Tag: Facebook

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News You Can Use: 11/14/2018

  • China is making the internet less free, and US tech companies are helping

    While doing business in China, US tech companies must play by local rules — or leave, as Google did in 2010. Sarah Cook, Freedom House’s senior research analyst for East Asia, tells The Verge that abiding by local regulation is a waste of time. “Rather than develop tailor-made products to comply with China’s draconian censorship rules, we believe tech companies’ resources and ingenuity would be better spent on helping users jump the Great Firewall and access the uncensored version of their products,” she says.

    But most companies aren’t doing that. This August, Apple pulled 25,000 apps from its Chinese App Store, claiming they were “illegal” according to local law. In 2017, Apple removed VPN apps that people had used to elude Chinese censorship. When Apple launched the Product RED version of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus in China, it removed any trace of the Product RED branding that’s designed to support AIDS-related charities, in what some critics say may have been a response to China’s anti-LGBT policies. Currently, LinkedIn restricts Chinese users from accessing politically sensitive profiles or posts from people outside the country. Microsoft’s Bing search engine still sanitizes Chinese language search results, nearly a decade after the New York Times first reported on it.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/2/18053142/china-internet-privacy-censorship-apple-microsoft-google-democracy-report

  • This Map Shows You How Much Money Every Member of Congress Got from Big Telecom

    The map only includes incumbents, so you’ll have to dig a little deeper to get information on other candidates. Still, it’s a good starting place for checking where your members of congress stand before you cast a ballot. In New York, for example, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has gotten $413,307 from ISPs, according to the map, while Senator Chuck Schumer has attracted $1,018,574 in contributions from Big Telecom.

    Net neutrality and the influence of Big Telecom is a hot issue for many voters, after the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal net neutrality last year. Major ISPs were in favor of scrapping the rules and used their financial and lobbying power to try to push it through.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9k7e43/before-you-vote-check-out-this-map-of-how-much-big-telecom-gave-your-congress-members

  • NAFTA, explained with a toy car
  • Facebook Is the Least Trusted Major Tech Company When it Comes to Safeguarding Personal Data, Poll Finds

    Only 22% of Americans said that they trust Facebook with their personal information, far less than Amazon (49%), Google (41%), Microsoft (40%), and Apple (39%).

    “Facebook is in the bottom in terms of trust in housing your personal data,” said Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema. “Facebook’s crises continue rolling in the news cycle.”

    http://fortune.com/2018/11/08/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-reputation/

  • Half of YouTube viewers use it to learn how to do things they’ve never done

    A new Pew research study that surveyed 4,594 Americans in 2018 found that 51 percent of YouTube users say they rely on the video service to figure out how to do new things, and the service proved important both for regular users and irregular users. “That works out to 35 percent of all U.S. adults, once both users and non-users of the site are accounted for,” the study reads.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/7/18071992/youtube-pew-study-education-news-childrens-videos

Photo by Aditya Saxena on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 11/2/2018

Companies are trying to find a way to make money in a world where customers are shrinking and costs continue to rise.

IBM’s purchase of Red Hat shows the company has to focus less on their AI goals and get back to software and services.

As people hold on to their phones and computers longer, Apple is raising prices to ensure the cash flow increases. The laws of supply and demand ring true as phone prices rise, demand has dropped. Is this a chicken and egg situation?  Only time will tell.

Acquisitions

  • IBM to Acquire Red Hat for About $33 Billion

    IBM plans to pay $190 a share for Red Hat in what IBM said would be its largest acquisition ever. IBM plans to use cash and debt to make the acquisition. At the end of the third quarter, it held $14.7 billion in cash.

    IBM is paying an unusually large premium in the deal, at 63% above Red Hat’s closing stock price of $116.68 on Friday. IBM said that the deal, including debt, is worth $34 billion. Using Red Hat’s most recently disclosed number for shares outstanding, the equity value of the deal is just under that.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-in-advanced-talks-to-buy-red-hat-1540751279?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Cloud

  • Microsoft’s Cloud Strategy Pays Off

    The cloud-computing business, called Azure, grew 76%–still healthy but the slowest pace of growth since Microsoft began regularly disclosing the percentage gains about three years ago. Microsoft doesn’t disclose revenue figures for the business, but Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst Brad Reback estimated Azure revenue totaled $2.69 billion for the quarter.

    Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment, which includes Azure and server products, grew 24% to $8.57 billion, about $300 million above analysts’ expectations. “This absolutely shows Microsoft’s hybrid-cloud strength,” Mr. Reback said.

