A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking
My focus for the last couple of years has been understanding and addressing the biggest challenges facing Facebook. This means taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the intern...
Huawei sues the US government, challenging a law that bans federal agencies from buying the company's products
Shenzhen, China (CNN Business)Embattled Chinese tech giant Huawei is suing the US government in its most aggressive move yet to fight back against accusations that its technology poses a global securi...
Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is working on rebuilding its messaging services to be more interoperable, ephemeral, privacy-focused, with end-to-end encryption
A major new blog post about Facebook's future — Facebook will increasingly shift its focus away from public posts to encrypted …
Nintendo announces VR kits for its Labo line of Switch DIY cardboard accessories; they cost $40 and $80 and will be available on April 12
Nintendo is getting into the virtual reality game — Nintendo's getting into virtual reality, but not in the way you might expect.
Mark Zuckerberg on the need for a “privacy-focused platform” focused on messaging to complement “public platforms”, the challenge of monetization, and more
ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, described a sweeping new vision for his platform.
A senior Facebook source says the company has no plans to enter China, after Zuckerberg says Facebook won't build data centers in countries that violate privacy
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News :
If Facebook pivots to privacy, News Feed becomes a legacy product, its new business model will likely be commerce, and misinformation will be harder to track
By 2015, Mark Zuckerberg had grown uncomfortable with his messaging history. His old instant messages had gotten him into trouble in the past …
Edison Research estimates Facebook has 15M fewer US users today compared to 2017, with the biggest drop seen in the 12 to 34 age group
Listen To The Story — Marketplace — All the bad press about Facebook might be catching up to the company. New numbers from Edison Research show …
NSA releases free public version of Ghidra, a set of tools developed internally for software reverse engineering, to excitement among malware researchers
The National Security Agency released a free, public version of Ghidra, a set of tools developed internally for software reverse engineering.
Google launches Rewarded Products, a new monetization option for Android developers that lets users watch ads to earn in-app currency or other benefits
Google today is introducing a new way for Android developers to generate revenue from their mobile applications. And no, it's not subscription-related.
Microsoft says it is making its Windows calculator app open source, available now on GitHub
Windows developers can help build the calculator now — Microsoft is making the source code for its Windows calculator available on GitHub today. The software maker wants to …
Mark Zuckerberg's “privacy-focused” announcement is not a dramatic pivot: it is a growth opportunity for Facebook and a challenge for regulators
What was striking about the reaction to Mark Zuckerberg's latest missive about the future of Facebook, A Privacy-Focused Vision … Tweets: @stevesi , @caseynewton , @caseynewton , @nikosfertakis , @mat...
Sources detail timeline of US scrutiny of Huawei, spurred by Reuters' report from 2012, and how execs' info has been collected at airport screenings for years
Karen Freifeld / Reuters :
Amazon says it will close all 87 of its US pop-up stores in April; the kiosks, in Whole Foods and other stores, let customers try Amazon products and services
- The company is also planning to open dozens of grocery stores and potentially thousands of Amazon Go stores, according to earlier reports.
An analysis of 105 “Uber for X” US companies, representing $7.4B in VC investment: four have reached unicorn status, 19 were acquired, and 28 have shut down
In March 2009, Uber was born. Over the next few years, the company became not just a disruptive …
SoftBank launches the Innovation Fund, starting with a $2B commitment to invest in Latin American tech startups in e-commerce, fintech, healthcare, and more
While SoftBank continues to make big bets on startups out of its $100-billion Vision Fund, it has also launched another investment vehicle …
Bird plans to rollout Bird Platform, which outsources the scooter-sharing business to aspiring entrepreneurs, to New Zealand, Canada, and Latin America
Bird is outsourcing the scooter-sharing business to aspiring entrepreneurs in countries outside the US and Europe
Sources: a common practice among bounty hunters and stalkers is to impersonate cops and claim there's a crisis to get real-time cell location data from telcos
In several cases, a stalker impersonated a US Marshal and reported a fake kidnapping in order to get telecom companies to give them real-time cell phone location data. Tweets: @timkarr , @motherboard ...
