Friday, December 16, 2016

Facebook tries to counter fake news. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16 2016 By Darrell Etherington

Facebook fights back against fake news, Mario is great on iOS and another sign that future generations will probably never own their own vehicle. It's The Daily Crunch for December 16, 2016. And if you're hungry for some tasteless goop, I've got great news for you.

1. Facebook adds fake news fighting tools

Facebook is making good on CEO Mark Zuckerberg's previously announced plan to fight fake news, with a suite of tools introduced yesterday, including third-party fact-checking from organizations including Snopes, FactCheck.org and the Associated Press.

The tools also include easier reporting tools for users. Hopefully, all of this combined results in a Facebook that's a bit more factual by default, but I'm very curious to see what impact this might have on FB user engagement, and how that will impact the social network's treatment of this kind of content.

2. Super Mario is ready to run on iOS

Nintendo's first big main franchise game for mobile is out, and the single-tap platformer is a heck of a lot of fun. Take it from Brian, or take it from me – I have an embarrassingly high number of Toads in my Mushroom Kingdom. Yes I know how that sounds.

3. Oracle CEO Safra Catz joins team Trump

Another day, another big tech executive joining Trump's side. This time it's Oracle CEO Safra Catz, who attended Trump's tech exec symposium earlier this week. No real details yet, but one reason all these tech powerhouses are signing up to help Trump in some capacity might be that they realize he's probably pretty easy to manipulate, and could therefore further their own agendas with a direct line to the President-elect.

4. Evernote's walking back that bad privacy policy

Evernote had been planning to change its privacy policy to allow staff to read user content, a move it said would help the company improve its machine learning tech. That's still not really a good excuse, so due to user furor, they're doing an about-face. Evernote still wants to be able to read content to improve its services, but now that will happen only if a user actually opts in.

5. Soylent returns

The Slimfast of the coding era has returned! If you had been enduring the pain of eating real food, you can now safely return to your diet of colourless slurry.

6. Investors aren't thrilled about Yahoo's bad moves

So you probably heard about Yahoo's big 1 billion-strong hack, but you may not have heard that it might be putting Verizon's acquisition of the Internet co. pioneer in jeopardy. We don't know anything more, really, despite being owned by Verizon via AOL, but this definitely looks like a huge, ridiculous mess for all involved.

7. Mercedes gets into the Groove

Car companies are trying to predict what comes next after ownership, and Mercedes thinks car-sharing might be part of that picture. The company launched Croove, a peer-to-peer car rental network, as a pilot in Munich today. Surprisingly, it's open to all car makes and models. A clear sign that carmakers know better than anyone else that individual vehicle ownership is nearing its end.

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Thursday, December 15, 2016

Uber's new regulator showdown and Trump's tech conclave. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15 2016 By Darrell Etherington

Uber's doing a new kind of dance with regulators, Trump treats the Valley to a tete-a-tete and Mario is coming to hopefully salvage just a little bit of 2016. All that and more in The Daily Crunch. And Tom Wheeler if you're reading this – I'll miss you.

1. Uber ordered to stop its SF self-driving service on day 1

Uber has been told that it must cease offering service via self-driving cars in San Francisco, on the same day it began those operations. The California DMV has insisted Uber go through its self-driving licensing process, or else face legal action.

This is something Uber must've known was coming when it launched in the city. For the ride-hailing company, stepping over or around local regulations is par for the course, and generally speaking it gains more than it loses in terms rallying locals to its side doing this kind of thing. Autonomous tech could be a different story, however, as the day also saw a report of a self-driving car running a red (though Uber later said this was a human-caused incident).

2. Donald Trump hosts tech titans

A who's who of tech leadership assembled at Trump tower yesterday, in a move that was seen by many as an about-face for Silicon Valley, which had previously seemed pretty opposed to Trump and what he represents. It was kind of gross to watch, tbh. Benioff was doing something quite different at the time.

3. Yahoo reveals another hack – and yes, that's "b" as in "billion"

Yahoo is basically the most insecure company in internet history at this point. Another hack, separate from the huge hack it revealed earlier, may have comprised the data of more than 1 billion accounts. Verizon (disclosure: owns TechCrunch) understandably is considering leaving the table.

4. Twitter made a messaging app but then killed it

A lot of companies make a lot of things that we never hear about and are subsequently killed, but Twitter's might've-been messaging client is an interesting one. You coulda been a contendah, little birdie.

5. Facebook Messenger gets text filters

Facebook Messenger has new filters that turns your typed text into auto-generated visual filters. Sounds okay but I can't remember the last time I took a photo in Messenger and sent it to someone. Other apps are for that.

6. FCC's Tom Wheeler will resign when Trump takes office

This is why we can't have nice things. Net Neutrality-friendly FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will be stepping down in January rather than serving under Trump. Makes sense, since Trump seems to want to undo everything Wheeler did to get net neutrality protections in place. Still: sad.

7. Mario's iPhone debut day

Today's the day Mario starts jumping over stuff on the iPhone. It'll happen later – some in the know suggest around 4 PM ET, in case you're looking for a heads up on when the App Store will crash.

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