27 March 2018

Google is acquiring GIF platform Tenor


Google will be acquiring Tenor, which powers a variety of GIF keyboards on phones and messengers like Facebook Messenger, the companies announced today.

Tenor will continue to operate as a separate brand within Google, the company said in a blog post. Tenor has increasingly positioned itself as a search company, using that as a metric for engagement and success as users tap into a massive database of GIFs. The company said it has more than 12 billion searches every month, and is one of the first major exits for a small but relatively hot space around tools that allow users to easily share GIFs. The company works with advertisers to create sponsored GIFs that slot into its searches, which are usually pretty compact and offer an opportunity to generate a lot of engagement.

GIFs have increasingly been pretty interesting because they offer an opportunity to compress a lot of information into something that’s easily shareable. Tenor CEO David McIntosh will often say that the company is about conveying emotion — and really, that isn’t something that often goes very well over text. If you’re watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, you’re probably better off searching for a GIF of your team rather than just blasting a text message to your group of friends.

“With their deep library of content, Tenor surfaces the right GIFs in the moment so you can find the one that matches your mood,” Google Images director of engineering Cathy Edwards said. “Tenor will help us do this more effectively in Google Images as well as other products that use GIFs, like Gboard. Tenor will continue to operate as a separate brand, and we’re looking forward to investing in their technology and relationships with content and API partners. So whether you’re using the Tenor keyboard or one of our other products, you can expect to see much more of this in your future:”

When you open Tenor, you’ll only find a small slice of GIFs that are available as the company is looking to compress the amount of time you actually spending digging around for a GIF you want to share. The theory is that if it’s easier to find and share one, you’ll do it again and again. This isn’t dissimilar from Google’s approach either, offering itself as a utility that’s a quick get-in, get-out experience that builds a level of stickiness that’s hard to unseat. Google is, of course, worth hundreds of billions of dollars off the back of a massive advertising business that basically prints money.

Tenor isn’t the only one in the space. Giphy, for example, also has a GIF keyboard and has a pretty large database of GIFs. Giphy says it has 300 million daily active users, though depending on who you talk to in the Valley that can mean a couple different things. Nevertheless, all of these companies have been able to attract venture financing. There’s also Gfycat, which positions itself as a tool for creators, that says it has 130 million monthly active users.

The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. But by positioning itself as a search company that slots into a messaging ecosystem, Tenor seems like a natural piece of the puzzle for Google. It also gives the company a small wedge into the messenger space as it’ll have an opportunity to touch all the platforms that are connected to Tenor like even Facebook messenger, though that one tends to flip between GIF platforms indiscriminately.


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Google is acquiring GIF platform Tenor


Google will be acquiring Tenor, which powers a variety of GIF keyboards on phones and messengers like Facebook Messenger, the companies announced today.

Tenor will continue to operate as a separate brand within Google, the company said in a blog post. Tenor has increasingly positioned itself as a search company, using that as a metric for engagement and success as users tap into a massive database of GIFs. The company said it has more than 12 billion searches every month, and is one of the first major exits for a small but relatively hot space around tools that allow users to easily share GIFs. The company works with advertisers to create sponsored GIFs that slot into its searches, which are usually pretty compact and offer an opportunity to generate a lot of engagement.

GIFs have increasingly been pretty interesting because they offer an opportunity to compress a lot of information into something that’s easily shareable. Tenor CEO David McIntosh will often say that the company is about conveying emotion — and really, that isn’t something that often goes very well over text. If you’re watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, you’re probably better off searching for a GIF of your team rather than just blasting a text message to your group of friends.

“With their deep library of content, Tenor surfaces the right GIFs in the moment so you can find the one that matches your mood,” Google Images director of engineering Cathy Edwards said. “Tenor will help us do this more effectively in Google Images as well as other products that use GIFs, like Gboard. Tenor will continue to operate as a separate brand, and we’re looking forward to investing in their technology and relationships with content and API partners. So whether you’re using the Tenor keyboard or one of our other products, you can expect to see much more of this in your future:”

When you open Tenor, you’ll only find a small slice of GIFs that are available as the company is looking to compress the amount of time you actually spending digging around for a GIF you want to share. The theory is that if it’s easier to find and share one, you’ll do it again and again. This isn’t dissimilar from Google’s approach either, offering itself as a utility that’s a quick get-in, get-out experience that builds a level of stickiness that’s hard to unseat. Google is, of course, worth hundreds of billions of dollars off the back of a massive advertising business that basically prints money.

Tenor isn’t the only one in the space. Giphy, for example, also has a GIF keyboard and has a pretty large database of GIFs. Giphy says it has 300 million daily active users, though depending on who you talk to in the Valley that can mean a couple different things. Nevertheless, all of these companies have been able to attract venture financing. There’s also Gfycat, which positions itself as a tool for creators, that says it has 130 million monthly active users.

The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. But by positioning itself as a search company that slots into a messaging ecosystem, Tenor seems like a natural piece of the puzzle for Google. It also gives the company a small wedge into the messenger space as it’ll have an opportunity to touch all the platforms that are connected to Tenor like even Facebook messenger, though that one tends to flip between GIF platforms indiscriminately.


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Arm chips will with Nvidia AI could change the Internet of Things


Nvidia and Arm today announced a partnership that’s aimed at making it easier for chip makers to incorporate deep learning capabilities into next-generation consumer gadgets, mobile devices, and Internet of Things objects. Mostly, thanks to this partnership, artificial intelligence could be coming to doorbell cams or smart speakers soon.

Arm intents to integrate Nvidia’s open-source Deep Learning Accelerator (NVDLA) architecture into its just-announced Project Trillium platform. Nvidia says this should help IoT chip makers to incorporate AI into their products.

“Accelerating AI at the edge is critical in enabling Arm’s vision of connecting a trillion IoT devices,” said Rene Haas, EVP, and president of the IP Group, at Arm. “Today we are one step closer to that vision by incorporating NVDLA into the Arm Project Trillium platform, as our entire ecosystem will immediately benefit from the expertise and capabilities our two companies bring in AI and IoT.”

Announced last month, Arm’s Project Trillium is a series of scalable processors designed for machine learning and neural networks. NVDLA open-source nature allows Arm to offer a suite of developers tools on its new platform. Together, with Arm’s scalable chip platforms and Nvidia’s developer’s tools, the two companies feel they’re offering a solution that could result in billions of IoT, mobile and consumers electronic devices gaining access to deep learning.

Nvidia Deepu Tallam, VP and GM of Autonomous Machines at Nvidia explained it best with this analogy: “NVLDA is like providing all the ingredients for somebody to make it a dish including the instructions With Arm [this partnership] is basically like a microwave dish.”


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Aira’s new smart glasses give blind users a guide through the visual world


When it comes to augmented reality technologies, visuals always seems to be a pretty essential part of most people’s definitions, but one startup is offering an interesting take on audio-based AR that also calls on computer vision. Even without integrated displays, glasses are still an important part of the company’s products, which are designed with vision-impaired users in mind.

