Oct
04

To compete in any economy, platforms must do better at retaining global creators

A sign is seen in a restaurant where a Bitcoin ATM is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada June 3, 2017.REUTERS/Chris Helgren

LONDON - Some universities on the east coast of the US have begun making small investments into cryptocurrency hedge funds, according to a lawyer in the industry.

John Lore, the founder of Capital Fund Law Group, told Business Insider: "We're seeing some academic institutions getting involved on a limited basis for strategic reasons.

"I can't say the names of [the academic institutions] because that's attorney-client but we have people mostly on the East Coast that have begun doing investments in this space on a fairly modest basis."

New York-based Capital Fund Law Group specialises in providing legal services to the hedge fund industry and has advised around 30 cryptocurrency hedge funds on setting up over the last year, according to Lore.

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Lore said that the majority of investment in these new funds comes from "high net worth individuals and, on a very limited basis, family offices."

"Yes there are investors but at this point, investors are putting in very small percentages of their net worth as we would expect and as I believe is appropriate," Lore said.

He said he doesn't expect to see institutional investors such as pension funds invest in crypto any time soon, due to regulatory uncertainty and the lack of a track record for many funds. One exception is university endowment funds, some of which have begun to invest in the space on a limited basis.

"We see academia as a tie between these somewhat young and enthusiastic fund managers and capital raising," Lore said.

Universities have been growing increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology that underpins it. Blockchain is a shared, uneditable ledger of all transactions and is encoded with complex cryptography.

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One of the developers of ethereum helped set up blockchain facilities at the universities of Edinburgh and Tokyo, and Ripple this week announced a $50 million research fund for blockchain and cryptocurrency. Leading universities around the world are also introducing courses on the technology, including Cambridge and Oxford.

Original author: Oscar Williams-Grut

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Jun
05

Apple's Cook aims at Facebook in interview, saying 'the privacy thing has gotten totally out of control' (AAPL)

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been repeatedly critical of Facebook's data collection practices. (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for RFK Human Rights)

Apple CEO Tim Cook took some more not-so-veiled shots at Facebook in a nationally televised interview Monday evening.

Speaking to CNN, Cook said he generally favors corporate self-regulation instead of government-imposed regulations. But when it comes to online privacy, self-regulation clearly isn't working and the government may need to step in, he said.

"You have to ask yourself, so what form of regulation might be good," Cook said. He continued: "I think the privacy thing has gotten totally out of control."

Cook has repeatedly criticized Facebook in recent months over how much data it collects on consumers and what it does with that information. For example, when asked about how he would have handled the Cambridge Analytica scandal— in which the data on up to 87 million Facebook users was leaked to a data-analytics company linked to President Donald Trump — Cook said, "I wouldn't be in that situation."

Apple's launching new features that will limit the data Facebook can collect

His comments on CNN followed the opening of Apple's annual WWDC developer conference earlier in the day in San Jose.

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At the conference, company officials announced numerous new features for its devices that seemed intentionally designed to restrict the amount of data Facebook in particular can collect on Apple users and to help those users limit the amount of time they spend on their devices, especially with Facebook's apps.

Apple has repeatedly tried to distinguish itself from Facebook, Google, and the other tech giants by emphasizing its stated commitment to privacy. Unlike those companies, advertising is a small piece of Apple's business, and it generally doesn't collect as much detailed information on its users as they do.

Cook played up that angle again in the interview, painting as nefarious the data collection done by Facebook and other ad-based businesses.

"I think most people are not aware who's tracking them, how much they're being tracked, and the sort of the large amounts of detailed data that are out there about them," he said.

Facebook officials have fired back at Cook in recent months, arguing that the company's advertising business allows it to offer its service for free and its data collection helps it offer ads that are actually of interest to individual users.

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In the interview, Cook said that he had been testing out the new features Apple has designed to allow customers to monitor their phone usage, he found that he himself was using his phone more than he should.

Cook reiterated his support for DACA

In addition to taking shots at Facebook, Cook also reiterated his support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. That program, which protected undocumented people who arrived in the US as children from being deported, was canceled by Trump in September. Cook and other tech leaders have been urging Congress to reinstate it.

"Congress needs to fix DACA, and fix DACA means allowing everyone to stay in this country and stop this ridiculous discussion that people brought here as kids shouldn't be allowed to stay here," he said.

Cook also weighed in on the incipient trade war that the Trump administration appears to be launching against China, the European Union, Mexico, and other countries. Despite the administration's announcement last week that it would now apply its previously announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the EU, Mexico, and Canada, Cook said he was "optimistic" a trade war could be averted.

"No one will win from that. It will be lose-lose," he said. "When the facts are so clear like that, I think both parties will see that and be able to work things out."

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Regardless of how those trade tensions end up, Cook said he didn't think the iPhone — by far Apple's most important product — won't be caught in the crossfire and prices won't rise on it as a result.

"I don't think the iPhone will get a tariff on it," he said.

Original author: Troy Wolverton

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Jun
05

Apple's Tim Cook says he's also spending too much time with his phone (AAPL)

Tim Cook talks apps at WWDC, June 4, 2018. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

When it comes to how much time he spends on his iPhone, even Apple CEO Tim Cook has a problem.

At its annual WWDC developer conference Monday, Apple announced new tools to help iPhone users monitor and limit the amount of time they spend on their devices. Cook said he'd been testing them out and was alarmed at what he found.

