Daily Tech Headlines – August 25, 2016
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| Daily Tech Headlines – August 25, 2016 | |
| Number | 56 |
| Broadcast Date | AUGUST 25, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 7:45 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Self-driving cars come to the public in Singapore, WhatsApp starts sharing data with Facebook, Apple may be developing a Snapchat competitor.
Headlines
- Starting Thursday, NuTonomy will begin offering autonomous vehicle taxi service in Singapore. Customers can summon a ride from the company's app for free, within the 2.5 sq km "One North" business district. NuTonomy engineers will be in the driver's seat "to ensure passenger comfort and safety." The company plans to offer a fully autonomous fleet by 2018.
- WhatsApp announced it is revising its privacy policy to allow it to connect your phone number with Facebook's systems so it can offer better friend suggestions and show more relevant ads to you on Facebook. Additional data, like last use, os, screen resolution, device id and country code will track usage and help fight spam. WhatsApp says it will not sell, post or share your WhatsApp numbers with others. It will also test how businesses can use WhatsApp to contact customers. Customers can choose not to let Facebook use the data by unchecking a box at the bottom of the new terms of service before accepting them but Facebook will still link accounts.
- Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Alex Webb report Apple is developing a video sharing and editing app for iOS as a response to Snapchat. The app supposedly can record video, apply filters and drawings and send to contacts through existing social networks like Twitter. It is designed to be used with one hand and take less than a minute to create and send a video. It's aimed for a 2017 release. Apple is also testing enhancements to make it easier to see all interactions with a contact, email, texts, social network posts — in a single panel.
- Facebook's AI Research team, aka FAIR, will open source its DeepMask, SharpMask, and MultiPathNet computer vision tools that identify the variety and shape of objects in photos. DeepMask identifies and classifies objects in a process called segmentation. SharpMask refines the selection for better accuracy. MultiPathNet identifies objects and categorizes them like telling dogs from cats for instance. FAIR is working on teaching software to identify what's happening in a video.
- Sports writer Jim Weber describes on LinkedIn how he received a permanent suspension to his Twitter account after tweeting 3 GIFs featuring images of moments from the Rio Olympic games. Weber received a DMCA takedown notice from Twitter, including an email from the International Olympic Committee's Director of Legal Affairs, giving him 10 minutes to confirm he had complied with the takedown request. After 3 minutes, his account was suspended by Twitter, and subsequently received notification that the suspension was permanent. After his story received attention his account suspension was reviewed and unsuspended.
- In a post on Google+, Google announced it would bring its Wi-Fi Assistant feature to Nexus smartphones. The feature was previously exclusive to devices using the Project Fi cell phone service. Once activated from settings, Wi-Fi Assistant will automatically connect to millions of free and open wi-fi hotspots when in range, saving on cellular data. The update is currently rolling out to Nexus owners in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, and "Nordic" countries.
- VentureBeat reports YouTube is developing a feature internally called Backstage to let users share photos, polls, links, text posts, and videos with subscribers. The posts would live in a YouTube Channel's tab alongside Home and Videos and appear in reverse chronological order. Backstage is expected to launch by the end of the year on mobile and desktop. YouTube also supposedly plans to allow user replies and ways to share Backstage posts on other social networks.
- HP Inc. announced it earned $0.48 per share in Q3 with revenue of $11.89 billion. Analysts had expected earnings per share of $0.44 and revenue of $11.46 billion. While overall revenue for the personal-systems division was flat, PC sales were up 4%, which HP claims is a result of focusing on higher margin products, like gaming PCs and premium notebooks. This was offset by a decline of 18% in ink and toner sales, and a 10% dip in printing hardware.
- Sony has introduced second-factor authentication for PlayStation Network Accounts using SMS as the second factor. Device-specific passwords can also be created.
- Opera and Google are partnering in Nigeria on Progressive Web Apps. PWA apps lets Android users add mobile sites accessed through Opera to their home screen where it can do things like push notifications and offer some offline functions saving data. PWA apps take up less storage space than regular apps. It overall reduces the data usage versus visiting the regular website.
- Financial technology groups from more than 20 cities plan to form a federation to coordinate web-based financial activities. Innotribe, the research arm of the SWIFT financial communication system organized the federation with Innovate Finance, Britain's trade body. The federation will be formally launched at the Sibos banking conference in Geneva in September.
- On Wednesday, Amazon announced the creation of the Kindle Reading Fund to donate Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets and e-books to communities worldwide. The fund expands Amazon's involvement with non-profit Worldreader to support reading programs in the developing world. The initiative will allow 501(c)(3) organizations and schools to request donations, which Amazon has pledged to respond to within 10 days.
- Amazon has launched a third destination for car shoppers called Vehicles. It lets you find information on cars, design your own spec and chat with others. It's separate from Automotive which is where you buy car parts and Garage where you can store information about cars you own.
- Comedy Central is ordering a TV show based off Swag-A-Saurus with James Davis one of the company's most popular Snapchat series. The television adaptation is set to debut in January 2017. New episodes of the Snapchat series will continue to be posted every Monday, even after the network program begins.
- Starting in September, Uber will begin experimenting with prepaid, flat-rate rides in San Francisco. Users in the test have to buy a pre-bundled package of 20 or 40 rides, at $20 and $30, respectively. Users can then use those rides in September to obtain a flat-rate UberPool ride for $2, or UberX for $7. Rides that exceed a $20 value would have the overage paid out of pocket.
- 25 years ago today, 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Torvalds wrote a newsgroup post about a free operating system he was working on. He said it was “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu.” His OS would eventually be called Linux.
Links
| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – August 24, 2016" |
Daily Tech Headlines – August 25, 2016 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – August 26, 2016" |