Aira has built a service that basically puts a human assistant into a blind user’s ear by beaming live-streaming footage from the glasses camera to the company’s agents who can then give audio instructions to the end users. The guides can present them with directions or describe scenes for them. It’s really the combination of the high-tech hardware and highly attentive assistants.

The hardware the company has run this service on in the past has been a bit of a hodgepodge of third-party solutions. This month, the company began testing its own smart glasses solution called the Horizon Smart Glasses, which are designed from the ground-up to be the ideal solution for vision-impaired users.

The company charges based on usage; $89 per month will get users the device and up to 100 minutes of usage. There are various pricing tiers for power users who need a bit more time.

The glasses integrate a 120-degree wide-angle camera so guides can gain a fuller picture of a user’s surroundings and won’t have to instruct them to point their head in a different direction quite as much. It’s powered by what the startup calls the Aira Horizon Controller, which is actually just a repurposed Samsung smartphone that powers the device in terms of compute, battery and network connection. The controller is appropriately controlled entirely through the physical buttons and also can connect to a user’s smartphone if they want to route controls through the Aira mobile app.

Though the startup isn’t planning to part ways with their human assistants anytime soon, the company is predictably aiming to venture deeper into the capabilities offered by computer vision tech. The company announced earlier this month that it would be rolling out its own digital assistant called Chloe that will eventually be able to do a whole lot, but is launching with the ability to read so users can point their glasses at some text and they should be able to hear what’s written. The startup recently showed off a partnership with AT&T that enables the glasses to identify prescription pill bottles and read the labels and dosage instructions to users.

The company is currently in the testing phase of the new headset, but hopes to begin swapping out old units with the Horizon by June.


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Expressive Speech Synthesis with Tacotron

How to Know If Your Baby Monitor Is a Security Threat to Your Family


Keeping your children safe is one of your ultimate goals in life. It sure is for me. But at the end of a long day, you want to put them to bed and sit down with a nice cold one. If you have an infant, there’s a good chance you also have a baby monitor. Hearing those little movements, those tiny coughs and gurgles let you know the small one is secure.

In the old days, your baby monitor was audio-only, using a radio frequency for its connection. But modern baby monitors are online, networked, available through your smartphone, with videos and other “features.” Is there any need for a network-enabled baby monitor, or is it more of a threat than you realize?

The Modern Baby Monitor

Sound was the only thing an old baby monitor gave anxious parents. Keeping the monitor close to baby’s crib would provide just enough feedback to calm those fears. But baby monitors are evolving along with the rest of the technological world. A cursory glance at “the best baby monitors of 2018” tells me that the majority of monitors now have:

Others come with cloud storage (why?!), built-in lullabies, temperature monitoring, and more. But you catch my drift: a modern baby monitor is more akin to a small media center with respect to the radio-audio versions of yesteryear.

And that is where the problem arises. Because we connect our baby monitors to the internet and because they are essentially tiny computers, they are susceptible to many of the same issues.

3 Examples of Baby Monitor Vulnerabilities

In the past three years, dating back to 2015, numerous baby monitor products were flagged as vulnerable. Here are three prime vulnerable baby monitor examples.

1. Mi-Cam Spying

The Chinese-manufactured Mi-Cam device has approximately 50,000 users. But in February 2018, Austrian security company, SEC Consult, found a series of vulnerabilities in the devices.

One attacker gained access via a proxy server that simply bypassed the camera’s password. Another vulnerability allowed them to act as a man-in-the-middle, intercepting live video streams between the device and the manufacturer’s cloud server.

Also, the research team tore the device apart to extract the firmware. They found “very weak four-digit default credentials,” according to their research blog.

2. FTC Names Several Insecure Baby Monitors

Back in 2016, the New York Department of Consumer Affairs received multiple reports of baby monitors as hacking targets. The monitors were being used to scream at, menacingly laugh at, or play intimidating and scary noises to infants.

The FTC built on the New York DCAs investigation, looking at five different baby monitors. It found that only one monitor required a secure password, while two had no encryption at all. Three allowed repeated password guesses after an incorrect entry, making them susceptible to a brute force attack.

The FTC findings weren’t a one-off. Security firm Rapid 7 found similar vulnerabilities after testing nine Wi-Fi capable baby monitors. Their research found that “Every camera had one hidden account that a consumer can’t change because it’s hard-coded or not easily accessible. Whether intended for admin or support, it gives an outsider backdoor access to the camera.”

3. Russian Site Streaming Thousands of Webcams

While this isn’t specifically baby monitors, a fair few where accessible via a Russian website acting as a portal for vulnerable internet connected webcams.

At its peak, some 73,000 webcam streams were available to Insecam’s users. The site pulls webcam IP addresses from Internet of Things device search engine Shodan, making the streams available to anyone.

Understandably, the site attracted some concern. The site owner added filtering to make sure that “none of the cameras on Insecam invade anybody’s private life.” Furthermore, the site now removes “any private or unethical camera” after an email complaint.

Why Are Baby Monitors Vulnerable?

Modern Wi-Fi enabled baby monitors are vulnerable for the same reasons everything else is: poor security. Particularly so, considering the chasm of vulnerability that is the Internet of Things (IoT). There is a good reason that security experts are incredibly wary of IoT devices. A great many have no security customization options.

That means you have no direct control over the passwords that secure your devices. In turn, this means the baby monitor’s security is dependent on your internet connection security. As evidenced by the Insecam site, there are tens of thousands of cameras and baby monitors lacking even the most basic password protection, let alone encryption and other security features.

Another issue with default device security is the availability of lists containing thousands of pre-installed passwords. It only takes a moment to cross-check a device’s default settings.

Researchers at Ben Gurion University, Negev, Israel found that not only do devices force you to use default settings but that those settings are sometimes uniform across multiple devices. Given the propensity of manufacturers to use appalling four-digit PINs such as 0000 or 1234, this isn’t entirely surprising.

“It is truly frightening how easily a criminal, voyeur or pedophile can take over these devices,” said Dr. Yossi Oren, senior lecturer in Ben Gurion’s Implementation Security and Side-Channel Attacks Lab. “Using these devices in our lab, we were able to play loud music through a baby monitor, turn off a thermostat and turn on a camera remotely, much to the concern of our researchers who themselves use these products.”

Dr. Oren also added that “it only took 30 minutes to find passwords for most of the devices and some of them were found only through a Google search of the brand.”

How to Know If a Baby Monitor Is Secure

There are a few things you can do to find a genuinely secure baby monitor:

  1. The first is to give your home network security a once over. Does your router still have the default password setting? Did you change your Wi-Fi password to something good, strong, and memorable? Are there any unknown devices on your network?
  2. The second is to complete your due diligence while shopping around for a baby monitor. Make sure you can change the device password. Complete a Google search for your respective baby monitors with “security” or “vulnerability” in the search term. If the monitor appears in news articles concerning leaks, breaches, hacks and so on, don’t buy it.
  3. The third is to consider if you really need a baby monitor that connects to the internet, has cloud storage, or sends you push notifications if your baby doesn’t move for a period (yes, they exist, for some reason).