Microsoft becomes the first major cloud provider to open data centers in South Africa, with AWS expected to bring its first data center into the country in 2020
Even without local data centers, Microsoft has been the leading cloud provider in the country, according to analysts.
Apple says it will bring 1,200 employees to its San Diego offices over three years, with as many as 200 coming in 2019, and will add new labs and office space
- Apple announced it will bring 1,200 employees to San Diego over three years as it reportedly tries to bring its modem engineering in-house.
YouTube has started rolling out a feature, in India, that shows info panels with fact checks on search result pages for topics prone to misinformation
YouTube will start showing “information panels” — boxes of text that provide debunks from YouTube's verified fact-checking partners … Thanks: @pranavdixit
Samsung Galaxy Watch Active review: comfortable to wear with good fitness-tracking features but pairs poorly with non-Samsung phones and Bixby is wanting
Tizen Watch OS works better with a rotating bezel, but don't think it sinks the whole watch. https://www.theverge.com/...
Sources: Bytedance is planning to launch a Slack-like work collaboration app; Bytedance had a $1.2B loss last year after mixed results of its TikTok expansion
In 2017 ByteDance, owner of such popular apps as newsfeed service Toutiao, made a slim profit.
Remix raises $15M Series B for its platform, used by 300 cities, that lets cities plan public transit infrastructure using a drag and drop menu
A San Francisco-based startup just raised $15 million to solve the complicated problem of transit infrastructure in urban environments.
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase say their joint healthcare company will be called Haven
Following criticism, Valve says it will not distribute Rape Day, a game set to arrive in April on Steam that would have let players abuse women
Michael McWhertor / Polygon :
Microsoft's policy to give app developers up to a 95% cut of Store revenues, announced in April 2018, is now in effect; games will keep previous 70/30 split
Tom McNamara / CNET :
Estonian ride-hailing company Taxify rebrands as Bolt, same as its e-scooters, to double down on providing multiple transportation options beyond private cars
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch :
Google reveals that a patch for Chrome last week was actually a fix for a sandbox-escaping zero-day exploit that was being actively used in the wild
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet :
Google brings its Duplex AI restaurant booking assistant to 43 states for Pixel 3 owners starting today and will soon roll it out to other Android users and iOS
Brian Heater / TechCrunch :
Profile of Eugene Gu, one of Twitter's most outspoken social justice personalities, who has a history of alleged abuse and used a fake handle to fight critics
Laura Yan / The Verge :
Report: Microsoft says Iran-linked hackers have targeted 2,200+ people at 200+ companies over the past two years, stealing corporate secrets and wiping data
Associated Press :
Brodmann17 raises $11M Series A led by OurCrowd for its automotive computer vision tech that can work on smaller, low-end processors
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch :
Google and OpenAI publish new research on how neural networks build and arrange visual concepts using an “activation atlas”
Neural networks can learn to classify images … Christine Fisher / Engadget : Google is sharing a tool to keep your data anonymous from AI Alasdair Allan / Hackster Blog : Say “Hello” to Google Coral T...
Sources describe the gray market for prototype iPhones, oftentimes with security features disabled, that iOS hackers have used to probe internals and find bugs
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / Motherboard :
Omidyar Network spins out its financial technology investment arm as Flourish, with up to $300M in capital
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch : Tweets: @omidyarnetwork Tweets: @omidyarnetwork : We are delighted to share that the #FinancialInclusion initiative at Omidyar Network has officially become @FlourishV...
Waymo starts selling lidar sensors to customers who don't compete with its robotaxi business, expects increased production of sensors to lower costs
Tom Randall / Bloomberg :
Apple's annual Supplier Responsibility Progress Report, assessing 770 suppliers across 30 countries, finds 27 “core violations” of labor rules, down from 44 YoY
Ian Sherr / CNET :
Report: Snap reached settlements with 3+ women in 2018 who alleged discrimination after layoffs; one round eliminated only women from growth and design teams
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge :
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Zoho CRM Plus in 2025: A year of thoughtful CX improvements
2025 marked 11 years of building a customer experience platform designed to support organizations as customer expectations, channels …
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.