Friday, July 17, 2020

The FBI is using Sabre, the biggest of three firms that store a majority of the world's travel info, to spy on suspects' movements through sealed court orders (Thomas Brewster/Forbes)

Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
The FBI is using Sabre, the biggest of three firms that store a majority of the world's travel info, to spy on suspects' movements through sealed court orders  —  American border patrol already has significant surveillance powers and collects vast amounts of data on who is flying into and out of the country.



US expects TikTok to operate as local company, leave ByteDance

A top White House adviser on Thursday said he expects TikTok to separate from its Chinese owner and operate as an US company, amid growing concerns about the security of the data handled by the short video app. https://ift.tt/39awuRa https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

YouTube brings back 1080p streaming option in India

YouTube had earlier temporarily restricted its video playback quality for users in India to lessen the burden on servers. https://ift.tt/3jiNB84 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Twitter Says Hackers Downloaded Data of 8 Accounts in Bitcoin Scam Attack

Twitter disclosed earlier today that hackers were able to download account information of eight accounts using the company's "Your Twitter Data" tool. https://ift.tt/3eFYqh1

Twitter provides an overview about what it knows about Wednesday's hack so far: how it happened, what the attackers accessed, its actions, and the next steps (Twitter)

Twitter:
Twitter provides an overview about what it knows about Wednesday's hack so far: how it happened, what the attackers accessed, its actions, and the next steps  —  As we've been informing via the @TwitterSupport account, on Wednesday, July 15, 2020, we detected a security incident at Twitter and took immediate action.



10 apps that make your smartphone camera do more than clicking photos

https://ift.tt/2Szv0Jc

From workplace to yoga classes, Zoom has changed the way people connect: Aparna Bawa, COO

I am not sure that anything about this pandemic is perfectly planned.. We used it as an opportunity to see how we can scale our business, says Aparna Bawa. https://ift.tt/32tavDM https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Chinese firms revive marketing strategies, highlight 'Make in India' in campaigns

Chinese smartphone and electronics brands such as Xiaomi, Vivo, Haier, Oppo and OnePlus are reviving their marketing and advertising spends in India. https://ift.tt/2CIl1MT https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Smartphone shipments in India fell 48% in Q2; Apple least impacted: Canalys

This is the first set of data for the Covid-19 hit April-June period for smartphone sales https://ift.tt/398T4tN https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

US coronavirus response disappointing: Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO expresses concern in interview with Anthony Fauci, US’ top infectious disease expert https://ift.tt/3hawlA1 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project would force social media companies to compensate users, but the plan underestimates difficulty of valuing data (Will Rinehart/Wired)

Will Rinehart / Wired:
Andrew Yang's Data Dividend Project would force social media companies to compensate users, but the plan underestimates difficulty of valuing data  —  He wants social media companies to pay you for the data you produce.  But loopholes abound, it's too expensive, and other plans like it have failed.



Covid-19: Facebook removes 'misleading' post by a doctor on Karnataka govt request

Dr Sanjeev Kumar had posted videos and messages, including a blanket prescription with names of 11 drugs “for very sick patients with low oxygen saturation but unable to find a bed”. https://ift.tt/2ZEr0LD https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Ebay nears $10 billion sale of classified ads unit: Sources

Ebay's classified business includes brands such as Gumtree and Kijiji and offers online ads to more than 1,000 cities around the world. https://ift.tt/2WvCfUF https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Companies like Deloitte and IBM have made millions building state unemployment websites that didn't work, yet keep getting contracts to fix them (Colin Lecher/The Markup)

Colin Lecher / The Markup:
Companies like Deloitte and IBM have made millions building state unemployment websites that didn't work, yet keep getting contracts to fix them  —  In at least one case, that same company is now getting pandemic-relatedcontracts  —  In 2010, California hired the consulting firm Deloitte …



GitHub took a 21TB snapshot of all active public repositories on February 2 and deposited it in the Arctic Code Vault on July 8 using 186 reels of archival film (Julia Metcalf/The GitHub Blog)

Julia Metcalf / The GitHub Blog:
GitHub took a 21TB snapshot of all active public repositories on February 2 and deposited it in the Arctic Code Vault on July 8 using 186 reels of archival film  —  At GitHub Universe 2019, we introduced the GitHub Archive Program along with the GitHub Arctic Code Vault.



Chinese video game giant NetEase reports Q4 revenue up 3% YoY to ~$4B and net profit down 29% to ~$903M, below ~$1.2B est., as it pushes self-developed games (Sherry Qin/Wall Street Journal)

Sherry Qin / Wall Street Journal : Chinese video game giant NetEase reports Q4 revenue up 3% YoY to ~$4B and net profit down 29% to ~$903...