Sorry I was a day late:
In a race against the clock — and gas gauge — Amazon driver brings you your packages
Not so fast:
"Employees at Amazon’s new NYC warehouse launch union push" by Josh Eidelson Bloomberg News December 13, 2018
NEW YORK — A committee of employees at Amazon’s recently opened Staten Island fulfillment center is going public with a unionization campaign, a fresh challenge to the e-commerce giant in a city where it plans to build a major new campus.
Labor unrest is the latest complication in Amazon’s plan to invest $2.5 billion and hire 25,000 people in the city over the next 15 years. Several New York City politicians who were shut out of negotiations handled by the governor and mayor have raised objections to a new office park in Queens that threatens to overload mass transit and drive up rents in an already expensive housing market.
It's all Democrats so WTF?
Now workers in another borough are saying the company treats them like robots and should be focused on improving conditions there rather than raking in tax breaks to build a new headquarters.
The union they’re working with sees the nearly $3 billion in incentives offered to bring an Amazon office campus to Long Island City as leverage to prevent the company from retaliating against them for organizing.
Look, it's the 21$t-century. It used to be that the factory came to town and added to the community and its people with a symbiotic effect, but that's gone now. We are in the age of the corporate $hakedown, con$umer-worker, and gig economy, soon to be replaced by AI. Get u$ed to it.
Employees backing the union effort said in interviews Tuesday that the issues at the warehouse include safety concerns, inadequate pay, and 12-hour shifts with insufficient breaks and unreasonable hourly quotas, after which they lose more of their day waiting unpaid in long lines for security checks.
‘‘They talk to you like you’re nothing — all they care about is their numbers,’’ said Rashad Long, who makes $18.60 an hour and commutes four hours a day to work at the warehouse. ‘‘They talk to you like you’re a robot.’’
He's making how much and complaining?
No wonder Bezos wants the illegal immigrants pouring in.
A handful of pro-union Amazon employees joined community activists and elected officials at a City Hall press conference Wednesday prior to a city council hearing about the proposed major office development in Queens. There, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer denounced the government’s ‘‘bad deal’’ with Amazon, asking, ‘‘What do the people get, and what are the workers going to get? Where is the labor agreement?’’
Amazon spokeswoman Rachael Lighty said in an e-mail that the company ‘‘follows all state employment laws.’’
Not all Staten Island workers see it that way.
Amazon is slated to reap more than $1 billion in tax breaks and grants from New York as part of the Long Island City deal. Some lawmakers have said the state’s Public Authorities Control Board should reject the development unless the company makes stronger commitments in areas including infrastructure investment, housing affordability, and worker rights.
That also means health benefits, right?
Employees are working with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, or RWDSU, which has also backed organizing efforts at the Whole Foods grocery chain that Amazon acquired last year. Amazon’s workforce is union-free throughout the United States.
They are going to $poil Whole Foods?
‘‘There’s never been greater leverage — if taxpayers are giving Amazon $3 billion, then taxpayers have the right to demand that Amazon stop being a union-busting company,’’ said RWDSU’s president, Stuart Appelbaum. ‘‘It’s incumbent upon the governor and the mayor to make sure that nothing happens to these workers who are standing up for their rights. If Amazon continues its union-busting activities in New York, they should call off the deal.’’
The (anonymous?) governor and mayor are both Democrats.
RWDSU has been meeting workers in person and contacting them over social media since around the time the Staten Island facility opened.
Appelbaum declined to discuss the specifics of how Amazon employees were seeking to obtain union recognition.
The union president is Applebaum, huh?
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So how did that city council meeting go?
"Amazon went to New York’s City Hall. Things got loud, quickly" by J. David Goodman New York Times December 13, 2018
NEW YORK — It was variously described as a rite of passage, a take-your-medicine moment, and a very New York-style welcome: Two Amazon executives raised their right hands and then faced more than three hours of public grilling by the New York City Council, but if the ritual of barbed questions and evasive answers was not unusual, the circumstances of Wednesday’s hearing were: Amazon does not need the council’s approval to locate new offices in Long Island City, Queens.
Still, the appearance marked the company’s first major foray into New York’s public spotlight since announcing the deal.
Council members took advantage of the executives sitting before them to vent their anger at the terms of the agreement, as well as at Amazon’s business practices, treatment of labor unions, and work on behalf of federal immigration officials.
I don't Rekognize that.
