Welcome to the Tech Mem Ride Home for Thursday, January 24th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, Bing's Schrodinger-style China Ban, headphones from Sonos, flying cars from Boeing,

layoffs for Project Titan, and the serious ongoing layoffs in the digital media world.

Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

All last night, it looked like Microsoft's Bing search engine had been blocked in China

despite the fact that Microsoft self-censors search results in that country. Now this morning it looks like

Bing is back and Bloomberg News is reporting that Bing was blocked due to a

technical error rather than any sort of attempt at censorship.

So, ends up being a non-story, right?

Just a mistake, no harm, no foul, except, note that all night long everyone saw this news and no one was

surprised. Quoting the New York Times, Beijing has carried out several waves of

increasingly intense crackdowns on internet freedoms

as the Communist Party has cemented its control over more aspects of Chinese life.

That includes cracking down on foreign internet products, including blocks on

Instagram and WhatsApp in recent years." As the times noted last night,

Bing has tried to play by China's rules.

For example, a search for the Dalai Lama, the religious leader, would turn up state media

accounts within China that accused him of stirring up hatred and separatism. Outside the country it would point to sites like Wikipedia."

End quote. So the point here is, everyone was like China just blocked bang big deal I feel like people have come to

expect that China is building its own parallel internet and doesn't need or

want outsiders especially Western companies to compete in their home market.

And even if you're one of these non-Chinese companies, and even if you jump through all of China's hoops, who's to say they won't

...