These three points are all vital to securing your baby monitor. But of all of them, the first is most important. If you cannot change the password on your baby monitor, you’ll never win. And that extends to all IoT devices.

If you cannot access the security settings, you are not in control of your security—and that alone is a slippery slope.

Image Credit: tiagoz/Depositphotos


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On-demand shipping startup Shyp is shutting down


After rocketing to a $250 million valuation in 2015 amid a massive hype cycle for on-demand companies, on-demand startup Shyp is shutting down today.

CEO Kevin Gibbon announced that the company would be shutting down in a blog post this afternoon. The company is ending operations immediately after, like many on-demand companies, struggling to find a scalable model beyond its launching point in San Francisco. Shyp missed targets for expanding to cities beyond its core base as well as pulled back from Miami. In July, Shyp said it would be reducing its headcount and shutting down all operations beyond San Francisco.

The company raised $50 million in a deal led by John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins back in 2015, one of his last huge checks as a variety of firms jumped onto the on-demand space. The thesis at the time was pretty sound: look at a strip mall, and see which businesses can come to you first. Shipping was a natural one, but there was also food, and eventually groceries. Today, there are only a few left standing, with Postmates, Instacart and DoorDash among the most prominent ones. Even then, Instacart is now under threat from Amazon, which is ramping up its own two-hour delivery after buying Whole Foods.

“At the time, I approached everything I did as an engineer,” Gibbon wrote. “Rather than change direction, I tasked the team with expanding geographically and dreaming up innovative features and growth tactics to further penetrate the consumer market. To this day, I’m in awe of the vigor the team possessed in tackling a 200-year-old industry. But, growth at all costs is a dangerous trap that many startups fall into, mine included.”

Shyp is now a casualty of the delivery space. Where it originally sought to make up the cost of delivery in the form of cheaper bulk costs for those deliveries, Shyp’s one-size-fits-all delivery — where you could deliver a computer or a bike — eventually ended up being one of the most challenging and frustrating elements of its business. It began adding fees to its online returns business and changing prices for its bulk shipments. As it turns out, a $5 carte blanche for delivery was not a model that really made sense.

Indeed, that growth-at-all-costs directive has cost many startups, with companies like Sprig shutting down and many companies getting slapped on the wrist for aggressive growth tactics like text spamming. It also meant that startups had to very quickly develop an effective playbook that, in the end, might not actually translate to markets beyond their core competency. Shyp pivoted to focusing on businesses toward the tail end of its lifetime, including a big deal with eBay, which we had heard at the time was doing well.

“We decided to keep the popular-but-unprofitable parts of our business running, with small teams of their own behind them,” he wrote. “This was a mistake—my mistake. While large, established companies have the financial freedom to explore new product categories for the sake of exploring, for startups it can be irresponsible.”

But Gibbon said the company kept parts of its popular but challenged models online – which may have also contributed to its eventual shut-down. The company expected to be in cities like Boston, Seattle and Philadelphia in early 2016, but that didn’t end up panning out. And Shyp increasingly felt the challenges of an on-demand model, trying to push the cost to the consumer as low as possible while handling the overheads and logistical headaches of a delivery business.

“My early mistakes in Shyp’s business ended up being prohibitive to our survival,” Gibbon wrote. “For that, I am sorry.”


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Facebook data misuse scandal affects “substantially” more than 50M, claims Wylie


Chris Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower whose revelations about Facebook data being misused for political campaigning has wiped billions off the share price of the company in recent days and led to the FTC opening a fresh investigation, has suggested the scale of the data leak is substantially larger than has been reported so far.

Giving evidence today, to a UK parliamentary select committee that’s investigating the use of disinformation in political campaigning, Wylie said: “The 50 million number is what the media has felt safest to report — because of the documentation that they can rely on — but my recollection is that it was substantially higher than that. So my own view is it was much more than 50M.”

We’ve reached out to Facebook about Wylie’s claim — but at the time of writing the company had not provided a response.

“There were several iterations of the Facebook harvesting project,” Wylie also told the committee, fleshing out the process through which he says users’ data was obtained by CA. “It first started as a very small pilot — firstly to see, most simply, is this data matchable to an electoral register… We then scaled out slightly to make sure that [Cambridge University professor Alexsandr Kogan] could acquire data in the speed that he said he could [via a personality test app called thisisyourdigitallife deployed via Facebook’s platform]. So the first real pilot of it was a sample of 10,000 people who joined the app — that was in late May 2014.

“That project went really well and that’s when we signed a much larger contract with GSR [Kogan’s company] in the first week of June… 2014. Where the app went out and collected surveys and people joined the app throughout the summer of 2014.”

The personal information the app was able to obtain via Facebook formed the “foundational dataset” underpinning both CA and its targeting models, according to Wylie.

“This is what built the company,” he claimed. “This was the foundational dataset that then was modeled to create the algorithms.”

Facebook has previously confirmed 270,000 people downloaded Kogan’s app — a data harvesting route which, thanks to the lax structure of Facebook’s APIs at the time, enabled the foreign political consultancy firm to acquire information on more than 50 million Facebook users, according to the Observer, the vast majority of whom would have had no idea their data had been passed to CA because they were never personally asked to consent to it.

Instead, their friends were ‘consenting’ on their behalf — likely also without realizing.

Earlier this month, after the latest CA revelations broke, the DCMS committee asked Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to answer their questions in person but he has so far declined their summons. Though it has just been reported that he may finally appear before Congress to face questions about how users’ data has been so widely misused via his platform.

In a letter to the DCMS committee, dated yesterday, Facebook said it is working with regulators in different countries to confirm exactly how many local users have been affected by data leak.

It adds that around 1 per cent of the users whose data was illicitly obtained by CA were European Union users. This small proportion seems unsurprising, given CA was working for the Trump campaign — and therefore aiming to gather data on Americans for 2016 presidential campaign targeting purposes.  EU citizens’ data wouldn’t have had any relevance to that.

“There will be two sets of data,” Facebook writes in its letter to the committee discussing the data passed to CA. “The first is people who downloaded the app, and the second is the number of friends of those people who have their privacy settings set in such a way that the app could see some of their data. This second figure will be much higher than the first and we will look to provide both broken down by country as soon as we can.”

Facebook’s privacy settings have caused major regulatory and legal headaches for the company over the years. In 2012, for example, Facebook settled with the FTC over charges it had deceived users by “telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public”.

And in 2011 and 2012, following a legal complaint by European privacy campaigner and lawyer Max Schrems, Facebook was urged by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner to tighten app permissions to avoid exactly the kind of friends data leakage that has now scaled into this major privacy scandal.

Instead, Facebook put off tightening up API permissions until as late as mid 2015 — thereby giving CA a window of opportunity to pull massive amounts of Facebook user data ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

When CA’s (currently suspended) CEO, Alexander Nix, appeared before the DCMS committee in February he was asked whether it worked with GSR and what use it made of GSR data. At that time Nix claimed CA had not used any GSR data.

The company is continuing to push this line, claiming in a series of tweets today that while it paid $500k for GSR data it subsequently “deleted the data” — and further claims it used alternative data sources and data sets to build its models. “Our algorithms and models bear no trace of it,” it says re: GSR data.