"I thought I was fairly disciplined about this, and I was wrong," Cook said. "When I began to get the data, I found I was spending a lot more time [on my device] than I should."

When asked, Cook declined to specify which apps were leading to his overuse.

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"I don't want give you all the apps, but just too much," he said.

Tech developers, children's advocates, politicians, and others have been increasingly raising alarms about devices and apps encouraging addiction-like behavior among their users. After shareholders filed a proposal earlier this year that would have urged Apple to do something to help iPhone users limit the time they spend on their devices, the company promised it would do just that.

In iOS 12, the upcoming version of the software that underlies the iPhone and the iPad, Apple is adding a collection of features that are designed to help people control how they use their devices. A feature called Screen Time will track how much time users are spending with particular apps. One called App Limits will let them preset the amount of time they can spend with each one. And when users turn on the Do Not Disturb feature in iOS 12, they will be able to configure it so it blocks all of their notifications until they turn it off.

In terms of measuring the success of the iPhone, "We've never been focused on usage as a key parameter," Cook said. He continued: "We're empowering people with the facts that will allow them to decide themselves how they want to cut back."

Original author: Troy Wolverton

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Jun
05

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Original author: Business Insider

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Jun
05

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's master plan is about to be put to a $7.5 billion test (MSFT, TEAM)

When it comes to the $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella urged software developers to "judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today and in the future."

From Microsoft's perspective, and Nadella's, GitHub fits right in to the master plan: The company has been investing heavily in open source in the four years since Nadella took the reins. In fact, Microsoft is the single biggest corporate contributor to open source projects on GitHub, edging out competitors like Google and Facebook. Microsoft even uses GitHub internally to build some of its products.

And yet, if Nadella sounds defensive, it's with good reason, as not everyone in the tech industry loves the deal — some GitHub users are already even decamping to competitors like the venture-backed GitLab and Atlassian BitBucket before the deal even closes.

The announcement of the deal struck a nerve with developers, who haven't so soon forgotten that Microsoft spent much of the '90s and '00s trying to quash Linux and other open source technologies. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once went so far as to call open source software a "cancer," though he later chilled out about it.

The Nadella-led Microsoft has spent the past several years trying to improve its image and show the world that it's a kinder, gentler company; one more willing to play nicely with others. Now, with the fourth largest acquisition in Microsoft's 43-year history, Nadella's makeover will be put to the test as he tries to convince the GitHub community that they can trust Microsoft with such an important asset.

Indeed, some, like long-time coder Jacques Mattheij, are concerned that despite Nadella's public commitment to open source, Microsoft hasn't really changed its stripes and will use GitHub only to its own advantage.

"I'm sure you'll be able to tell I'm a cranky old guy by looking up the dates to some of these references, but 'new boss, same as the old boss' applies as far as I'm concerned. Yes, the new boss is a nicer guy but it's the same corporate entity," Mattheij wrote in a blog entry after news of the acquisition was first reported.

Others have more immediate concerns: Microsoft doesn't have the best track record when it comes to making the most of their acquisitions. The Nokia buy turned into a total fiasco, and many users believe Microsoft mismanaged Skype since its acquisition. Now, developers are concerned that Microsoft will interfere with all the things they like about GitHub.

"What I really love about this is that M$ [sic] realize the product's users are tightly wound to the brand's identity, and are hostile to M$'s. They know they're buying a 'lifestyle brand' and that they have to keep it hip and unencumbered by a corporate behemoth or it'll become worthless," writes user peterwwillis in a Hacker News comment.

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Yet another criticism is more abstract. GitHub hosts the source code for millions of pieces of software, from personal passion projects all the way up to Facebook-created app frontend development tools. Having a $781 billion company in ultimate control of all that software is making some uneasy.

"I think what bothers me about this announcement is that _anyone_ owns Github; that is, a tech giant with a lot of influence in the software world owning the largest repository of code in history. Something feels wrong about it. I'd be as uncomfortable with it if Google or Facebook or Apple owned it," writes Hacker News user dclowd9901.

Developers are doing something about it

In response to the acquisition, at least some developers are rushing to move from GitHub to its competitors. Venture-backed startup GitLab and $15 billion Aussie software giant Atlassian both released charts on Monday showing a surge of developers moving to their respective code-hosting services in the hours following word of the acquisition. SourceForge, too, says it saw a bump.

Indeed, GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij tells Business Insider that his company has seen 100,000 code repositories moved from GitHub since Bloomberg reported the imminent announcement of the deal on Sunday. In general, GitLab says that it's seen about 10 times as much upload activity than normal over the same span.

Sijbrandij says that for "a lot of people, this is a wake up call." While both companies are built on the open source Git technology — hence the similar names — GitLab offers a free open source version of its software, and GitHub does not. In that sense, Sijbrandij says that GitHub is a little hypocritical: It supports open source, but doesn't offer any back.

Those competitors aren't being shy about shading Microsoft over the deal, either. In particular, GitLab has gotten the Twitter hashtag #MovingtoGitLab going, encouraging users to tell their stories of ditching GitHub.

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"We compete with Microsoft across many products, and have been very successful with a unique bottoms-up business model. We invest heavily in R&D to build great products that customers choose to use instead of being forced to," Atlassian exec Jens Schumacher tells Business Insider.

Still, GitLab, at least, isn't writing GitHub off entirely. While Sijbrandij believes that GitLab offers developers a superior tool kit, he acknowledges that Microsoft is always a powerful competitor.

"For sure, we're not underestimating it," says Sijbrandij.