    Overall, revenue rose 19% to $29.08 billion.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsofts-profit-revenue-rise-even-as-cloud-business-growth-slows-1540413172

Security

  • Private messages from 81,000 hacked Facebook accounts for sale

    The perpetrators told the BBC Russian Service that they had details from a total of 120 million accounts, which they were attempting to sell, although there are reasons to be skeptical about that figure.

    Facebook said its security had not been compromised.

    And the data had probably been obtained through malicious browser extensions.

    Facebook added it had taken steps to prevent further accounts being affected.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46065796

  • Sen. Ron Wyden Introduces Bill That Would Send CEOs to Jail for Violating Consumer Privacy

    Wyden’s bill proposes that companies whose revenue exceeds $1 billion per year—or warehouse data on more than 50 million consumers or consumer devices—submit “annual data protection reports” to the government detailing all steps taken to protect the security and privacy of consumers’ personal information.

    The proposed legislation would also levy penalties up to 20 years in prison and $5 million in fines for executives who knowingly mislead the FTC in these reports. The FTC’s authority over such matters is currently limited—one of the reasons telecom giants have been eager to move oversight of their industry from the Federal Communications Commission to the FTC.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xjwjz/sen-ron-wyden-introduces-bill-that-would-send-ceos-to-jail-for-violating-consumer-privacy

Software/SaaS

  • IBM is betting the farm on Red Hat, and it better not mess up

    As Jon Shieber pointed out yesterday, it was a tacit acknowledgement that company was not going to get the results it was hoping for with emerging technologies like Watson artificial intelligence. It needed something that translated more directly into sales.

    Red Hat can be that enterprise sales engine. It already is a company on a $3 billion revenue run rate, and it has a goal of hitting $5 billion. While that’s somewhat small potatoes for a company like IBM that generates $19 billion a quarter, it represents a crucial addition.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/29/ibm-is-betting-the-farm-on-red-hat-and-it-better-not-mess-up/

  • Box takes on OpenText, Microsoft as enterprise content hub

    “The next five years in content management will be completely different from the last 20,” said Jeetu Patel, chief product officer at Box. Gone are the days of self-contained repositories that simply store, produce and archive business documents. The key to success entails knowing where your content resides, how to best access it and weaving the content into high-value experiences that solve business problems. The enterprise content hub is where that all begins, and Box is positioning itself to become that focus.

    https://searchcontentmanagement.techtarget.com/feature/Box-takes-on-OpenText-Microsoft-as-enterprise-content-hub

  • Linus Torvalds is back at Linux while GNU’s Stallman unveils a “kindness” policy

    Torvalds’s apparent speedy return and Stallman’s not-explicitly-pro-diversity not-quite-a-code-of-conduct seem to show the open source and free software movements are intent on taking their own approaches to diversity and gender relations. There’s no doubt this side of computing, which has historically been male and white and somewhat insular, is feeling the impact of external critiques. But so far, the projects have made relatively bland moves toward change that may not be enough to satisfy their critics or make would-be contributors who’ve felt excluded see themselves as welcome.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90254836/linus-torvalds-is-back-at-linux-while-gnus-stallman-unveils-a-kindness-policy

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Apple Raises Prices, and Profits Keep Booming

    Apple said Thursday that it sold about as many iPhones in the latest quarter as it did a year earlier but that iPhone revenue rose 29 percent. That was because customers paid nearly 29 percent more for the devices. (The average selling price is now $793.)

    The price increase helped propel Apple’s profits 32 percent higher, to $14.13 billion.

    But after those figures were reported, Luca Maestri, Apple’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call that the company would no longer disclose how many iPhones, iPads or Mac computers it sold. As a result, journalists and analysts will no longer be able to track how Apple’s swelling prices are improving its profits.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/apple-quarterly-results.html

Other

  • Google Walkout: Employees Stage Protest Over Handling of Sexual Harassment

    But employees’ discontent continued to simmer. Many said Google had treated female workers inequitably over time. Others were outraged that Google had paid Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile software, a $90 million exit package even after the company concluded that a harassment claim against him was credible.