They were backed up, with applause, shouts, and jeers, by a spectrum of liberal opponents who packed the chambers, unfurling an anti-Amazon banner from the balcony at the start of the hearing.
These are the same people who scream civility and tolerance at you!
Several times the crowd drowned out the two executives as they attempted to explain the merits of the deal struck with the company last month by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
At least they dropped their names in this article.
“We believe this project will be a positive economic impact for the city and the state,” said Brian Huseman, vice president of public policy for Amazon. Repeatedly, his remarks were met by guffaws from the audience of antagonists.
Lobbyists for Amazon, hired to navigate an increasingly hostile political landscape, sat in a row near the front, and could be seen occasionally huddling with a de Blasio official on the sideline.
Democrat de Blasio was supposed to be the new voice of Occupy Wall Street, remember?
The two fronts in the room mirrored those that have been competing in recent weeks to win over public opinion in Queens, where Amazon has been quietly taking meetings with local leaders, and activists who backed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been going door-to-door to build opposition to the company’s new outpost.
At the council on Wednesday, opponents of the deal, which would bring an estimated 25,000 jobs to Long Island City, in exchange for as much as $3 billion in state and city incentives, strongly outnumbered supporters.
None of the council members in the overwhelmingly Democratic body spoke up in favor of the deal, and they vented their frustration at having been left out of the closed-door negotiations that preceded the announcement of the deal.
Closed door negotiations by Democrats!
What is with them, anyway?
“James, you disrespected this body with how you handled this process,” Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, who represents Long Island City, said to James Patchett, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, during a particularly aggressive exchange.
“We got played,” the council speaker, Corey Johnson, said to Patchett at another point, speaking of Amazon’s nationwide competition. “They were able to pit city after city against each other.”
“I don’t know who I’m more angry at: the administration or Amazon,” said Jumaane Williams, a councilman from Brooklyn who is a candidate for public advocate, but the rhetorical points they scored over the course of the often testy hearing remained symbolic: By design, the agreement between the city, the state and Amazon does not give the City Council the power to veto it. Instead, the company’s development of new offices along the East River will be subject to a state planning process.
By the time it was over Huseman and the other Amazon executive, Holly Sullivan, looked as though they may have regretted coming.
Throughout the hearing, Sullivan and Huseman, who kept his hands folded on the table in front of him, tried to maintain an even tone and a posture of listening even when the questions were witheringly direct.
Patchett showed more frustration with the council, sparring at several points with Van Bramer, who pressed him to discuss de Blasio’s involvement in the negotiations.
“I certainly spoke with him or met with him in person over 10 times,” Patchett said of his interactions with the mayor.
“So the mayor cannot meet with many of his own commissioners about everyday city business and how the city functions,” Van Bramer said, “but he can meet with you 10 times at least in the last year just on this Amazon deal?”
Why isn't he asking the mayor instead?
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Looks like it is back to the drawing board:
"Bezos’ preschools come as rich get richer, more generous" by Sally Ho Associated Press December 03, 2018
SEATTLE — From Jeff Bezos’ free preschools to Andrew Carnegie’s public libraries, education stands out as a favorite cause among America’s wealthiest people, and as the rich get richer, and apparently more generous, this legacy of so-called investment philanthropy has shaped government priorities and driven policy changes, but with such high-profile giving fueled by both capitalism and poverty, critics have thrust that dichotomy into the spotlight, challenging how the system that allowed these philanthropists to amass their fortunes ultimately contributes to the social problems they are trying to address.
It's called tossing the rabble chump change, duh (nice big old tax break, too).
Bezos announced this fall he is dedicating half of his new $2 billion Bezos Day One Fund toward creating free preschools in low-income communities nationwide, which could make him the top philanthropic funder of early education.
I know he likes young men, and sure hope this isn't being set up as some sort of procurement ring.
It’s unknown if Bezos considers this seed money or a fixed endowment, but the tech titan, newspaper owner, and space entrepreneur is clear he wants to disrupt the status quo in the same way his Amazon.com company has changed retail, declaring his preschoolers are ‘‘the customer.’’
For what?
The Amazon founder and chief executive in 2018 became the first $100 billion mogul to top Forbes’s annual rankings of the world’s richest people. Forbes’s calculations overall say the world now has more than 2,200 billionaires with a combined fortune of $9.1 trillion, up 18 percent from the previous year, and that coincides with a record-breaking amount of charitable giving in 2017, according to the annual Giving USA report written by Indiana University. With $410.02 billion in contributions, the total given to education causes across the United States was second only to the amount of money given to churches and religious groups.
