Airbnb Sees Domestic Bookings Up on the Year Since Mid-May
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| Airbnb Sees Domestic Bookings Up on the Year Since Mid-May | |
| Number | 1147 |
| Broadcast Date | JUNE 8, 2020 |
| Episode Length | 5:12 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
Airbnb says domestic bookings are up on the year since mid-May, Alexis Ohanian resigns from Reddit’s board, and Apple publishes Password Manager Resources on GitHub.
Headlines
- Bloomberg reports that Airbnb saw more nights booked for US listings from May 17 to June 3rd than it did in 2019, and has seen a similar boost in domestic travel in other markets, with more listings available now than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to CEO Brian Chesky, overall search queries are down 10% on the year, but that bookings within 200 miles of a users' home accounted for more than 50% in May, compared to less than a third in February.
- Co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, resigned from Reddit's board of directors Friday. Ohanian said on Twitter he has urged the board to fill his seat with a black candidate, and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said the company would honor that request. Ohanian also promised to use future gains from his Reddit stock holdings to serve the black community starting with a million dollar pledge to the Know Your Rights Camp. Ohanian's wife and daughter are black.
- Facebook published new group moderation guidelines in response to moderators deleting posts regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and injustice as "political." Rather than simply banning "political" posts, Facebook recommends groups create specific lists of topics that aren't allowed. Facebook also recommended mods educate themselves on the issues, “create opportunities for new and diverse members” to join as moderators, and acknowledge current events with a post that outlines group rules.
- A study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimates that autonomous cars would prevent about one third of US car crashes if all cars on the road were autonomous. Autonomous cars will be better at identifying hazards, react faster and not suffer distractions. The problem comes when events happen too fast for even a computer to react to, such as a bicycle unexpectedly veering into a car's path. Autonomous cars are not expected to be able to prevent all errors and misjudgments. A group of autonomous vehicle makers called Partners for Automated Vehicle Education pointed out the study assumed humans could alter car programs to break traffic laws, which accounted for another 38% of crashes.
- Apple published Password Manager Resources on GitHub, designed for developers of password managers to “create strong passwords that are compatible with popular websites." The resources include the requirements of particular websites to generate compatible passwords, groups of websites with shared credential backends and the URLs of sites to change passwords. Apple hopes the resources will improve overall quality of all password managers and provide an incentive for websites to use stanards to improve password manager compatibility.
- DuckDuckGo search engine CEO Gabriel Weinberg told Bloomberg that officials investigating Google for antitrust violations asked him about the idea of forcing Google to offer search alternatives on Android and in Chrome. US state and federal investigators are examining Google's dominance in mobile OS, digital advertising and other businesses.
- Twitter user Yannick Eckl noticed that when visiting the cryptocurrency exchange Binance in the Brave browser, the browser automatically redirected to an affiliate version of the URL, and review of the browser's code on GitHub found similar redirects for the exchanges Ledger, Trezor and Coinbase. According to Brave CEO Brendan Eich, the redirects have since been removed and promised to "never revise typed in domains again." According to Eich, the redirects never revealed any user information.
- A new survey by the digital safety app maker Qustodio looking at children aged 4 to 14 found they spent an average of 85 minutes a day watching YouTube and 80 minutes a day on TikTok. The survey looked at 60,000 families with children in the US, UK, and Spain. YouTube is used by 69% of kids surveyed in the US, with only 7% using the YouTube Kids app. The second most watched video app by kids in the US is Netflix with 33% watching, followed by TikTok with 16.5% watching. While time on YouTube dipped a few minutes on the year in each country, the US saw average minutes on TikTok increase 116% from May 2019 through February 2020.
- Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that, according to sources, Apple is preparing to roll out interest free payments on Apple devices paid with the Apple Card. The company will reportedly offer 12-month interest-free payments for iPads, Macs, Apple Pencil, and iPad keyboards, with 6 months no interest on Airpods, Apple TV, and HomePod. Last year, Apple introduced 24-month 0% financing on iPhone models.
- Apple was granted a patent for software to create “synthetic group selfies.” The patent outlines an Apple device user inviting others to be part of the selfie, with software arranging still photos, stored video images, or live streaming images into a single photo. Users would keep the original image and synthetic selfie, as well as be able to modify the placement of people in the synthetic image. Apple originally filed the patent in 2018.
Links
| Preceded by: "Week in Review for the Week of 6/1/20" |
Airbnb Sees Domestic Bookings Up on the Year Since Mid-May |
Followed by: "Apple May Announce Intel Chip Replacement for Macs at WWDC" |