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from How-To Geek http://bit.ly/2REFELK
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Saturday, February 2, 2019
Geek Trivia: Explaining Your Code To An Inanimate Object Is A Programming Trick Known As What?
from How-To Geek http://bit.ly/2REFELK
An Italian judge orders Francesco Firano, founder of cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail, to repay the $170M worth of cryptocurrency that went "missing" early 2018 (David Canellis/The Next Web)
David Canellis / The Next Web:
An Italian judge orders Francesco Firano, founder of cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail, to repay the $170M worth of cryptocurrency that went “missing” early 2018 — THAT'S IF HE EVEN HAS IT ANYMORE ... An Italian judge has reportedly ordered Francesco Firano …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2UD436c
Housing advocates say automated tools from companies like CoreLogic, used by landlords to screen tenants, fail to capture the complexity of criminal records (Colin Lecher/The Verge)
Colin Lecher / The Verge:
Housing advocates say automated tools from companies like CoreLogic, used by landlords to screen tenants, fail to capture the complexity of criminal records — But advocates say algorithms can't capture the complexity of criminal records — Mikhail Arroyo had made it out of the coma …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2MKF9i9
A look inside Blind's anonymous chat forum used by Google employees shows transphobic and racist comments and messages critical of Google's diversity efforts (Jennings Brown/Gizmodo)
Jennings Brown / Gizmodo:
A look inside Blind's anonymous chat forum used by Google employees shows transphobic and racist comments and messages critical of Google's diversity efforts — In early January, Google systems reliability engineer Liz Fong-Jones announced she was leaving the company after 11 years …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2Bfzk7K
AT&T lost 14% or 267K DirecTV Now subscribers in Q4 after a $5 price hike in the summer, as it struggles with managing debt from DirecTV and Time Warner deals (Karl Bode/Motherboard)
Karl Bode / Motherboard:
AT&T lost 14% or 267K DirecTV Now subscribers in Q4 after a $5 price hike in the summer, as it struggles with managing debt from DirecTV and Time Warner deals — Massive merger debt forced company to raise rates, only driving users to cut the cord even faster.
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2HLAC0g
Rekognition's only known law enforcement client does not use "confidence threshold", undermining Amazon's defense against research showing the software's bias (Bryan Menegus/Gizmodo)
Bryan Menegus / Gizmodo:
Rekognition's only known law enforcement client does not use “confidence threshold”, undermining Amazon's defense against research showing the software's bias — Faced with two independent studies that found its facial recognition software returns inaccurate or biased results …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2BisHSq
Here’s the first trailer for the VR sequel to Groundhog Day
Sony Pictures is taking audiences back to Punxsutawney… this time in virtual reality.
Whether it’s an abomination and a perversion of one of the best movies in the Bill Murray oeuvre or a great way to immerse a viewer in one of the most perfectly realized worlds brought to the silver screen (I unrepentantly love Groundhog Day) is TBD. That’s for players to decide.
In Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son players embody Phil Connors Jr., the son of Groundhog Day’s central character.
For anyone not familiar with the film, Bill Murray’s character was forced to relive the same day until he made all of the right choices to change the trajectory of his life.
In the sequel, his kid faces the same dilemma, reliving the same day over and over until, as Sony’s messaging puts it, “he learns the true value of friends and family.”
Published and produced by Sony Pictures Virtual Reality, the VR Groundhog Day sequel is co-produced by MWM Immersive, the division of Madison Wells Media — which also made Chained: A Victorian Nightmare — and developed by Tequila Works, the Madrid-based video game developer behind Deadlight and RiME.
from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2RBQli9
The central banks of Saudi Arabia and UAE launch a trial project for a cryptocurrency called Aber, to facilitate financial settlements between the two countries (Yogita Khatri/CoinDesk)
Yogita Khatri / CoinDesk:
The central banks of Saudi Arabia and UAE launch a trial project for a cryptocurrency called Aber, to facilitate financial settlements between the two countries — The central banks of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have jointly launched a digital currency trial.