The exemption line on the tax form says altruism$m.
Larry Lieberman of the nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator said schools, children, and learning have near-universal appeal among the wealthiest philanthropists, who often credit their own success to the opportunities and power of education, and much like faith-based organizations, many well-funded educational institutions are dependent on, and therefore masterful at, fundraising.
It's a $elf-$erving charity, I'm $ure.
Yet for as long as education philanthropy has existed, so has criticism about one man’s funding priorities and what role capitalism, wealth distribution, and poverty play in it.
Fundamentally, philanthropy expert David Callahan said, those philanthropists are also advancing the idea that meritocracy can solve the inequality, without affecting the system of capitalism that produces it.
‘‘It’s the myth of the American Dream. The American Dream is that anyone who can work hard enough and improves themselves will succeed,’’ Callahan said. ‘‘Pretty much everyone buys into it at some level, and a lot of philanthropy reflects it.’’
And THAT, my dear readers, is what I call $TATU$ QUO AGENDA-PU$HING!
America’s leading philanthropists have long favored grander ideas that promise seismic shifts rather than contributing to fixed costs that may better the existing systems of public goods. While approaches have evolved, high-end philanthropy has been successful in leveraging the might of their private, often tax-exempt dollars to push government investment and policy changes in their pursuits, and whereas some philanthropy amounts to writing blank checks left in presumably capable hands and modestly outlined directives, the wealthiest have personified ‘‘venture’’ or ‘‘investment’’ philanthropy, which hinges on the expectation that the grants prove specific results.
No, no, no, not in our $y$tem!
Bezos said he is building a nonprofit organization to open and operate the free preschools, using the teaching philosophy of Maria Montessori. Bezos himself attended a Montessori school, which generally focuses on individual learning and social-emotional development, but earlier this year, Bezos’ company as Seattle’s largest private employer intensely fought the city council’s proposed business tax intended to fund more services for the region’s growing homelessness crisis, forcing city leaders to quickly retreat.....
There is no place like home.
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Maybe you would prefer a $lice of Apple?
"Apple puts music service on Amazon Echo in subscription push" by Mark Gurman Bloomberg News November 30, 2018
Apple and Amazon.com announced their second partnership this month: The iPhone maker’s music-streaming service is coming to Amazon’s Echo devices in December.
The move gets Apple Music onto the most popular voice-controlled speakers, giving it distribution beyond Apple’s own devices. Subscribers will be able to control Apple Music with Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant, the first time Apple has opened up its music service to full voice control outside its own Siri technology.
The decision pushes Apple’s music service into more living rooms at a time when its own Internet-connected speaker, the HomePod, hasn’t sold as well as the competition. Given the breadth of Alexa-enabled speakers on the market, the move could also boost Apple’s own subscription numbers.
I would turn the music off if I were you.
‘‘This is further evidence that Apple sees it needs to work with other hardware players in order to advance Apple Music, and it is an admission that the HomePod has been a disappointment,’’ said Gene Munster of Loup Ventures.
Apple will sell 3.5 million HomePods this year, compared with 28.5 million Echos and 16.2 million Google Home speakers, making Amazon the best partner to help increase Apple Music subscriptions, according to Loup Ventures. Apple Music currently has more than 50 million subscribers. The service is a key component of Apple’s plan to expand digital services revenue and offset slowing growth of iPhone unit sales.
Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos cares more about increasing the number of people using Alexa and Echo speakers than he does about selling phones or music subscriptions. Earlier this month, the e-commerce giant began selling the latest Apple iPhones, Watches, and iPads on its website. One notable exclusion as the HomePod.
It’s unclear if the two moves are related, but the e-commerce deal could spur more purchases of Apple devices by Amazon customers. While Amazon is the market leader in smart speakers, the company’s efforts to design and sell its own smartphone flopped, and it doesn’t sell pricey tablets like the iPad or high-end wearables like the Apple Watch.
This isn’t the first time Apple is leveraging other hardware makers to boost Apple Music. When it launched the service in 2015, it released a version that works on Android. Apple hasn’t said how many users it has on Android, but the app has been downloaded more than 10 million times, according to the Google Play store’s website. Apple also offers integration with Sonos speakers for its music service.
Apple hasn’t announced a similar partnership with Google for its Home speakers. Google competes directly with the iPhone with its Pixel devices, and Android is the main rival for Apple’s iOS mobile operating system.
