Geek Trivia: The V In DVD Stands For What?

The V In DVD Stands For What?

Video Vertical Volume Versatile Think you know the answer?

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A year after FCC's vote to repeal net neutrality rules, there have been no big changes in how ISPs and mobile carriers provide their services (Klint Finley/Wired)

Klint Finley / Wired:
A year after FCC's vote to repeal net neutrality rules, there have been no big changes in how ISPs and mobile carriers provide their services  —  IT'S BEEN ONE year since the Federal Communications Commission voted to gut its net neutrality rules.  The good news is that the internet isn't drastically different than it was before.

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Hulu is launching a new private programmatic marketplace for advertisers to buy its on-demand and TV inventory; the marketplace won't replace upfront deals (Jeanine Poggi/Ad Age)

Jeanine Poggi / Ad Age:
Hulu is launching a new private programmatic marketplace for advertisers to buy its on-demand and TV inventory; the marketplace won't replace upfront deals  —  Hulu is further automating advertising on the streaming platform with a new private programmatic marketplace.

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Intel extends partnership with esports company ESL in $100M deal to provide tech, including high-powered CPUs and 5G, for esports events worldwide through 2021 (Annie Pei/CNBC)

Annie Pei / CNBC:
Intel extends partnership with esports company ESL in $100M deal to provide tech, including high-powered CPUs and 5G, for esports events worldwide through 2021  —  - Intel and esports company ESL have extended a long-standing partnership, signing a three-year, $100 million deal designed …

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Synthace, the developer of Antha OS for automating laboratory processes for biological experiments, raises $25.6M Series B led by Horizons Ventures (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Synthace, the developer of Antha OS for automating laboratory processes for biological experiments, raises $25.6M Series B led by Horizons Ventures  —  U.K.-based startup Synthace wants to automate laboratory processes with a programming language designed for biological experiments, and it's getting the financial backing to do it.

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China-based online consumer lending platform 360 Finance closes flat on its first day of trading in US after raising $51M in its IPO (Peter H. Frank/CapitalWatch)

Peter H. Frank / CapitalWatch:
China-based online consumer lending platform 360 Finance closes flat on its first day of trading in US after raising $51M in its IPO  —  In the midst of a rough market, 360 Finance Inc. (Nasdaq: QFIN) held its own today as the company completed its initial public offering at $16.50 per share …

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Lucy Peng, an original Alibaba co-founder, steps down as CEO of Lazada after 9 months, will be replaced by Lazada's Executive President Pierre Poignant (Jon Russell/TechCrunch)

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Lucy Peng, an original Alibaba co-founder, steps down as CEO of Lazada after 9 months, will be replaced by Lazada's Executive President Pierre Poignant  —  Alibaba has reshuffled the leadership at Lazada, its e-commerce firm in Southeast Asia, after CEO Lucy Peng — an original Alibaba co-founder …

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The recklessness of Uber and Tesla in their development of autonomous cars risks alienating a public already wary of self-driving vehicles (Brian Merchant/Gizmodo)

Brian Merchant / Gizmodo:
The recklessness of Uber and Tesla in their development of autonomous cars risks alienating a public already wary of self-driving vehicles  —  Autonomous vehicles were supposed to make driving safer, and they may yet—some of the more optimistic research indicates self-driving cars could save tens …

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Facebook Bug Exposes Users’ Photos

A Facebook bug has exposed the private photos of up to 6.8 million users. The bug means thousands of third-party apps had potential access to photos they didn’t have permission to view. The worst thing is the amount of time Facebook took to disclose the incident.

Facebook’s Very Bad Year

It’s fair to say Facebook hasn’t had a good 2018. There was the Cambridge Analytica scandal everyone should be familiar with by now. And over a backdrop of people deleting Facebook, the social network has had ongoing issues maintaining people’s trust.

The issues run deep, with Facebook battling the spread of fake news, advertising campaigns with the potential to influence elections, and a seemingly lax attitude to users’ data and privacy. And now we get the news that private photos were exposed to apps.

Facebook Discloses New Bug

Facebook disclosed the incident in a Facebook for Developers Blog post. The social network explains that this bug affected “people who used Facebook Login and granted permission to third-party apps to access their photos”.

If you want to check if you're affected by Facebook's latest bug involving photo sharing, here's the link: https://t.co/yQDopYtQhy pic.twitter.com/QNMWErLOU9

— Zack Whittaker (@zackwhittaker) December 14, 2018

Users sometimes give apps permission to access photos they share on their timeline. However, this bug meant that for 12 days developers could also access other photos shared on Facebook, and even photos people uploaded but then decided not to post.

The bug in question was live between September 13 and September 25, 2018. Facebook discovered and duly fixed the bug on the 25th. However, it has taken almost three months for Facebook to notify the developers affected and, by extension, the users affected.

