Facebook Acqui-Hires Vidpresso Team
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| Facebook Acqui-Hires Vidpresso Team | |
| Number | 607 |
| Broadcast Date | AUGUST 14, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 6:05 |
| Hosts | Sarah Lane |
Apple encouraged app developers to adopt subscription models, Tinder founders sue over alleged valuation manipulation, NVIDIA details new Turing GPU.
Headlines
- Business Insider reports that Apple is encouraging developers to transition to a subscription, software-as-a-service model, rather than a one-time purchase fee model, and sources say Apple held an invite-only meeting in the spring of 2017 for around 30 developers to convince them to adopt the sub model. In 2016 Apple introduced what was reportedly internally called "Subscriptions 2.0," a way for developers that made utilities and similar apps to bill their customers on a regular, recurring basis.
- NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the company's new Turing GPU architecture in a keynote at SIGGRAPH 2018. Turing is rolling out this year with new features such as hybrid rendering, which combines ray tracing with traditional rasterization. NVIDIA says the fastest Turing parts can cast 10 Billion (Giga) rays per second, which is a 25x improvement in ray tracing performance over he unaccelerated Pascal. The Turing architecture also carries over the tensor cores from Volta, and supports a wider range of precisions such as INT8 and INT4 precisions. NVIDIA announced that the upcoming Quadro RTX 8000, RTX 6000, and RTX 5000 – will be shipping in Q4 of this year.
- Huawei and ZTE have been mostly banned from use by US government and government contractors. The ban was signed into place by President Trump Tuesday as a component of the Defense Authorization Act. In June, the Senate easlily passed an amendment that would have reinstated a trade ban on ZTE, potentially shutting down the company. But the House did not. Eventually Congress decided on a measure that will essentially ban government workers from using components from Huawei, ZTE, or a number of other Chinese communications companies. The ban goes into effect over the next two years.
- Facebook has acqui-hired the 7-person Vidpresso team and its technology. Vidpresso makes online videos more interactive with on-screen social media polling and comments, graphics and live broadcasting integrated with Facebook, YouTube, Periscope and more. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Vidpresso clients and partners like KTXL, Univision, BuzzFeed, Turner Sports, Nasdaq, TED, NBC and others will continue to be able to use its services.
- Sources tell Bloomberg that YouTube is paying some creators upfront sums to use and promote new features, including paid memberships and an enhanced chat. YouTube introduced paid memberships, paid chats and a new merchandising program earlier this year. The new Super Chat lets fans of a given YouTube star pay to highlight their messages in live streams. These new YouTube contracts reportedly don’t require YouTube exclusivity, but they do prohibit users from posting first on competitors’ sites.
- Samsung updated its SmartThings product line with a new wireless hub and a new dual-band Wi-Fi router using mesh networking tech licensed from Plume. The router can manage smart home devices like plugs, switches, and lights, that connect over Zigbee and Z-Wave wireless protocols. A three-pack sells for $280 or individually for $120. The new SmartThings hub sells for $70. Samsung also updated its SmartThings’ leak, motion, and “multipurpose” door opening / vibration / temperature sensor, and its programmable button and plug-in smart outlet, all available today for between $15 and $35.
- The Associated Press reported Monday that turning off "Location Tracking" in Google Maps does not actually turn off all stored locations. Google says "Location Tracking" means actively recording your location as you use a device. What the AP found, and had confirmed by Princeton researchers, is that even with Location Tracking off, Google's Website and Apps will still store one-time locations when you use them with an app that needs it like Google Maps or Weather Updates. Since these are not continuously tracking you just recording a location when you fire up the app, Google classes them separately. If you want to stop this kind of location storage you can find the setting in your Google Account, find activity controls, and turn off "web and app activity". You can also delete any previously saved location data from your Google account as well.
- Twitter Lite, the data-saving version of the app, is expanding to 21 more countries, bringing the total to 45. Twitter Lite is designed to load faster on slower network connections, like 2G and 3G, and is also under 3MB in size. Last November Twitter claimed Twitter Lite led to a greater than 50% increase in tweets, and noted that 80% of its then 330 million monthly users were outside the U.S. The app is available as a free download on Google Play.
- Square now lets customers buy and sell bitcoins via its Cash App in all 50 U.S. states. The company announced the service expansion in a tweet Monday, months after Square rolled out the bitcoin service to investors in the country. Square has also secured a "BitLicense" in New York, making it one of several crypto services allowed to operate in the state.
- Tinder's Co-founders and eight other former and current executives of the dating app are suing the service's current owners Match Group and its parent company, IAC for $2 billion in damages, alleging that manipulation of the company's valuation denied them billions of dollars they were owed. The suit centers around an analysis of Tinder from 2017 by Wall Street banks to set a value for stock options received by Sean Rad, a Tinder co-founder, and other early employees. It also includes an allegation of sexual harassment against Tinder's former CEO, Greg Blatt.
Links
| Preceded by: "DEFCON Researchers hack all the things" |
Facebook Acqui-Hires Vidpresso Team |
Followed by: "Alexa and Cortana Team Up" |