Google Fiber is leaving Louisville in humiliating setback | The Verge

See this Google post for more details

"In Louisville, Google Fiber installation crews had been using a process called “shallow trenching” that involved laying fiber cable two inches beneath the sides of roads in the city and covering them up with sealant. The company seemed optimistic about this plan until some of the cable started becoming exposed over time, requiring a second cover-up with hot asphalt. It seems Access realized it had to go a bit deeper with the cabling; in San Antonio, a similar method is used — but the fiber is laid at least six inches deep into the ground. Google Fiber has at times faced legal challenges from rivals (like AT&T) that don’t want to share utility poles, so shallow trenching is also a way around that hurdle.
Unfortunately, things have somehow gone so awry in Louisville that Google Fiber claims it would need to rebuild the entire network to get everything to a satisfactory point, and it seems Alphabet just isn’t interested in blowing the cash that would be necessary to do that. So instead, Google Fiber will today alert Lousville customers that their service will end on April 15th."

Google Fiber is leaving Louisville in humiliating setback | The Verge

Jeff Bezos Accuses the National Enquirer of Sextortion | Lawfare

Check the full post for an index of related resources; also see Bezos Allegations Could Upend American Media’s Deal With Feds | Bloomberg

"Wittes and I, along with Cody Poplin and Clara Spera, produced a Brookings Institution report on sextortion in 2016, and Wittes interviewed Mona Sedky—a computer crimes prosecutor who focuses on sextortion cases—on the Lawfare Podcast. Much of what we said then remains true now: sextortion is understudied; it’s suprisingly common; and it’s a brutal form of abuse. Some victims commit suicide. Those who suffer from sextortion are not usually those who have money and power; they are, by and large, vulnerable children and teenagers who are scared and don’t know where to turn. For this reason, as Wittes identified, Bezos’s decision to come forward with AMI’s threat is actually quite a powerful statement.
[...]
I would be remiss to close without noting the larger political implications of the story, though they’re outside the scope of this piece. It’s not entirely clear from the Medium post precisely what “coverage” AMI was concerned could be described as “politically motivated,” nor is it clear who AMI worried would make that statement—Bezos, or the Post. Bezos has long been a target of President Trump due to his ownership of the Post, and the Enquirer—helmed by David Pecker, a longtime associate of the president’s—has become enmeshed in the many investigations into Trump due to its role in allegedly enabling the silencing of women with whom Trump had affairs. AMI recently signed a non-prosecution agreement with prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York."

Jeff Bezos Accuses the National Enquirer of Sextortion | Lawfare

Netflix, but for Video Games | The Economist

New frontiers for gaming

"In October Google began tests of a cloud-gaming service called “Project Stream”, using a big-budget game, “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” (a still is pictured). The game was designed to run on dedicated consoles and beefy PCs. But with the computational heavy-lifting shifted to Google’s data-centres, even a modest laptop could have the game’s sumptuous take on the Peloponnesian War piped to it over the web.
Those initial trials are now finished. Microsoft, which makes the Xbox consoles, is due to start testing a similar service, Project xCloud, later this year. Amazon is also thought to be interested. The giants will be battling a string of competitors. Electronic Arts, a big games publisher, has plans for a streaming product of its own. Nvidia, a maker of video-gaming graphics chips, is testing a similar service. Sony, which makes the PlayStation consoles, already has a cloud-gaming offering called PlayStation Now, as do startups such as Loudplay and Shadow. Customers of Telecom Italia, an Italian internet provider, and Orange, a French one, can avail themselves too.
The hope is that cloudified games will be more appealing to consumers. The industry would simply be keeping up with their habits, says Kareem Choudhry, who runs Project XCloud at Microsoft. People are trained to expect entertainment to be portable, transferable between different devices, and instantly available."

Netflix, but for Video Games | The Economist

The New York Times Co. Reports $709 Million in Digital Revenue for 2018 | NYT

Also see The New York Times is proving that the internet did not kill the news business | CNBC

"The company hit another revenue milestone: Digital advertising surpassed print advertising for the first time in the fourth quarter, jumping 23 percent to $103 million. Print advertising fell 10 percent, to $88 million.

The revenue gains will allow the company to spend more on its newsroom operations.

“Our appeal to subscribers — and to the world’s leading advertisers — depends more than anything on the quality of our journalism,” Mr. Thompson said in the statement. “That is why we have increased, rather than cut back, our investment in our newsroom and opinion departments. We want to accelerate our digital growth further, so in 2019, we will direct fresh investment into journalism, product and marketing.”

Last year the company added 120 newsroom employees, bringing the total number of journalists at The Times to 1,600, the largest count in its history."

The New York Times Co. Reports $709 Million in Digital Revenue for 2018 | NYT

There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology | Wired

Final paragraphs from a Bruce Schneier reality check

"Do you need a public blockchain? The answer is almost certainly no. A blockchain probably doesn’t solve the security problems you think it solves. The security problems it solves are probably not the ones you have. (Manipulating audit data is probably not your major security risk.) A false trust in blockchain can itself be a security risk. The inefficiencies, especially in scaling, are probably not worth it. I have looked at many blockchain applications, and all of them could achieve the same security properties without using a blockchain—of course, then they wouldn’t have the cool name.

Honestly, cryptocurrencies are useless. They're only used by speculators looking for quick riches, people who don't like government-backed currencies, and criminals who want a black-market way to exchange money.

To answer the question of whether the blockchain is needed, ask yourself: Does the blockchain change the system of trust in any meaningful way, or just shift it around? Does it just try to replace trust with verification? Does it strengthen existing trust relationships, or try to go against them? How can trust be abused in the new system, and is this better or worse than the potential abuses in the old system? And lastly: What would your system look like if you didn’t use blockchain at all?

If you ask yourself those questions, it's likely you'll choose solutions that don't use public blockchain. And that'll be a good thing—especially when the hype dissipates." 

There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology | Wired

Spotify finally made a profit and spent big on its podcast future | Engadget

For more analysis, see The end of an era: Spotify buying Gimlet signals the start of something new in podcasting. Is that good or bad? | NiemanLab

"Spotify already offers podcasts and has been producing original shows for some time. The company isn't content with its offerings, however. In addition to Gimlet and Anchor, executives are hoping to spend between $400 million and $500 million "on multiple acquisitions" this year. "Growing podcast listening on Spotify is an important strategy for driving top of funnel growth, increased user engagement, lower churn, faster revenue growth, and higher margins," the company said in its earnings. "We intend to lean into this strategy in 2019, both to acquire exclusive content and to increase investment in the production of content in-house."

Spotify is taking the Netflix model, in short. As the company grows, it's inevitable that established record labels will start charging higher licensing fees. Podcasts, however, is something that Spotify can buy and own as exclusive content. If it green-lights the right shows, it could pull users away from third-party podcast apps and then slowly persuade them to take out a premium subscription. Anchor, too, gives Spotify the potential to rapidly build a YouTube-style distribution network. "Gimlet and Anchor will position us to become the leading platform for podcast creators around the world and the leading producer of podcasts," Ek hinted in a blog post."

Spotify finally made a profit and spent big on its podcast future | Engadget

Oracle Didn’t See the Data Reckoning Coming | Bloomberg

Data broker broken

"Data Cloud’s software enables an advertiser to target people based on what they buy in stores; the websites they visit; their likes, interests, and musings on social media; and even what they’re looking at on their screens. It also helps an advertiser manage its Facebook and Twitter campaigns. If Company X wants to, it can ask Oracle to find people looking at images of its SUV, add the information to its consumer profiles, and then upload the data to Facebook, where the carmaker can target those people with ads for the same model.

That last part has gotten tougher in the past year. In March, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed just how casually Facebook Inc. had shared user data with other companies for years, the social network’s clampdown on its own systems became a serious problem for Oracle, say two former staffers and another person familiar with the matter, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. By fall, Facebook promised, Oracle and other companies would have to get more consumer consent to use data that helped brands target ads on its network, and Facebook would stop selling ad data on behalf of such third parties. Facebook confirmed that it canceled two partner programs but declined to comment further.

