Thursday, October 10, 2019
Geek Goddess 2019 will pick the Best Women Coders
Credit Saison India gets NBFC licence from RBI
Nokia 6.2 With Triple Rear Cameras to Launch in India Today
Feds hit GirlsDoPorn owners with criminal sex trafficking charges
Enlarge (credit: Arman Zhenikeyev)
Federal prosecutors have charged three men and a woman with sex trafficking charges for operating the popular porn site GirlsDoPorn. At least 22 women featured on the site have sued the site's owners, charging that the pornographers used lies and coercion to gain their participation.
The 22 women said they responded to ads for clothed modeling gigs. When they were asked to shoot porn instead, they initially resisted. But they went along with it after the company assured them that their videos would only be sold on DVD to customers outside the United States and would not be posted online. That turned out to be a lie, as their videos wound up on GirlsDoPorn, a website with plenty of American viewers.
"I was in a state of panic when I first found out," one of the alleged victims testified in court. "I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it."
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Upgrade, the newest company by Renaud Laplanche, has a new credit card that it swears is good for you
Three years ago, the founder of LendingClub, Renaud Laplanche, took the wraps off his second act, a consumer lending venture called Upgrade that now employs 350 people, has lent roughly $2 billion to 200,000 people, and has raised $142 million from investors.
It was jumping into a crowded market that has only grown more frenzied, with an seemingly endless number of fintech startups that market themselves as more thoughtful alternatives to established banks and traditional credit card companies. While giants like Visa and MasterCard charge interest and late fees for overdue payments, for example, the Stockholm, Sweden-based company Klarna, which allows shoppers to buy now and pay later, makes money through retailer transaction fees and late fees but doesn’t charge interest fees. In a similar twist, Max Levchin’s lending company, Affirm, doesn’t charge late fees when its customers rack up big charges but it does charge interest rates (sometimes as high as 30 percent).
Upgrade is slightly different in that that it doesn’t invite customers to defer their payments when they buy something using dollars from Upgrade. But it still largely fits into the same mold in that it markets itself as better for lending customers and more mindful of them. Its flagship personal loans product, for example, is largely used by customers to pay off credit cards and it features credit health tools that ostensibly teach people how to improve their credit scores.
It also charges up to 35.89 percent interest.
A brand-new credit product — the Upgrade Card — takes things even further on the feel-good front. As Laplanche explains it, the card “basically combines the payments capabilities of a credit card with the low cost of a bank loan into one single product.”
Adds Laplanche of this hybrid creation: “Lending Club created a $100 billion industry with personal loans 12 years ago; I think this is 10 times bigger — and 10 times cheaper for consumers.
We’re inherently skeptical of most lending products being good — or “cheap” — for customers. But here’s how it works: instead of asking a cardholder to pay a minimum amount each month from the balance they owe on their card, Upgrade breaks down the balance into an installment plan with equal monthly payments — plus an interest payment — that can be completed in a year to three years’ time.
“It’s like a mortgage or a car loan with a clear payment schedule,” says Laplanche. “You can budget for it and it sort of forces you to pay down the balance over a reasonable period,” unlike credit cards where customers can run a balance for as long as they like — which can wind up costing them an arm and a leg in interest payments alone over time.
There is no prepayment penalty and the card replenishes as it is paid off.
More, unlike many credit cards that reward users for spending with cash back and other perks, Upgrade customers receive 1% cash back each time they make a payment toward their balance.
Still, there is an annual percentage rate as with most credit cards, and it’s not much kinder than other alternatives, with an annual interest rate that ranges from 6.49% to 29.99%
Laplanche further concedes that, as with any lending product, customers who miss payments or start with a lower credit score are more likely to confront a higher interest rate than someone who is able to pay off their card as they use it.
Upgrade partnered with Cross River Bank to create the new card. The 11-year-old, Fort Lee, N.J.-based institution has itself raised at least $128 million over the years, including via a $100 million round led by KKR that closed late last year and a $28 million round put together in 2016 with the help of Battery Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Ribbit Capital, among others.
Cross River has become the go-to institution for a lot of fintech startups, including Affirm, Transferwise, and Coinbase — startups that want to stay compliant with consumer protection regulations but might have had trouble partnering with a large bank, especially when starting out.
Upgrade, which closed its last round, is probably due for a new round itself, having closed its $62 million Series C round in August of last year. Asked about this, however, Laplanche says only that, “We’re good.”