The good news for Microsoft

When Business Insider spoke with outgoing GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath earlier on Monday, he said that the success of the $26.2 billion LinkedIn acquisition, and the $2.5 billion buy of Minecraft creator Mojang, gave him optimism that Microsoft has gotten its act together with regards to big-ticket mergers.

The good news for Microsoft is that several people in Silicon Valley also share Wanstrath's outlook. There's no doubt that there are still many pessimists out there — but it's a sign of the times that Microsoft has its boosters, too.

"Since this decision involves our - and that also means Microsoft's - livelihood and the open-source ecosystem as a whole, I'm sure that Microsoft won't f--k this up, and it will remain the GitHub we all know and love," writes Resi Respati on the Practical Dev blog.

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"Hot take: What people do not account for is that the GitHub they love would of had to make changes to become profitable. You and the community were getting a very expensive service for free. That would not have continued forever. Microsoft is potentially the best outcome," writes popular InfoSec Twitter account SwiftOnSecurity.

And for Microsoft's part, there seems to be an understanding that there's an uphill battle to be fought to win over the hearts and minds of a significant portion of the community. In a very immediate sense, Microsoft is already willing to commit to never force GitHub users into using Microsoft technology.

"Skepticism is totally understandable, but we're on the right path," outgoing GitHub CEO and future Microsoft Technical Fellow Chris Wanstrath told Business Insider.

Original author: Matt Weinberger

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Jun
04

'Things have changed at Google': An engineer who quit to protest Project Maven explains why the company's changing values forced him out (GOOG, GOOGL)

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks with reporters at the 2018 I/O conference. Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

On April 20, Tyler Breisacher walked out of Google for the last time, ending his more than six-year relationship with the company. In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, he said that on that day he was a little emotional, but comforted by the fact that he was leaving for the right reasons.

Breisacher, a Google software developer who worked on Google's Github compiler, resigned in part to protest the company's involvement in Project Maven — the controversial collaboration between Google and the US Department of Defense. In March, word got out that Google had quietly supplied artificial intelligence technology to the Pentagon to help analyze drone video footage.

In April, more than 4,000 workers signed a petition demanding that Google's management cease work on Project Maven and promise to never again "build warfare technology." Soon after that, Gizmodo reported that a dozen or so Google employees had resigned in protest. Breisacher was among that group, he says.

The internal dissent and the negative press forced Google to backtrack, and the company reportedly told staff on Friday that it would not renew the Project Maven contract when it runs out next year.

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Does Breisacher feel he and the other protesters triumphed?

Breisacher says he won't uncork any champagne bottles until he sees the list of ethical principles Google is expected to publish this week which will lay out its policies towards AI work.

"I think this is the best outcome as far this contract is concerned," said Breisacher, 30, in his first on-the-record interview since quitting. "This is obviously a big deal and it's very encouraging but this only happened after months and months of people signing petitions and (internal debate) and people quitting."

And while many expect Google to forswear military work in the published AI principles, Breisacher worries that the company may leave itself some wiggle room that could lead to future instances of problematic AI projects.

Google is leaving billions of dollars on the table, but some Googlers feel betrayed

Reuters/Reuters StaffThe revelation about Google's involvement with Maven and the subsequent internal strife because of it has embarrassed the company. In addition, Google now appears to have taken itself out of the competition for cloud contracts offered by the Department of Defense -- worth tens of billions of dollars.

A Google spokesperson has not responded to repeated requests for comment, and the company's reasons for backtracking on Maven remain unclear. Certainly, the resignations of a dozen employees or the signatures of 4,000 workers on a petition is not going to impact the operations of the internet giant, which employs some 80,000 workers across the globe.

But it's hard to deny that the employees who opposed Google's involvement in Project Maven made their presence felt. In addition to the petition, and the resignations, it can't be overlooked that someone inside the company leaked internal documents and emails to the media that helped reveal the information about Google's military involvement to the public.

On Friday, Gizmodo reported that it had reviewed emails that showed Google had far greater ambitions to work with the US military and intelligence than managers had previously let on.

"The emails also show," wrote Gizmodo reporter Kate Conger, "that Google and its partners worked extensively to develop machine learning algorithms for the Pentagon with the goal of creating a sophisticated system that could surveil entire cities."

This is the kind of revelation that has some Google employees feeling betrayed, said Breisacher. In their eyes, Google once stood for a set of values that didn't include helping nations wage war.

Maven was the final straw

Project Maven is just another sign that reflects fundamental shifts in the thinking within Google's management, according to Breisacher. He said he had thought about leaving Google long before Maven came to light.

Google cofounder Larry Page Getty As a gay man, Breisacher became disheartened that Google decided to sponsor CPAC, a conservative conference that is also sponsored by the National Rifle Association and the Koch Institute and other groups that Breisacher believes are hostile to gays. Then last year, videos related to to LGBT issues were flagged as inappropriate on YouTube. The video-sharing service said it was an error but the issue didn't go away and Breisacher didn't think the company responded with the necessary urgency.

"When I started, Google had a reputation as a pro-gay, pro-trans company," said. "I guess I'm disillusioned. I know that Google is a "for profit company and you shouldn't expect it to do things purely for the good of the world. But in the past, we would expect leaders to listen to the employees and to think carefully about issues and not to cross certain lines...things have changed at Google."

Does he see any way for Google to save its soul?

Breisacher says maybe but that this question may not be the most relevant. He says what may be most important about Google's backtracking is that it shows employees have power.