Before the Cambridge story broke, it wasn’t uncommon for Oracle account managers to do 40 percent of their business on Facebook, says one of the former staffers. So while Oracle tried to get Facebook workarounds in place, account managers scrambled to push clients toward Twitter, Pinterest, and other alternatives that at least kept them spending money, that person says. At the same time, the list of companies supplying Oracle with profile data fell by as much as half, they say, because many of those companies couldn’t comply with Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation ahead of its enforcement deadline last May. Oracle says it doesn’t push clients to favor one platform or another, that it has more than made up for its lost data inputs with new partners in other markets, and that Facebook remains a key partner."

  Oracle Didn’t See the Data Reckoning Coming | Bloomberg

Crypto-Exchange Says It Can’t Pay Investors Because Its C.E.O. Died, and He Had the Passwords | NYT

On a brighter note, the security model seems to work...

"A Canadian cryptocurrency exchange said it could not repay at least $250 million to clients after its chief executive died suddenly while visiting India. The company, Quadriga CX, said in court filings that the C.E.O., Gerald W. Cotten, was the only person who knew the security keys and passwords needed to access the funds. [...]

In an affidavit, his widow, Jennifer K. M. Robertson, wrote that her husband had run the business from an encrypted laptop, working mostly out of their home in Fall River, Nova Scotia. Ms. Robertson did not know the password or recovery key and could not find them written down anywhere “despite repeated and diligent searches,” she wrote.

Ms. Robertson said she also hired an expert to find the cryptocurrency in “cold wallets” stored offline, with little success.

While other crypto-exchanges have lost their clients’ money, this appears to be the first one that has said it actually lost the keys to its accounts."

Crypto-Exchange Says It Can’t Pay Investors Because Its C.E.O. Died, and He Had the Passwords | NYT

Biggest Public Company? Microsoft. Wait, Apple Again. Amazon? No, Back to Microsoft. | NYT

FB should be back in the #5 position (albeit ~$300B behind #4) within a week or two...

"The positions of Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon have been flip-flopping since the wipeout in the iPhone maker’s stock price late last year. The mantle has changed hands seven times among the three companies. Three of those switches have taken place over the past week as the big tech companies reported quarterly results. And Alphabet (Google’s parent company) has lurked not far behind the whole time.

The competition reflects the global economic concerns hanging over the markets as well as the changing technology landscape, and it’s a shift from past years. Apple passed Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable company in the United States almost eight years ago, and after 2012 it held on, largely unchallenged, for six years."

Biggest Public Company? Microsoft. Wait, Apple Again. Amazon? No, Back to Microsoft. | NYT

Making New Drugs With a Dose of Artificial Intelligence | NYT

Research different

"The contest, the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction, was not won by academics. It was won by DeepMind, the artificial intelligence lab owned by Google’s parent company.

“I was surprised and deflated,” said Dr. AlQuraishi, a researcher at Harvard Medical School. “They were way out in front of everyone else.”

DeepMind specializes in “deep learning,” a type of artificial intelligence that is rapidly changing drug discovery science. A growing number of companies are applying similar methods to other parts of the long, enormously complex process that produces new medicines. These A.I. techniques can speed up many aspects of drug discovery and, in some cases, perform tasks typically handled by scientists.

“It is not that machines are going to replace chemists,” said Derek Lowe, a longtime drug discovery researcher and the author of In the Pipeline, a widely read blog dedicated to drug discovery. “It’s that the chemists who use machines will replace those that don’t.”"

Making New Drugs With a Dose of Artificial Intelligence | NYT

Apple Augmented-Reality Headset Executive Leaves Company | Bloomberg

Also see HoloLens Inventor Avi Bar-Zeev Departs Apple's AR/VR Team | MacRumors

"The former Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. manager said on Twitter that he "had the best exit one can imagine" and "won’t comment on any specific product plans." Former Dolby executive Mike Rockwell runs Apple’s AR team as vice president of augmented and virtual reality.

Apple has been working on a headset that would handle some iPhone functions, including messaging, calling, watching video and maps navigation, Bloomberg News has reported. The company has hundreds of people working on the effort -- code named T288 -- and is seeking to launch the device as early as 2020. It will have its own new chip, App Store, and operating system dubbed rOS, people familiar with the effort have said."

Apple Augmented-Reality Headset Executive Leaves Company | Bloomberg

Google poured billions into its cloud business in 2018, outspending both Amazon and Microsoft | Business Insider

Also see Google ended 2018 with 5 million customers paying for G Suite | 9to5Google

"During its year-end earnings report on Monday, Google revealed that it doubled its capital expenditures in 2018, to $25.5 billion, up from $12.6 billion in 2017. The hefty spending went towards everything from new office facilities to accommodate Google's growing workforce to bolstering its infrastructure such as datacenters and servers.

It's tough to say exactly who much of that capex went towards Google's cloud business specifically, but the company has made it clear that investing in the cloud is a priority. Google said it launched its 18th Google Cloud region in the fourth quarter and pointed to plans for continued expansion in the US and abroad.

In comparison, Amazon spent $11.3 billion cash on capex in 2018, split between fulfillment operations (like warehouses) and AWS, it said. And Microsoft said it spent $16 billion."

Google poured billions into its cloud business in 2018, outspending both Amazon and Microsoft | Business Insider

Slack Files for Public Offering, Joining Silicon Valley’s Stock Market Rush | NYT

Final sentence: "In January, Microsoft announced that 420,000 organizations used its Teams product, including 89 of the Fortune 100."

"There is likely to be a strong demand for Slack stock. The company was valued at $7.1 billion by private investors last year, but in recent weeks investment firms have offered to buy its shares at a price that values Slack at $13 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the details who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Slack also plans an unusual form of public offering called a direct listing, the person added. Unlike most I.P.O.s, in which firms sell stock to public market investors in advance, direct listings let a company begin trading its shares on an exchange without raising new funds. Spotify, a provider of streaming music, went public in 2018 in a direct listing, paving the way for other high-profile start-ups to follow.

With a direct listing, shareholders can also sell their stock immediately after the public offering, instead of waiting for what is known as a lockup period to expire."

Slack Files for Public Offering, Joining Silicon Valley’s Stock Market Rush | NYT

Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook at 15

From Mark Zuckerberg's 15th-anniversary post; also see Has Facebook been good for the world? | Vox

"We've made real progress on these issues and built some of the most advanced systems in the world to address them, but there's a lot more to do. We're now taking steps that wouldn't have been possible even just a few years ago -- for example, this year we plan to spend more on safety and security than our whole revenue at the time of our IPO, and the artificial intelligence required to help manage content at scale didn't exist until recently. But as people use these networks to shape society, it's critical we continue making progress on these questions.
At the same time, there is another force at play as well. As networks of people replace traditional hierarchies and reshape many institutions in our society -- from government to business to media to communities and more -- there is a tendency of some people to lament this change, to overly emphasize the negative, and in some cases to go so far as saying the shift to empowering people in the ways the internet and these networks do is mostly harmful to society and democracy."

Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook at 15

Facebook turns 15 | The Economist

Final paragraphs below; also see Death of the private self: how fifteen years of Facebook changed the human condition | Guardian

"Can the social-media giant stay as influential in the next 15 years as it has already been? At the risk of being wrong about Facebook again, that seems unlikely. This is partly because its impact has already been so extensive. But it is also because of growing unease with the platform. As with all new technologies, from the printed book to the telegraph, social media can be used both for good and bad. Critics of Facebook are increasingly vocal about the harms, pointing out that Facebook is addictive, harmful for democracy and too powerful in making decisions about what content people see. “Big tobacco” is what the bosses of several top tech companies have started calling the social network, and politicians are speaking openly about regulation.