Amazon and Google have clashed in similar ways, with Google pulling YouTube from Echo speakers last year when Amazon didn’t sell Google Chromecast video streaming gadgets. Amazon reversed course in the end.
Apple’s HomePod was supposed to be the ultimate hub for Apple Music as it focused on audio playback over general purpose tasks like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. However, the device struggled out of the gate in part due to its high $349 price, sometimes sub-standard voice control experience, and delays to key features like stereo sound and multi-room audio playback. Soon after going on sale earlier this year, Apple cut some HomePod orders with suppliers. Since then, it has added new features like the ability to summon an iPhone’s location and make calls.
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I hear a lawsuit being filed.
"Here’s what Apple’s snub says about Boston’s status as a tech hub" by Andy Rosen and Jon Chesto Globe Staff December 13, 2018
Apple announced Thursday that it would mostly bypass Boston as part of a multicity expansion, but home-grown digital retailer Wayfair continued its march through the Back Bay, where it plans to grow a workforce that could soon hit 10,000.
The dual developments were a telling indicator of Greater Boston’s status as a technology hub: The region seems capable of nurturing homegrown tech wunderkinds, and tech giants elsewhere see it as an ideal location for specialized, strategic outposts, but as Apple’s and, recently, Amazon’s decisions to look elsewhere show, Boston has struggled in the trophy class of tech expansions, the new campuses with thousands of jobs, including lower-level positions that can provide an anchor in the middle class for workers.
Unlike the $ports teams, they will have to settle for less than a championship.
In some ways, the city is a victim of its own success. Its booming tech sector is partially responsible for the competitive labor market, pricey real estate, and high cost of living that can make Boston a tough sell for big corporate relocations.
I $uppo$e you come up with whatever excu$e you can while staring at oneself in the mirror.
Tom Hopcroft, chief executive of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, said talent is the top reason companies expand in the state – and it’s the number one obstacle to their growth here. Tech wages are the third highest here, after California and Washington state.
“The labor market is so tight, you have to pay a premium to get talent here,” Hopcroft said.....
At least it keeps the unions out.
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Related:
"The fast-growing online retailer Wayfair Inc. landed $31 million in tax incentives from the state Thursday to help the company add thousands of jobs in Boston and hundreds in Pittsfield. The Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved a plan to dole out the incentives to the home-goods seller over 10 years. In return, Wayfair pledged to add a total of 3,300 jobs. A spokeswoman for the council said this is the state’s second-biggest tax-credit award since 2010. The largest was a $46 million package pledged to MassMutual earlier this year in return for its decision to add 1,500 jobs in Springfield and up to 1,000 in Boston. (General Electric was awarded $125 million in grant money in 2016 as part of a plan for a state agency to acquire the two Fort Point buildings where GE will move.) Boston-based Wayfair had already said it plans to eventually employ at least 10,000 people here, approximately doubling the 5,000-plus workforce at its approximately 650,000-square-foot Copley Place headquarters....."
"The latest tax incentives are attached to some 3,300 new jobs, mostly in Boston. That would normally be a jaw-dropping number. Not for Wayfair. (Wayfair still isn’t turning a profit, even as it clears $6 billion in annual revenue.) State officials would argue the tax incentives helped make the Pittsfield project a reality; Wayfair considered several other states for the call center. This expansion will be a sort of homecoming for Niraj Shah. The Wayfair chief executive grew up in Pittsfield, graduating from the city’s high school in 1991. His father, like many of his generation, worked at General Electric. GE, of course, once dominated Pittsfield’s economy. GE is long gone from the city today, but maybe Wayfair can start to take its place......"
Yeah, who needs Amazon!
Also see: General Post
"SoFi is cutting 7 percent of staff" by Julie Verhage Bloomberg News December 02, 2018
Social Finance Inc., the lending and refinancing startup valued at more than $4 billion, is cutting about 7 percent of its staff, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The 100 job cuts are happening in the company’s mortgage department, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. SoFi has said it plans to dramatically expand its mortgage business in 2019. As part of that effort, the company is now undertaking a wholesale restructuring of how that division operates — including a shift away from underwriting loans directly.
SoFi has lost money for two consecutive quarters, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg, as profits of its core lending business fell and it pushed into new product lines. This summer, the company was seeking a $1 billion revolving line of credit to fund operations and expansion. Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer Anthony Noto, who started the job this year, has said his goal is to get the company ready for an initial public offering.
