Daily Tech Headlines – January 26, 2018
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Daily Tech Headlines – January 26, 2018 | |
| Number | 425 |
| Broadcast Date | JANUARY 26, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:00 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Google gets into local news, Intel has good news despite Meltdown and Rakuten and Wal-Mart team up on groceries and ebooks.
Headlines
- Google is testing a service called Bulletin that lets anyone publish local news and events. Examples include high school sports, street closures, and bookstore readings. Bulletin is being tested in Nashville, Tennessee and Oakland, California. Users can post text, photos and videos from a phone app. Google wants to work with news organizations to take advantage of the service.
- Intel beat expectations for Q4 growing 4% year-over-year on the strength of its data center business which rose 20% in revenue beating expectations of 10%. Internet of Things revenue rose 21% and programmable chips grew 35%. Intel also forecast continued growth despite the Spectre/Meltdown flaws in its chips. Intel says the flaws will hurt sales but promised to ship new chips this year that do not have the flaws or the performance problems caused by software fixes.
- Wal-Mart is partnering with Rakuten to offer online grocery shopping in Japan in Q3. Wal-Mart will also partner with Rakuten's Kobo to add audiobook and ebook sales to Wal-Mart's site in the US. A co-branded reading app will be released for Android and iOS.
- China's JD.com is selling 15% of its logistics arm to Tencent while it begins international expansion including online sales in Europe and the US, starting in Los Angeles. JD may partner with Wal-Mart on logistics in the US, but aims to build its own US warehouse so it can offer same day delivery. JD wants half its revenue to come from outside China within 10 years.
- Dell is exploring strategic options including growing by acquiring other companies, selling or spinning out companies it owns or possibly issuing public stock again. Dell took the company private in 2013. Dell acquired EMC in 2016 but has not seen the profit increase it expected from the acquisition. The Dell board will meet later this month.
- An anonymous user on the app Blind alleges Lyft employees accessed customer data on ex romantic partners, celebrities, and public figures like Mark Zuckerberg. Lyft told The Information that it is investigating the claims. Lyft has policies and training that prohibit using customer data for anything outside a business need and the customer database logs which employees access it.
- The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports the employee who accidentally sent a missile alert in Hawaii is no longer cooperating with investigators. The employee gave a written statement on January 13 but has not cooperated since. The employee was reassigned to a different job but has not returned to work since the incident.
- MoviePass has stopped allowing customers to use its service at certain premium AMC theaters in Los Angeles, New York and Boston in order to get the theater chain to cooperate with the service. MoviePass offers unlimited tickets for a monthly fee while it pays full price to the theaters. It wants a cut of the ticket prices and concession sales which AMC refuses to consider.
- Coincheck, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges in Japan has stopped letting customers withdraw money and halted trading. The organization announced the move on its blog but did not explain why. Coincheck does not have a license from Japan's regulator.
- Acer is showing a tablet running ChromeOS at the Bett Show for the education industry. The tablet was in Acer's booth and appeared to be around 9 inches with a front-facing camera and a stylus from Staedtler. 9to5 Google says code commits indicate the tablet may be code-named Scarlet and run on a Rockchip processor.
Links
| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – January 25, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – January 26, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – January 29, 2018" |