Though it has just posted record quarterly profits, it seems unlikely that Americans are going to increase the time they spend on Facebook proper. Time on its core social network is declining, probably because users are questioning whether it is as enjoyable as it used to be. Adults in America spent 11.5% of their online time on Facebook’s main platform, a fifth less than two years earlier, according to Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research. Instagram use is rising, but not enough to make up for the core social network’s decline. As more people question whether social media are good for them, Facebook could loosen its grip on America. The relationship with Facebook continues, but the love affair is over."

Facebook turns 15 | The Economist

Amazon hits record $3 billion in profit off strong holiday season | Washington Post

Also see AWS Drives More Than Half of Amazon's Operating Income | Light Reading

"Amazon closed 2018 with a record $3 billion in profit in the fourth quarter, running off the fuel of the holiday season to beat Wall Street expectations. But its guidance for the start of 2019 fell short.

On Thursday, the retail giant announced its sales were up 20 percent in the last quarter to $72.4 billion. Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division, reported a 45 percent jump in the fourth quarter to hit $7.43 billion in sales. AWS revenue alone made up 10 percent of Amazon’s total quarterly sales -- reinforcing just how dominant cloud computing has become for a company broadly thought of as an online retailer.

The results also offered a full look at Amazon’s performance in 2018. For the year, net sales were up 31 percent to $232.9 billion, compared to $177.9 billion in 2017."

Amazon hits record $3 billion in profit off strong holiday season | Washington Post

Russia’s Playbook for Social Media Disinformation Has Gone Global | NYT

On a related note, see Facebook’s ‘Draft Charter’ for Content Moderation: Vague, But Promising | Lawfare

"Russia created a playbook for spreading disinformation on social media. Now the rest of the world is following it.

Twitter said on Thursday that countries including Bangladesh and Venezuela had been using social media to disseminate government talking points, while Facebook detailed a broad Iranian disinformation campaign that touched on everything from the conflict in Syria to conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks.

The campaigns tied to various governments — as well as privately held accounts in the United States — followed a pattern similar to Russian disinformation efforts before and after the 2016 presidential election. Millions of people were targeted by content designed to widen political and social divisions among Americans."

Russia’s Playbook for Social Media Disinformation Has Gone Global | NYT

Apple revokes Google’s ability to use internal iOS apps, just like Facebook | Washington Post

Perhaps the headline should be: "Google Suffers Consequences For Violating Apple Developer Program License, Just Like Facebook"; also see Apple and Facebook make peace so Facebook employees can start using internal iOS apps again | CNBC and Apple restores Google's internal iOS apps after certificate misuse punishment | TechCrunch

"Much like Facebook’s research app, Google’s software — called Screenwise Meter — had been designed and distributed to consumers under an enterprise developer certificate that restricts the user base to employees. By making the apps available to the wider public, the tech companies ran afoul of Apple’s terms. Google has disabled Screenwise Meter on iOS devices and apologized in a statement to TechCrunch Wednesday.

“We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization," Apple said after TechCrunch reported on Facebook’s Research VPN app."

Apple revokes Google’s ability to use internal iOS apps, just like Facebook | Washington Post

Apple Stands Up for Privacy. Does It Matter? | NYT

Final paragraphs from Kara Swisher's latest Facebook reality check

"Still, it’s interesting that Mr. Cook climbed out on this limb anyway. Some insiders at Facebook are alleging he did so to get the heat off Apple’s troubles. But that’s a canard. Mr. Cook has long been vocal about distinguishing Apple from Facebook when it comes to user data and the importance of protecting privacy.

The bigger problem is that such an important issue might turn out to be the real nothing burger. Facebook turned in another stellar quarter this week, which made its stock rise strongly. So despite all the sketchy things the company is accused of doing by Apple and many others, most investors and analysts don’t seem to care, and they will never care, as long as its digital advertising business — goosed by its astonishing and nakedly ambitious ability to suck in data, data and more data from all of us — continues to impress. Simply put, Wall Street does not care.

Or to use an old bromide: Facebook is so poor, all it has is money."

Apple Stands Up for Privacy. Does It Matter? | NYT

Tesla’s profits disappoint, renewing concerns about growth | Washington Post

Also see Tesla Has Just 4 Weeks to Rally 21% or Pay $920 Million on Bonds | Bloomberg

"Elon Musk’s Tesla posted a lower-than-expected profit for the fourth quarter and a $1 billion loss for all of 2018, the all-electric automaker said Wednesday, renewing questions about how it will fund its grand ambitions as it faces mass layoffs and billion-dollar debts.

Tesla’s $139 million quarterly profit marked the first time the company has recorded back-to-back quarterly profits, and the company’s $21 billion in revenue for the year — up from $11 billion in 2017 — showed it had made considerable progress in its race to dominate the global market for electric cars.

But analysts had expected the company to record about $182 million in profits for the quarter, and the miss appeared to reinvigorate investor concerns over the Silicon Valley automaker’s ability to reach new markets and survive in an increasingly competitive industry. The $50 billion company’s stock fell about 5 percent in after-hours trading."

Tesla’s profits disappoint, renewing concerns about growth | Washington Post

Intel Chiefs Testify on Global Threats, Cybersecurity and Elections | Lawfare

On a related note, see An Angry Trump Pushes Back Against His Own ‘Naïve’ Intelligence Officials | NYT

"The written statement provided by Coats began with a general discussion on the cyber threats facing the United States. According to Coats, “[o]ur adversaries and strategic competitors will increasingly use cyber capabilities—including cyber espionage, attack, and influence—to seek political, economic, and military advantage over the United States and its allies and partners.” He also briefly addressed how cyber threats have evolved. In that section, Coats concluded that foreign adversaries have expanded their traditional cyber espionage and intelligence activities and “are now becoming more adept at using social media to alter how we think, behave, and decide.” Coats’s written statement reflected the conclusions of the recently published National Intelligence Strategy, which states that “[d]espite growing awareness of cyber threats and improving cyber defenses, nearly all information, communication networks, and systems will be at risk for years to come,” and “[o]ur adversaries are becoming more adept at using cyberspace capabilities to threaten our interests and advance their own strategic and economic objectives.”

Coats identified China and Russia as “pos[ing] the greatest espionage and cyber attack threats” to the country, but also warns of the threats presented by Iran and North Korea. This point does not substantially deviate from the information that Coats provided during his 2017 and 2018 briefings to Congress. In addition, it is consistent with a 2016 statement by former DNI James Clapper, which described these four countries as “leading threat actors.”"

Intel Chiefs Testify on Global Threats, Cybersecurity and Elections | Lawfare

Newspapers cost more than twice as much today as they did a decade ago (and that was a smart move by publishers) | NiemanLab

On a related note, see Loss of newspapers contributes to political polarization | AP

"A seven-day print subscription to the Times will now run you over $1,000 a year in much of the country. A subscription to The Boston Globe here in Cambridge will run you about $750 a year. The Washington Post or The Dallas Morning News will each run you about $650. And if you’re in that dying breed of single-copy buyers at a newsstand or coffee shop, those four papers would cost you, on a weekday, $3, $2.50, $2, and $2.49, respectively.

Those prices have gone up fast. As recently as 2013, a weekday Boston Globe ran you $1.25 and a Washington Post or Dallas Morning News cost $1. And kids, gather ’round while I tell you about how angry people were in 2001 when a copy of the Post went from 25 cents to 35 cents. A year’s home delivery subscription to the Post cost about $130 back then. Even accounting for inflation since then, a Post subscription now costs about 3.5 times what it used to."

Newspapers cost more than twice as much today as they did a decade ago (and that was a smart move by publishers) | NiemanLab

Facebook keeps attracting digital ads, shares jump after hours | Reuters

 For another Facebook perspective, see Maybe Only Tim Cook Can Fix Facebook’s Privacy Problem | NYT

"Investors have worried that Facebook’s pledge to invest heavily to improve its privacy and security standards would blunt the company’s growth, but its fourth-quarter results appeared to soothe those concerns, sending its stock price up more than 11 percent after hours.