    That led some Google employees to call for a walkout. The organizers also produced a list of demands for changing how Google handles sexual harassment, including ending its use of private arbitration in such cases. They also asked for the publication of a transparency report on instances of sexual harassment, further disclosures of salaries and compensation, an employee representative on the company board, and a chief diversity officer who could speak directly to the board.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/google-walkout-sexual-harassment.html

Photo by Taylor Grote on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 10/24/2018

The Source - No Attention Span

  • Facebook Isn’t Sorry — It Just Wants Your Data

    Weeks after the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal broke, Facebook announced at its annual conference that it would soon use its trove of user data to roll out a dating app to help pair users together in “long-term” romantic relationships. Later in the year, while Zuckerberg told Congress “I promise to do better for you” and pledged increased transparency in its handling of users’ data, the company admitted to secretly using a private tool to delete the old messages of its founder. This summer, just days after Zuckerberg assured “we have a responsibility to protect people,” reports surfaced that Facebook asked US banks for granular customer financial data (including card transactions and checking account balances) to use for a banking feature. Even the company’s good faith attempts to secure its platform feel ham-handed and oblivious, like last November when Facebook asked users in Australia to upload their nude photos to Facebook for employee review to combat revenge porn.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebook-isnt-sorry-it-just-wants-your-data

  • How WhatsApp is undermining Facebook’s war on election interference

    The problem, of course, is WhatsApp. As we were admiring the flags, Brazilian newspaper Folha published an investigation showing that media companies are buying large groups of phone numbers and blasting them with anti-leftist propaganda on the encrypted messaging app. While it’s often discussed as a chat app, WhatsApp has message-forwarding mechanics that strip away the identity of the sender and allow messages to spread virally with little accountability.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/19/17997516/facebook-election-war-room-brazil-whatsapp

  • The economics of immigration
  • Open offices have driven Panasonic to make horse blinders for humans

    “As open offices and digital nomads are on the rise, workers are finding it ever more important to have personal space where they can focus,” the company told Dezeen. “Wear Space instantly creates this kind of personal space – it’s as simple as putting on an article of clothing.”

    The device, which debuted as a prototype at SXSW earlier this year, is now the subject of a crowdfunding campaign. Early birds can snag one for around $260, but we’re going to say neigh on this one.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/open-offices-have-driven-panasonic-to-make-horse-blinders-for-humans/

  • Sorry, Goldfish: People’s Attention Spans Aren’t Shrinking, They’re Evolving

    The research, presented in detail in Prezi’s 2018 State of Attention Report, found that well over half — 59 percent — of business professionals feel they can give a piece of content their undivided attention more so today than they could just one year ago. Also, nearly half (49 percent) of respondents said they are more selective about the content they consume now compared to one year ago.

    The State of Attention study also found evidence that attention spans are not only intact across generations, but also expanding in younger generations. That’s important information for businesses: Many organizations struggle to communicate effectively with, and develop engaging content for, all groups in their multigenerational workforce — but that’s especially true with millennials. And millennials, according to Pew Research Center, are the largest generation in the workforce as of 2017.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/321266

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 10/5/2018

California is making headlines for their stance on consumer information protection. They are introducing their own net neutrality laws, they are forcing hardware makers to develop better default passwords, and they are forcing bots to reveal themselves (can’t pass themselves off as humans).

Apple and Amazon are stating they were NOT hacked by China. but Bloomberg thinks differently.

And finally… Elon Musk needs to get off of Twitter with the quickness.

Acquisitions

  • Software Firms Cloudera, Hortonworks to Merge

    The firms expect to generate about $720 million in combined annual revenue and achieve more than $125 million in annual cost savings as a result of the merger.

    Under terms of the deal, Cloudera stockholders will own about 60% of the combined company and Hortonworks stockholders the remaining 40%, the companies said Wednesday.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/software-firms-cloudera-hortonworks-to-merge-1538603060

  • Google acquires AI customer service startup Onward

    Onward’s enterprise chatbot platform leveraged natural language processing to extract meaning from customers’ messages. Drawing on signals like location, login status, and historical activity, it could personalize and contextualize its responses to questions.

    Onward’s visual bot builder, which let clients tailor answers with decision trees, afforded even greater customization. Thanks to integrations with Zendesk, Help Scout, Salesforce, Hubspot, Shopify, Spree, and Solidus, its bots could autonomously track conversations, add leads, and keep tabs on shipments and orders.

    https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/02/google-acquires-onward-an-ai-customer-service-startup/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Can’t spot the bot? In California, automated accounts have to reveal themselves

    a new law that bans automated accounts, more commonly known as bots, from pretending to be real people in pursuit of selling products or influencing elections. Automated accounts can still interact with Californians, according to the law, but they will need to disclose that they are bots.