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2GgwLFQ
Facebook warned over privacy risks of merging messaging platforms
Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in Europe has asked the company for an “urgent briefing” regarding plans to integrate the underlying infrastructure of its three social messaging platforms.
In a statement posted to its website late last week the Irish Data Protection Commission writes: “Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal.”
Last week the New York Times broke the news that Facebook intends to unify the backend infrastructure of its three separate products, couching it as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg asserting control over acquisitions whose founders have since left the building.
Instagram founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, left Facebook last year, as a result of rising tensions over reduced independence, according to our sources.
While WhatsApp’s founders left Facebook earlier, with Brian Acton departing in late 2017 and Jan Koum sticking it out until spring 2018. The pair reportedly clashed with Facebook execs over user privacy and differences over how to monetize the end-to-end encrypted platform.
Acton later said Facebook had coached him to tell European regulators assessing whether to approve the 2014 merger that it would be “really difficult” for the company to combine WhatsApp and Facebook user data.
In the event, Facebook went on to link accounts across the two platforms just two years after the acquisition closed. It was later hit with a $122M penalty from the European Commission for providing “incorrect or misleading” information at the time of the merger. Though Facebook claimed it had made unintentional “errors” in the 2014 filing.
A further couple of years on and Facebook has now graduated to seeking full platform unification of separate messaging products.
“We want to build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private,” a spokesperson told us when we asked for a response to the NYT report. “We’re working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks.”
“As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work,” the spokesperson added, confirming the substance of the NYT report.
There certainly would be a lot of detail to be worked out. Not least the feasibility of legally merging user data across distinct products in Europe, where a controversial 2016 privacy u-turn by WhatsApp — when it suddenly announced it would after all share user data with parent company Facebook (despite previously saying it would never do so), including sharing data for marketing purposes — triggered swift regulatory intervention.
Facebook was forced to suspend marketing-related data flows in Europe. Though it has continued sharing data between WhatsApp and Facebook for security and business intelligence purposes, leading to the French data watchdog to issue a formal notice at the end of 2017 warning the latter transfers also lack a legal basis.
A court in Hamburg, Germany, also officially banned Facebook from using WhatsApp user data for its own purposes.
Early last year, following an investigation into the data-sharing u-turn, the UK’s data watchdog obtained an undertaking from WhatsApp that it would not share personal data with Facebook until the two services could do so in a way that’s compliant with the region’s strict privacy framework, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Facebook only avoided a fine from the UK regulator because it froze data flows after the regulatory intervention. But the company clearly remains on watch — and any fresh moves to further integrate the platforms would trigger instant scrutiny, evidenced by the shot across the bows from the DPC in Ireland (Facebook’s international HQ is based in the country).
The 2016 WhatsApp-Facebook privacy u-turn also occurred prior to Europe’s GDPR coming into force. And the updated privacy framework includes a regime of substantially larger maximum fines for any violations.
Under the regulation watchdogs also have the power to ban companies from processing data. Which, in the case of a revenue-rich data-mining giant like Facebook, could be a far more potent disincentive than even a billion dollar fine.
We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment on the Irish DPC’s statement and will update this report with any response.
Here’s the full statement from the Irish watchdog:
While we understand that Facebook’s proposal to integrate the Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram platforms is at a very early conceptual stage of development, the Irish DPC has asked Facebook Ireland for an urgent briefing on what is being proposed. The Irish DPC will be very closely scrutinising Facebook’s plans as they develop, particularly insofar as they involve the sharing and merging of personal data between different Facebook companies. Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal. It must be emphasised that ultimately the proposed integration can only occur in the EU if it is capable of meeting all of the requirements of the GDPR.
Facebook may be hoping that extending end-to-end encryption to Instagram as part of its planned integration effort, per the NYT report, could offer a technical route to stop any privacy regulators’ hammers from falling.
Though use of e2e encryption still does not shield metadata from being harvested. And metadata offers a rich source of inferences about individuals which, under EU law, would certainly constitute personal data. So even with robust encryption across the board of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp the unified messaging platforms could still collectively leak plenty of personal data to their data-mining parent.
