Facebook Turning Over A New Tree
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| Facebook Turning Over A New Tree | |
| Number | 3500 |
| Broadcast Date | APRIL 1, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 30:25 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
Cloudflare integrates Warp VPN, Mark Zuckerberg writes a weekend Op-Ed, and Google reports on Android security.
Quick Hits
- Cloudflare announced an update to their 1.1.1.1 App, which now integrates a VPN called Warp. Warp encrypts all internet traffic from a device to the point it hits Cloudflare's network and uses a Google developed protocol called QUIC which builds on UDP to offer improved reliability, replacing Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Cloudflare claims using QUIC and routing traffic over their wide network will noticeably decrease page loads while offering improved security. Warp will be available in an update to the 1.1.1.1 app as of April 1st, with paid plans available for greater access speed.
- Airbnb confirmed it has invested in India's hospitality services and booking aggregator OYO, which sources tell TechCrunch was worth between $150 to $200 million. In a late 2018 funding round, OYO was valued at $5 billion. The companies are exploring having some of OYO's 500,000 rooms across 13,000 hotels and 6,000 homes in eight countries listed on Airbnb.
Top Stories
- The Facebook PR machine is in high gear. In an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner, Mark Zuckerberg said he wants to create section of Facebook devoted to high-quality news. He even mentioned the idea of paying a license fee for the news. (Facebook tested moving news content in an explore tab but ended the test in March 2018) Mark Zuckerberg published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post calling for Internet regulation across four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability. He suggest creating "third-party bodies to set standards governing the distribution of harmful content" and having companies graded against those standards, privacy regulation in the mold of the EU's GDPR, and support for the Data Transfer Project for standardizing data portability. Starting May 2, Facebook announced that a "why am I seeing this" post button will show up in the drop down menu of every item in the news feed. Facebook said it deleted 712 accounts and 390 pages in India and Pakistan for "inauthentic behavior." 549 accounts and 138 pages were said to be linked to India’s Congress party. Congress said none of its official pages or those run by verified volunteers had been taken down. India has an election April 11. Pages removed in Pakistan were said to be run by employees of the Pakistani military’s public relations arm, the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR).
- Yoon Chang-hyun quit his lucrative researcher job at Samsung to start his own YouTube channel. His story appears to be a bit of a trend. South Koreans had the shortest job tenure among member countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as of 2012, just 6.6 years compared to the average of 9.4 years and 11.5 years in Japan. This survey also showed just 55% of South Koreans were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest rate in the OECD.
- Google announced new features for Gmail, celebrating 15 years since the email service was launched. Users will now have the option to schedule emails from the compose window. Gmail's smart compose feature is coming to all Android users, and coming to iOS soon. Smart Compose can now also suggest subject lines, adapt to a users writing style, and adds support for Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.
- In an emailed media statement, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio announced that Apple was cancelling its previously announced AirPower wireless charging mat. Riccio cited failure to achieve “high standards”. AirPower was originally announced in September 2017. Most speculation is that Apple could make the pad work but had problems with either overheating, wireless interference or both. The Airpower was using multiple coils to charge devices with different charging systems at the same time.
- In its annual update regarding Android security, Google reports 0.04% of all downloads from Google Play were classified as potentially harmful applications, up from 0.02% in 2017. Google attributed part of the growth to tracking more categories. For instance Google began tracking Click fraud apps in 2018 for the first time and it had the highest install rate. That's a few tens of millions of app downloads. Sideloading is a risk as Google noted that 0.08% of devices that used Google Play exclusively for app downloads were affected by PHAs. On the preventative side, Google said that “Google Play Protect prevented 1.6 billion PHA installation attempts from outside of Google Play.”
- THX announced it will debut its large format THX Ultimate Cinema by this summer at the Regency Westwood Village Theatre in LA. The format features dual-laser 4K Barco projectors and a THX-certified 7.1 immersive sound system. So essentially THX is taking on IMAX and Dolby. THX pledges to master at least 30 films per year for its system. The projectors are compatible with other movies as well.
Mailbag
- I was listening to ep 3497 and you guys were talking about the FCC crackdown on the robo dial scammers. I am a software developer in the telco industry and specifically a company that does robo calls (we however do the legal stuff like appointment reminders and recall alerts). This industry is surprisingly small and everyone knows everyone, so I have a bit of insight into the FCC fines and those affected. The main provider of the robo service who was knowingly facilitating the scam calls was using a shell company designed to be burned. Aside from paying his fine (if he does), the ruling will likely not affect his main business at all. He is also the only named party that was named as required to pay his full fine. None of the other named parties (the spoofers) are actually required to pay their full fine because they simply don't have the money. They will likely do the same thing; shutting down their company, making a new name, and start dialing again ASAP.
- Sent by anonymous
- Long time listener and patron here, who happens to live in Columbus, Ohio! You guys have been an integral part of my daily commute to work every morning for 5 years! I'm so excited to finally be able to write in about something!
On DTNS-3499 you guys discussed the Columbus, Ohio story about the Smart City Initiative, but everyone was wondering why Columbus was chosen, and I jumped with excitement at my chance to write in!
I work as a Design Engineer for a big auto maker, who happens to have a 2,500+ employee R&D facility and 3 major factories just outside of Columbus. Because of this, roughly 15,000 employees all commute 30 miles on the same stretch of highway every day, each direction. So as you can imagine there's a lot of interest in the community for autonomous driving and electrification.
The Columbus Smart City Initiative has partnered with the automotive industry here and plans to utilize that same 35 miles of highway between Columbus and the factories to conduct autonomous infrastructure design and testing. (Linky: https://www.33smartcorridor.com ) The first step of this was a Smart Intersection that was fully autonomous a few months ago. (Linky 2: https://www.dispatch.com/news/20181004/honda-demonstrates-smart-intersection-technology-in-marysville ) Eventually the plan is to leverage the automaker's presence in the region as a way to gather meaningful data due to all the traffic and existing research being conducted. And hopefully make our commutes better with self driving cars some day!
Of course I'll still be listening to DTNS every day, but maybe eventually you guys will discuss the latest in Tech News and Chip toppings while I'm working on a laptop riding along in an autonomous car. One can hope!
Love the show! Keep up the hard work! - Sent by Andrew an Automotive Engineer & DTNS Fan in Columbus Ohio
- Long time listener and patron here, who happens to live in Columbus, Ohio! You guys have been an integral part of my daily commute to work every morning for 5 years! I'm so excited to finally be able to write in about something!
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| Preceded by: "Whoops, I’m a Game Company" |
Facebook Turning Over A New Tree |
Followed by: "Complicated Cucumber Cutting" |