"At Google, we had this 'Don't be evil,' that people believe we have to live up to," Breisacher said "I don't know if it's as easy to take a stand on issues at other companies but I hope the takeaway for employees at Microsoft or Amazon and the other companies is that they realize they have the power to collectively demand things... to change things."

Original author: Greg Sandoval

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Jun
04

Microsoft promises that GitHub users won't be stopped from using Amazon's or Google's cloud (MSFT)

On Monday, Microsoft officially announced it was buying GitHub, shortly after Business Insider had reported that the two companies were working on a deal.

Microsoft is paying a whopping $7.5 billion in an all-stock deal. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion and late last year said it was on track to do $200 million in revenue. So, by any standard, that's a hefty premium that Microsoft is paying for GitHub.

The questions is: how does Microsoft expect to earn its money back?

The obvious and jaded answer is that Microsoft wants to push all of those developers to run their software on Microsoft's cloud, Azure. In doing this, Microsoft will earn ongoing monthly fees from millions of GitHub developers that might have otherwise have decided to run their apps on the Amazon Web Services cloud, or on Google Cloud.

But, tempting as that might sound, Microsoft swears that it is not going to do this.

GitHub is an online service that hosts software code and allows lots of developers to work on it together as a team. It has free version, paid cloud versions and sells old fashioned software.

GitHub While GitHub has been generating revenue from the developer community, it has also "struggled with how to monetize platform," one insider told us.

GitHub did have a grand plan for becoming a multi-billion business, insiders told us. What if, instead of just hosting everyone's apps as they developed them, the apps could run on a GitHub cloud?

The top cloud providers are making billions of dollars a year.

On the other hand, the top providers also spend billions of dollars a year building out their data centers to host everyone's apps.

And that's why GitHub was out talking to Microsoft, Google and Amazon about selling itself, multiple people said. And that's also why it might seem logical for Microsoft to simply tell GitHub users that they must now hop onto Microsoft's cloud.

But, politically speaking, forcing them to do so would anger the developer community. They will pick the cloud and technologies that will work best for their own needs. If they aren't given a choice, they will simply leave GitHub for a competitor, like Atlassian's BitBucket, or the fast-growing upstart GitLab.

And GitHub's founder knows developers are wary.

"Skepticism is totally understandable, but we're on the right path," founder Chris Wanstrath told Business Insider's Matt Weinberger about the acquisition, and developer's fears.

So, if Microsoft is promising that GitHub will remain independent, what's the master plan? It is an app store for developer tools. Microsoft's own tools will be in the apps store. Other company's tools will be, too.

"Today, developers need to find and assemble services from many locations and pay for them separately," Microsoft told investors in a prepared presentation. "In the future, developers will be able to discover, adopt, consume and pay for everything they need in one place."

Controlling an app store that already has access to 29 million developers will not only help Microsoft sell its own developer tools, but could let Microsoft profit on other people's tools, too.

Microsoft isn't saying what kind of a fee it will charge for its app store, but let's just imagine that it will follow Apple's and Google's lead and take some percentage of every transaction.

That's not to say that Microsoft won't do all it can to convince GitHub users to ditch AWS or Google and use Azure. By owning GitHub, Microsoft can add all kinds of special features to try and make its own cloud work best for them. Ultimately, though, it would be the developer's choice, not Microsoft's.

Original author: Julie Bort

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Jun
04

The $10,000 Apple Watch will stop getting major software updates from Apple starting this fall (AAPL)

When Apple's new Apple Watch software arrives this fall, one group of users will be left out of the update: those who shelled out for the $10,000 Apple Watch Edition.

Wirecutter's Andrew Cunningham first noticed the change.

Apple announced the new WatchOS5 software at the 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. The update includes several exciting new features, like a smarter version of Siri, interactive notifications, and a new Walkie-Talkie style of communicating.

But Apple says the update will be compatible with Apple Watch Series 1 or later. That means Apple is no longer giving major software updates to its first generation Apple Watch — nicknamed the Apple Watch Series 0 — and the original Apple Watch Edition, an 18-karat gold version that started at $10,000 and cost as much as $17,000.

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Apple stopped selling the gold Apple Watch Edition a year after its 2015 debut. When Apple unveiled the Apple Watch Series 1 and Apple Watch Series 2 in 2016, the gold watch disappeared from Apple's online store entirely. These days, you may be able to find it on a secondary market like eBay.

Apple never disclosed how many gold Apple Watch Editions it sold, but sharp-eyed fans have spotted the watch on celebrities like Beyonce, Kanye West, Pharrell, Katy Perry, Drake, and Karl Lagerfeld.

Apple replaced the gold version with a ceramic Apple Watch Edition, which retails for the much more reasonable price of $1,299. That watch, along with Apple's array of other watches, will be compatible with WatchOS 5.

The 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition. Edgar Su/Reuters

Read more from Apple's WWDC 2018 conference:

Original author: Avery Hartmans

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Jun
04

Apple says its Apple TV business has grown 50% since it introduced a 4K version of the streaming box

While it was once categorized as "a hobby" by Apple, the Apple TV streaming box is selling better than ever.

Tim Cook announced Monday at Apple's annual conference for app developers, WWDC, that sales for Apple TV have increased by 50% since the company introduced a 4K-supported version of the streaming box last year.