Facebook’s apps are also not open source. So even WhatsApp, which uses the respected Signal Protocol for its e2e encryption, remains under its control — with no ability for external audits to verify exactly what happens to data inside the app (such as checking what data gets sent back to Facebook). Users still have to trust Facebook’s implementation but regulators might demand actual proof of bona fide messaging privacy.
Nonetheless, the push by Facebook to integrate separate messaging products onto a single unified platform could be a defensive strategy — intended to throw dust in the face of antitrust regulators as political scrutiny of its market position and power continues to crank up. Though it would certainly be an aggressive defence to more tightly knit separate platforms together.
But if the risk Facebook is trying to shrink is being forced, by competition regulators, to sell off one or two of its messaging platforms it may feel it has nothing to lose by making it technically harder to break its business apart.
At the time of the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp Facebook promised autonomy to their founders. Zuckerberg has since changed his view, according to the NYT — believing integrating all three will increase the utility of each and thus provide a disincentive for users to abandon each service.
It may also be a hedge against any one of the three messaging platforms decreasing in popularity by furnishing the business with internal levers it can throw to try to artifically juice activity across a less popular app by encouraging cross-platform usage.
And given the staggering size of the Facebook messaging empire, which globally sprawls to 2.5BN+ humans, user resistance to centralized manipulation via having their buttons pushed to increase cross-platform engagement across Facebook’s business may be futile without regulatory intervention.
from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2S6fNB6
Startups Weekly: Even Gwyneth Paltrow had a hard time raising VC
I spent the week in Malibu attending Upfront Ventures’ annual Upfront Summit, which brings together the likes of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Washington, DC’s elite for a two-day networking session of sorts. Cameron Diaz was there for some reason, and Natalie Portman made an appearance. Stacey Abrams had a powerful Q&A session with Lisa Borders, the president and CEO of Time’s Up. Of course, Gwyneth Paltrow was there to talk up Goop, her venture-funded commerce and content engine.
“I had no idea what I was getting into but I am so fulfilled and on fire from this job,” Paltrow said onstage at the summit… “It’s a very different life than I used to have but I feel very lucky that I made this leap.” Speaking with Frederic Court, the founder of Felix Capital, Paltrow shed light on her fundraising process.
“When I set out to raise my Series A, it was very difficult,” she said. “It’s great to be Gwyneth Paltrow when you’re raising money because people take the meeting, but then you get a lot more rejections than you would if they didn’t want to take a selfie … People, understandably, were dubious about [this business]. It becomes easier when you have a thriving business and your unit economics looks good.”
In other news…
1. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is an entrepreneur, too
The actor stopped by the summit to promote his startup, HitRecord. I talked to him about his $6.4 million round and grand plans for the artist-collaboration platform.
Backed by GV, Sequoia, Floodgate and more, Clover Health confirmed to TechCrunch this week that it’s brought in another round of capital led by Greenoaks. The $500 million round is a vote of confidence for the business, which has experienced its fair share of well-publicized hiccups. More on that here. Plus, Clutter, the startup that provides on-demand moving and storage services, is raising at least $200 million from SoftBank, sources tell TechCrunch. The round is a big deal for the LA tech ecosystem, which, aside from Snap and Bird, has birthed few venture-backed unicorns.
Pinterest, the nine-year-old visual search engine, has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as lead underwriters for an IPO that’s planned for later this year. With $700 million in 2018 revenue, the company has raised some $1.5 billion at a $12 billion valuation from Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, Valiant Capital Partners, Wellington Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and more.
Kleiner Perkins went “back to the future” this week with the announcement of a $600 million fund. The firm’s 18th fund, it will invest at the seed, Series A and Series B stages. TCV, a backer of Peloton and Airbnb, closed a whopping $3 billion vehicle to invest in consumer internet, IT infrastructure and services startups. Partech has doubled its Africa VC fund to $143 million and opened a Nairobi office to complement its Dakar practice. And Sapphire Ventures has set aside $115 million for sports and entertainment bets.
The co-founder of Y Combinator will throw a sort of annual weekend getaway for nerds in picturesque Boulder, Colo. Called the YC 120, it will bring toget her 120 people for a couple of days in April to create connections. Read TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos’ interview with Altman here.
Consumer wellness business Hims has raised $100 million in an ongoing round at a $1 billion pre-money valuation. A growth-stage investor has led the round, with participation from existing investors (which include Forerunner Ventures, Founders Fund, Redpoint Ventures, SV Angel, 8VC and Maverick Capital). Our sources declined to name the lead investor but said it was a “super big fund” that isn’t SoftBank and that hasn’t previously invested in Hims.
Five years after Andreessen Horowitz backed Oculus, it’s leading a $68 million Series A funding in Sandbox VR. TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney talked to a16z’s Andrew Chen and Floodgate’s Mike Maples about what sets Sandbox apart.
Here’s your weekly reminder to send me tips, suggestions and more to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or @KateClarkTweets.
- Data governance platform Collibra raises $100M at a $1B valuation
- FabFitFun raises $80M for its growing lifestyle brand
- ContentSquare, the digital experience insights platform, raises $60M
- Petal raises $30M from Valar to bank the unbanked with credit cards
- Verbit raises $23M for its transcription service
- Dadi brings in $2M to democratize sperm storage
In a new class-action lawsuit, a former Munchery facilities worker is claiming the startup owes him and 250 other employees 60 days’ wages. On top of that, another former employee says the CEO, James Beriker, was largely absent and is to blame for Munchery’s downfall. If you haven’t been keeping up on Munchery’s abrupt shutdown, here’s some good background.
Consolidation in the micromobility space has arrived — in Brazil, at least. Not long after Y Combinator-backed Grin merged its electric scooter business with Brazil-based Ride, it’s completing another merger, this time with Yellow, the bike-share startup based in Brazil that has also expressed its ambitions to get into electric scooters.
If you enjoy this newsletter, be sure to check out TechCrunch’s venture-focused podcast, Equity. In this week’s episode, available here, Crunchbase editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm, TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley editor Connie Loizos and Jeff Clavier of Uncork Capital chat about $100 million rounds, Stripe’s mega valuation and Pinterest’s highly anticipated IPO.
from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Gnc1fA
MediaRadar: YouTube 2018 ad revenue rose 11% YoY, as Geico and Samsung accounted for 11.5% of revenue and media and entertainment companies brought in 30%+ (Amy Gesenhues/Marketing Land)
Amy Gesenhues / Marketing Land:
MediaRadar: YouTube 2018 ad revenue rose 11% YoY, as Geico and Samsung accounted for 11.5% of revenue and media and entertainment companies brought in 30%+ — YouTube ad revenues increased 11 percent year-over-year in 2018, according to MediaRadar. — YouTube saw a 51 percent ad renewal …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2TqTXoM
Deal Alert: 50% Off An Aukey 18W USB-C PD Wall Charger
If you’re in the market for a compact and powerful charger for your demanding smartphone or portable device, this is a tough deal to beat: half off an 18W USB-C PD charger from a top notch company.
Normally $21.99, you can pick up the charger for $10.99 off Amazon if you use the code 95SGCK4R (for the black model) or 9VO4Q3XT (for the white model).
What makes this little charger so great? Introduced by Aukey last fall it’s one of the most compact high watt chargers on the market (it’s scarcely bigger than the stock iPhone charger and sports foldable prongs). Paired with a USB-C charging cable you’ll be able to charge your newer iPhone, newer Android device, or other USB-C compatible devices like your Nintendo Switch much faster than you would with their stock charger.
The deal is so hot they’re already out of stock into the coming week, but we recommend buying one anyway and waiting the extra few days, it’s that great of a deal.
from How-To Geek http://bit.ly/2S3UekJ
Easily Borrow eBooks From Your Library on Your Phone or Tablet
Your local library probably offers eBooks and audiobooks via Overdrive. OverDrive can be a bit complicated, but the free Libby app for iPhone, iPad, and Android makes it as slick and easy to use as shopping on Amazon.
