Benefit Daily

2019-12-25 13:30:59 Uber CEO Says Goodbye, ByteDance Rejects Rumors, Biggest Flops and Fails of the Decade

Check what's going on in the field of business and tech while you're celebrating Christmas

Uber founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick leaves board. The company announced that he would be stepping down from his position on the board of directors and has sold all of his stock options, estimated to be worth at least $2.5 billion.

Steven Hill, a journalist and the author of “Raw Deal: How the ‘Uber Economy’ and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers,” told Digital Trends that Kalanick’s resignation, may “reflect his realization that this money losing company has no future”. “Uber is losing billions of dollars because it is subsidizing at least 50% of every ride. In the ultimate irony, the more people use Uber, the more money it loses. At some point Uber will have to either double its prices and lose customers or go out of business. It looks like Kalanick is betting that it will be the former,” Hill stated.

ByteDance rejected rumors that it is considering selling off stake in video app TikTok after Bloomberg reported yesterday that the tech giant was thinking about a sale. A ByteDance spokesperson told Business Insider in an email "There have been no discussions about any partial or full sale of TikTok. These rumors are completely without merit."

In case you forgot, ByteDance is the highest-valued privately-held company in the world, worth an estimated $75 billion, and has been called "China's Facebook" for its size and ownership of popular social networking apps.

Read and ponder

The Forbes investigation: inside the secret bank behind the fintech boom

The 84 biggest flops, fails, and dead dreams of the decade in tech

Science explains why we should all work shorter hours in winter

Merry Christmas! Open / Comment

2019-12-20 16:40:42 2020 is coming and now it's just the right time to sum up all the interesting events that happened during this year as well as during the decade (2010-2020) in tech and business industries

The Verge's 32 Moments that made the decade: where we started 10 years ago and where heading to now.

The Guardian's 20 tech trends for 2020: from new gaming consoles to activism at Apple.

The Fortune's 5 CEO exits that sum up the memorable business year that was 2019: Larry Page, Adam Neumann and other famous managers.

The Next Web's From sexting to politics: How emoji evolved this decade Open / Comment

2019-12-13 10:15:10 Potential Splitting of Facebook, Apple's Trolls & Habits of Self-Made Millionaires

The FTC might finally do something about Facebook’s social media monopoly. The Wall Street Journal reports that a preliminary injunction by the FTC might happen as soon as next month, and would force Facebook from integrating any more apps. The FTC is reportedly considering taking action against Facebook because of antitrust concerns. An injunction against Facebook’s “interoperability policies” would affect how Facebook’s different platforms interact with one another, according to the Journal.

We wrote here what's wrong with this idea.

From the $999 stand to the $400 wheels, Apple keeps trolling us. Each time Apple announces a new product, there's an accessory or an upgrade that costs way more than what you'd expect. With the freshly launched Mac Pro, however, Apple turned this whole thing up to eleven. The machine itself is expensive, but it's understandable given the powerful components within. The optional 6K-inch Pro Display XDR is pricy as well, but it, too, has the specs to back it up. The also-optional $999 stand is insane — but all right, at least it has a design that matches the monitor.

Twitter wants to decentralize, but decentralized social network creators don’t trust it. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a theoretically huge announcement: he wanted Twitter to stop being a self-contained platform and start delivering content from a decentralized system, changing social media as we know it. He kicked off the plan by announcing a project called Bluesky, which will fund the independent development of that system. But among many people who already work on decentralized networks, the response was a collective roll of the eyes. Twitter wasn’t boldly stepping into new territory; it was stomping into an existing field with a lot of noise and very little detail.

Read & ponder

17 habits of self-made millionaires who retired early

Meet the Forbes OZ 20: the top players investing for lasting impact

How artificial intelligence and machine learning are affecting technology right now

The time has come to make Open Banking evolve into open finance. What does it mean? Open / Comment

2019-12-12 13:00:45 Spotify's on Netflix, WhatsApps's Fight with Bots and Silicon Valley's Secrets

Do you watch Netflix? One more thing to get excited: Spotify’s founding story is going to be its series. Netflix says it’s developing a scripted series inspired by the book “Spotify Untold” by business reports at Swedish Dagens Industri, Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud. The story will focus on Spotify’s founding and how it changed the way people listen to music over the past decade.