Asked by the committee about Nix’s early, contradicting testimony, Wylie wondered out loud why CA spent “the better part of $1M on GSR” — pointing also to “copious amounts of email” and other documents he says he has provided to the committee as additional evidence, including invoicing and “match rates on the data”.

“That’s just not true,” he asserted of CA’s claim not to have used GSR (and therefore Facebook) data.

Kogan himself has previously claimed he was unaware exactly what CA wanted to use the data for. “I knew it was for political consulting but beyond that no idea,” he told Anderson Cooper in a TV interview broadcast on March 21, claiming also that he did not know that CA was working for Trump or whether they even used the data his app had gathered.

He also suggested the data he had been able to gather was not very accurate at an individual level — claiming it would only be useful in aggregate to, for example, “understand the personality of New Yorkers”.

Wylie was asked by the committee how the data was used by CA. Giving an example he says the company’s approach was to target different people for advertising based on their “dispositional attributes and personality traits” — traits it tried to identify via patterns it could identify in big data.

He said:

For example, if you are able to create profiling algorithms that can predict certain traits — so let’s say a high degree of openness and a high degree of neuroticism — and when you look at that profiles that’s the profile of a person who’s more prone towards conspiratorial thinking, for example, they’re open enough to kind of connect to things that may not really seem reasonable to your average person. And they’re anxious enough and impulse enough to start clicking and reading and looking at things — and so if you can create a psychological profile of a type of person who is more prone to adopting certain forms of ideas, conspiracies for example, you can identify what that person looks like in data terms. You can then go out and predict how likely somebody is going to be to adopt more conspiratorial messaging. And then advertise or target them with blogs or websites or various — what everyone now calls fake news — so that they start seeing all of these ideas, or all of these stories around them in their digital environment. They don’t see it when they watch CNN or NBC or BBC. And they start to go well why is that everyone’s talking about this online? Why is it that I’m seeing everything here but the mainstream media isn’t talking about [it]… Not everyone’s going to adopt that — so that advantage of using profiling is you can find the specific group of people who are more prone to adopting that idea as your early adopters… So if you can find those people in your datasets because you know what they look like in terms of data you can catalyze a trend over time. But you first need to find what those people look like.

“That was the basis of a lot of our research [at CA and sister company SCL],” he added. “How far can we go with certain types of people. And who is it that we would need to target with what types of messaging.”

Wylie told the committee that Kogan’s company was set up exclusively for the purposes of obtaining data for CA, and said the firm chose to work with Kogan because another professor it had approached first had asked for a substantial payment up front and a 50% equity share — whereas he had agreed to work on the project to obtain the data first, and consider commercial terms later.

“The deal was that [Kogan] could keep all the data and do research or whatever he wanted to do with is and so for him it was appealing because you had a company that was the equivalent of no academic grant could compete with the amount of money that we could spend on it, and also we didn’t have to go through all the compliance stuff,” added Wylie. “So we could literally just start next week and pay for whatever you want. So my impression at the time was that for an academic that would be quite appealing.”

 

“All kinds of people [had] access to the data”

Another claim made by Wylie during the session was that the secretive US big data firm Palantir helped CA build models off of the Facebook data — although he also said there was no formal contract in place between the two firms.

Wylie said Palantir was introduced to CA’s Nix by Sophie Schmidt, Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s daughter, during an internship at CA.

“We actually had several meetings with Palantir whilst I was there,” claimed Wylie. “And some of the documentation that I’ve also provided to the committee… [shows] there were senior Palantir employees that were also working on the Facebook data.”

The VC-backed firm is known for providing government, finance, healthcare and other organizations with analytics, security and other data management solutions.

“That was not an official contract between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica but there were Palantir staff who would come into the office and work on the data,” he added. “And we would go and meet with Palantir staff at Palantir. So, just to clarify, Palantir didn’t officially contract with Cambridge Analytica. But there were Palantir staff who helped build the models that we were working on.”

Contacted for comment on this allegation a Palantir spokesperson refuted it entirely — providing TechCrunch with this emailed statement: “Palantir has never had a relationship with Cambridge Analytica nor have we ever worked on any Cambridge Analytica data.”

The committee went on to ask Wylie why he was coming forward to tell this story now, given his involvement in building the targeting technologies — and therefore also his interests in the related political campaigns.

Wylie responded by saying that he had grown increasingly uncomfortable with CA during his time working there and with the methods being used.

“Nothing good has come from Cambridge Analytica,” he added. “It’s not a legitimate business.”

In a statement put out on its Twitter yesterday, CA’s acting CEO Alex Tayler sought to distance the firm from Wylie and play down his role there, claiming: “The source of allegations is not a whistleblower or a founder of the company. He was at the company for less than a year, after which he was made the subject of restraining undertakings to prevent his misuse of the company’s intellectual property.”

Asked whether he’s received any legal threats since making his allegations public, Wylie said the most legal pushback he’s received so far has come from Facebook, rather than CA.

“It’s Facebook who’s most upset about this story,” he told the committee. “They’ve sent some fairly intimidating legal correspondence. They haven’t actually taken action on that… They’ve gone silent, they won’t talk to me anymore.

“But I do anticipate some robust pushback from Cambridge Analytica because this is sort of an existential crisis for them,” he added. “But I think that I have a fairly robust public interest defense to breaking that NDA and that undertaking of confidentiality [that he previously signed with CA].”

The committee also pressed Wylie on whether he himself had had access to the Facebook data he claims CA used to build its targeting models. Wylie said that he had, though he claims he deleted his copy of the data “some time in 2015”.

During the testimony Wylie also suggested Facebook might have found out about the GSL data harvesting project as early as July 2014 — because he says Kogan told him, around that time, that he had spoken to Facebook engineers after his app’s data collection rate had been throttled by the platform for some reason.

“He told me that he had a conversation with some engineers at Facebook,” said Wylie. “So Facebook would have known from that moment about the project because he had a conversation with Facebook’s engineers — or at least that’s what he told me… Facebook’s account of it is that they had no idea until the Guardian first reported it at the end of 2015 — and then they decided to send out letters. They sent letters to me in August 2016 asking do you know where this data might be, or was it deleted?

“It’s interesting that… the date of the letter is the same month that Cambridge Analytica officially joined the Trump campaign. So I’m not sure if Facebook was genuinely concerned about the data or just the optics of y’know now this firm is not just some random firm in Britain, it’s now working for a presidential campaign.”

We also asked Facebook if it had any general response to Wylie’s testimony but at the time of writing the company had not responded to this request for comment either.

Did Facebook make any efforts to retrieve or delete data, the committee also asked Wylie. “No they didn’t,” he replied. “Not to my knowledge. They certainly didn’t with me — until after I went public and then they made me suspect number one despite the fact the ICO [UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office] wrote to me and to Facebook saying that no I’ve actually given over everything to the authorities.”

