Facebook's Project Atlas Pays Users for Privacy
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| Facebook's Project Atlas Pays Users for Privacy | |
| Number | 738 |
| Broadcast Date | JANUARY 30, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 4:47 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
Facebook’s Project Atlas pays users for their privacy, Apple earnings show the first holiday quarter revenue decline since 2001, and Metro Exodus bypasses Steam for game sales.
Headlines
- TechCrunch reported on Facebook's Project Atlas, a program that since 2016 paid users aged 13 to 35 to install a “Facebook Research” VPN app. The app was installed via beta testing services, and gave Facebook root access to decrypted network traffic. Users were paid $20 per month, plus referral fees. Outside of analyzing network usage, Facebook also asked participants for system screenshots, including Amazon order histories. Since publication, Facebook stated it will shut down the program on iOS, but Facebook Research is still available on Android.
- Alphabet's Jigsaw tech incubator announced that its DDoS protection service Project Shield will be available to European news organizations that "are vital to free and fair elections" ahead of European Parlimentary elections this May. Project Shield allows sites to route traffic through a Google IP address, which uses a reverse proxy that identifies and filters malicious traffic. Google also announced it has done in-person security training for over 1,000 campaign and election officials, journalists and people from election-related NGOs. Google will also require anyone running European election ads to verify being either an EU-based entity or citizen as well as provide disclosures for who is paying for the ad. Google will also make a EU Election Ads Transparency Report available in the coming weeks, as well as a searchable ad library.
- Security researcher Oliver Hough tipped off TechCrunch that a server of customer data belonging to the data management startup Rubrik was online without password protection. The server was hosted on Amazon Elasticsearch, and contained 10s of gigabytes of customer names, contact information and case work dating back to October 2018, and included customers like Deloitte, Shell, Amalgamated Bank, the U.K. National Health Service and Homeland Security. When alerted by TechCrunch, Rubrik took the server offline and stated that no customer-owned data was exposed.
- Apple reported Q4 earnings per share of $4.18 on revenue of $84.3 billion. Analysts had expected revenue of $83.97 billion on earnings of $4.17 per share. iPhone revenue, which as a reminder does not break out unit sales anymore, came in at $51.98 billion, vs. analyst expectations of $52.67 billion. Services pulled in $10.9 billion in revenue, increased 29% on the year. Wearable, Home, and Accessory revenue was $7.31 billion on the quarter, growing 33% on the year but slightly below analyst expectations. Overall, Apple saw quarterly revenue decline 5% on the year, the first time its seen a decline on the holiday quarter since 2001. Apple pegged this decline exclusively on slowdowns in China, which saw an almost $5 billion decrease in revenue since last year.
- The Information reports that Apple has told content studios and networks involved with their forthcoming streaming service "to be ready for launch by mid-April,” according to three sources, and is expected to be publicly available within weeks of that date. And for the record, no pricing or information on what the service will actually look like was part of the report.
- The PC version of the highly anticipated first-person shooter Metro Exodus is bypassing Steam and releasing exclusively on the Epic Games Store. The release on Epic will also see a price drop $10 to $49.99 although this is for US buyers only. The CEO of Deep Silver, the game’s publisher, said the move reflects that “Epic’s generous revenue terms are a game changer that will allow publishers to invest more into content creation, or pass on savings to the players.” The company added, “Any customer with an outstanding pre-order for Metro Exodus on PC through any digital retailer will receive their game as expected.”
- Nvidia’s Quadro Virtual Machine Workstation will now be available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. The virtualized workstations will offer Nvidia’s high-end to mid-level cloud GPUs for High Performance Computing applications. The benefit to users is that they only pay as needed while leaving the underlying infrastructure management to someone else. The company believes these virtual workstations will be a special interest for firms involved with architecture, entertainment, oil and gas and manufacturing.
- Gmail's rolling out new interfaces based on the Material design language for Gmail on Android and iOS in the coming weeks. Changes include shifting the the user’s profile picture to the right-hand side, attachments, like photos and documents, will be visible from the main inbox view, switching between multiple Gmail accounts can done by tapping the profile picture in the main screen, and giant red warning signs will appear on emails that are suspected of phishing.
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| Preceded by: "Apple Takes Group FaceTime Offine" |
Facebook's Project Atlas Pays Users for Privacy |
Followed by: "Apple To Put New 3-D Cam In iPhone?" |