Daily Tech Headlines – March 26, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – March 26, 2018 | |
| Number | 466 |
| Broadcast Date | MARCH 26, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 3:42 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
FTC investigates Facebook, Uber sells southeast asian business to Grab, and a car vending machine from Ford and Tencent.
Headlines
- Uber has agreed to sell its Southeast Asian ride-hailing business to Grab. This leaves Indonesia's Go-Jek, backed by Google and Tencent, as the only other major ride-hailing and meal delivery competition in the region. Uber will take a 27.5 percent stake in Singapore-based Grab. The Competition Commission of Singapore must approve the acquisition.
- This weekend Dylan McCkay, followed by several other people, found that their call history up to mid-2017 was stored in their Facebook data. Prior to Android 4.1, giving permission to Facebook's Android app to access contacts also gave it access to call history. That API was deprecated in October 2017 when most of the collection seems to have stopped. Facebook Lite and Messenger may still ask explicitly for call and text logs. Requesting a purge of contacts does not seem to successfully delete the call history. Facebook says the feature was used only to find friends and that users always had control over the data.
- The US Federal Trade Commission said Monday it is conducting an open investigation of Facebook's privacy practices. If Facebook is found to have violated its 2011 consent decree with the FTC, it could be fined thousands of dollars a day per violation.
- The New York Times says entertainment executives told it Apple plans to roll out its new TV programming between March and summer 2019. Apple currently has a 40-person team working on Apple Worldwide Video. Apple has 12 TV projects in the works.
- Spotify expects revenue to grow 20-30 percent in 2018, a slower pace from last year due to currency swings. The company estimates its value at about $20 billion. Spotify stock begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange April 3rd.
- Twitter announced it will no longer accept ads for initial coin offerings, crypto wallets and token sales, as well as most exchanges, although it didn't set a time when the restrictions would begin. Google and Facebook have previously restricted such ads as well.
- Multiple reports say China has offered to raise the percentage of semiconductor chips it buys from US sources, instead of Korean or Taiwanese, in order to lower the trade deficit. The US announced last Thursday it would place tariffs on around $60 billion worth of goods. China has responded with $3 billion of new tariffs it would place in response. China is also holding off approval of Qualcomm's acquisition of NXP Semiconductor.
- Ford and Alibaba are partnering on a car vending machine in Guanghzhou, China. The multi-story Super Test-Drive center has dozens of Ford vehicles and a mechanical system lowers the selected car to the street. Users select a car they want from the Tmall app and have an option to take it for a three day test ride.
- The Linux Foundation is opening the LF Deep Learning Foundation to “support and sustain open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning." Founding members include Amdocs, AT&T, B.Yond, Baidu, Huawei, Nokia, Tech Mahindra, Tencent, Univa and ZTE. The foundation's first project will be the Acumos AI platform.
Links
| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – March 23, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – March 26, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – March 27, 2018" |