which was probably inspired by another game called Osmos. We also sort.io games into numerous categories, such as top-rated or newest, so you can quickly find your favorites. This website has all of the most recent io games, such as taming.io, as well as some of the most popular titles, such as Frinker.io, Snow Rider 3D, and Skribbl.io. We all put in a lot of effort to improve and develop.io games that you can play in your browser without having to download anything or create a merchant account, with the goal of giving customers a nice experience while performing deals on our website. Snow Rider 3D is an online site where you can play various types of online games with no extra fee. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. Lee, C.Y., Osindero, S.: Recursive recurrent nets with attention modeling for OCR in the wild. In: International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (2018) Laroca, R., et al.: A robust real-time automatic license plate recognition based on the YOLO detector. In: Fuzzy Systems Association and International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems (2017) Hurtik, P., Vajgl, M.: Automatic license plate recognition in difficult conditions - technical report. Hui Li, C.S.: Reading car license plates using deep convolutional neural networks and LSTMS (2016) (eds.) Trends in Applied Knowledge-Based Systems and Data Science, pp. In: Fujita, H., Ali, M., Selamat, A., Sasaki, J., Kurematsu, M. He, S., Yang, C., Pan, J.S.: The research of chinese license plates recognition based on CNN and length\_feature. Gou, C., Wang, K., Yao, Y., Li, Z.: Vehicle license plate recognition based on extremal regions and restricted Boltzmann machines. In: IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. Girshick, R., Donahue, J., Darrell, T., Malik, J.: Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation. In: 2017 14th IAPR International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), vol. 577–585 (2015)ĭing, H., et al.: A compact CNN-DBLSTM based character model for offline handwriting recognition with Tucker decomposition. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, pp. 23–27 (2017)Ĭheang, T.K., Chong, Y.S., Yong, H.T.: Segmentation-free vehicle license plate recognition using ConvNet-RNN (2017)Ĭhorowski, J.K., Bahdanau, D., Serdyuk, D., Cho, K., Bengio, Y.: Attention-based models for speech recognition. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, Suzhou, China, pp. IEEE (2016)īhunia, A.K., Konwer, A., Bhowmick, A., Bhunia, A.K., Roy, P.P., Pal, U.: Script identification in natural scene image and video frame using attention based convolutional-LSTM network (2018)Ĭalvo-Zaragoza, J., Valero-Mas, J.J., Pertusa, A.: End-to-end optical music recognition using neural networks. In: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), pp. arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.0473 (2014)īahdanau, D., Chorowski, J., Serdyuk, D., Brakel, P., Bengio, Y.: End-to-end attention-based large vocabulary speech recognition. Īngara, N.S.S.: Automatic license plate recognition using deep learning techniques (2015)īahdanau, D., Cho, K., Bengio, Y.: Neural machine translation by jointly learning to align and translate. In: 2015 14th IAPR International Conference on Machine Vision Applications (MVA), pp. Organizacija 50(3), 285–295 (2017)Ībtahi, F., Zhu, Z., Burry, A.M.: A deep reinforcement learning approach to character segmentation of license plate images. KeywordsĪboura, K., Al-Hmouz, R.: An overview of image analysis algorithms for license plate recognition. Experiments showed that the AC-RNN performs better on the testing real images, increasing about 5% on accuracy, compared with classic ConvNet-RNN. The AC-RNN could figure out the vehicle license even in cases of light changing, spatial distortion and partial blurry. The proposed AC-RNN was trained on a large generated dataset which contains various types of license plates in China. While the ConvNet is used to extract features, the recurrent neural networks (RNN) with connectionist temporal classification (CTC) are applied for sequence labeling. The attention mechanism helps to locate the important instances in the step of recognition. Based on the idea of Segmentation-free VLPR, this paper proposed an attention enhanced ConvNet-RNN (AC-RNN) for accurate Chinese Vehicle License Plate Recognition. Segmentation-free VLPR systems compute the label in one pass using Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM), without individual segmentation step, their results tend to be not influenced by the segmentation accuracy. While a lot of approaches have been proposed, and achieved good performance to some extent, these approaches still have problems, for example, in the condition of characters’ distortion or partial occlusion. As an important part of intelligent transportation system, vehicle license plate recognition requires high accuracy in an open environment. In the mouth, capsaicin bypasses your taste buds and binds to pain receptors on the tongue called TRPV1. Here’s what happens as soon as you bite into a hot pepper.Ĭapsaicin is an irritant for all mammals, and it causes a burning sensation when it comes into contact with any skin or mucous membrane. What exactly are hot peppers and other spicy foods doing to our bodies, and is it possible to harm yourself by eating too much? And if the heat is painful, why do we love it so much? Whether you love or hate the heat, one thing is certain: the more spice, the more it hurts. While some can tolerate super hot peppers and champion spicy food for its health benefits, others have less-than-pleasant experiences and even wind up in the emergency room. They often eat peppers like the Carolina Reaper for fun, participate in deathly hot wing challenges, and show off their spice tolerance at hot sauce expos around the country. “Hot culture,” as Currie calls it, is a growing community of people who can’t get enough of the heat. But some seem to enjoy putting themselves through the spicy pain. Neither does this video of BuzzFeed staffers attempting the same. You might’ve seen the mega-viral clip from YouTuber Lizzy Wurst of her and a friend trying to stomach Carolina Reapers. What’s new is that they are now hotter than ever before, and along with the dramatic increase in record-breaking peppers is a rise in people who eat them in a way that’s almost an extreme sport.įrom pepper-eating contests and extreme menu items that require liability waivers to videos on social media of people eating the Carolina Reaper, Bhut jolokia (ghost pepper), and Samyang "fire noodles" - it’s not hard to find people rising to a spicy challenge that often ends in pain and tears. The heat-causing capsicums have become a dietary staple in cultures all over the world, valued for their flavor and ability to prevent food spoilage in hot climates. The potent plants - which belong to the capsicum genus in the nightshade family - have been around for thousands of years, originating in Central America and spreading to other continents through trade and globalization. In other words, the Carolina Reaper is nearly off-the-charts spicy - or as Currie said, “stupid hot.” It won the Guinness World Record for the world's hottest chili pepper in 2013, dethroning the “Trinidad Scorpion Butch T” pepper, and has retained the title ever since - although Currie said he's already bred another pepper that's nearly twice as hot, called “ Pepper X.” That’s about 600 times hotter than a jalapeño pepper at 2,500–8,000 SHU and about 8 times hotter than a habanero, which ranges between 200,000–350,000 SHU. “His initial measurement was the hottest he’d ever seen,” Currie said.Īccording to Currie, the Carolina Reaper ranges between 1.5 million and 2 million SHUs, depending on the pepper and the growing season. It was 2005 when he teamed up with chemistry professor Cliff Calloway and his team of graduate students at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. After a few successful growing seasons, Currie decided to find out where the pepper ranked on the Scoville scale, which uses Scoville heat units (SHU) to measure capsaicin. “I knew it was hot because when we gave them out to everyone, they started vomiting,” Currie said. So when Currie, founder of the PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, South Carolina, hybridized plants using nine chili peppers from Asia and one from the Caribbean, he also created something spicier than anything he’d ever tasted: the now world-famous “Carolina Reaper.” The most common capsaicinoid is capsaicin, which gives the pepper its fiery edge. “I wanted more of that good stuff," Currie told BuzzFeed News. In fact, he was trying to raise the levels of capsaicinoids, compounds found in peppers, because he believes they have medicinal properties and can help protect against heart disease and cancer. Ed Currie wasn't looking to make the world's hottest pepper when he began crossbreeding chilies from around the globe in 2003.
For this reason I would say that if you want the best Wayfaring shelter in the world, look to the USA. There are more people making independent livings from it there, rather than being simply gear salespeople as the UK’s smaller scene seems to necessitate. America has a far bigger market, and consequently a much better small and mid-sized scene for backpacking kit manufacturers. Both these sites are for US kit, but the language and tech they discuss applies to UK products too. Backpackinglight are the most technically advanced reviewers I reckon. Outdoor Gear Lab are a good place to start. There are many resources online reviewing tents, tarps and bivys. Consider re-proofing it - with fabsil for tents, and with a wash-in nikwax for bivys. Whatever you have, practice setting it up in a park or garden first. Ask friends and family if you can borrow something. It’s a mixed up marketplace… What is usually true is that all this gear is expensive, so first of all, look to what you already have available. Some tents are basically tarps, and some have multiple opem doors. Please note - this is all generalisation. It can also allow a sense of greater immersion in the environment. This modular approach to shelter can offer more varieties of appropriate use. And a tarp is a sheet of waterproof material you can rig into a roof (and/or floor & walls). A bivy (bivvi/bivi/bivouac) is a sleeping bag cover (usually waterproof, sometimes with mosquito netting built in). The main alternative to a tent is a bivy bag and tarp. Plus they give you space and privacy to get