Fintech Firms Flock to Lithuania
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| Fintech Firms Flock to Lithuania | |
| Number | 746 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 8, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 3:56 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
Fintech companies flock to Lithuania before Brexit, Google Fiber is shutting down in Louisville, and Facebook restructures its youth team.
Headlines
- According to sources speaking to the Russian business daily Vedomosti, Google has censored roughly 70% of websites blacklisted by the country's communications regulator. The move seems to put Google into compliance with 2017 regulations that require search engines to delete officially blacklisted content. Google was fined $7,500 back in November for failure to do so previously. According to Google's latest transparency report, Russia accounted for 75% of global takedown requests in the first half of 2019.
- Speaking to Reuters, Lithuania's central bank disclosed that roughly 100 fintech companies have applied to operate in the country, in order to ensure access to the European Union after Brexit. Firms, including British online banks and Google, are seeking electronic money institution licenses in Lithuania. As of January, the country has only issued a total of 83 licenses, and bank officials say they lack the resources to review all applications prior to Britain's March 29th exit from the EU.
- Italy will not ban Huawei and ZTE from helping build the country’s 5G network according to a statement from Italy's industry ministry. Earlier on Thursday, the Italian newspaper La Stampa cited senior government sources saying Rome was ready to use special powers to terminate contracts with the two Chinese companies.
- Google Fiber announced they will be ending service in Louisville, KY and will not charge for their final two months of service for subscribers. The announcement blames the departure on a faulty infrastructure decision to place their lines in shallow trenches which have proved unreliable and would require another full reinstallation.
- In a blog post Thursday, Amazon VP of global public policy at AWS, Michael Punke, said the company supports “appropriate” legislation surrounding use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement to ensure civil rights aren't being violated." This follows a similar declaration from Microsoft last month saying it discourages the use of technology to engage in unlawful discrimination and encourage customers to be transparent about its use.
- Facebook confirmed to Recode that it is restructuring its youth team, focusing on increased investment in Messenger Kids. The company is shutting down its meme app LOL, and will not continue to develop the high school community feature to connect classmates.
- Spotify published an updated Terms of Service that explicitly bans ad blocking on the service. According to the new terms, “circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service" can result in either immediate termination or suspension of service. The new TOS goes into effect March 1st.
- Google announced its open-sourcing its bug finding infrastructure, ClusterFuzz, on GitHub. Fuzzing is a term for an automated software testing process that inputs invalid, unexpected or random data into a computer program which is monitored to see exceptions like crashes and memory leaks. ClusterFuzz is Google's cloud-based implementation that runs on 25,000 cores that was launched in 2012. Two years ago, the company offered ClusterFuzz as a free service to open source projects.
- Google announced that with the release of Chrome 73 next month, the browser will officially support multimedia keys. Users will be able to control both audio and video, as well as work whether Chrome is in the foreground or minimized. Chrome 73 will also include the Media Session API, which developers can use to customize the behavior of multimedia keys. Support will come initially to Chrome on Chrome OS, macOS, and Windows, with Linux support coming at an unspecified date.
- Sprint filed a lawsuit against AT&T in the Southern District of New York, claiming the company's use of 5G Evolution on phones was false advertising and damages the reputation of 5G standards. The complaint cited a survey commission by Sprint that found 54% of consumers thought 5GE was equivalent or better than 5G. The suit seeks an injunction preventing AT&T from using the term on phones or in advertising.
Links
| Preceded by: "Skype Blurs Your Background" |
Fintech Firms Flock to Lithuania |
Followed by: "Week in Review for the Week of 2/4/19" |