In the meantime, it’s apparently planning ahead with the resources it has currently. Beyond the Upgrade Card, the company expects to introduce a savings account in the first quarter of next year, a move similar to the move Robinhood announced earlier this week when it unveiled a high-yield cash management account. It makes sense. If the economy turns, and it seems likely given the ongoing spat between China and the U.S., not to mention other unanswered questions, consumers are likely to look increasingly for safe havens like savings and cash management accounts.
Whether the moves are enough to insulate Upgrade, or numerous other fintech startups, in a serious downturn, remains to be seen, but Laplanche has weathered worse before. Though LendingClub was among the first peer-to-peer lenders and enjoyed a splashy debut on the public market in the summer of 2014, by the spring of 2016, Laplanche was asked to resign and was soon after charged by the SEC with fraudulently inflating the company’s returns. He settled with the agency last year without admitting wrongdoing. He also paid a fine and agreed to be barred from the securities industry for three years.
SAP CEO Bill McDermott steps down after over nine years, will be an adviser until year end; board members Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein appointed co-CEOs (CNBC)
SAP CEO Bill McDermott steps down after over nine years, will be an adviser until year end; board members Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein appointed co-CEOs — SAP said on Thursday that Bill McDermott is stepping down as CEO after more than nine years running the German software company.
Researchers identify zero-day vulnerability in iTunes for Windows, now patched, that was exploited by attackers to deliver BitPaymer/iEncrypt ransomware (Elizabeth Montalbano/Threatpost)
Researchers identify zero-day vulnerability in iTunes for Windows, now patched, that was exploited by attackers to deliver BitPaymer/iEncrypt ransomware — Bad actors are actively targeting a vulnerability in the Windows version of Apple iTunes to deliver BitPaymer/iEncrypt ransomware.
The Essential Gem's unveiling resurface allegations against Andy Rubin, making clear that it's becoming hard to disassociate products from their makers (Lauren Goode/Wired)
The Essential Gem's unveiling resurface allegations against Andy Rubin, making clear that it's becoming hard to disassociate products from their makers — The Essential Gem's unveiling makes clear that it's becoming harder to disassociate new products from the people making them.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Jio Outgoing Calls Update: All Details of Its New IUC Top-Up Vouchers
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Agrees to Testify Before US Congress on Libra
Kajol to Star in Netflix Movie Tribhanga From Ajay Devgn
Apple Removes Police-Tracking App Used in Hong Kong Protests From Its App Store
Nokia 62 India launch set for October 11
Nokia 6.2 was introduced last month at IFA 2019, which was Nokia’s first presence at the event. HMD Global unveiled a range of Nokia products including the Nokia 6.2. Now, the company is all set to launch the smartphone in India. A teaser page for Nokia 6.2 has gone live on the Amazon India website. It showcases the features of the handset along with revealing the launch date of the smartphone.
Nokia 6.2 specificationsNokia 6.2 features a 6.3-inch FHD+ waterdrop PureDisplay with 19.5:9 aspect ratio and support for HDR 10. It is equipped with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The smartphone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 chipset, paired with Adreno 509 GPU. It comes in three variants - 3GB RAM + 32GB internal storage and 4GB RAM + 64GB/128GB internal storage. However, it is still unclear which variants are going to make their way to India. Further, the memory can be expanded up to 512GB with microSD card.
In the optics department, Nokia 6.2 sports a triple rear camera setup: a 16MP camera with f/1.8 lens + an 8MP wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture + a 5MP depth camera. On the front lies an 8MP selfie shooter that supports ZEISS optics.
The Nokia 6.2 packs a 3500mAh battery. It also comes with a headphone jack and FM Radio. It runs Android 9 Pie out of the box. However, it belongs to the Android One family of smartphones. Hence, it will be updated to Android 10 soon. You can check out when will Nokia smartphone get Android 10 here.
Nokia 6.2 price in IndiaNokia 6.2 will be made available in Ceramic Black and Ice colour options. As for the pricing, we have no information on that yet. However, the smartphone was introduced at $219 that converts to Rs 15,800 approx. It is all set to launch in India tomorrow, October 11.
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Facebook CEO to testify before US house panel on Oct 23
EU warns of 5G cybersecurity risks, stops short of singling out China
Taiwan's National Security Bureau says daily average cyberattacks on government departments doubled in 2024 vs. 2023 to 2.4M, mostly from Chinese cyber forces (Yimou Lee/Reuters)
Yimou Lee / Reuters : Taiwan's National Security Bureau says daily average cyberattacks on government departments doubled in 2024 vs....
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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Lorena O'Neil / Rolling Stone : A look at the years of warnings about AI from researchers, including several women of color, who say ...