While it doesn't include its own screen, the device connects to your TV and allows access to Apple's ecosystem of third-party apps and live TV, which can be viewed with the proper cable credentials. The company upgraded Apple TV in September to allow for 4K streaming of TV shows and movies.

Apple said on Monday that iTunes and Apple TV now feature "the largest collection of 4K HDR movies." The company also allows Apple TV users the ability to convert previously purchased TV shows and movies to 4K as a free upgrade.

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Apple also announced that Apple TV 4K will now pair its visuals with "room-filling" Dolby Atmos sound, making it "the only streaming player to be both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos certified."

Read more from Apple's WWDC 2018 conference:

Original author: John Lynch

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Jun
04

YouTube has replaced Facebook as the most widely used social media platform among teens (GOOGL, FB)

In the last few years alone, Facebook has gone from being the favorite social media platform among American teenagers to not even breaking the top three. The social media giant has been replaced in first place by longtime competitor YouTube, according to the latest study from the Pew Research Center.

As this chart from Statista shows, Generation Z chose YouTube as the platform they use the most as of April 2018, and put it at a close second as the platform they visit most often, showing a clear shift in the social media ecosystem.

In fact, YouTube's share of 13- to 17-year olds who use online platforms exceeds what Facebook's was when it was on top the last time Pew conducted this study in 2015. Three years later, Facebook's share of the teen market has gone down from 71% to roughly half. And YouTube — which didn't even have a spot on the 2015 chart — has secured itself a reasonable claim to being the most popular.

Shayanne Gal/Business Insider

Original author: Prachi Bhardwaj

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Jun
04

Apple is taking a direct shot at Facebook with new privacy controls and anti-distraction features (AAPL, FB, GOOGL)

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been critical of Facebook's widespread collection of data on its users. Apple

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been sharply critical of Facebook of late for its widespread collection of data on consumers.

On Monday, Cook's company followed up his words with some pointed actions that are designed to limit some of that data collection by Facebook and other operators of online ad networks.

"Data companies are clever and relentless," Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said at the company's WWDC developer conference in San Jose, explaining why Apple is offering some new features to allow users to control and protect their personal information.

Showing off one of those features, he said, "You can decide to keep your information private."

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One of the new features, which will be built into the next version of the company's Safari web browser, will block Facebook and other companies from using the "like" buttons and comment fields that often appear on pages around the web.

"It turns out these can be used to track you whether you click on them or not," Federighi said. "This year, we're shutting that down."

Safari will limit web sites' ability to create digital fingerprints

Another feature in Safari will limit the kinds of information that web site operators and data brokers can gather about users' computers. That information, which includes details about the computers consumers are using, the types of fonts they have on their devices, and the kinds of plug-ins they have installed in their browsers, can collectively be used as a kind of digital fingerprint to identify particular users, he said.

The next version of Apple's Safari browser will allow users alert users to the tracking Facebook and other companies do through "like" buttons and comment boxes and allow them to block it. Screenshot

Thanks to the steps Apple is taking to block Safari from leaking that data, "Your Mac will look like everyone else's Mac, and it will be dramatically more difficult for data companies to identify your device and track you," Federighi said.

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Apple is adding both of the new Safari features to the versions of the web browser that come with the Mac, the iPhone and the iPad. They'll come with iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, both of which are due out later this year.

The features follow a feature Apple built into Safari last year that limits the ability of data brokers to track Safari users' online movements across different sites as they surfed the web.

Apple users will have new tools to curtail their use of particular apps

The company is also taking steps to help users limit the amount of time they spend with particular apps and to fight back against the tactics Facebook and other companies use to repeatedly lure them back into their services. Among them: an upgraded version of its Do Not Disturb feature, more robust parental controls, a feature called Screen Time that will help users track the amount of time they're spending with particular apps, and another one called App Limits that will allow users to curtail the amount of time they're spending with certain apps.

In showing off the new App Limits feature for the iPhone, Apple used Facebook-owned Instagram as its example for an app that might be block for exceeding preset time limits. Apple In showing off Screen Time, the Facebook app was listed prominently at the top of the example list of apps that a hypothetical user spent the most time with. And in demonstrating App Limits, the app that got cut off was Instagram, which Facebook owns.

"Some apps demand more of our attention than we might even realize," Federighi said. "They beg us to use our phone when we really should be occupying ourselves with something else."

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Over the last year, Cook has repeatedly criticized Facebook for the amount of data it collects on its users and what it does with that information. Following Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the data on up to 87 million of the social network's users was improperly obtained by a Trump-linked consulting firm, he was asked what he would do if he were in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's place. Cook's response: "I wouldn't be in that situation."

Apple has tried to distinguish itself from the other big tech giants, particularly Facebook and Google, by promoting its privacy and security practices. Unlike those and other tech giants, Apple isn't dependent on advertising, instead getting the nearly all of its revenue from sales of devices and related services.

The changes also come amid growing criticism of tech companies, including Apple, for designing devices and services that encourage what many have called a kind of addiction among their users. Apple had promised earlier this year to take steps to give users more control over their devices and apps.

Original author: Troy Wolverton

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Jun
04

Apple's next major update to the Mac arrives this fall, and is called 'Mojave' — here are all the new features (AAPL)

Apple senior VP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, introducing MacOS Mojave at WWDC 2018. apple wwdc 2018

Apple's next major update to its main computer operating system, MacOS, is coming this fall. The update is named Mojave, and it will cost nothing to upgrade.