    The law comes as concerns about social media manipulation remain elevated. With just more than a month to go before the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, social media companies have pledged to crack down on foreign interference.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/can-t-spot-bot-california-automated-accounts-have-reveal-themselves-n915556

Cloud

  • There’s a crack at the heart of Facebook’s advertising business

    As the Post illustrates, Facebook remains a critical tool for niche advertisers looking to reach their far-flung audiences. For big brand advertisers, though, Facebook can be a less certain proposition. That was my takeaway from Tim Peterson’s story in Digiday today about ad buyers’ apathy toward so-called premium programming on Watch, Facebook’s nascent video platform.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17934770/facebook-lgbt-ads-watch-policies

Security

  • Apple and Amazon explicitly deny claims that servers were compromised by Chinese chips

    Both Apple and Amazon are vehemently denying claims that their servers were compromised by Chinese spies following an explosive report from Bloomberg on Thursday. The report claims that spies were able to infiltrate some of the country’s biggest tech companies by inserting microchips the size of “a grain of rice” into Chinese-manufactured servers, part of the tech giants’ infrastructure. The report alleges that the companies discovered the chips on their own and notified US authorities, but both Apple and Amazon are refuting that any of the claims cited in the story are actually founded in reality.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17936968/apple-amazon-deny-servers-chinese-spy-chips

  • California Is Making It Illegal for Devices to Have Shitty Default Passwords

    “The lack of basic security features on internet connected devices undermines the privacy and security of California’s consumers, and allows hackers to turn everyday consumer electronics against us,” state senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, who authored the bill, said in a press release. “This bill ensures that technology serves the people of California, and that security is not an afterthought but rather a key component of the design process.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbd5m4/california-is-making-it-illegal-for-devices-to-have-shitty-default-passwords

Other

  • Amazon eliminates monthly bonuses and stock grants after minimum wage increase

    Several Amazon warehouse employees have criticized the move, stating they would actually be losing thousands in incentive pay. Currently, warehouse workers get two shares of Amazon stock when they’re hired ($1,952.76 per share as of writing), and an additional stock option each year. After the changes take effect, the RSU program will be phased out for stocks that vest in 2020 and 2021, and it will be replaced with a direct stock purchase plan by the end of next year.

    An Amazon warehouse worker told The Verge via email that the news was devastating to fulfillment employees, many of whom depend on their RSU and VCP (variable compensation pay, a performance-based monthly bonus program) incentives on top of their hourly wages. VCP incentives, which are dependent on good attendance and hitting productivity targets, could get Amazon workers an 8 percent monthly bonus, and a 16 percent bonus during the peak November and December seasons.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17934194/amazon-minimum-wage-raise-stock-options-bonus-warehouse

  • Elon Musk Tweet Mocks the Securities and Exchange Commission

    “Before the sun sets today, the SEC and his lawyers will be on the phone,” said Stephen Crimmins, a former SEC litigator now at Murphy & McGonigle PC. “It definitely jeopardizes the settlement.”

    For the settlement to move forward, the SEC could demand additional constraints on Mr. Musk’s activities, Mr. Crimmins added, since the primary concern of the SEC’s case was about how he had acted as a CEO and how he would behave going forward.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-tweet-appears-to-mock-the-securities-and-exchange-commission-1538685320?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Claude Piché on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 9/28/2018

Facebook was hacked (again), exposing 50 million users to potential data breaches. Instagram and WhatsApp accounts could also be affected.

As Intel experiences chip shortages, their plan is to focus on getting the high end chips at the door.

Ohh… Elon Musk is getting sued.

Acquisitions

  • Slack buys Astro and shuts down its email app

    It may seem curious for Slack, the giant chat app with the goal of killing email, to buy an email app — but the pairing makes a good deal of sense. Astro’s focus was on business users, and it built out some smart integrations inside of Slack. With the two teams combined, Slack can use Astro’s experience to build a native solution for dealing with emails right inside the chat app.

    There is some bad news, though: Slack is shutting down Astro’s email app. The app will stop functioning on October 10th. That’s unfortunate, given that good third-party email clients have become increasingly hard to come by, and Astro had some features that really made it stand out.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/24/17897658/slack-astro-acquisition-email-app-shut-down-integration

  • With Sirius behind it, can Pandora now stage a comeback?

    Sirius XM is all about selling subscriptions to listen to Howard Stern and stations based on genres like 70s, 80s and 90s, and for those who want on-demand music, “now Sirius can cross sell a Spotify clone,” he says. “It’s a winning combination.”