Facebook is “sorry this happened,” and is rolling out tools to help developers “determine which people using their app might be impacted by this bug.” Those people will then be notified, and directed to a Help Center link explaining the issue in more detail.

Fingers Crossed for 2019

This tops off an annus horribilis for Facebook, and we really hope 2019 brings better fortune. Not for Facebook’s sake, but for the sake of its users. Otherwise Facebook et al might find that everyone collectively decides to quit social media altogether.

Image Credit: Marco Verch/Flickr

Read the full article: Facebook Bug Exposes Users’ Photos

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Cydia shuts down purchasing mechanism for its jailbreak app store

Years after becoming one of the go-to destinations for iOS jailbreaks, Cydia’s app store is disabling purchases. Users will be able to access existing downloads through the store and access purchases via third-parties, but beginning this week, they’ll no longer be able to buy apps through the store.

Founder Jay “Saurik “ Freeman revealed the news via a Reddit post this week recommending users remove PayPal accounts from their profile. Freeman notes his initial plan to shut the service down by year’s end, before ultimately opting to close down the purchasing mechanism this weekend over the PayPal issue.

The software engineer cites the toll running the service has taken on his personal life and finances in making the decision. “[T]his service loses me money and is not something I have any passion to maintain: it was a critical component of a healthy ecosystem,” he writes, “and for a while it helped fund a small staff of people to maintain the ecosystem, but it came at great cost to my sanity and led lots of people to irrationally hate me due to what amounted to a purposeful misunderstanding of how profit vs. revenue works.”

Cydia was launched 10 years ago, shortly after the first iPhone was jailbroken. The service has offered users a way to bypass Apple’s own App Store lockdown, building up a rabid fanbase in the process. Ultimately, however, jailbreaking’s popularity has waned in the intervening users.

The exact future of the Cydia community remains unclear, though Freeman has promised a “more formal post” about his plans next week. We’ve reached out for further comment.

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Data shows GraphQL, a Facebook-developed open source data query language, has seen a sharp rise in adoption among JavaScript developers over the past two years (Klint Finley/Wired)

Klint Finley / Wired:
Data shows GraphQL, a Facebook-developed open source data query language, has seen a sharp rise in adoption among JavaScript developers over the past two years  —  THE CODE THAT runs the web is a melting pot of programming languages and technologies.  JavaScript, the most popular language on the web …

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How Jolla's Sailfish has survived as an independent mobile OS by targeting government and enterprise sectors in Russia and China which are wary of Google (Daniel Oberhaus/Motherboard)

Daniel Oberhaus / Motherboard:
How Jolla's Sailfish has survived as an independent mobile OS by targeting government and enterprise sectors in Russia and China which are wary of Google  —  Alternative mobile operating systems have come and gone over the years, but only Sailfish has survived the iOS and Android duopoly.

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The limits of coworking

It feels like there’s a WeWork on every street nowadays. Take a walk through midtown Manhattan (please don’t actually) and it might even seem like there are more WeWorks than office buildings.

Consider this an ongoing discussion about Urban Tech, its intersection with regulation, issues of public service, and other complexities that people have full PHDs on. I’m just a bitter, born-and-bred New Yorker trying to figure out why I’ve been stuck in between subway stops for the last 15 minutes, so please reach out with your take on any of these thoughts: @Arman.Tabatabai@techcrunch.com.

Co-working has permeated cities around the world at an astronomical rate. The rise has been so remarkable that even the headline-dominating SoftBank seems willing to bet the success of its colossal Vision Fund on the shift continuing, having poured billions into WeWork – including a recent $4.4 billion top-up that saw the co-working king’s valuation spike to $45 billion.

And there are no signs of the trend slowing down. With growing frequency, new startups are popping up across cities looking to turn under-utilized brick-and-mortar or commercial space into low-cost co-working options.

It’s a strategy spreading through every type of business from retail – where companies like Workbar have helped retailers offer up portions of their stores – to more niche verticals like parking lots – where companies like Campsyte are transforming empty lots into spaces for outdoor co-working and corporate off-sites. Restaurants and bars might even prove most popular for co-working, with startups like Spacious and KettleSpace turning restaurants that are closed during the day into private co-working space during their off-hours.

Before you know it, a startup will be strapping an Aeron chair to the top of a telephone pole and calling it “WirelessWorking”.

But is there a limit to how far co-working can go? Are all of the storefronts, restaurants and open spaces that line city streets going to be filled with MacBooks, cappuccinos and Moleskine notebooks? That might be too tall a task, even for the movement taking over skyscrapers.

The co-working of everything…

Photo: Vasyl Dolmatov / iStock via Getty Images

So why is everyone trying to turn your favorite neighborhood dinner spot into a part-time WeWork in the first place? Co-working offers a particularly compelling use case for under-utilized space.

First, co-working falls under the same general commercial zoning categories as most independent businesses and very little additional infrastructure – outside of a few extra power outlets and some decent WiFi – is required to turn a space into an effective replacement for the often crowded and distracting coffee shops used by price-sensitive, lean, remote, or nomadic workers that make up a growing portion of the workforce.

Thus, businesses can list their space at little-to-no cost, without having to deal with structural layout changes that are more likely to arise when dealing with pop-up solutions or event rentals.

On the supply side, these co-working networks don’t have to purchase leases or make capital improvements to convert each space, and so they’re able to offer more square footage per member at a much lower rate than traditional co-working spaces. Spacious, for example, charges a monthly membership fee of $99-$129 dollars for access to its network of vetted restaurants, which is cheap compared to a WeWork desk, which can cost anywhere from $300-$800 per month in New York City.

Customers realize more affordable co-working alternatives, while tight-margin businesses facing increasing rents for under-utilized property are able to pool resources into a network and access a completely new revenue stream at very little cost. The value proposition is proving to be seriously convincing in initial cities – Spacious told the New York Times, that so many restaurants were applying to join the network on their own volition that only five percent of total applicants were ultimately getting accepted.

Basically, the business model here checks a lot of the boxes for successful marketplaces: Acquisition and transaction friction is low for both customers and suppliers, with both seeing real value that didn’t exist previously. Unit economics seem strong, and vetting on both sides of the market creates trust and community. Finally, there’s an observable network effect whereby suppliers benefit from higher occupancy as more customers join the network, while customers benefit from added flexibility as more locations join the network.

… Or just the co-working of some things…

Photo: Caiaimage / Robert Daly via Getty Images

So is this the way of the future? The strategy is really compelling, with a creative solution that offers tremendous value to businesses and workers in major cities. But concerns around the scalability of demand make it difficult to picture this phenomenon becoming ubiquitous across cities or something that reaches the scale of a WeWork or large conventional co-working player.

All these companies seem to be competing for a similar demographic, not only with one another, but also with coffee shops, free workspaces, and other flexible co-working options like Croissant, which provides members with access to unused desks and offices in traditional co-working spaces. Like Spacious and KettleSpace, the spaces on Croissant own the property leases and are already built for co-working, so Croissant can still offer comparatively attractive rates.

The offer seems most compelling for someone that is able to work without a stable location and without the amenities offered in traditional co-working or office spaces, and is also price sensitive enough where they would trade those benefits for a lower price. Yet at the same time, they can’t be too price sensitive, where they would prefer working out of free – or close to free – coffee shops instead of paying a monthly membership fee to avoid the frictions that can come with them.

And it seems unclear whether the problem or solution is as poignant outside of high-density cities – let alone outside of high-density areas of high-density cities.

Without density, is the competition for space or traffic in coffee shops and free workspaces still high enough where it’s worth paying a membership fee for? Would the desire for a private working environment, or for a working community, be enough to incentivize membership alone? And in less-dense and more-sprawl oriented cities, members could also face the risk of having to travel significant distances if space isn’t available in nearby locations.

While the emerging workforce is trending towards more remote, agile and nomadic workers that can do more with less, it’s less certain how many will actually fit the profile that opts out of both more costly but stable traditional workspaces, as well as potentially frustrating but free alternatives. And if the lack of density does prove to be an issue, how many of those workers will live in hyper-dense areas, especially if they are price-sensitive and can work and live anywhere?

To be clear, I’m not saying the companies won’t see significant growth – in fact, I think they will. But will the trend of monetizing unused space through co-working come to permeate cities everywhere and do so with meaningful occupancy? Maybe not. That said, there is still a sizable and growing demographic that need these solutions and the value proposition is significant in many major urban areas.

The companies are creating real value, creating more efficient use of wasted space, and fixing a supply-demand issue. And the cultural value of even modestly helping independent businesses keep the lights on seems to outweigh the cultural “damage” some may fear in turning them into part-time co-working spaces.

And lastly, some reading while in transit:

• The Grim Future of Urban Warfare – The Atlantic, Darran Anderson
• New York’s New Wage Law for Uber Drivers is a Lesson for Cities Around the World – MIT Technology Review, Erin Winick
• Can New Home Building Tech Help Solve the Affordability Crisis? – FastCompany, Adele Peters
• Homelessness Rises More Quickly Where Rent Exceeds a Third of Income – Zillow Research, Chris Glynn & Alexander Casey
• Vote on Temescal to Test Core Values – StreetsblogSF, Roger Rudick
• L.A. Approves New Rules for Airbnb-Type Rentals After Years of Debate – Los Angeles Times, Emily Alpert Reyes
• Can France Revive its Industrial Heartland? – FT, Harriet Agnew
• Why Communities Across America Are Pushing to Close Waste Incinerators – CityLab, Rebecca Stoner

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California says all city buses have to be emission free by 2040

On the heels of a dire government report published last month about climate change and its devastating impacts, many cities and states are scrambling to find ways to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that threaten their air quality, not to mention their economies.

As is often the case, California is leading the charge, yesterday becoming the first state to mandate that mass transit agencies purchase fully electric buses only beginning in 2029, and that public transit routes be populated by electric buses alone by 2040.

The new rule will is expected to require the production and purchase of more than 14,000 new zero-emission buses.

Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air and Resource Board (CARB) that voted unanimously to make California the first state with such a commitment, told the outlet Trucks.com earlier this month that California has “to push standards that are more progressive” than the federal government because of the state’s chronic air pollution, which is linked to asthma and heart disease, among other things.

The move is reportedly the result of several years of CARB’s work with industry and public-health groups, and it flies in the face of moves by the Trump administration to push for lower fuel efficiency standards and to instead promote the use of fossil fuels.

Indeed, the Trump administration has questioned from the outset how much the U.S. is responsible for cutting back emissions, and the newest government report seemingly didn’t alter anything for the President. Asked last month about the government’s findings that, unchecked, global warming will have catastrophic implications for the U.S. economy, he said, “I don’t believe it.” He added: “People like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers.”

Instead of wait on the administration to change its mind, California’s new Innovative Clean Transit rule will force California’s public bus lines — many of which currently run on natural gas or diesel fuel — to shift to either electric power or hydrogen fuel cells.

The move could be a boon for electric bus companies like Proterra, a 14-year-old, Burlingame, Ca., company that has raised roughly half a billion dollars from investors to build its zero-emission, battery-electric buses. It could also potentially help the publicly traded Chinese automaker giant BYD, which, as TC has reported, has been on a partnership spree with cities across China to electrify their public transportation systems and is now extending its footprint across the globe.

The new ruling is not the only line of attack that California is adopting. As The Hill notes, earlier this year, California also voted to become the first state to mandate new homes be retrofitted with solar panels. In September, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that will require the state to transition to a 100 percent renewable energy electric grid by 2045.

CARB has also worked to advise the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which last month announced what it called its Cleaner Trucks Initiative. EPA officials say that via the initiative, the agency plans to revise truck pollution standards in a way that lowers their nitrogen oxide emissions while also doing away with requirements that the industry has complained are financially onerous.

As reported by the L.A. Times, despite the announcement, no one yet knows if the EPA is planning more stringent emissions limits or anything as strict as the 90 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide pollution that CARB has said is needed to clean smog to health standards.

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Tony Hawk goes mobile

For three years, Tony Hawk has been conspicuously absent from the video store shelves. For most game developers, that’s little more than a blip between titles. When your name and face are attached to 16 titles in 15 years, however, everyone starts to notice when you’re gone.

“It’s usually the first topic of discussion with me,” Hawk laughs. The first, that is, once the world’s most famous skateboarder’s identity has been firmly established.

That question was finally answered this week with the arrival of Skate Jam, the first of Hawk’s titles created exclusively for a mobile platform. The game also marks the skater’s first collaboration with mobile app acquisition group Maple Media — marking a split with longtime publisher Activision.

It was a partnership that ended with a whimper, with the arrival of 2015’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5. The final installation of the beloved series was heavily criticized for being uninspired and rushed, and Hawk ultimately opted to move on from a relationship that helped turn his name into a $250 million a year brand at its peak.

The unceremonious end of the Activision deal left the future of the franchise in jeopardy, with Hawk exploring his options. “My contract with Activision ended, and I was exploring a few options, including some VR stuff,” he tells TechCrunch. While he says he’s still open to a future Tony Hawk virtual reality title, the medium ultimately proved too tricky for the first skater to land a 900. “It’s a pretty daunting task to figure out how to make skateboarding work in VR without people getting sick.”

Advances in mobile platforms, on the other hand, have made a smartphone version far more appealing than it would have been at the height of the franchise’s success. “Maple Media came and said they would like to expand on their skate games,” says Hawk. “When I played their most recent engine, I felt there was something there, akin to what I felt when I first played the THPS engine. I felt that, with my input and expertise, we could make something that would be truly authentic for gamers and skaters alike, for a new generation.”

As far as whether Skate Jam’s release portends the rebirth of the franchise, Hawk is ultimately a bit more cagey. He explains that the team is more focused on building out the current title than committing to Pro Skater’s annual release schedule.

“We’re going to see a lot more development in terms of growing this title,” Hawk says. “It’s much more streamlined and we can do it on a regular basis. We’re not planning to develop a new title, per se, but are planning to grow and develop this one.”

Skate Jam is now available for Android and iOS.

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