“The worst is over for this social media giant,” said Haris Anwar, an analyst at Investing.com: “Its ad business and user engagement haven’t been affected despite all the negative blows of the past year.”

The company has struggled with scandals over improperly shared customer data and propaganda on its service that tarnished its image and made it the target of political scrutiny across the globe last year."

Facebook keeps attracting digital ads, shares jump after hours | Reuters

Apple is in fantastic shape (as long as you ignore the iPhone) | Quartz

Also see Apple Reports First Quarter Results | Apple Newsroom

"Today’s report validated some of those concerns. The company reported $51.9 billion in iPhone sales this quarter, a drop of about 15% from the same period last year. It appears it was not a great holiday season for Apple’s latest devices, which some felt were too similar to last year’s products, but at a higher price.

One of the true bright spots for Apple in recent quarters has been its services business, which includes sales of apps, games, Apple Music and iCloud subscriptions, as well as Apple Pay fees. That business is the size of a Fortune 100 company on its own, and generated $10.8 billion this quarter, a jump of 19% over the same period last year.

For the first time, Apple reported the margin on its services business: a massive 62.2%."

Apple is in fantastic shape (as long as you ignore the iPhone) | Quartz

Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them | TechCrunch

Yet another "learning opportunity" for Facebook senior management... Also see Facebook will shut down its controversial market research app for iOS | The Verge

"Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook  has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and rewards teenagers and adults to download the Research app and give it root access to network traffic in what may be a violation of Apple policy so the social network can decrypt and analyze their phone activity, a TechCrunch investigation confirms. Facebook admitted to TechCrunch it was running the Research program to gather data on usage habits.

Since 2016, Facebook has been paying users ages 13 to 35 up to $20 per month plus referral fees to sell their privacy by installing the iOS or Android “Facebook Research” app. Facebook even asked users to screenshot their Amazon order history page. The program is administered through beta testing services Applause, BetaBound and uTest to cloak Facebook’s involvement, and is referred to in some documentation as “Project Atlas” — a fitting name for Facebook’s effort to map new trends and rivals around the globe."

Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them | TechCrunch

Warning! Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ | NYT

Some deep thoughts from Thomas Friedman

"Around the end of each year major dictionaries declare their “word of the year.” Last year, for instance, the most looked-up word at Merriam-Webster.com was “justice.” Well, even though it’s early, I’m ready to declare the word of the year for 2019.

The word is “deep.”

Why? Because recent advances in the speed and scope of digitization, connectivity, big data and artificial intelligence are now taking us “deep” into places and into powers that we’ve never experienced before — and that governments have never had to regulate before. I’m talking about deep learning, deep insights, deep surveillance, deep facial recognition, deep voice recognition, deep automation and deep artificial minds.

Some of these technologies offer unprecedented promise and some unprecedented peril — but they’re all now part of our lives. Everything is going deep."

Warning! Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ | NYT

With 10+ million daily active users, Slack is where more work happens every day, all over the world | Slack blog

Evidently not yet feeling constrained by Microsoft Teams or Workplace by Facebook...

"We are grateful for the customers who have put their trust in Slack to help them transform their organizations and be more productive. Slack is uniquely supporting teams at scale; it is used by 65 of the Fortune 100, and we’ve expanded our impact in these organizations by adding hundreds of thousands of new users within them since last year.

But it’s not just these large enterprises that are changing the way they work. The number of paid customers worldwide has grown by more than 50% over the past year and now tops 85,000. These include organizations with tens of people alongside those with tens of thousands, and they span nearly every kind of work: accountants, customer support reps, engineers, lawyers, journalists, dentists, chefs, detectives, executives, scientists, farmers, hoteliers, salespeople, and all kinds of other people use Slack to coordinate election coverage, diagnose network problems, review code, negotiate budgets, plan marketing campaigns, approve menus, review job candidates, and organize disaster response teams, along with countless other tasks."

With 10+ million daily active users, Slack is where more work happens every day, all over the world | Slack blog

How Google's Jigsaw Is Trying to Detoxify the Internet | PCMag

From an extensive Jigsaw overview

"Tech giants have experimented with various combinations of human moderation, AI algorithms, and filters to wade through the deluge of content flowing through their feeds each day. Jigsaw is trying to find a middle ground. The Alphabet subsidiary and tech incubator, formerly known as Google Ideas, is beginning to prove that machine learning (ML) fashioned into tools for human moderators can change the way we approach the internet's toxicity problem.

Perspective is an API developed by Jigsaw and Google's Counter Abuse Technology team. It uses ML to spot abuse and harassment online, and scores comments based on the perceived impact they might have on a conversation in a bid to make human moderators' lives easier."

How Google's Jigsaw Is Trying to Detoxify the Internet | PCMag

An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor | NYT

Final paragraphs from a timely book review

"McNamee’s book is not merely the cri de coeur of a forsworn tech optimist zinged by moral conscience. It’s also a robust and helpful itemization of the ways Facebook could be brought to heel. McNamee clearly believes the company can be made into something more benign, and perhaps even socially beneficial. That may or may not be true, but the damage it has already done is not precisely containable. Considering the high likelihood that Russian activity on Facebook may have tipped the 2016 election to Donald Trump, the damage is already of generational measure.

But here’s the bizarre quirk of the Facebook dystopia, whose sheer perversity would have likely pleased Orwell: It’s all Big and no Brother. Our time and lives are the company’s only currency. Without our continued attention, Facebook quite literally has nothing, and its empire could be brought down with a feather. Now, blow."

An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by an Early Facebook Investor | NYT

Lego bricks outshine gold bars as investments, study finds | CNET

BrickCoin can't be far behind...

""Lego returns are not exposed to market, value, momentum and volatility risk factors, but have an almost unit exposure to the size factor," the report said. "A low exposure to standard risk factors make the Lego toy an attractive alternative investment with a good diversification potential."

It's interesting to note that some of the most expensive Lego sets sold since 2014 have reached six figures."

Lego bricks outshine gold bars as investments, study finds | CNET

Major iPhone FaceTime bug lets you hear the audio of the person you are calling … before they pick up | 9to5Mac

Listen/watch different...

"A significant bug has been discovered in FaceTime and is currently spreading virally over social media. The bug lets you call anyone with FaceTime, and immediately hear the audio coming from their phone — before the person on the other end has accepted or rejected the incoming call. Apple says the issue will be addressed in a software update “later this week”. (Update: Apple has taken Group FaceTime offline in an attempt to address the issue in the interim).

Naturally, this poses a pretty privacy problem as you can essentially listen in on any iOS user, although it still rings like normal, so you can’t be 100% covert about it. Nevertheless, there is no indication on the recipient’s side that you could hear any of their audio."

Major iPhone FaceTime bug lets you hear the audio of the person you are calling … before they pick up | 9to5Mac

Images show Apple preparing News app in iOS 12.2 for new magazine subscription service | 9to5Mac

For other iOS 12.2 hints, see iOS 12.2 beta includes references to four new iPad models, new iPod Touch without Touch ID | 9to5Mac

"Today, we’ve been able to activate the landing page for this new service on Apple News running on iOS 12.2. It looks like the subscription service will be called “Apple News Magazines” and it will be associated to the user’s iTunes Store account, just like Apple Music. There are many mentions of “bundle subscription” in this beta, which makes us believe this can be a part of Apple’s plan to release an all-in-one media subscription which will include Apple Music, TV shows and magazines.

It’s unclear when this will become available to the public, but with the internal testing happening now and the other rumored new products and services, it’s possible that we’ll see an event in March which would include the announcement of the new TV shows service, Apple News Magazines and this all-in-one bundle subscription."

Images show Apple preparing News app in iOS 12.2 for new magazine subscription service | 9to5Mac

‘Businesses Will Not Be Able to Hide’: Spy Satellites May Give Edge From Above | NYT

In other surveillance capitalism news...

"High-altitude surveillance was once the domain of global superpowers. Now, a growing number of start-ups are turning it into a business, aiming to sell insights gleaned from cameras and other sensors installed on small and inexpensive “cube satellites.”

The companies and governments that spent decades using internet services, cameras and other devices to collect data on regular people may soon get a taste of their own information technology.

“Businesses will not be able to hide from competitors or regulators or watchdogs,” said Mark Johnson, chief executive and co-founder of Descartes Labs, another satellite information start-up. “They need to realize that their traditional competitive advantage — information — will be available to everyone.”"

‘Businesses Will Not Be Able to Hide’: Spy Satellites May Give Edge From Above | NYT

Microsoft’s Bing Back Online in China After Apparent Blockage | NYT

Tbd if we'll ever know the rest of the Bing-in-China story; in other Microsoft service access news, Microsoft Office 365 users in Europe unable to access mailboxes for a full day | ZDNet

"While Bing is not widely used in China, it has been one of the few remaining portals to the broader internet as the government isolates China’s internet from the rest of the world. Bing has survived in part because Microsoft has worked to follow the government’s censorship practices around political topics. It has also cooperated with the government in developing other parts of its business, such as working with a state-run firm that supplies the military to produce a government-approved version of its Windows 10 software.

“There are times when there are disagreements, there are times when there are difficult negotiations with the Chinese government, and we’re still waiting to find out what this situation is about,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said in an interview with Fox Business Network at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Mr. Smith acknowledged that Microsoft had fewer legal rights in China than in other countries.

“There are certain principles that we think it’s important to stand up for,” he said, “and we’ll go at times into the negotiating room and the negotiations are sometimes pretty darn direct.”"

Microsoft’s Bing Back Online in China After Apparent Blockage | NYT

The Facts About Facebook | WSJ

Final paragraphs from a Mark Zuckerberg op-ed (summarized: "We need your information for operation and security, but you control whether we use it for advertising.")

"Ultimately, I believe the most important principles around data are transparency, choice and control. We need to be clear about the ways we’re using information, and people need to have clear choices about how their information is used. We believe regulation that codifies these principles across the internet would be good for everyone.

It’s important to get this right, because there are clear benefits to this business model. Billions of people get a free service to stay connected to those they care about and to express themselves. And small businesses—which create most of the jobs and economic growth around the world—get access to tools that help them thrive. There are more than 90 million small businesses on Facebook, and they make up a large part of our business. Most couldn’t afford to buy TV ads or billboards, but now they have access to tools that only big companies could use before. In a global survey, half the businesses on Facebook say they’ve hired more people since they joined. They’re using our services to create millions of jobs.

For us, technology has always been about putting power in the hands of as many people as possible. If you believe in a world where everyone gets an opportunity to use their voice and an equal chance to be heard, where anyone can start a business from scratch, then it’s important to build technology that serves everyone. That’s the world we’re building for every day, and our business model makes it possible."

The Facts About Facebook | WSJ

LinkedIn's early investment in start-up Confluent has become a 50-fold gain for Microsoft | CNBC

Check the full article for more on Confluent's history and LinkedIn's investment portfolio

"When Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $27 billion in 2016, the deal brought with it a small equity investment that's turned into a surprising windfall.

Two years before the acquisition, LinkedIn invested about $500,000 as part of a $6.9 million venture round in a fledgling spin-out called Confluent, which was setting out to commercialize the Apache Kafka open-source software. It was LinkedIn's first such investment, and valued Confluent at about $24 million.

On Wednesday, Confluent said its valuation has swelled to $2.5 billion, based on a fresh $125 million investment led by Sequoia. That means the company is worth over 100 times more today than it was when LinkedIn wrote its check in 2014. LinkedIn's stake is now valued at about $25 million (a 50-fold increase), because its investment was diluted in future fundraising rounds, said a person with knowledge of the deal who asked not to be named because the size of LinkedIn's ownership was never disclosed."

LinkedIn's early investment in start-up Confluent has become a 50-fold gain for Microsoft | CNBC

Microsoft acquires another open-source company, Citus Data | CNBC

For more details, see Microsoft Acquires Citus Data: Creating the World’s Best Postgres Experience Together | Citus Data and Microsoft acquires Citus Data, re-affirming its commitment to Open Source and accelerating Azure PostgreSQL performance and scale | Microsoft Blog; for a history of Postgres and its significance, see Looking Back at Postgres (PDF), a chapter from the recently published Making Databases Work: The Pragmatic Wisdom of Michael Stonebraker

"Microsoft on Thursday said that it's acquiring Citus Data, a start-up that has commercialized open-source database software called PostgreSQL. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

The deal could help Microsoft make its argument that it supports open-source technologies, particularly in the cloud, while continuing to make money from popular proprietary software like Windows and Office. In the cloud business, Microsoft wants to use openness as a way to pick up business amid competition from Google, market leader Amazon and others."

Microsoft acquires another open-source company, Citus Data | CNBC

StarCraft is a deep, complicated war strategy game. Google’s AlphaStar AI crushed it. | Vox

Tbd when Google DeepMind will introduce AlphaGovernment... For details: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II | DeepMind blog

"In a stunning demonstration of how far AI capabilities have come, AlphaStar — a new AI system from Google’s DeepMind — competed with pro players in a series of competitive StarCraft games. StarCraft is a complicated strategy game that requires players to consider hundreds of options at any given moment, to make strategic choices with payoffs a long way down the road, and to operate in a fast-changing environment with imperfect information. More than 200,000 games are played every day.

The demo was streamed live on YouTube and Twitch and had been highly anticipated — not just among gamers but also among AI enthusiasts — since it was announced on Tuesday.

The results were stunning: AlphaStar won all but one of the games it played."

StarCraft is a deep, complicated war strategy game. Google’s AlphaStar AI crushed it. | Vox

Sandberg says Facebook must earn back trust | Reuters

An understatement-of-the-year candidate

"The social media platform is investing billions of dollars a year to improve the security of its network, Sandberg said in an interview hosted by German newspaper Die Zeit and UK law firm CMS at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“We did not anticipate all of the risks from connecting so many people,” Sandberg said, adding that the site had added features that give users greater control over their personal information.

The 15-year-old technology company has been a darling of California’s Silicon Valley, making stars out of its founder, chief executive and chairman Mark Zuckerberg, and Sandberg, known for her feminist manifesto “Lean In”. But its shares have fallen roughly 33 percent since July to $144 due to concerns about user privacy."

Sandberg says Facebook must earn back trust | Reuters

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: The Rolling Stone Interview | Rolling Stone

From an extensive interview; tangentially, see NYU’s Jay Rosen says 2020’s political journalism will be even worse than 2016’s | Recode

"The model in Silicon Valley for a long time was “we are a neutral platform.” It’s obviously not quite the case anymore. So if it’s not a platform, what is it?
People see Twitter as a public square, and therefore they have expectations that they would have of a public square. Washington Square Park, for instance — I just had an hour and a half there, today. I sat, and I did my phone calls, and I watched people. There’s a lot going on in Washington Square Park. There’s tourists, students, filmmakers, musicians, street hustlers, weed dealers, chess players. And there’s people talking out in the open. The park itself is completely neutral to whatever happens on top of it. But if you stop there, you don’t realize what I believe the park actually is. It does come with certain expectations of freedom of expression, but everyone is watching one another. So if someone gets up on a little soapbox, with a megaphone, and starts yelling, a crowd comes around them and listens. That person can also yell across the park and say, “Hey, you idiot, yeah, you, I’m talking to you, come over here.” Then it’s really harassing behavior and people notice that, and they’re like, “Hey, man, don’t do that. Stop.” And then there’s the park police as well, who maintain the standard of decency within the park."

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: The Rolling Stone Interview | Rolling Stone

Google's Proposed Changes to Chrome Could Weaken Ad Blockers | Wired

For more details, see Google planning changes to Chrome that could break ad blockers | Ars Technica

"THE WEB CAN be an annoying and creepy place. Big animated ads try to distract you from what you’re reading, while ads for products you’ve already bought stalk you. That’s led many people to install ad blockers or other tools to inhibit websites from tracking them. According to a survey by identity management company Janrain, 71 percent of respondents use ad blockers or some other tool to control their online experience. Google, which makes the bulk of its money from advertising, has even gone so far as to block ads on its Chrome browser on a small number of sites with particularly aggressive ads.
[...]
But proposed changes to Google’s open source browser Chromium, on which Chrome is based, would break many existing ad blockers and other tools for blocking or changing online content. It will still be possible to block ads if the proposed changes are incorporated into Chrome, but developers would need to rewrite their Chrome extensions. Many developers are protesting the proposal, arguing that the changes would harm users."

Google's Proposed Changes to Chrome Could Weaken Ad Blockers | Wired

Meet Scout | Amazon blog

Sidewalks may soon be crowded with delivery robots... Also see The Prime Challenges for Amazon's New Delivery Robot | Wired

"How will delivery by Amazon Scout work? Customers in Snohomish County order just as they normally would and their Amazon packages will be delivered either by one of our trusted partner carriers or by Amazon Scout. Customers can shop on the Amazon App or amazon.com and enjoy the same delivery options including fast, FREE Same-Day, One-Day and Two-Day shipping for Prime members.

We’re starting with six Amazon Scout devices, delivering packages Monday through Friday, during daylight hours. The devices will autonomously follow their delivery route but will initially be accompanied by an Amazon employee. We developed Amazon Scout at our research and development lab in Seattle, ensuring the devices can safely and efficiently navigate around pets, pedestrians and anything else in their path."

Meet Scout | Amazon blog

Apple just dismissed more than 200 employees from Project Titan, its autonomous vehicle group | CNBC

Also note, from Apple shrinks autonomous vehicle team by 200 employees | The Verge: "However, despite this apparent reduced focus, the amount of self-driving cars Apple is testing on the roads has continued to increase, with the company having more registered test vehicles in California than Google’s autonomous spin-off Waymo as of March 2018."

"Apple dismissed just over 200 employees this week from Project Titan, its stealthy autonomous vehicle group, people familiar with the matter told CNBC.

An Apple spokesperson acknowledged the lay-offs and said the company still sees opportunity in the space:

"We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple," the spokesperson said."

Apple just dismissed more than 200 employees from Project Titan, its autonomous vehicle group | CNBC

China Appears to Block Microsoft’s Bing as Censorship Intensifies | NYT

Later in the article: "Blocking Bing would brick over one of the last holes in a wall of online filters that has isolated China’s internet from the rest of the world." Also see China Blocks Microsoft's Bing Due to Technical Error, Sources Say | Bloomberg. In other China + technology news, see In Davos, U.S. executives warn that China is winning the AI race | Washington Post

"Under China’s president, Xi Jinping, the last vestiges of the global internet have slowly disappeared from an online world that had already shut out Twitter, Google and Facebook.

Now one of the last survivors, Microsoft’s Bing search engine, appears to have joined them — even though the American company already censors its results in China.

The Chinese government appeared to block the search engine on Wednesday, in what would be a startling renunciation of more than a decade of efforts by Microsoft to engage with Beijing to make its products available. If the block proves to be permanent, it would suggest that Western companies can do little to persuade China to give them access to what has become the world’s largest internet market by users, especially at a time of increased trade and economic tensions with the United States."

China Appears to Block Microsoft’s Bing as Censorship Intensifies | NYT

Never Tweet | NYT

From a timely Twitter/journalism reality check

"So it was just another weekend on Twitter. But in its zigs and zags, the Covington story made one thing clear: Twitter is ruining American journalism.

The Covington saga illustrates how every day the media’s favorite social network tugs journalists deeper into the rip currents of tribal melodrama, short-circuiting our better instincts in favor of mob- and bot-driven groupthink. In the process, it helps bolster the most damaging stereotypes of our profession. Instead of curious, intellectually honest chroniclers of human affairs, Twitter regularly turns many in the news — myself included — into knee-jerk outrage-bots reflexively set off by this or that hash-tagged cause, misspelled presidential missive or targeted-influence campaign.

But Twitter isn’t just ruining the media’s image. It’s also skewing our journalism. Everything about Twitter’s interface encourages a mind-set antithetical to journalistic inquiry: It prizes image over substance and cheap dunks over reasoned debate, all the while severely abridging the temporal scope of the press."

Never Tweet | NYT

Family says hacked Nest camera warned them of North Korean missile attack | Washington Post

You're securing it wrong...

"Calls to 911 and Nest confirmed there was no danger. Instead, a Nest supervisor explained to the family they were probably victims of a “third-party hack,” granting someone access to their cameras and its speakers through a compromised password.

Google, which owns Nest, told the Mercury News that Nest was not breached.

“These recent reports are based on customers using compromised passwords (exposed through breaches on other websites). In nearly all cases, two-factor verification eliminates this type of the security risk,” Nest said in an email statement to the Mercury News. The firm said it is “actively introducing features” that will reject compromised passwords, allow customers to monitor access to their accounts and track external entities that abuse credentials."

Family says hacked Nest camera warned them of North Korean missile attack | Washington Post

Google Gives Wikimedia Millions—Plus Machine Learning Tools | Wired

Significant search synergy

"GOOGLE IS POURING an additional $3.1 million into Wikipedia, bringing its total contribution to the free encyclopedia over the past decade to more than $7.5 million, the company announced at the World Economic Forum Tuesday. A little over a third of those funds will go toward sustaining current efforts at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, and the remaining $2 million will focus on long-term viability through the organization’s endowment.

Google will also begin allowing Wikipedia editors to use several of its machine learning tools for free, the tech giant said. What's more, Wikimedia and Google will soon broaden Project Tiger, a joint initiative they launched in 2017 to increase the number of Wikipedia articles written in underrepresented languages in India, and to include 10 new languages in a handful of countries and regions. It will now be called GLOW, Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia."

Google Gives Wikimedia Millions—Plus Machine Learning Tools | Wired

Cloud, services fuel IBM's profit beat, robust outlook; shares jump | Reuters

Tbd when the IBM public cloud data center investment write-off will be taken... Also see IBM’s stock jumps 7% despite another decline in revenue | SiliconAngle

"IBM’s cloud strategy has focused on helping companies stitch together multiple cloud platforms rather than compete head on with “hyperscale” cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O), Microsoft Azure (MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O).

IBM’s cloud business overall grew 12 percent to $19.2 billion in 2018. It is one area IBM has actively looked to build and part of its “Strategic Imperatives,” which also include analytics, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

The core cloud businesses performed “quite well” in the quarter and is consistent with an overall view that enterprises are increasingly moving into the full-scale cloud migration, MoffettNathanson analyst Lisa Ellis said."

Cloud, services fuel IBM's profit beat, robust outlook; shares jump | Reuters

Despite Bitcoin’s Dive, a Former Soviet Republic Is Still Betting Big on It | NYT

What could possibly go wrong?...

"The whole experiment is likely to face immediate challenges as the price of Bitcoin declines, after a spectacular rise tempted investors around the world to bet on cryptocurrencies.

Most companies tend to lose money when the price of Bitcoin falls below energy costs, and mining operators worldwide have recently been scaling back. The largest mining company, the Chinese company Bitmain, has been closing offices and laying off workers. Last week, Bitfury announced layoffs at a facility in Canada.

Georgia, however, has been betting its economy on luring blockchain technology, the encrypted storage capability behind all crypto transactions."

Despite Bitcoin’s Dive, a Former Soviet Republic Is Still Betting Big on It | NYT

George Mason students have a new dining option: Food delivered by robots | Washington Post

More food delivery robots

"“Students and teachers have little free time as it is, so there is a convenience for them to have their food, groceries and packages delivered to them,” said Ryan Tuohy, Starship Technology’s senior vice president of business development. “Our goal is to make life easier, whether that means skipping the line, eating lunch on the lawn rather than in the cafe, or finding the time to eat better when studying for exams.”

“Commuters can even meet the robot on their way into class,” he added."

George Mason students have a new dining option: Food delivered by robots | Washington Post

Google is threatening to kill Google News in Europe if the EU goes ahead with its “snippet tax” | NiemanLab

The "couple of reasons:" "Publishers are more aware that scale is a pipe dream and that they want to own the reader relationship; Search is a lot more mobile now, and news is more important to search there.")

"So, depending on whose side you’re on, Europe is on the verge of either (a) finally supplying news publishers with compensation for their work from the free-riding tech titans who’ve build businesses around aggregating work they don’t pay for, or (b) destroying a fundamental tenet of the open web while simultaneously hurting audiences, publishers, and democracy itself. (Not the most subtle PR here, Google.)

It certainly seems like a bad idea to me, for a host of reasons you can read about elsewhere on the Internet. But wherever you come down on it, I think it’s worth noting how this particular moment is a little different from 2014. The power dynamics have shifted — only a bit, but noticeably — for a couple of reasons." 

Google is threatening to kill Google News in Europe if the EU goes ahead with its “snippet tax” | NiemanLab

Does Journalism Have a Future? | The New Yorker

From a journalism reality check by Jill Lepore

"The broader problem is that the depravity, mendacity, vulgarity, and menace of the Trump Administration have put a lot of people, including reporters and editors, off their stride. The present crisis, which is nothing less than a derangement of American life, has caused many people in journalism to make decisions they regret, or might yet. In the age of Facebook, Chartbeat, and Trump, legacy news organizations, hardly less than startups, have violated or changed their editorial standards in ways that have contributed to political chaos and epistemological mayhem. Do editors sit in a room on Monday morning, twirl the globe, and decide what stories are most important? Or do they watch Trump’s Twitter feed and let him decide? It often feels like the latter. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger; it makes everyone sick. The more adversarial the press, the more loyal Trump’s followers, the more broken American public life. The more desperately the press chases readers, the more our press resembles our politics.

The problems are well understood, the solutions harder to see. Good reporting is expensive, but readers don’t want to pay for it. The donation-funded ProPublica, “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force,” employs more than seventy-five journalists. Good reporting is slow, good stories unfold, and most stories that need telling don’t involve the White House. The Correspondent, an English-language version of the Dutch Web site De Correspondent, is trying to “unbreak the news.” It won’t run ads. It won’t collect data (or, at least, not much). It won’t have subscribers. Like NPR, it will be free for everyone, supported by members, who pay what they can. “We want to radically change what news is about, how it is made, and how it is funded,” its founders state. Push-notifications-on news is bad for you, they say, “because it pays more attention to the sensational, exceptional, negative, recent, and incidental, thereby losing sight of the ordinary, usual, positive, historical, and systematic.” What will the Correspondent look like? It will stay above the fray. It might sometimes be funny. It’s slated to début sometime in 2019. Aside from the thing about ads, it sounds a lot like a magazine, when magazines came in the mail."

Does Journalism Have a Future? | The New Yorker

This startup is launching a remote-controlled ‘grocery store on wheels' | Washington Post

Also see Your city street may soon turn into a grocery aisle | Boston Globe (source of photo below)

"Unlike a typical grocery delivery services, which requires customers to select groceries online first, food-filled Robomart vehicles — which can reach 25 miles per hour — will be dispatched to a particular neighborhood, where customers can summon one via an app. Though there is no human on board, but the delivery vehicles will be operated by people from another location using “cameras and navigation systems,” according to the Globe.

Once it has arrived, customers can open the vehicle’s sliding glass doors using the app, giving them access to a selection of fruits, vegetables, “convenient food items” and even hot meals, Ahmed said.

The vehicles’ RFID and computer vision technology automatically track each item that is removed from the vehicle before charging the customer’s account and emailing them a receipt, he said, noting that that once the doors close the transaction is complete. Asked how much food can fit in a single vehicle, Ahmed said a single vehicle — which is about 12 feet long and six feet tall — can hold about a half-ton of goods."

This startup is launching a remote-controlled ‘grocery store on wheels' | Washington Post

Twitter suspends account that helped ignite controversy over viral encounter | CNN

Reid Hoffman is perhaps hoping he didn't inadvertently fund this...

"Speaking about the nature of fake accounts on social media, McKew told CNN Business, "This is the new landscape: where bad actors monitor us and appropriate content that fits their needs. They know how to get it where they need to go so it amplifies naturally. And at this point, we are all conditioned to react and engage or deny in specific ways. And we all did."
Twitter's rules forbid users from creating "fake and misleading accounts," and shortly after CNN Business asked Twitter about the account, it was suspended.
A spokesperson for Twitter told CNN Business, "Deliberate attempts to manipulate the public conversation on Twitter by using misleading account information is a violation of the Twitter Rules.""

Twitter suspends account that helped ignite controversy over viral encounter | CNN

Uber is working on autonomous electric bicycles and scooters, opens robotics division | Electrek

I think I'll pass on the beta test phase of this technology...

"Uber is apparently working to integrate autonomous driving and sensing technology into their electric bicycles and scooters, according to 3D Robotics CEO Chris Anderson. Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) made the announcement this weekend at a DIYRobocars event.

Autonomous electric bicycles and scooters may be able to drive themselves to charging locations or reposition themselves to locations with higher demand.

Currently, both tasks require trucks and vans to collect and disperse the electric bicycles and scooters. Autonomous driving would eliminate that requirement, cutting down on the cost of labor and fuel, as well as reducing emissions."

Uber is working on autonomous electric bicycles and scooters, opens robotics division | Electrek

France fines Google nearly $57 million for first major violation of new European privacy regime | Washington Post

GDPR => Google Destined to Pay Regularly? On a related note, see Google Considering Pulling News Service From Europe | Bloomberg

"Despite Google’s recent changes to comply with the E.U. rules, the CNIL said in a statement that “the infringements observed deprive the users of essential guarantees regarding processing operations that can reveal important parts of their private life since they are based on a huge amount of data, a wide variety of services and almost unlimited possible combinations.”

In response, Google said it is “studying the decision to determine our next steps,” adding: “People expect high standards of transparency and control from us. We’re deeply committed to meeting those expectations and the consent requirements of the GDPR.”"

France fines Google nearly $57 million for first major violation of new European privacy regime | Washington Post

Microsoft recommends switching to iPhone or Android as it prepares to kill off Windows phones | CNBC

"Achieve more" by dumping your Windows Phone; tangentially, see Microsoft Wants Cortana to Play Nicely With Amazon and Google | Wired, which notes "The strategy is straightforward. If Microsoft can't own the platform, it still wants a presence."

"Microsoft said that on Dec. 10, 2019, it will stop sending "new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free assisted support options, or technical content updates from Microsoft for free." In other words, there aren't going to be any more updates, and only a few phone models will even be supported until that final date.

"With the Windows 10 Mobile OS end of support, we recommend that customers move to a supported Android or iOS device," Microsoft said. "Microsoft's mission statement to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, compels us to support our Mobile apps on those platforms and devices.""

Microsoft recommends switching to iPhone or Android as it prepares to kill off Windows phones | CNBC

Netflix: Fortnite is a bigger rival than HBO | Washington Post

A sign of the streaming times

"“We earn consumer screen time, both mobile and television, away from a very broad set of competitors,” Netflix said in the letter. “We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO . . . There are thousands of competitors in this highly-fragmented market vying to entertain consumers."

Netflix’s decision to name-check Fortnite reflects the game’s ever-growing popularity. It boasts over 200 million registered users, and some 80 million log in to play each month, according to publisher Epic Games. Thanks to an engaging combination of reward mechanics, social communication and ease of entry — the game’s competitive mode is free to play — Fortnite soared to fresh heights last year, helping Epic earn a reported $3 billion in profit."

Netflix: Fortnite is a bigger rival than HBO | Washington Post

Facebook launches petition feature, its next battlefield | TechCrunch

Also see Facebook is launching a petitions feature | The Verge

"The launch follows other civic-minded Facebook features like its Town Hall and Candidate Info for assessing politicians, Community Help for finding assistance after a disaster, and local news digest Today In. A Facebook spokesperson who gave us the first look at Community Actions provided this statement:

“Building informed and civically engaged communities is at the core of Facebook’s mission. Every day, people come together on Facebook to advocate for causes they care about, including by contacting their elected officials, launching a fundraiser, or starting a group. Through these and other tools, we have seen people marshal support for and get results on issues that matter to them. Community Action is another way for people to advocate for changes in their communities and partner with elected officials and government agencies on solutions.”"

Facebook launches petition feature, its next battlefield | TechCrunch

Amazon Knows What You Buy. And It’s Building a Big Ad Business From It. | NYT

Selling your shopping activity and transaction data to sell you more stuff...

"“Amazon has really straightforward database — they know what I buy,” said Daniel Knijnik, co-founder of Quartile Digital, an Amazon-focused ad agency that oversaw the ads for the clinics and retirement services. “For an advertiser, that’s a dream.”

Ads sold by Amazon, once a limited offering at the company, can now be considered a third major pillar of its business, along with e-commerce and cloud computing. Amazon’s advertising business is worth about $125 billion, more than Nike or IBM, Morgan Stanley estimates. At its core are ads placed on Amazon.com by makers of toilet paper or soap that want to appear near product search results on the site."

Amazon Knows What You Buy. And It’s Building a Big Ad Business From It. | NYT

Twitter CEO dodges question about banning Trump if he called for murder | CNET

A busy day ahead for the Twitter PR department...

"But what if Trump tweeted that his followers should murder a journalist? Would that be enough to get him barred?

"That would be a violent threat. We'd definitely ... You know we're in constant communication with all governments around the world. So we'd certainly talk about it," Dorsey said in a lengthy Q&A with The Huffington Post.

When pressed again about the question, the tech mogul said, "I'm not going to talk about the particulars.""

Twitter CEO dodges question about banning Trump if he called for murder | CNET

Google buys $40 million worth of smartwatch tech from Fossil Group | Ars Technica

A timely investment; see this Fossil Group post for more details

"All of Fossil's digital-faced smartwatches run on Google's Wear OS, so the two companies have already worked together for quite some time. But Fossil is one of many companies to develop "hybrid" smartwatches, most of which have analog faces and resemble traditional timepieces in most aesthetic ways.

However, they still have the internal tech necessary to track daily activity and sleep, as well as deliver smartphone alerts through vibrations, custom watch-hand movements, and other subtle techniques. These are features that Misfit devices already had when Fossil purchased the company. Some Misfit smartwatches and trackers even used side buttons to control smartwatch functions, like taking a photo with the phone's camera or pausing music playback. While hybrid smartwatches don't have touchscreen interfaces, run apps, or store music like Wear OS devices can, they excel in longevity by having battery lives that last months to years.

It's possible that Google wants to look into the "hybrid" side of smartwatches. Google, strangely, hasn't made its own Pixel smartwatch yet, so the company may want to see if and how it can incorporate some of Fossil's technology into its next Google-made wearables."

Google buys $40 million worth of smartwatch tech from Fossil Group | Ars Technica

Microsoft’s Leap Into Housing Illuminates Government’s Retreat | NYT

Yet another reminder that elections have consequences...

"Microsoft’s announcement is welcome news in the Seattle region, where housing costs have risen faster lately than in any other part of the country. But the fact that a tech company has to step in to help ensure the development of affordable housing points to a long-building reality nationwide: The federal government has largely retreated from this role.

The government spent about three times as much on housing programs in the 1970s as it does today, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In the years since, the government has gotten out of the business of building public housing. And capital funds to repair the remaining public housing stock have been cut in half over the last 15 years.

Over this time, federal resources have increasingly shifted away from subsidizing the construction of affordable housing to subsidizing renters who find housing in the private market. And now most new below-market-rate housing is built not by public agencies, but by nonprofit developers leveraging tax credits. The value of those credits has declined recently as well, as a result of changes in the tax bill passed in 2017."

Microsoft’s Leap Into Housing Illuminates Government’s Retreat | NYT

The shutdown is breaking government websites, one by one | Washington Post

Check the full article for additional consequences of letting security certificates expire

"Various online pages run by the White House, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Archives and the Department of Agriculture appear to be affected by the latest round of expirations, Netcraft said.

The report follows revelations last week that Web pages run by NASA, the Justice Department, the federal judiciary and others have been affected by a lapse in security certification. The actual number of websites affected could be much higher than 130, said Paul Mutton, a Netcraft security consultant, as some certificates may have covered multiple pages under the same agency.

The expired certificates mean that most modern Web browsers, such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, will refuse to display the pages on request — instead showing a warning message that suggests the sites may have been compromised by hackers.

In reality, nothing has happened. But security practitioners say that in another sense, that is precisely the problem."

The shutdown is breaking government websites, one by one | Washington Post

‘Why I Still Have Faith in Facebook’ | Time

A Facebook regulation reality check by Donald Graham; also see Roger McNamee's I Mentored Mark Zuckerberg. I Loved Facebook. But I Can't Stay Silent About What's Happening. | Time and "Zucked" book takes aim at Facebook | Axios

"Facebook has made plenty of mistakes since its inception. As was true at the Washington Post in 1981, it has to set about fixing them in the only possible way: accept the responsibility–all of it. Return to your basic mission and do it right. Provide a great service for people; protect every aspect of your users’ privacy; be honest about what went wrong; and be clear (with governments but above all with users) about what you are doing to fix the problems.

I admire Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the people I knew at Facebook more than I can tell you. I’m not an insider any more since leaving the company’s board in 2015, but I can see on my Facebook page the extent of their efforts to fix what has been wrong. I would bet on them and would guess that their own efforts will be more important than those of any government or regulatory body. Regulation will slow technology companies down rather than change them as their critics hope. The beneficiaries will be their Chinese competitors–not exactly paragons of respect for your privacy. It is hard to see what form of regulation can control speech on Facebook but not control TIME’s–or yours."

‘Why I Still Have Faith in Facebook’ | Time

O.K., Google: How Much Money Have I Made for You Today? | NYT

For more on “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” Shoshana Zuboff's new book, see Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism | LARB (Nicholas Carr), 'We Are No Longer The Customers': Inside 'The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism' | On Point and How Tech Companies Manipulate Our Personal Data | NYT

"Google comes in for plenty of criticism from Zuboff, but she is equally scathing about Facebook. (She calls Sheryl Sandberg, who worked at Google before becoming Facebook’s chief operating officer, “the ‘Typhoid Mary’ of surveillance capitalism.”) Facebook has learned how to manipulate empathy and attachment in order to increase engagement and make billions. In a document sent to advertisers in Australia and New Zealand, Facebook bragged of its ability to discern exactly when a young person could use a “confidence boost.” And then there are the Facebook scandals involving Cambridge Analytica and the Kremlin during the 2016 election, with their deployment of personality tests and viral memes; it’s all fun and games until the host of “The Apprentice” becomes president.

Surveillance capitalists like to depict themselves as more socially enlightened than their industrial predecessors, but in Zuboff’s reckoning they ask for a lot while giving relatively little back. Their companies operate at “hyperscale”: Despite their enormous market capitalization, Google and Facebook each employ far fewer workers than General Motors once did, even during the depths of the Great Depression. Citing the economic historian Karl Polanyi, Zuboff shows how postwar corporations were expected to offer some sort of communal reciprocity — hiring workers and hiking wages, sharing prosperity rather than hoarding it. The ascendancy of neoliberalism in the 1970s, she says, laid the groundwork for Silicon Valley to promote an extreme form of entrepreneurial capitalism, unencumbered by any substantive responsibility to the communities it purports to serve."

O.K., Google: How Much Money Have I Made for You Today? | NYT