Daily Tech Headlines – March 20, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – March 20, 2018 | |
| Number | 462 |
| Broadcast Date | MARCH 20, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:27 |
| Hosts | Sarah Lane |
Local police say Uber likely not at fault in self-driving car death, Facebook addresses data privacy concerns to employees, Telegram loses appeal in Russian Supreme Court.
Headlines
- The New York Times reports Facebook chief information security officer Alex Stamos is leaving the company in August, citing sources, and that internal disagreements over how the social network should deal with its role in spreading false and misleading information. In response to the story, Stamos tweeted that his role at the company did change, but that he was still working at Facebook.
- Roku announced its new Roku Channel that offers a free, ad-supported VOD offering is set to go live this summer on “select” Samsung smart TVs. The platform's VOD service debuted last fall on Roku TVs and Roku players, and features “hundreds” of movies and TV shows. Roku noted that The Roku Channel’s ad load per programming hour is about half as compared to traditional linear TV.
- Facebook scheduled an open meeting to all employees Tuesday to address the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, reports the Verge, which obtained calendar information about the meeting. The meeting was said to be led by Paul Grewal, the company’s deputy general counsel, who was also expected to take questions via a polling feature found on the meeting’s internal event page. The situation widely reported yesterday was that a researcher at the University of Cambridge created a Facebook app to harvest information about millions of Facebook profiles and then gave the data to Cambridge Analytica, which was in violation of Facebook’s terms of service.
- On Monday, ABC 15 in Tempe, Arizona reported 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg had died after being struck by a self-driving Uber SUV, the first known time an autonomous vehicle operating in self-driving mode has resulted in a human death. Uber CEO Dara Khos-row-shahi expressed sympathy for the victim’s family on Twitter and paused all of its AV testing operations across all cities where it operates, including Pittsburgh, Toronto, San Francisco and Phoenix. The US National Transportation Safety Board also began an investigation. Tempe police chief Stylia Moir said today that from viewing the surveillance videos, “it’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway." Police have not released the videos.
- Yesterday, Techcrunch reported that Match, the parent company of Tinder and Match.com, was suing rival dating app Bumble for patent infringement and misuse of intellectual property. Match alleged that Bumble “copied Tinder’s world-changing, card-swipe-based, mutual opt-in premise” and its patent that filed in 2013 but just granted a few months ago. Bumble responded today in a blog post that alleges Match made multiple attempts to buy Bumble, as well as launched a copycat of Bumble's “ladies first” feature. In the letter, Bumble says to Match “we swipe left on your attempted scare tactics, and on these endless games. We swipe left on your assumption that a baseless lawsuit would intimidate us.”
- Encrypted messaging app Telegram lost an appeal in Russia’s Supreme Court to block the country’s Federal Security Service from getting access to user data. This was first reported by Bloomberg. Last year, the FSB asked Telegram to share its encryption keys but the company said no, which resulted in a $14,000 fine. Today, Supreme Court Judge Alla Nazarova upheld that ruling and denied Telegram’s appeal, although Telegram says it will appeal this as well.
- Google announced a new program to fight misinformation called the Google News Initiative, similar to what the company already offers in Europe through the Digital News Initiative. Highlights include striving for accurate journalism particularly during breaking news events; helping news sites continue to grow from a business perspective; and creating new tools to help journalists do their jobs. Google pledges to invest $300 million toward the effort over the next three years.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – March 19, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – March 20, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – March 21, 2018" |