    Pandora’s biggest issue has been its double-edged sword. It is under contract to the record labels in paying higher copyright fees than on-demand outlets, and thus, the more listeners it gets, the more money it has to pay out. Pachter says Pandora has lost over $100 million in 2017 and 2016 due to sky high royalty rates.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/09/25/sirius-xm-pandora-comeback/1416707002/

  • DXC Boosts Cloud-First Approach With System Partners Buyout

    System Partners, a provider of customer-centric services like advisory, strategy designing, tailored managed services and the like, boasts more than 100 Salesforce certified consultants in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

    Management at DXC Technology believes that the buyout is a strategic move to support and cater to existing customers more efficiently, and strengthen its position in the cloud market

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/dxc-boosts-cloud-first-approach-with-system-partners-buyout-cm1029023

Artificial Intelligence

Cloud

  • Rising Cloud Bills May Get a Breather

    It is a big food chain that’s gotten much bigger quickly. Total capital spending by the four aforementioned companies has jumped by an average of 45% on a year-over-year basis for the past six quarters. The four spent a total of $34.7 billion in the first six months of this year—up 59% from the same period last year. But analysts for Morgan Stanley expect that pace to decelerate to growth of 45% for the second half and warned in a note this week that it could slow further to “low double digits” next year.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/rising-cloud-bills-may-get-a-breather-1538128800

  • Microsoft, IBM sign up to cheaper cloud alliance

    GeekWire is reporting that Cloudflare has brought in Microsoft, IBM, Digital Ocean, Automattic and Backblaze under a single banner called the Bandwidth Alliance.

    Scheduled to be announced today, during Cloudflare’s eighth birthday party, the group’s goal is to make sure Cloudflare’s customers using their services pay either significantly cheaper prices, or pay nothing at all, for the traffic that passes through locations where their networks are connected to Cloudflare’s services.

    https://www.itproportal.com/news/microsoft-google-sign-up-to-cheaper-cloud-alliance/

Security

  • France records big jump in privacy complaints since GDPR

    France’s CNIL agency said today that it’s received 3,767 complaints since May 25, when GDPR came into force, up from 2,294 complaints over the same period last year — which it notes was already a record year.

    CNIL says this represents a 64% increase in complaints, which it suggests shows that EU citizens have “seized the GDPR strongly” — attributing public engagement on the issue to media attention on the new regulation and on data protection stories such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/25/france-records-big-jump-in-privacy-complaints-since-gdpr/

  • Facebook Is Breached by Hackers, Putting 50 Million Users’ Data at Risk

    Three software flaws in Facebook’s systems allowed hackers to break into user accounts, including those of the top executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, according to two people familiar with the investigation but not allowed to discuss it publicly. Once in, the attackers could have gained access to apps like Spotify, Instagram and hundreds of others that give users a way to log into their systems through Facebook.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/technology/facebook-hack-data-breach.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Intel acknowledges supply issues, will prioritize premium chips

    In the short term, Intel plans to prioritize the premium market, including Xeon and Core processors, so it “can serve the high-performance segments of the market.” Beyond that, the company plans to invest $15 billion in capital expenditures this year, including $1 billion going toward the manufacture of 14nm silicon in the U.S., Ireland and Israel.

    These issues have left the broader PC industry in a rough spot. On the face of it, a shortage due to increased demand seems like a good problem to have, but ultimately a lack of processors could create a major issue if the market continues to grow, perhaps ultimately reversing some of that success.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/intel-acknowledges-supply-issues-will-prioritize-premium-chips/

  • Verizon hits 1.45Gbps 4G LTE speeds in New York

    The milestone saw it aggregate six channels of spectrum (both licensed and shared — a first in the US). According to Verizon VP of Technology Planning and Development, Bill Stone, the company is laying a “foundation” for its “evolution into 5G.”

    The trial involved aggregating four carriers of licence-assisted access (LTE-LAA) spectrum with licensed PCS and AWS spectrum, according to ZDNet. It also relied on 256 quadrature amplitude moderation (256 QAM) and 4×4 multiple-input multiple-output (4×4 MIMO) technologies — the latter antenna tech is available in 1,100 locations nationwide. Meanwhile, it’s facing fierce 5G competition from rivals AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/28/verizon-peak-4g-lte-speed-new-york/

Other

  • SEC charges Tesla CEO Elon Musk with fraud

    The SEC complaint alleges that Musk issued “false and misleading” statements and failed to properly notify regulators of material company events. The SEC held a press conference Thursday evening regarding the complaint.

    Among other remedies, the SEC is seeking to bar Musk from serving as an officer or director of a publicly traded company if found guilty.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/27/tesla-falls-4percent-on-report-elon-musk-sued-by-sec.html

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash