Daily Tech Headlines – September 12, 2016
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| Daily Tech Headlines – September 12, 2016 | |
| Number | 68 |
| Broadcast Date | SEPTEMBER 12, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 8:04 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
Ford buys Chariot, Amazon wants to stream sports, and vDOS goes dark.
Headlines
- Facebook removed a Vietnam-era “napalm girl” photo called the “The Terror of War” and suspended the account of Norwegian writer Tom Egeland who posted it. The photo taken by Nick Ut during the Vietnam war showing a naked 9-year-old girl running away from a napalm attack. The suspension attracted a number of complaints from Afternposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, who’s article on FB was flagged as indecent and subject to removal. Facebook responded that it was a feature, not a bug stating “it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.” Recode now reports that Facebook has retracted the decision and would “reinstate the image on Facebook, where we are aware it has been removed,” but that “It will take some time to adjust these systems, but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days.” The company made no comments to Record on changes to the policy.
- Boing Boing reports that the EU court of justice has ruled that any commercial site that links to a document that infringes copyright is presumed to be party to the infringement. Boing Boing suggests the ruling could potential leave those who link to improperly licensed material also liable for monetary damages. The court case of GS Media BV vs Sanoma centers on Playboy magazine photos shot by its Dutch unit Sanoma Obj being posted illegally online and those pictures being linked to by GS Media BV.
- Ford announced several moves to expand its business beyond car sales. The company plans to acquire Chariot, a San Francisco based crowdfunded shuttle service. Chariot runs buses on algorithmically determined routes based on demand. Ford plans to expand the service from San Francisco to 5 new markets in the next 18 months, including one international location. The company also plans to acquire Motivate, the largest operators of bike-share programs in the US. Ford committed to adding 7000 bikes to Motivate's Bay Area bike share network after the acquisition closes. Finally the Verge reports that Ford CEO Mark Fields is setting up a new division in the company to advise municipalities about "mobility solutions."
- Bloomberg reports that according to their sources, Amazon is attempting to gain streaming rights for sporting events. Amazon looks to target sports with a global audience, specifically targeting the French Open tennis championship and professional rugby. Earlier this year, the company hired former Sports Illustrated executive James DeLorenzo and former YouTube executive Charlie Neiman to oversee sports partnerships. Bloomberg reports that Amazon would be interested in streaming more US centric sporting events, but doesn't forsee rights becoming available in the foreseeable future.
- In other Amazon news, Business Insider reports that according to sources, the company will expand its physical retail presence throughout 2017. Amazon plans to setup dozens of new pop-up stores in malls throughout the US, up to a possible 100 by the end of 2017. The pop-up stores would focus on Amazon's hardware, including Kindle e-readers, FireTV media streamers, and Echo products.
- Julian Sanchez at Just Security reports on proposed revisions from an anonymous source to the Compliance with Court Orders Act, sponsored by Senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Burr. The proposed revisions would still require companies to make encrypted data intelligible to government agents upon a court order, but would restrict this rule to those providers that "control" the encryption process, not merely company's that own or created it. The revision would also require any court ordered decryption be specifically related to law enforcement investigation, and would require any technical assistance given to break encryption be "reasonable."
- Krebs on Security reports that the Distributed Denial of Service coordinating company vDOS has been hacked, exposing their customer list and target information. vDOS offered DDoS services from $20-200 a month, based on attack time, and according to leaked records earned more than $618,000 in bit-coin since July 2014. On Thursday, two 18-year old Israeli hackers, Itay Huri and Yarden Bidani were arrested as part of an investigation into vDOS. Krebs estimates that between April and July of 2016, vDOS was responsible for almost 9 years worth of attack traffic. vDOS's website went offline sometime Friday evening.
- The New York Times reports that according to 3 people briefed on the matter, Apple is restructuring its oft-rumored autonomous car program. This has resulted in the layoff of dozens of employees, reportedly Apple advised the effected employees this is part of a "reboot" of their car project. Previous reports have suggested Apple ramped up its car program about 2 years ago, and had grown up until this point to over 1000 employees.
- Yesterday Tesla unveiled the eighth version of its Autopilot system for the company's vehicles. The update changes the priority of the radar system in the car, making it the primary control sensor in the array. Previously the radar was supplemental, requiring the camera system to have a positive object recognition hit before beginning breaking. The update will also disable the AutoPilot feature if a driver repeatedly ignores warnings to keep their hands on the wheel. Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes the update would have prevented the May accident of a Model S broadsiding a truck, which killed the driver, Josh Brown. The update is expected to go live in 1 to 2 weeks.
- Twitter announced a new skill for Amazon Echo devices called Twitter Reader. The new skill enables Echo users to have recent tweets read back, go through mentions, and list trending topics. PCMag reports though that Alexa does bleep any profanity, luckily that's the only offensive thing I've ever read on Twitter.
- HP Inc. entered into an agreement to acquire Samsung's printer business for $1.05 billion. HP stated they made the acquisition to "disrupt" the $55 billion printer market. HP will also acquire 6500 printing patents in the deal. The acquisition is expected to close by Q3 2017, and is still pending regulatory review.
- WhatsApp, the king of Messaging, has long been blocking links to Telegram in its Android app. Almost all other links inserted into chat could be clicked through to open in browser, but telegram link, or even links with the word "telegram", would be rendered as plain text. Android Police noticed that this has been reversed in the app.
Links
| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – September 9, 2016" |
Daily Tech Headlines – September 12, 2016 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – September 13, 2016" |