dressed without contortions in the morning, or read a book at night. However, tents typically have room for a person (or 2/3/4) and their luggage, and come with built-in insect protection. If you are taking Sanctuary at a sensitive place, pegs in the ground can be inappropriate. Another disadvantage of (most) tents is that they weigh a lot, and (usually) require pegging into the ground to stand up, limiting their uses. So be sure to get one that is not lurid bright colours (unless you are only sleeping in campsites) as this will make you feel less creep-up-on-able. This means that the noise of a beetle walking by can sound like a human marauder about to pounce. Inside a tent you can often enjoy the ostrich-like illusion of invisibility. Like a high-rise penthouse flat on the seafront, you get great views while everyone else gets a view of you. Tents are often far more visible than those inside might hope. As does built-in ventilation, usually from the peak or the lower corners. Sleeping beside water makes for a damp atmosphere. Choosing where you pitch is a lot to do with this. What this means, is how much condensation do you want to feel when you touch the sides? In the UK, we have a damp climate, so single skin tents can suffer from condensation build-up. You have the choice of single skin vs double skin tents. A failed tent is a lot of useless litter to carry to a bin. Be careful of the cheapest tents, they are often more like models of tents than actual tents, and will not function when wind and rain come a-knocking. A tent can be best if you are walking in a group, or with children or animals, in exposed and harsh conditions. And they are usually very good at shedding weather. The advantage of tents is that they (often) come with mosquito net and floor, and offer 360 degree privacy, allowing a ‘hideaway’ of sorts. Tents are a very diverse range of structures, and can cost from £20 to £1500. This sort of gear is expensive, but a b&b costs £75+ per night, so carrying your own home quickly becomes a bargain in comparison. Thank you! Wayfaring Shelters If your Wayfaring journey will see you sleeping under the sky, you will need to bring a shelter with you. Buying from the pictured links helps sustain my website without costing you extra. Do not install MyHomeLib in either %ProgramFiles% or %ProgramFiles(x86)% directory - it is bad idea.fb2mobi.exe looks for fb2mobi.toml in its directory (similarly fb2epub.exe looks for fb2epub.toml), so any additional customization is easy. It is a drop-in replacement and should be functional out of the box in most cases. Just make sure that your MyHomeLib\converters directory does not contain oldįb2mobi and/or fb2epub subdirectories and unpack fb2c_win32.zip or fb2c_win64.zip there. Windows builds come with full MyHomeLib support. If you want resulting mobi files to be located alongside with original files, do something likeįb2c.exe convert -to mobi c:\books\to-read c:\books\to-read MyHomeLib support: Sending files to Kindle via e-mail in process executeįb2c.exe convert -nodirs -stk -to epub c:\books\to-read d:\out In order to convert all fb2 files in c:\books\to-read directory and get results in d:\out directory without keeping original subdirectory structure version, -v print the version (default: false)Īdditional help for any command could be obtained by running. debug, -d prepare archive with details of a current run (may overwrite some log settings) (default: false) if FILE is "-" JSON will be expected from STDIN (accepts multiple inputs) config FILE, -c FILE load configuration from FILE (YAML, TOML or JSON). Help, h Shows a list of commands or help for one command Synccovers Extracts thumbnails from documents (Kindle only!)ĭumpconfig Dumps active configuration (JSON)Įxport Exports built-in resources for customization "program version" ("go runtime version") : "git sha string"Ĭonvert Converts FB2 file(s) to specified format Program has detailed logging configured by default (by default conversion.log in current working directory) - in case of problems, take a look there first. In order to customize program behavior use "export" command to the directory of your choice and then supply path to your configuration file during program run. RWTNh1aN8DrXq26YRmWO3bPBx4m8jBATGXt4Z96DF4OVSzdCBmoAU Vq Usage: Starting with v1.58.0 releases are packed with zip and signed with minisign.I do not have kindlegen for Apple Silicon - not sure if one even exists, so manage your expectations. Starting with v1.60.1 macOS releases for Intel and Apple silicon are build separately.fb2c has no dependencies and does not require installation or any kindĭownload from the releases page and unpack it in a convenient location.If mobi or azw3 are required additional limitations are imposed by Amazon's kindlegen fb2c could be build for any platform supported by go language.processing of files, directories, zip archives and directories with zip archives - no special consideration is made for.page size is calculated based on proper Unicode code points rather than byte size.html tags unknown to fb2 spec may be dropped depending on context.chapter-end vignette would not be added if chapter does not have text paragraphs.small changes in result formatting, for example:.go differs in how it processes images, it is less forgiving