Mojave brings a slew of changes to Apple computers, but the biggest change of all is something more subtle: Some apps from the iPhone/iPad (iOS) will work on MacOS. It's the latest example of Apple blurring the lines between its two main computer ecosystems — iOS and MacOS — and it starts with Voice Memos, Apple News, Stocks, and Home, all new apps coming to the Mac with Mojave.

Some iOS developers will be able to bring over their apps to MacOS, enabling for easier interoperability between the two versions.

Before introducing this major change, Apple senior VP of software engineer Craig Federighi explicitly pointed out that this shouldn't be misconstrued as the "merging" of iOS and MacOS.

"Are you merging iOS and MacOS?" he said. "I'd like to take a moment to briefly address this question."

Screenshot

"No, of course not. We love the Mac, and we love MacOS, because it's explicitly created for the unique characteristics of Mac hardware," Federighi said.

That said, starting in 2019, some iOS app developers will be able to move over their app to the MacOS platform using new tools created by Apple.

But that's not the only change coming in the next version of MacOS — here's a breakdown of everything Apple showcased, from "Dark Mode" to a major new privacy push:

Original author: Ben Gilbert

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Oct
16

Size isn’t the problem: 3 ways to gain real insight from your data

Twitter closed up 3.41% Monday to settle at $3.7.90, its best level in three years.

Shares got off to a red-hot start in 2018, rallying more than 50% by the middle of March. That move was propelled by a fourth-quarter 2017 earnings report that boasted the company's first-ever net profit. That marked the fifth straight quarter of double-digit daily active user growth, which Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said "points to better engagement from its core user base." He concluded that the company is "on the road to recovery."

But, shares surrendered the bulk of those gains in the wake of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica data scandal. As investors sold Facebook shares amid concerns that new data regulation would hurt user growth and advertising prices, so too did they sell Twitter stock.

But share once again rebounded, due in large part to another strong earnings report. First-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations in almost every category, and the stock hasn't looked back since.

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Twitter is up 58% this year.

Original author: Jacob Sonenshine

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Jun
04

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Anne Bonaparte, CEO of Appthority (Part 1) - Sramana Mitra

The perimeter of the enterprise is disappearing. What happens to Security? Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Appthority and to yourself. Anne Bonaparte: I’m CEO of Appthority....

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Jun
04

Lendix raises $37 million for its lending marketplace

French startup Lendix has raised a new funding round of $37 million (€32 million). With this new influx of cash, the startup has one goal in mind. It wants to become the leading lending marketplace of Continental Europe.

Idinvest and Allianz are leading the round, with CIR SpA (De Benedetti’s holding firm) also participating. Existing investors Partech, CNP Assurances, Decaux Frères Investissements and Matmut are also participating once again.

As of today, people living in France, Spain and Italy can sign up to lend money to companies established in those three countries. But the startup is already working hard to expand to the Netherlands and Germany before the end of the year. Next year, Lendix plans to operate in 7 countries.

And it seems like it’s becoming easier to launch new markets. There are now quite a few users and institutional investors on the platform. Lendix doesn’t need to attract Dutch users to start lending to Dutch companies. French, Italian and Spanish users are already willing to put some money in Dutch companies. It’s a true European user base because everybody uses the same currency.

With today’s funding round, it’s going to be easier to launch in Germany. “When you want to open in Germany — and that is our current plan — it’s harder to recruit if you don’t have a German brand name behind you,” co-founder and CEO Olivier Goy told me.

That’s why Allianz is going to be more than just a financial backer. For instance, the insurance company is going to promote Lendix to its corporate clients so that they think about Lendix if they need to borrow some money.

It’s another proof that Lendix doesn’t want to be a French company that operates in other countries. The company also has opened an office in Madrid and another one in Milan with local teams.

Lendix is still a drop in the bucket compared to traditional bank loans. But the company wants to differentiate its product offering from regular banks as much as possible.

Right now, when a company requests a loan, the company’s algorithms are going to work on a basic credit scoring. After that, somebody calls the company to ask a few questions. The Lendix team can focus on more specific information.

“We also have developed a tool called Iris,” CTO Benjamin Netter told me. “It is going to become the biggest intelligence database for European companies.”

France is leading the way when it comes to open data. You can now access the registry of commerce, the identification number database and important incorporation events. But it’s a mess if you want to access this data. There are different file formats, and the same database uses different fields depending on the region of France.

Lendix has been parsing all this data to turn it into an actionable database. This way, Lendix can get a clear overview of companies that apply for a loan.

The company doesn’t plan to stop there. You could use Iris to detect some fraud patterns. For instance, a person could keep incorporating new companies and shutting them down quickly.

Eventually, you could reach out to companies before they need to apply for a loan. Netter mentioned a restaurant called Street Bangkok. They’ve opened three restaurants over the past six months. It’s clear that they might need some money at some point to invest in new restaurants. Lendix Iris could spot those patterns.

Lendix is still nowhere near as big as Funding Circle. But the company thinks there’s enough room for multiple players in this space. Both can grow at the same time by competing with traditional banks.

And it starts by being faster than a traditional bank. Companies get a rate within 48 hours. “Our goal is that you should be able to get a rate within half a day,” Goy said. Banks will have a hard time giving you an answer so quickly.

Disclosure: I share a personal connection with an executive at CNP Assurances.