Assuming your library supports OverDrive, all you have to do is download the Libby app and sign in with your library card. Use the official website to check if your library supports OverDrive. Libby is actually made by OverDrive and is available on Windows 10, too.
After signing in with your library card details, you can use the Libby app to search for available eBooks and audiobooks. If a book is available, you can instantly check it out, download it, and read it right from within the Libby app. If someone else is reading the book and there aren’t any free copies available, you can place a “hold” just like you would on a physical book. Libby will automatically borrow a held book when it becomes available.
Books you’ve borrowed appear on your “shelf” in Libby. It all works similar to physical books. You can see when the book is due back and renew your loan if no one else is holding it. When your loan period expires, Libby will automatically return the eBook to the library. You can return a book ahead of time if you’re done, too—this will let someone else read it without waiting.
All of this was possible with OverDrive, but Libby just makes it so much more convenient than the old system. Best of all, it’s all free—all you need is a library card. You can even borrow books in Libby and send them to your Kindle.
Your local library probably offers other free digital resources, too, including free streaming movies and TV shows, online courses, and digital newspaper access.
RELATED: Not Just Books: All the Free Digital Stuff Your Local Library Might Offer
from How-To Geek http://bit.ly/2GjwBNW
DeepSolar Project, using machine learning and 1B+ satellite images, claims it found 1.47M solar installations in the US, much more than commonly cited estimates (Meghan Brown/ENGINEERING.com)
Meghan Brown / ENGINEERING.com:
DeepSolar Project, using machine learning and 1B+ satellite images, claims it found 1.47M solar installations in the US, much more than commonly cited estimates — Solar power installations have been increasing in both the residential and commercial spaces, but it is nearly impossible …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2S1d7Vs
With 100M devices sold, Alexa has achieved some level of product-market fit, but Amazon is still looking for Alexa's strategic place within its business (Benedict Evans)
Benedict Evans:
With 100M devices sold, Alexa has achieved some level of product-market fit, but Amazon is still looking for Alexa's strategic place within its business — Amazon's Alexa has been a huge, impressive and unexpected achievement. Amazon created a category from scratch and left both the AI leader Google …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2S1xmSU
Google bans 29 apps downloaded 4.3M+ times from the Play Store after researchers discovered they were being used to perform malicious acts like serve scam ads (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Google bans 29 apps downloaded 4.3M+ times from the Play Store after researchers discovered they were being used to perform malicious acts like serve scam ads — The 29 apps concealed their malice and were hard for many infected users to uninstall. — Google has banned dozens …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2MJD1Hr
As NYC's driver minimum wage law goes into effect, Uber increases its prices and Lyft sues NYC's Taxi and Limousine Commission and says prices will increase (Sara Ashley O'Brien/CNN)
Sara Ashley O'Brien / CNN:
As NYC's driver minimum wage law goes into effect, Uber increases its prices and Lyft sues NYC's Taxi and Limousine Commission and says prices will increase — New York (CNN Business)Uber and Lyft customers will have to pay more for their rides as a result of the first-of-its-kind driver minimum wage law in New York City.
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2BbADob
Instacart says it will roll out a $3 batch minimum fee for drivers over the coming days after Instacart inadvertently paid a driver 80 cents for a delivery run (Sean Captain/Fast Company)
Sean Captain / Fast Company:
Instacart says it will roll out a $3 batch minimum fee for drivers over the coming days after Instacart inadvertently paid a driver 80 cents for a delivery run — In the algorithm-driven gig economy, it's sometimes hard for workers to know how much they're actually getting paid.
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2GfyGdS
DNA testing firm FamilyTreeDNA is working with the FBI and allowing agents to search its 1M+ DNA profiles, raising user concerns about data privacy (Salvador Hernandez/BuzzFeed News)
Salvador Hernandez / BuzzFeed News:
DNA testing firm FamilyTreeDNA is working with the FBI and allowing agents to search its 1M+ DNA profiles, raising user concerns about data privacy — Family Tree DNA, one of the largest private genetic testing companies whose home-testing kits enable people to trace their ancestry and locate relatives …
from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2Uw3zP6
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