The FOSS Force Almost Open Tech News Quiz (3/7/25)

Did you have time to keep up with the news this week? Here’s your chance to brag… or not. Again this week, there are 10 questions. Good luck!

Results

You did great! Thanks for playing!

BTW, we’ll be taking next Friday off, so we’ll see you again on March 21 for our next quiz.

Oh well. You were probably too busy to keep up with the news. Better luck next time.

BTW, we’ll be taking next Friday off, so we’ll see you again on March 21 for our next quiz.

#1. This week we learned of a new mobile app that its developer is calling “Uber for…” what?

Uber for Jetsetters. It's an app for chartering Lear Jets and other aircraft.

Uber for Guns. This app is for ordering active duty or recently retired law enforcement officers as temporary armed bodyguards.

Uber for Edibles. In states where cannabis is legal, the app will deliver cannabis edibles ordered from a limited online menu.

Uber for Kids. "For busy moms!" the app's Google Play listing says. This one lets you hire a driver to take children to a park or playground, and supervise them while they're there.

#2. In a week that saw the Liquor Control Board of Ontario remove 3,600 US products from its shelves, the province also ripped up a $100 million contract with what US tech company in retaliation to the tariffs recently place by the US on Canadian goods and services?

StarLink. The contract was to provide high-speed internet to northern Ontario's rural and remote First Nation communities.

Microsoft. The province will be replacing Microsoft Word with WordPerfect, which is developed in Canada by a Canadian software maker.

Zoom. Starting immediately, the premier said, all online meeting will be held using Jitsi, a free and open source product.

Oracle. All Oracle software used by the province will be replaced with software from vendors located outside the US.

#3. To help it in it’s efforts to get and stay ahead in the artificial general intelligence (AGI) race, Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently sent a memo to employees asking them to do what?

Spend 20% to purchase stock in a special AGI company established by Google.

Increase employee productivity by as much as 25%.

"Please be evil."

Return to working in Google's offices five days a week.

#4. A new botnet with up to 86,000 nodes launching massive DDOS attacks has recently been discovered by Nokia’s Deepfield Emergency Response Team. The botnet is believed to be composed of what kind of devices?

Roku devices that have been infected by malware, since found and removed, that was included in the video file of the second episode of the current season of Reacher.

US government servers after being accessed by DOGE.

Infected security cameras.

iPhones that had download an infected security application from Apple's app store.

#5. Last week Mozilla announced a first ever what for the company… which it almost immediately had to update.

The first year in which the organization didn't give its CEO a raise, which was updated after the board voted to increase CEO pay by $1 million for the year.

The first year in which the organization wouldn't accept money from Google for making it Firefox's default search engine.

The first ever Terms of Service, which was updated after users began complaining about the terms.

Admission that it hadn't been doing a good job of keeping Firefox maintained.

#6. This week TechCrunch reported that this US government agency is investigating San Francisco-based Scale AI.

The Department of Justice for alleged witness tampering in a federal civil case.

The Environmental Protection Agency for not complying to environmental regulations at its data center.

The Department of Labor for compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act.

DOGE, in regards to a contract it signed three months ago with the Department of Defense.

#7. This week the Wall Street Journal reported that export controls on selling what product to China are not be being effective?

Chinese software vendors continue to have access to certain open source software products from US companies that are not supposed to be distributed to China, North Korea, or Russia.

China continues to have access to US made weapons of mass destruction by importing them from Russia and North Korea.

US pop music continues to be played on Chinese radio stations despite US copyright bans in the region.

China continues to be able to purchase Nvidia Blackwell chips through third-party traders located in other regions.

#8. A weekend hackathon project called GibberLink that was created by two Meta software engineers, went viral this week. What does GibberLink do?

It allows an AI agent to recognize when it’s speaking on the phone with another AI agent and talk to that agent in a language that can't be understood by humans.

It allows a Facebook user to turn Messenger into a 100% encrypted messaging tool that can't be controlled by Meta engineers.

Its a new way of linking a Facebook post to other social networks, so that the post appears on the other social site looking exactly like it looks on Facebook.

A way of creating new emojis on the fly and sharing them with others.

#9. At the end of February, Microsoft announced that on May 5 it will be ending what Microsoft product?

Skype, the encrypted video calling platform it launched in 2003.

Microsoft Office as software running on your local machine, although Office 365 will remain availale.

The Windows version of the open source .NET developer platform.

None of the above.

#10. Earlier this week, we learned that Uber users in Austin, Texas now have a service available to them that’s not available in other locations. What is it?

Special group rates for trips to "Austin City Limits" performances.

Free trips, funded by a Texas-based charity, to out-of-state birth control clinics for procedures not allowed in Texas.

The option to choose an EV instead of a gas powered vehicle.

The option to choose a driverless vehicle from Alphabet's Waymo.

Finish

Open Networking and Edge Summit

RIoT Developer Day

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025

Overture Maps Member Summit

Developer Day 2025