Week in Review for the Week of 2/11/19
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| Week in Review for the Week of 2/11/19 | |
| Number | 753 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 16, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 5:08 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
The American AI Initiative gets signed, Amazon cancels HQ2 in New York, and the EU Copyright Directive keeps Articles 11 and 13 after negotiations.
Headlines
- President Trump signed the American AI Initiative Executive order on Monday, designed to boost the country's AI industry. The order makes federal data available to AI researchers, asks agencies to prioritize worker retraining for changes brought by AI, and directs federal agencies to prioritize AI funding although no new funding is allocated in the initiative. The order also requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create standards to allow the development of "reliable, robust, trustworthy, secure, portable, and interoperable AI systems.”
- Amazon is canceling plans to build a corporate campus in New York City. The campus was set for Long Island City, Queens and Amazon claimed it would create more than 25,000 jobs in the area, in exchange for nearly $3 billion in state and city incentives. But several local lawmakers criticized providing subsidies to such a large corporation, and ultimately Amazon said in a statement Thursday, "We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada."
- Sources tell the Washington Post that Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission are in negotiations over a multi-billion dollar fine to settle an investigation into the company's privacy practices. The negotiations stem from the FTC's investigation into the improper access to Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica back in March. Part of the FTC's investigation is whether Facebook violated a 2011 agreement with the FTC to improve its privacy practices, and included a provision to notify users before sharing data with third parties. The amount of the fine remains to be settled, but seems like it will dwarf the FTC's previous largest fine against a tech company, a $22.5 million fine against Google in 2012. Any negotiated fine will need to be approved by a federal judge.
- The trilogue negotiations over the EU Copyright Directive have ended with an agreement that keeps Article 11, the snippets rule, and Article 13 the upload filter rule. The final version of Article 11 will require any site of any size that reproduces more than “single words or very short extracts” of news stories to get a license. Article 13 requires commercial sites and apps to make best efforts to buy licenses for anything that users might upload and prevent unlicensed works from being uploaded. Sites become liable for infringements that are a result of insufficient efforts. The final text now returns to the EU Council and EU Parliament for approval, starting Monday, February 18, with a vote by the EU Parliament's Legal Affairs committee with a plenary vote expected in late March or early April, a few weeks before EU parliamentary elections.
- Buzzfeed reported that Apple will hold an event on its campus on March 25 to introduce a subscription news service, and sources told CNBC that Apple is aiming to launch its TV service in April or early May. Bloomberg subsequently reported its sources say that Apple is planning to unveil both its video and news subscription offerings at next month's event. The video service is reportedly similar to Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, including TV shows and movies either acquired or funded by Apple. The news service is said to be integrated into the Apple News app, bundling subscriptions into a single monthly fee.
- Apple announced that Health Records on iPhone will soon allow veterans receiving care through the Veterans Health Administration to view medical records in the app. This is the first consumer record-sharing platform used by the VA, which currently provides service to nine million veterans in the country.
- LinkedIn is launching a live video element to its platform in beta in the US. LinkedIn Live will be invite-only. In coming weeks, the company plans to cover conferences, product announcements, Q&As and other events led by influencers and mentors, plus office hours, earnings calls, graduation and awards ceremonies, and the like. LinkedIn is working with several third-party developers including Wirecast, Switcher Studio, Wowza Media Systems, Socialive and Brandlive, “with more to come in the following weeks.” Microsoft, which acquired LinkedIn in 2016, is encoding the video through Azure.
- The Wall Street Journal reports that Lyft's founders John Zimmer and Logan Green are looking to take near-majority voting control of the ride-hailing company when it goes public this year, according to sources. Currently the duo own a stake of less than 10 percent in Lyft. The Journal also reports the company will appoint one of its existing board members as non-executive chairman.
- ActivisionBlizzard announced earnings beat estimates by a cent last quarter but forecast full-year profit and revenue below analyst's estimates. Part of the miss is due to sale of publishing rights for Destiny to Bungie. The company also announced 800 job cuts, about 8% of its workforce, mostly in non-game development areas. It said it will increase the number of developers working on games by 20% this year while focusing on live services, eSports and successful franchises like Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone.
- DJI will roll out its Geospatial Environment Online (GEO) 2.0 system in 19 European countries starting later this month. The system creates safety zones around airports and flight paths to prevent drones from interfering with air traffic. 13 European markets that already had the GEO system will get the 2.0 update.
Links
| Preceded by: "Facebook and FTC Negotiating Record Privacy Fine" |
Week in Review for the Week of 2/11/19 |
Followed by: "Australia's Political Parties and Parliament Hacked" |