WhatsApp starts fighting with annoying automated messaging. WhatsApp says it is taking additional measures to prevent people and businesses from abusing its system with bulk and automated messaging. Though WhatsApp offers a Business app and API to help companies more easily communicate with customers, the company says using these tools to send out bulk or automated messages is against its Terms of Service.

At the same time YouTube unveiled its new, stricter harassment policy. According to the updated policy, this type of content now is prohibited:

1. Content that features prolonged name calling or malicious insults (such as racial slurs) based on their intrinsic attributes. These attributes include their protected group status, physical attributes, or their status as a survivor of sexual assault, domestic abuse, child abuse etc.

2. Content uploaded with the intent to shame, deceive or insult a minor. A minor is defined as a person under the legal age of majority. This usually means anyone younger than 18 years old, but the age of a minor might vary by country.

Be careful with what you're saying via Youtube.

Read & ponder

Listening to your most intimate moments: how the world’s biggest companies got millions of people to let temps analyze some very sensitive recordings

100 legendary gadgets that changed the world we're living in and defined the 2010s Open / Comment

2019-12-06 10:40:50 Airbnb Bans Parties, Uber Lets Your Favorite Drivers & Microsoft Adds Some Voice

Airbnb officially bans all open-invite parties and events to protect its hosts and guests. The company announced it changed its policy to halt certain guests from hosting events not approved by hosts, such as a recent Halloween party hosted at a California Airbnb rental in which five people were killed.

Uber will soon let you ‘favorite’ drivers (in California, at least). The ride-hailing company now lets you set a driver as a ‘favorite’ in its app after you’ve rated them five stars. This feature was first tested in the UK earlier this year, but now appears to be expanding to other regions.

In Outlook, Play My Emails will let you listen to your inbox like a podcast. Designed with Microsoft's Fluent Design system, the changes are meant to "take mobile productivity to the next level."

Read and ponder

The dark side of electronic waste recycling

Schools spy on kids to prevent shootings, but there's no evidence it works Open / Comment

2019-12-04 09:30:20 Page and Brin Leave as Google CEOs

Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are stepping down from their management roles. They will no longer be CEOs but will be able to control the company."With Alphabet now well-established, and Google and the Other Bets operating effectively as independent companies, it's the natural time to simplify our management structure,"Page and Brin said in the announcement. "We've never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there's a better way to run the company. And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President."

Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said that the timing of their departures "will raise more questions around the company's future strategy." "It’s a natural time for Larry and Sergey to leave since the current restructuring of Alphabet, which started four years ago," he continued.

Ivan Feinseth, director of research at Tigress Financial Partners, said that Pichai is a good choice to take over Alphabet. Under his leadership, the company has been "on the forefront of every key secular tech trend: cloud, mobile, search, advertising, including investing in a lot of emerging technologies."

Investors had a muted reaction to the news. Shares in Alphabet nudged up only a half percent to $1,292.38 in extended trading, after the announcement Tuesday afternoon. Open / Comment

2019-12-03 10:01:37 American 'Spy' at Pyongyang Crypto Conference & Facebook's New Tool

Virgil Griffith who works for the Ethereum Foundation gave a talk at a cryptocurrency conference in Pyongyang, North Korea. When he returned to the United States, officials accused him of helping North Korea evade sanctions with crypto and blockchain. Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin defended Griffith, and said he hoped the country "shows strength rather than weakness and focuses on genuine and harmful corruption."

Facebook has launched a new tool that will allow users to quickly and easily transfer all the photos they’ve posted on Facebook to their Google Photos account. While it only works with Google Photos, it’s expected to support more competing services in the future. The new tool is born out of the Data Transfer Project, a pact between Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter to provide a service-to-service data portability platform that lets users of one service easily transfer their data to a competing service.