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Jun
04

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Asheem Chandna of Greylock Ventures (Part 4) - Sramana Mitra

Sramana Mitra: We actually do a lot of work with bootstrapped entrepreneurs partly because our mission is to help as many entrepreneurs be successful as possible. I can tell you the vast majority of...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Jun
04

Microsoft promises to keep GitHub independent and open

Microsoft today announced its plans to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. Unsurprisingly, that sent a few shock waves through the developer community, which still often eyes Microsoft with considerable unease. During a conference call this morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, incoming GitHub CEO (and Xamarin founder) Nat Friedman and GitHub co-founder and outgoing CEO Chris Wanstrath laid out the plans for GitHub’s future under Microsoft.

The core message everybody on today’s call stressed was that GitHub will continue to operate as an independent company. That’s very much the approach Microsoft took with its acquisition of LinkedIn, but to some degree, it’s also an admission that Microsoft is aware of its reputation among many of the developers who call GitHub their home. GitHub will remain an open platform that any developer can plug into and extend, Microsoft promises. It’ll support any cloud and any device.

Unsurprisingly, while the core of GitHub won’t change, Microsoft does plan to extend GitHub’s enterprise services and integrate them with its own sales and partner channels. And Nadella noted that the company will use GitHub to bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services “to new audiences.”

With Nat Friedman taking over as CEO, GitHub will have a respected technologist at the helm. Microsoft’s acquisition and integration of Xamarin has, at least from the outside, been a success (and Friedman himself always seems very happy about the outcome when I talk to him), so I think this bodes quite well for GitHub. After joining Microsoft, Friedman ran the developer services team at the company. Wanstrath, who only took over the CEO role again after its last CEO was ousted after harassment scandal at the company, had long said that he wanted to step down and take a more active product role. And that’s what’s happening now that Friedman is taking over. Wanstrath will become a technical fellow and work on “strategic software initiatives” at Microsoft.

Indeed, during an interview after the acquisition was announced, Friedman repeatedly noted that he thinks GitHub is the most important developer company today — and it turns out that he started advocating for a closer relationship between the two companies right after he joined Microsoft two years ago.

During today’s press call, Friedman also stressed Microsoft’s commitment to keeping GitHub as open as it is today — but he also plans to expand the service and its community. “We want to bring more developers and more capabilities to GitHub, he said. “Because as a network and as a group of people in a community, GitHub is stronger, the bigger it is.”

Friedman echoed that in our interview later in the day and noted that he expected the developer community to be skeptical of the mashup of these two companies. “There is always healthy skepticism in the developer community,” he told me. “I would ask developers to look at the last few years of Microsoft history and really honestly Microsoft’s transformation into an open source company.” He asked developers to judge Microsoft by that and noted that what really matters, of course, is that the company will follow through on the promises it made today.

As for the product itself, Friedman noted that everything GitHub does should be about making a developer’s life easier. And to get started, that’ll mean making developing in the cloud easier. “We think broadly about the new and compelling types of ways that we can integrate cloud services into GitHub,” he noted. “And this doesn’t just apply to our cloud. GitHub is an open platform. So we have the ability for anyone to plug their cloud services into GitHub, and make it easier for you to go from code to cloud. And it extends beyond the cloud as well. Code to cloud. code to mobile, code to edge device, code to IoT. Every workflow that a developer wants to pursue, we will support.”

Another area the company will work on is the GitHub Marketplace. Microsoft says that it will offer all of its developer tools and services in the GitHub Marketplace.

And unsurprisingly, VS Code, Microsoft’s free and open source code editor, will get deeply integrated GitHub support.

“Our vision is really all about empowering developers and creating a home where you can use any language, any operating system, any cloud, any device for every developer, whether your student, a hobbyist, a large company, a startup or anything in between. GitHub is the home for all developers,” said Friedman. In our interview, he also stressed that his focus will be on making “GitHub better at making GitHub” and that he plans to do so by bringing Microsoft’s resources and infrastructure to the code hosting service, while at the same time leaving it to operate independently. 

It’s unclear whether all of these commitments today will easy developers’ fears of losing GitHub as a relatively neutral third-party in the ecosystem.

Nadella, who is surely aware of this, addressed this directly today. “We recognize the responsibility we take on with this agreement,” he said. “We are committed to being stewards of the GitHub community, which will retain its developer-first ethos operate independently and remain an open platform. We will always listen to develop a feedback and invest in both fundamentals as well as new capability once the acquisition closes.

In his prepared remarks, Nadella also stressed Microsoft’s heritage as a developer-centric company and that is it already the most active organization on GitHub. But more importantly, he addressed Microsoft’s role in the open source community, too. “We have always loved developers, and we love open source developers,” he said. “We’ve been on a journey ourselves with open source and the open source community. Today, we are all in with open source. We are active in the open source ecosystem. We contribute to open source project and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open-sourced when it comes to our commitment to all source judges, by the actions we have taken in the recent past our actions today and in the future.”

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Jun
04

Microsoft has acquired GitHub for $7.5B in stock

After a week of rumors, Microsoft today confirmed that it has acquired GitHub, the popular Git-based code sharing and collaboration service. The price of the acquisition was $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. GitHub raised $350 million and we know that the company was valued at about $2 billion in 2015.

Former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman (and now Microsoft corporate vice president) will become GitHub’s CEO. GitHub founder and former CEO Chris Wanstrath will become a Microsoft technical fellow and work on strategic software initiatives. Wanstrath had retaken his CEO role after his co-founder Tom Preston-Werner resigned following a harassment investigation in 2014.

The fact that Microsoft is installing a new CEO for GitHub is a clear sign that the company’s approach to integrating GitHub will be similar to hit it is working with LinkedIn. “GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries,” a Microsoft spokesperson told us.