than Python's PILLOW and do not have lazy decoding (see use_broken_images configuration option).fixes and echancements in toc.ncx generation.slightly different hyphenation algorithm (no hyphensReplaceNBSP).no overwriting of configuration parameters from command line, options either specified in configuration file or on command line.no "default" external configuration, path to configuration file has to be supplied - always.no XML configuration - use TOML, YAML or JSON format instead. “The financial implications for me would be pretty terrible,” Fields said. If the app is taken away, he said building an audience on another platform would be challenging for him due to the competition to grab user attention. He has one active deal with the fast fashion retailer Fashion Nova, which allows him to earn an income along with the videos he posts on TikTok. They would also lose the social capital that comes from having a large following on the trend-setting app.ĭemetrius Fields, a standup comedian who amassed 2.8 million followers on TikTok from posting comedy sketches, said he spent a long time building his career and followership on the platform. Many earn income from their videos and have inked brand partnerships to market products to their audiences - another stream of revenue that could be wiped away if the platform disappears. Some popular TikTokers who speak out against a ban are concerned - and angered - about how it might impact their personal lives. It has also ramped up a broader public relations campaign, plastering ads all over Washington that tout its promises of securing users’ data and privacy and creating a safe platform for its young users. On Wednesday, it sent dozens of influencers to Congress to lobby against a ban. TikTok itself has been trying to leverage its popularity. That would include the option for the app's Chinese owners to divest, which the Biden administration is reportedly demanding from TikTok if it wants to avoid a nationwide ban. It's because of TikTok's large user base that Lindsay Gorman, a former tech adviser for the Biden administration who now works as a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund, says the Biden administration will likely pursue every option short of a ban first. He added that Congress should move forward with a proposal that would force platform’s sale to an American company for continued access for its millions of users while “ensuring that the platform isn’t subject to Chinese propaganda or compromises people’s privacy.”Īccording to a survey by the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of Americans aged 13 to 17 use TikTok, and 16% of all teens say they use it almost constantly. “America has the most innovative technology companies in the world.” “But there’s absolutely no reason that an American technology company can’t do that,” said Khanna, the top Democrat on the cyber subcommittee on House Armed Service. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., whose district is in the heart of Silicon Valley, said he is mindful of the value that platforms like TikTok provide to young people as an outlet for creative expression and building community. And others blamed the surge of scrutiny on the platform on another tech rival, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.īut few expressed fear of possible Chinese surveillance or security breaches that lawmakers continue to amplify as they look to rein in TikTok. Some called a potential TikTok ban, as some lawmakers and the Biden administration has reportedly threatened, the “biggest scam” of the year. Many TikTok users reacted to the hearing by posting videos critical of lawmakers who grilled Chew and frequently cut him off from speaking. “You may not care that your data is being accessed now, but you will be one day.” “I want to say this to all the teenagers out there, and TikTok influencers who think we’re just old and out of touch and don’t know what we’re talking about, trying to take your favorite app,” said Republican Rep. There’s also concern Beijing might try to push pro-China narratives or misinformation through the platform. Nevertheless, lawmakers, the FBI and officials at other agencies continue to raise alarms that Chinese law compels Chinese companies like TikTok's parent company ByteDance to fork over data to the government for whatever purposes it deems to involve national security. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said during a nearly six-hour congressional hearing Thursday that the platform has never turned over user data to the Chinese government, and wouldn’t do so if asked. But many users on the platform are more concerned about the possibility of the government taking away their favorite app. The disconnect illustrates the uphill battle that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle face in trying to convince the public that China could use TikTok as a weapon against the American people. who just want to be able to keep making and watching short, fun videos offering makeup tutorials and cooking lessons, among other things. On the other are some 150 million TikTok users in the U.S. NEW YORK (AP) - On the one side are dozens of lawmakers on Capitol Hill issuing dire warnings about security breaches and possible Chinese surveillance. |