Read and ponder

Artificial intelligence has tremendous power to enhance spying, and both authoritarian governments and democracies are adopting the technology as a tool of political and social control. Learn more about how artificial Intelligence is watching us and judging us.

As medical technology advances, and becomes ever more intimate and perhaps even invasive, where will we draw the line—and why? A story of one man who rejected the life-sustaining technologies and died, having left plenty of questions unanswered.

In case you missed...

Facebook shared its first detailed overview of the key elements that make Instagram's Explore work, and how they provide personalized content for people on this social media.

By the way, company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg had an undisclosed dinner with Trump and Peter Thiel at the White House. Ben Gillbert believes this case illustrates why Zuckerberg's views about political speech are under fire and explains that. Open / Comment

2019-11-28 10:01:43 Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2019

One day soon an emerging technology highlighted in this report will allow you to virtually teleport to a distant site and actually feel the handshakes and hugs of fellow cyber travelers.

The World Economic Forum and Scientific American made an amazing project by engaging experts to evaluate the perspectives of emerging technologies and prepared an interactive list with detailed information about each of them. A good thing to read for some insights and inspiration. Open / Comment

2019-11-22 12:01:47 ​​Tesla's Electric Pickup Truck, Facebook's New Vision On Ads & Apple's Confusing Performance

Elon Musk has revealed the latest Tesla model, promising hundreds of miles of range for about $40,000. Tesla's all new electric pickup truck is called Cybertruck. In his unusually short, 25-minute presentation, Musk didn’t say when the truck will head into production. But he did speak to the importance of entering the pickup segment, one of the most popular in the US. “We need something different. We need sustainable energy now,” Musk said on stage, before a crowd of fans and journalists at SpaceX’s headquarters. You can see the new Tesla's pickup truck in the picture below.

Seems like Facebook gave up and now considering making changes to its political-advertising policy that could include preventing campaigns from targeting only very small groups of people. Facebook has sought feedback on potential changes with large Republican and Democratic political ad buyers — about that possible change and other ideas — in efforts to limit how misinformation is spread, since ads with false or misleading information are often targeted toward specific audiences. Though it is unclear if or when Facebook could roll out any changes, it has hinted that modifications to its political ad policy could be possible.

The U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee had questions for Apple. Kyle Andeer, Apple’s Vice President of Corporate Law denied accusations it was making it hard for people to repair their own phones and protecting a virtual repair monopoly.

Apple’s primary arguments were that iPhones are too technical for the average person to repair without special training, that doing such repairs could be dangerous, and that it costs Apple more money to do repairs than they charge. It’s the first time Apple has ever gone on the record about its repair policies at length. Some journalists pointed out that it could not be true.


Read & Ponder

The first real internet connection happened 50 years ago — but those that sent the first messages on what would become the modern internet aren’t so pleased with their creation today. Find out why some of the internet inventors think it is "a playground for the worst instincts of human beings."

To see the future of disinformation, you build robo-trolls. How it happened that AI-powered software is getting better and could soon be weaponized for online disinformation.

How to be prepared fot everything: take a look at what investing experts advice to do in 2020. What kind of problems the world may face, which industries could rocket ahead and how to earn on it. Open / Comment

2019-11-21 09:01:25 Electric-Car Revolution, Qualcomm's Big Game, Microsoft's Experiments & Steve Wozniak Interview

Why the electric-car revolution may take a lot longer than expected. An MIT analysis finds that steady declines in battery costs will stall in the next few years.

Companies like Microsoft and Shake Shack have experimented with the four-day workweek to improve work-life balance for their employees. But for all the advantages a shorter workweek may offer, there's also a downside to consider.

Why social networks are essential for innovation and productivity.

Qualcomm is talking a big game about 5G—in 2020 and beyond. But the reality on the ground is much more spotty than Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon would like you to believe.

One-to-one with Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak. Steve discusses his personal life, his focus on education, recommendations for entrepreneurs, the state of innovation and his memories of Steve Jobs. Open / Comment