GitHub says that as of March 2018, there were 28 million developers in its community, and 85 million code repositories, making it the largest host of source code globally and a cornerstone of how many in the tech world build software.

But despite its popularity with enterprise users, individual developers and open source projects, GitHub has never turned a profit and chances are that the company decided that an acquisition was preferable over trying to IPO.

GitHub’s main revenue source today is paid accounts, which allows for private repositories and a number of other features that enterprises need, with pricing ranging from $7 per user per month to $21/user/month. Those building public and open source projects can use it for free.

While numerous large enterprises use GitHub as their code sharing service of choice, it also faces quite a bit of competition in this space thanks to products like GitLab and Atlassian’s Bitbucket, as well as a wide range of other enterprise-centric code hosting tools.

Microsoft is acquiring GitHub because it’s a perfect fit for its own ambitions to be the go-to platform for every developer, and every developer need, no matter the platform.

Microsoft has long embraced the Git protocol and is using it in its current Visual Studio Team Services product, which itself used to compete with GitHub’s enterprise service. Knowing GitHub’s position with developers, Microsoft has also leaned on the service quite a bit itself, too and some in the company already claim it is the biggest contributor to GitHub today.

Yet while Microsoft’s stance toward open source has changed over the last few years, many open source developers will keep a very close look at what the company will do with GitHub after the acquisition. That’s because there is a lot of distrust of Microsoft in this cohort, which is understandable given Microsoft’s history.

In fact, TechCrunch received a tip on Friday, which noted not only that the deal had already closed, but that open source software maintainers were already eyeing up alternatives and looking potentially to abandon GitHub in the wake of the deal. Some developers (not just those working in open source) were not wasting time even to wait for a confirmation of the deal before migrating.

While GitHub is home to more than just open source software, if such a migration came to pass, it would be a very bad look both for GitHub and Microsoft. And, it would a particularly ironic turn, given the very origins of Git: the versioning control system was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 when he was working on development of the Linux kernel, in part as a response to a previous system, BitKeeper, changing its terms away from being free to use.

The new Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella strikes us as a very different company from the Microsoft of ten years ago — especially given that the new Microsoft has embraced open source — but it’s hard to forget its earlier history of trying to suppress Linux.

“Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” said Nadella in today’s announcement. “We recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”

Yet at the same time, it’s worth remembering that Microsoft is now a member of the Linux Foundation and regularly backs a number of open source projects. And Windows now has the Linux subsystem while VS Code, the company’s free code editing tool is open source and available on GitHub, as are .NET Core and numerous other Microsoft-led projects.

And many in the company were defending Microsoft’s commitment to GitHub and its principles, even before the deal was announced.

I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts.

If anybody decided to mess with that community, there would be a riot to say the least

— Mat Velloso, the cynical (@matvelloso) June 4, 2018

Still, you can’t help but wonder how Microsoft might leverage GitHub within its wider business strategy, which could see the company build stronger bridges between GitHub and Azure, its cloud hosting service, and its wide array of software and collaboration products. Microsoft is no stranger to ingesting huge companies. One of them, LinkedIn, might be another area where Microsoft might explore synergies, specifically around areas like recruitment and online tutorials and education.

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Jun
04

Tencent Reports Record Profit - Sramana Mitra

According to The New York Times, there are over 770 million internet users in China. Chinese Internet giant recently reported a record quarterly profit that beat analyst expectations driven by...

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Original author: Sramana_Mitra

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Oct
16

Nvidia’s founding couple donates $50M for AI computing at alma mater Oregon State University

I took Saturday off, slept a lot, and read What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen.

Kate Fagan has written a must-read book for every parent of a high school or college athlete.

The story of Madison Holleran is a heartbreaking one. Maddy was a star athlete in high school, in a big (five kids) happy family with two engaged parents. She played soccer and track and, after almost going to Lehigh for soccer, ended up going to Penn for track.

And, that’s when everything started to go wrong.

Maddy committed suicide a few days after returning for the second semester of her freshman year after trying, unsuccessfully, to quit the track team.

Maddy’s family gave the author, Kate Fagan, incredible access, which allowed Fagan to write a powerful book. Many different themes are explored, against the backdrop of Maddy’s development as a teenage athlete, the internal pressures of today’s teen, the struggle of entry into college and separation from home, and how depression can take hold of someone. While Maddy’s story is central to all of this, Fagan includes her own experience as a college athlete in areas, that make the writing incredibly relatable.

It’s not an easy book since you know the ending when you start it. It’s simple to fall in love with Maddy – she’s a delightful American kid. The joy in her friendships and experiences start off rich and light. You see the turn into darkness happen slowly. And, because it unfolds against the backdrop of Fagan’s analysis and intellectual exploration, it makes it more accessible.

On Sunday, I came across a full-page ad in the NY Times with Michael Phelps talking about his own depression for a new product called TalkSpace. I found a short video for it, which is below.

As a bonus, there’s a section in the book about Active Minds with some interviews with members. This is an organization for mental health in college students, which Amy and I support through our Anchor Point Foundation and that I wrote about in the post Mental Fitness, the NFL, Active Minds, and the Competitive Workplace.

If you are a parent of a teenage or college athlete, read this book. If you want to learn more about mental health and depression, read this book. And, if you want to get involved in organizations like Active Minds, just This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 

Also published on Medium.

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Original author: Brad Feld

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