“I suspect that when Facebook looked at what happened in 2016… they went if we make a big deal of this this might be optically not the best thing to make a big fuss about,” he added. “So I don’t think they pushed it in part because if you want to really investigate a large data breach that’s going to get out and that might cause problems. So my impression was they wanted to push it under the rug.”

“All kinds of people [had] access to the data,” he added. “It was everywhere.”


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Google Maps gets support for 39 new languages


Google today announced that Google Maps is getting support for 39 new languages.

The newly supported languages are Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bosnian, Burmese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, Georgian, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Kazakh, Khmer, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese and Zulu.

It’s a bit of a surprise that Google Maps didn’t already support some of these languages already, but better late than never.

In total, about 1.25 billion people speak these languages, so this should open up quite a few new markets for Google Maps, which already has over a billion active users. Chances are, of course, that the app already has plenty of users in countries where they newly supported languages are spoken, but this will surely open up a large new market for Google Maps.

Today’s news follows a range of recent Google Maps announcements in the last two months that range from support for wheelchair accessible routes in transit navigation to a Mario-themed driving mode and real-time commute info coming to iOS.


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Apple doubles down on book creation with iPad app


Apple’s ebook creation tools – first launched in 2012 – have long played an interesting if minor role in the ecosystem. While Amazon has the indie book world sewn up with Kindle Direct Publishing, the desktop-based iBooks Author has always been the multimedia alternative and a favorite for folks creating one-off texts. Although there are no clear numbers (the last announcement happened in 2015 when Apple claimed seeing 1 million new iBooks users per week), there is some evidence that it behooves indie authors to at least support the platform and with the new iPad Author tools it looks like creators – and educators – will be able to create and distribute their own iPad-based texts.

The app, which is part of Pages and is called Digital Books in new iOS parlance, allows users to create multimedia books just as they would create regular documents. The app also supports group editing and multiple templates allow you to flow images and text into the app seamlessly.

The new application is a direct attack on the current popular educational authoring tool, Google Docs. Anecdotally, the Brooklyn schools my kids attend all finish and turn in their homework via the schools own private Google accounts, a fact that probably keeps iOS educational team leads up at night. This move from a dedicated desktop app mostly aimed at indie authors and higher education to an iPad app aimed at small groups and, presumably, elementary and high school teachers who want to produce their own lightweight content, is a step in the right direction.


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Google Play Movies & TV becomes a one-stop shop for everything that streams


With the explosion of streaming services now available, it’s becoming more difficult to figure out not just what movie or TV show to watch next, but where you can actually watch it. Google today is rolling out its solution to this problem with a significant revamp of its Google Play Movies & TV app and an update to the Google Play Store itself that will show you which streaming services have the content available, in addition to whether it’s available for rent or purchase, as before.

The end result is something that’s similar to Apple’s own TV app, which combines users’ own library of movies and TV with the ability to seek out what’s trending and available in the world of online video.

In the updated Google Play Movies & TV app, you’ll now find three tabs in the new bottom navigation bar which will direct you to your Home, Library or your Watchlist. The watchlist is a feature the app recently gained as well, but now it has a much more prominent position.

As you browse through the app, you can click on titles to read more about them, as before, but now you’re also able to see where the item can be streamed.

At launch, Google is working with 28 streaming services whose content libraries are now integrated in Google Play Movies & TV. That’s fewer than Apple’s TV app supports, which is currently over 60.

But it will find content even if it’s an exclusive to the streaming provider, and not necessarily something Google has for rent or sale. That means you can find original programming – like Amazon’s “The Man in the High Castle” – and then start watching it on the streaming service that hosts it.

“We deeplink right into playback for that [third-party streaming] app,” explains Ben Serridge, the product manager for the Movies & TV app at Google. “So if I wanted to start watching ‘The Good Doctor’ pilot, I press the play button and it goes into the ABC app and start playback.”

Beyond the big names, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, the app also pulls in content from ABC, CBS, FOX NOW, NBC, HBO NOW, HBO Go, Showtime, Showtime Anytime, Max Go, Starz, Disney Now, HGTV, BET Now, Comedy Central, A&E, Cooking Channel, Crackle, DIY Network, Food Network, History, Lifetime, MTV, The CW, Travel Channel, Tubi TV and VH1.

Notably missing is Netflix, whose content is searchable in Apple’s TV app.

Serridge didn’t explain why it’s missing, saying only that “we would very much like to have all the apps that distribute this kind of content on Play participating” –  effectively tossing the ball back to Netflix’s court.

Even without Netflix, the feature is useful if not comprehensive. It will show you the services hosting the content, whether it’s freely available to stream, if you need a subscription (as with HBO Now), the associated costs, or if you need to login with pay TV credentials to watch.

This is especially helpful because some of the network TV apps offer a teaser of a show with a few free episodes, but not complete seasons. The Google Play Movies & TV app will help you track down the rest elsewhere, if need be.

The app will also now help you narrow down searches thanks to a robust filtering system that lets you click on tags by genre, mood, decade, and more. For example, you could click on “Family,” “Drama,” Award winning,” Highly rated,” Comedy,” and other filters.

In addition to helping you find content, stream it, or add it to your Watchlist, the app includes personalized recommendations. These will be partly based on items you’ve previously watched, but you can also explicitly signal your interest or distaste as well, by clicking on the thumbs up or thumbs down button. The thumbs down will remove the item from your suggestions entirely.

Outside the app itself, the Play Store is being updated to show you the same information about content availability.

Solutions like the new Google Play Movies & TV app and Apple’s TV app are handy in the cord cutting era where content is spread out across networks, services, and other over-the-top offerings. But even these apps aren’t enough. Not only is Netflix missing from Google’s app, so is its own YouTube original content – and that’s the same company!

Also not addressed by either Apple or Google’s app are which shows may be available to stream or record via live TV services like YouTube TV, Hulu Live TV, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now, and Sling TV. (Although, to be fair, that’s not only a different set of services, it’s also a much larger challenge given that broadcast network availability varies by market. A dedicated solution like Suppose.tv or Fomopop’s live TV finder may work better.)

Meanwhile, there are other tools for finding and tracking favorite shows, like Reelgood or TV Time (or a jailbroken Fire TV stick we should admit), but they don’t have the benefit of matching content from a rent-and-buy marketplace like Google Play, or being available across phone, tablet, and desktop web, like Google Play.

Google says the new features will roll out to Android phones and tablets in the U.S. over the next few days.


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Lytro, a light-field imaging startup, is shutting down


Lytro, the light-field imaging startup focused on virtual reality, is shutting down. In a blog post, Lytro said it’s going to begin winding down and will not be taking on any new productions or providing new services.

Earlier this month, we heard Google would be acquiring Lytro in an “asset sale.” Word on the street is that some employees will be moving over to Google while others will entirely part ways with the company.

Here’s Lytro’s full blog post:

At Lytro, we believe that Light Field will continue to shape the course of Virtual and Augmented Reality, and we’re incredibly proud of the role we’ve been able to play in pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. We’ve uncovered challenges we never dreamed of and made breakthroughs at a seemingly impossible pace. We’ve had some spectacular successes, and built entire systems that no one thought possible. More importantly, we built a team that was singularly unified in its focus and unrivaled in its dedication. It has been an honor and a pleasure to contribute to the cinema and Virtual Reality communities, but starting today we will not be taking on new productions or providing professional services as we prepare to wind down the company. We’re excited to see what new opportunities the future brings for the Lytro team as we go our separate ways. We would like to thank the various communities that have supported us and hope that our paths will cross in the future.

Lytro began as a point-and-shoot camera that was able to refocus images after the fact. It later evolved into using its depth-data, light-field technology in virtual reality.

Lytro and Google were not immediately available for comment. Be sure to see TechCrunch’s previous coverage on Lytro.


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Google Play Movies & TV becomes a one-stop shop for everything that streams


With the explosion of streaming services now available, it’s becoming more difficult to figure out not just what movie or TV show to watch next, but where you can actually watch it. Google today is rolling out its solution to this problem with a significant revamp of its Google Play Movies & TV app and an update to the Google Play Store itself that will show you which streaming services have the content available, in addition to whether it’s available for rent or purchase, as before.

The end result is something that’s similar to Apple’s own TV app, which combines users’ own library of movies and TV with the ability to seek out what’s trending and available in the world of online video.

In the updated Google Play Movies & TV app, you’ll now find three tabs in the new bottom navigation bar which will direct you to your Home, Library or your Watchlist. The watchlist is a feature the app recently gained as well, but now it has a much more prominent position.

As you browse through the app, you can click on titles to read more about them, as before, but now you’re also able to see where the item can be streamed.

At launch, Google is working with 28 streaming services whose content libraries are now integrated in Google Play Movies & TV. That’s fewer than Apple’s TV app supports, which is currently over 60.

But it will find content even if it’s an exclusive to the streaming provider, and not necessarily something Google has for rent or sale. That means you can find original programming – like Amazon’s “The Man in the High Castle” – and then start watching it on the streaming service that hosts it.

“We deeplink right into playback for that [third-party streaming] app,” explains Ben Serridge, the product manager for the Movies & TV app at Google. “So if I wanted to start watching ‘The Good Doctor’ pilot, I press the play button and it goes into the ABC app and start playback.”

Beyond the big names, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, the app also pulls in content from ABC, CBS, FOX NOW, NBC, HBO NOW, HBO Go, Showtime, Showtime Anytime, Max Go, Starz, Disney Now, HGTV, BET Now, Comedy Central, A&E, Cooking Channel, Crackle, DIY Network, Food Network, History, Lifetime, MTV, The CW, Travel Channel, Tubi TV and VH1.

Notably missing is Netflix, whose content is searchable in Apple’s TV app.

Serridge didn’t explain why it’s missing, saying only that “we would very much like to have all the apps that distribute this kind of content on Play participating” –  effectively tossing the ball back to Netflix’s court.

Even without Netflix, the feature is useful if not comprehensive. It will show you the services hosting the content, whether it’s freely available to stream, if you need a subscription (as with HBO Now), the associated costs, or if you need to login with pay TV credentials to watch.

This is especially helpful because some of the network TV apps offer a teaser of a show with a few free episodes, but not complete seasons. The Google Play Movies & TV app will help you track down the rest elsewhere, if need be.

The app will also now help you narrow down searches thanks to a robust filtering system that lets you click on tags by genre, mood, decade, and more. For example, you could click on “Family,” “Drama,” Award winning,” Highly rated,” Comedy,” and other filters.

In addition to helping you find content, stream it, or add it to your Watchlist, the app includes personalized recommendations. These will be partly based on items you’ve previously watched, but you can also explicitly signal your interest or distste as well, by clicking on the thumbs up or thumbs down button. The thumbs down will remove the item from your suggestions entirely.

Outside the app itself, the Play Store is being updated to show you the same information about content availability.

Solutions like the new Google Play Movies & TV app and Apple’s TV app are handy in the cord cutting era where content is spread out across networks, services, and other over-the-top offerings. But even these apps aren’t enough. Not only is Netflix missing from Google’s app, so is its own YouTube original content – and that’s the same company!

Also not addressed by either Apple or Google’s app are which shows may be available to stream or record via live TV services like YouTube TV, Hulu Live TV, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now, and Sling TV. (Although, to be fair, that’s not only a different set of services, it’s also a much larger challenge given that broadcast network availability varies by market. A dedicated solution like Suppose.tv or Fomopop’s live TV finder may work better.)

Meanwhile, there are other tools for finding and tracking favorite shows, like Reelgood or TV Time (or a jailbroken Fire TV stick we should admit), but they don’t have the the benefit of matching content from a rent-and-buy marketplace like Google Play, or being available across phone, tablet, and desktop web, like Google Play.

Google says the new features will roll out to Android phones and tablets in the U.S. over the next few days.


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Nvidia suspends all autonomous vehicle testing


Nvidia is temporarily stopping testing of its autonomous vehicle platform in response to last week’s fatal collision of a self-driving Uber car with a pedestrian. TechCrunch confirmed this with the company, which offered the following statement:

Ultimately [autonomous vehicles] will be far safer than human drivers, so this important work needs to continue. We are temporarily suspending the testing of our self-driving cars on public roads to learn from the Uber incident. Our global fleet of manually driven data collection vehicles continue to operate.

Reuters first reported the news.

The manually driven vehicles, to be clear, are not self-driving ones with safety drivers, but traditionally controlled vehicles with a full autonomous sensor suite on them to collect data.

Toyota also suspended its autonomous vehicle testing out of concern for its own drivers’ well-being. Uber of course ceased its testing operations at once.


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7 Reasons to Upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS


With a spring 2018 release date, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS “Bionic Beaver” brings a new set of features to Linux computing. You might be unsure about whether to update. Well, here are several reasons why you should upgrade Ubuntu to version 18.04 on your current Linux PC or laptop.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS: The Facts

Scheduled for release in April 2018, Ubuntu 18.04 (codenamed “Bionic Beaver”) is an important version of the popular Linux OS.

Every two years an LTS release is made, and Ubuntu 18.04 is the first since 2016. Long Term Support releases have five years of support from Ubuntu’s developers, Canonical. This means you can use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with support until 2023.

A note about the naming convention: Ubuntu 18.04 is so-called because it’s released in the fourth month of 2018. We can expect a non-LTS iteration late in 2018, known as 18.10. Every year, Ubuntu’s six-monthly cycle releases in April and October.

So, why should you upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04? Let’s dive into the reasons.

1. Security Enhancements

First and foremost, you should upgrade your current Ubuntu version regularly in order to benefit from the latest security patches. These might be for the operating system, drivers, or even (in the case of the Meltdown and Spectre bugs) the underlying hardware.

It’s worth pointing out here that this is true of all operating systems, whether Linux-based, Windows, or macOS. Regular updates will improve your computer’s security. This is why Windows XP users are regularly encouraged to upgrade or switch to Linux.

However, there is a potential security concern that you should be aware of. With Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Canonical intends to collect data from your computer. As explained previously, there is nothing personally identifiable in this data. Instead, it is to establish your computer’s hardware components, what version of Ubuntu you’re running, your location (based on your choice when setting up Ubuntu) and a few other things.

This marks a change from Canonical’s previous attitude to this sort of data collection, but is understandable given how flakey figures are for Linux usage around the world. Crucially, this data collection can be opted out of; if you’re upgrading from a previous version of Ubuntu, meanwhile, you can also opt in.

2. GNOME Arrives on the LTS Release

reasons to upgrade ubuntu

Perhaps the biggest news of the LTS release is GNOME 3.28. Since GNOME replaced Unity in Ubuntu 17.10 (although Unity isn’t quite dead) GNOME has been the default desktop environment (pictured above on Artful Aardvark).

Of course, you don’t have to go with GNOME. Other Ubuntu desktop environments are available, such as MATE.

GNOME on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS marks the first appearance of the new Unity-esque customized GNOME 3.0 desktop on a long-term support release. And it’s a great reason to upgrade Ubuntu to version 18.04.

3. A Brand New Icon Set

reasons to upgrade ubuntu

Despite hopes to the contrary (and a dedicated community project), Ubuntu 18.04 will not boast a fresh new look. However, while the Ambiance theme is hanging around (despite looking a bit tired), new icons are expected in Ubuntu.

Open source icon project Suru has been incorporated into Ubuntu 18.04. These icons were originally seen in the abandoned Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system (now under the control of UBPorts.com).

As noted on the Suru web page (where you can take a look at what’s to come), “Original mobile application icons have been repurposed to theme their GNOME counterparts. Folder and file type icons have been added, based on an unreleased Suru concept. Plus a complete symbolic icon set has been created, with many icons based on the original Suru system icons.”

4. Color Emojis

reasons to upgrade ubuntu

Sick of Ubuntu leaving you with embarrassing black and white emojis? Upgrade Ubuntu to 18.04 LTS, and your embarrassment is a thing of the past, thanks to full color emojis!

You’re stoked, right? I can tell.

Although some tweaks will give you color emojis on versions of Ubuntu prior to 18.04 LTS, this is the first time they’ve been included by default.

The emojis you’ll find in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS are the same open source emojis as found on Android. For many users, then, these will be familiar.

5. A New Linux Kernel

Sitting at the heart of every Linux-based operating system is the kernel. This is basically the component of the operating system that talks to the hardware (here’s a more in-depth explanation).

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS was initially expected to include Linux Kernel v4.14, and while this still may be the case, there is also a good chance that the 4.15 Kernel might appear instead.

6. Community-Sourced Default Features and Apps

Also worth your time on the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is the collection of community sourced features and apps. Announced in April 2017, the call for suggestions has resulted in improved support for NVIDIA GPUs, touchpad gesture support and BlueZ implementation for improved Bluetooth functionality.

But it doesn’t end there. Apps were also suggested, with some obvious choices such as Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice, while Kdenlive and GNOME Calendar are also in the list.

These tools will not be available in the operating system by default, however. Rather, you’ll have the option to install them as you install Ubuntu.

7. Xorg Display Server Returns

reasons to upgrade ubuntu

Over the past couple of years, Ubuntu has had a tough time, with the withdrawal of its mobile variant, and the end of Unity. One of the biggest sticking points was the switch to the Wayland display server in Ubuntu 17.10. While it continues to be earmarked as the display server of the future, the lack of app support for Wayland resulted in users switching back to Xorg.

As a result, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS comes with Xorg restored as the default display server. However, it’s simple enough to switch back to Wayland, via a cog icon on the login screen.

Great Reasons to Upgrade Ubuntu Today

So, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is coming, and you have plenty of reasons to upgrade. To recap:

  1. Security enhancements
  2. GNOME on LTS
  3. Brand new icons
  4. Color emojis
  5. New Linux kernel
  6. Community-sourced features
  7. Xorg display server

Want a better understanding of how this all fits in with Ubuntu? Check our Ubuntu startup guide.


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Apple is finally selling the Space Gray mouse, keyboard and trackpad without an iMac Pro


Surprise! You don’t have to pay $5,000 or more to get a Space Gray Magic Mouse 2, Magic Keyboard or Magic Trackpad 2. You can now buy those devices separately.

And because this is Apple, you’ll have to pay more to get the dark items. The Magic Mouse 2 costs $79 in silver and $99 in Space Gray.

The Magic Keyboard costs $129 for the silver version and $149 for the Space Gray one. This keyboard comes with a numeric keypad. The small version of the keyboard only has one color option. The trackpad costs the same price.

This news is going to make many eBay sellers really sad.

Apple iMac Pro mouse

Apple iMac Pro mouse


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This Firefox Extension Stops Facebook Tracking You


As you surely must be aware by now, Facebook has been in trouble lately over what’s come to be known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In a nutshell, it meant millions of people had their data sold to a third party and used against them.

In light of these revelations, there have been calls for everyone to delete Facebook. However, Mozilla, the company which makes Firefox, has developed an alternative called the Facebook Container extension. Which should stop Facebook tracking you.

Isolating Facebook From Everything Else

As egregious as it was to learn that the data Facebook collects can end up being used to win elections, it’s the fact that this data was collected in the first place that should worry us all. Especially as most of us consent to Facebook collecting this data.

As explained in a post on the Mozilla Blog, Mozilla hopes to limit the amount of data we’re voluntarily sharing with Facebook. It can do this by isolating your use of Facebook to a separate container, preventing Facebook from tracking you across the rest of the web.

All you need to do is install the Facebook Container extension. When you do so you’ll be logged out of Facebook, and your cookies will be deleted. From then on, every time you visit Facebook it will open in a container tab isolated from your other tabs.

While this can’t stop Facebook from knowing everything, it will stop the social network tracking you via third-party cookies. Mozilla itself doesn’t collect data from the Facebook Container extension; just how many times it has been installed and uninstalled.

A Viable Alternative to Deleting Facebook

I think we can all understand people’s desire to delete Facebook at this juncture. It’s what Zuckerberg and co. deserve. However, there are plenty of reasons not to delete Facebook, and with the Facebook Container extension, Mozilla has given Firefox users an alternative.


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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will reportedly testify before Congress


After declining a summons from a UK parliamentary committee that’s investigating how social media data is being used this morning, it appears that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may end up finally going before Congress to testify amid a wave of privacy debacles, according to a report by CNN.

The initial wave of this scandal began last week when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, had acquired information on more than 50 million Facebook users via an app that accessed that information through the Facebook platform several years ago. While Facebook is not unfamiliar with privacy snafus, this appeared to be one of the final straws, forcing Facebook CEO to issue a sort of non-apology-ish apology — as well as take out full page (in wildly not-very-engaging full text form, weirdly enough) ads in several major newspapers.

CNN reports that Zuckerberg has come to terms with the fact that he will have to testify, and that the testimony may come within a matter of weeks amid pressure from lawmakers, the media, and the public.

Zuckerberg in particular has been a face absent in front of Congress, but it appears the pressure from this incident may be too much for the company to handle without getting his face out there in order to neutralize the fallout. Facebook offered CTO Mike Schroepfer and chief product officer Chris Cox to meet with the committee, but Zuckerberg again was absent here. Indeed, it was several days following the reports that Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg made a formal appearance, as well as a number of interviews with various media outlets to try to explain themselves out of the situation

Last week, Zuckerberg said in one of those interviews that, “if it ever the case that I am the most informed person at Facebook in the best position to testify, I will happily do that.” Clearly, it appears that Congress wants the chief executive officer of the formerly-$500 billion advertising-driven business to be the one to do the explaining amid the increased fallout over the Cambridge Analytica debacle.

We reached out to Facebook for a comment and will update the post when we hear back.


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10 Mobile Apps for Discovering Events Happening Around You


Festivals, concerts, sports, and other events happen everywhere, all the time. No matter which you prefer or even if you enjoy all of them, how do you know what’s going on and when? One of the best ways to find out is with your mobile device.

Whether you’re sitting on the couch looking for something to do or are already out and deciding where to go after dinner, these are the best free mobile apps for events in your area.

1. Eventbrite

EventBrite Event App

Eventbrite is one of the greatest event apps for finding local happenings of all kinds. Music festivals, craft shows, and even bar crawls are right at your fingertips.

Enable your location to see nearby events, or search by city. The app then gives you dates, times, locations, maps, and similar events. You can also check ticket prices and order those that are available.

You can browse events by category or search for something specific. Plus, you can share happenings with your friends or save your favorites with a free account. Eventbrite has it all. (Even so, some people want Eventbrite alternatives. Keep reading for some great options.)

Download: Eventbrite for Android | iOS (Free)

2. All Events in City

All Events in City Event App

Another terrific app with all sorts of events is All Events in City. From sports and art to workshops and seminars, you can find just the right event for you.

Pop in your city to begin and then browse the events listed by category. You can tap to see all events within a category, like Entertainment or Upcoming. Then, narrow your results by subcategory such as Concerts or Comedy.

All Events in City gives you the dates, times, and locations as well as descriptions, maps, and ticket links. What’s great about this app is that you can mark if you are attending, contact the organizer, add it to your calendar, and share it with friends— all from one spot.

Download: All Events in City for Android | iOS (Free)

3. EventsNearMe

EventsNearMe Event App

EventsNearMe provides you with local happenings based on your location or city of choice. You can see immediately a count of the events near you and then browse the feed.

You’ll see events like block parties, happy hours, charity events, and comedy nights. And of course, all event details are included with dates, times, locations, descriptions, and available photos.

If you would rather see events by location or by date, the app has map and calendar views as well. Mark your favorites and tap the ticket link where available. EventsNearMe is super easy to use and offers those little extras.

Download: EventsNearMe for Android | iOS (Free)

4. Gravy

Gravy Event App

It may have an odd name, but this app gives you a good helping of events nearby. Gravy provides happenings based on your location or calendar date.

You’ll see holiday parties, music events, dinner dances, and more. You can then filter the results by interest, area, or quantity which offers a quick look or the most coverage. If you are looking for a particular event, you can search by keyword.

Get all event details with dates, times, descriptions, and photos. Add them to your calendar, share them, or mark them as favorites. And for more details, some events have a link directly to the coordinating website which is handy.

Download: Gravy for Android | iOS (Free)

5. Go Do

Go Do Event App

Go Do is an event finder with an interesting concept. When you open the app, you land on a map showing you your location (once enabled). You can then tap the days of the week along the top to see what’s coming up.

On the left is a tab marked Go. Tap it, add a new location if you’re heading out of town, and the map will update with events in that spot. On the right is a tab marked Do. Tap it to narrow down the types of events that interest you like art, dance, sports, or music.

The map highlights events with colorful icons so you know what type they are immediately. Tap one for a quick look and then tap it again to head to the coordinating website for all the details. If you want something unique in an event finder, check out Go Do.

Download: Go Do for Android | iOS (Free)

6. Unation

Unation Event App

Unation lets you discover events or search for them easily. Set up a free account and then browse by location. You can narrow down your options with filters for staff picks, recently added, interests, location, date, or creator.

So if you are looking only for fashion, family, or fitness events, you can tap to find those quickly. Then, review the dates, times, locations, descriptions, and see who else is attending from the user group. You can mark if you plan to go, which makes getting together with friends who use Unation easy.

If an event requires tickets, you can check prices and proceed with ordering right from the app. Unation is a good tool for planning outings with others.

Download: Unation for Android | iOS (Free)

7. 10Times

10Times Event App

For fairs, expos, farmers’ markets, and other enjoyable events, 10Times is a solid app. It may not be as fancy as some others, but it gives you the details you need for nearby happenings.

Set up a free account, select your interests, and then see what events are taking place. The tabs let you review upcoming, nearby, or trending options. The app shows all details for dates, times, descriptions, and also the organizer’s information.

You can set up reminders, invite others, and mark if you plan to attend. 10Times offers a bit extra because you can not only find events, but businesses in your area too. This makes the app an all-purpose and helpful option.

Download: 10Times for Android | iOS (Free)

8. Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster Event App

Maybe the types of events you like are a bit bigger than local art shows or business workshops. For sporting, theater, and live music events, Ticketmaster is well-known. Find your events, purchase your tickets, and you’re on your way to a fun-filled day or evening.

You can look for events based on your location or enter a city name. Then browse by popular, nearby, this weekend, or upcoming events.

If you use Ticketmaster online, you can log in to your account in the app. Get event details with dates, times, locations, accessibility, parking, and a map. Then check out seating for the venue, ticket prices, and make a purchase if you’re ready to go.

Download: Ticketmaster for Android | iOS (Free)

9. StubHub

StubHub Event App

If you like the idea of larger events and ticket purchasing all in one app, but aren’t a Ticketmaster fan, try StubHub. Explore what’s going on by location or category like sports, theater, or music.

Similar to Ticketmaster, you can see all event details, check the seating map, view ticket prices, and make a purchase. If you sign in or sign up for a free account, you can use the price alert feature.

You may not find smaller events like festivals or parades, but if you would rather go big, then take a look at StubHub.

Download: StubHub for Android | iOS (Free)

10. Vivid Seats

Vivid Seats Event App

One more app for finding local events with ticket purchasing is Vivid Seats. Select a city and state from the list, view suggested events nearby, and then buy tickets.

Like Ticketmaster and StubHub, the events you see in Vivid Seats are on a large scale. So for concerts, sports, and theater, it’s a nice option.

You can filter results you see by event type, category, dates, or date range. While Vivid Seats doesn’t have quite as many event details as the others, it’s still worth checking out.

A pair of features that stand out are the Scan Your Music and Connect to Spotify, which provide help in finding events. If you want to see when one of your favorite artists will be in town, this is an awesome way to find out.

Download: Vivid Seats for Android | iOS (Free)

Get Ready, Get Set, Go Out!

Whether for business or pleasure, large or small, these mobile apps for events can help you find the right entertainment options nearby.

And if you use and would rather stick with Facebook for finding fun, you can subscribe to local events or even create your own Facebook event.


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