The San Francisco-based startup, with about 1,400 employees, does the majority of its business in student loan refinancing, but facing higher interest rates that have weighed on US lenders, it has recently been broadening its focus in an effort to expand into an all-purpose online financial services company. SoFi has told investors it will be profitable again by the end of the year.
The company first got into the mortgage space in 2014. To date, it has made more than $3 billion in mortgage loans, with half of that coming from existing members, according to the company. While that’s not a small number, it pales in comparison to the billions of dollars SoFi has lent out via student loan refinancing and personal loans.
A bubble waiting to pop.
Under its new structure for its mortgage division, borrowers will continue to deal with the fintech startup throughout the process, although the underwriting, title, appraisal and closing will be done by a partner. The strategy will help the company reduce the risk on its books, the person said.
The bulk of the staff reductions in SoFi’s mortgage division will come from operations, according to the person. Employees were informed of the staffing changes earlier Friday.
“These changes put us in a better position to help even more members by offering competitive rates and a smoother digital experience,” a company spokeswoman wrote in an e-mailed statement.
Uh-huh.
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Phone call for you:
"AT&T plans three streaming options in its war with Netflix" by Gerry Smith Bloomberg News November 30, 2018
AT&T Inc. is putting its new Time Warner arsenal of media properties to work, unveiling plans to roll out a three-tiered streaming-video service to compete with Netflix Inc.
One of the new products being launched late next year will be a movies-only plan, the company said on Thursday. Another will have original programming as well as blockbuster films, and the highest-priced choice will include content licensed from other companies.
AT&T will have plenty of competition. Walt Disney Co. is introducing an online service with Star Wars and Marvel shows around the same time, and Jeffrey Katzenberg has a new short-form video project in the works. But AT&T’s CEO, Randall Stephenson, has to find new ways to retain TV viewers: His DirecTV Now online streaming service is going to lose subscribers this quarter and next, AT&T said.
The telecom giant provided the latest details as part of a presentation to analysts and investors, who are looking for signs that the company can get a payoff from its $85 billion Time Warner deal.
A surprising loss of both TV and wireless subscribers in the third quarter raised concerns about the company’s core business and drew attention to its $183 billion debt load and a costly 5G network expansion ahead. AT&T’s top executives attempted to address those worries by targeting a leverage ratio of 2.5 times net debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization by the end of 2019, down from the current pro forma ratio of 2.85 times. To raise cash to pay down debt, the company suggested it could sell assets like real estate or its 10 percent Hulu stake.
AT&T shares, which are down 21 percent this year as of Thursday, rose as much as 2.8 percent before closing up 2.19 percent at $31.24 Friday.
In September, Stephenson said he planned to use Time Warner’s HBO as the anchor for the new online video service and surround it with Warner Bros. shows and films — and possibly sports programming.
During a question-and-answer session with analysts, AT&T media chief John Stankey tried to allay concerns that the company’s various video options would confuse customers. In addition to the upcoming streaming service, the company has multiple tiers of DirecTV Now.
To narrow its focus, WarnerMedia — the new name of Time Warner — has already started to reduce the number of niche consumer subscription services, such as FilmStruck. He said the company is moving toward a more “unified library” of content. This centralized system will help serve both the upcoming video-on-demand service as well as play an important role in beefing up the DirecTV Now offerings.
Stankey also suggested that rival video-on-demand services like Netflix and Amazon are facing shorter-length content licenses — in other words, they won’t have shows and movies locked down for as long. As they lose the rights to well-known entertainment properties, they’re in a race to create more original content.
AT&T faces less of that pressure because it now owns the media libraries of Turner, HBO, and Warner Bros., Stankey said.
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Where are you, Michael Dell?
You get that hotel room reserved yet?
"Worried about the Marriott data breach? It’s too late" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff November 30, 2018
Another day, another data breach.
This time, it’s 500 million identities stolen over a four-year period from the Marriott hotel chain. It’s one of the worst digital data thefts yet, but there’s no point panicking now. The time to panic was decades ago. Once we let corporations and governments stash our personal data in massive computer databases, we signed up for a future of stolen secrets and vanishing privacy.
How did the Marriott thieves manage to get in?
A pa$$ key?
I'll bet they were real quiet about it, too.
With relative ease, probably. All it takes is one careless employee clicking on a seemingly innocent e-mail that installs malicious code on a single computer. That infected machine can spread its toxins through whole networks by planting programs that capture passwords and scoop up stockpiles of valuable information. From public schools to the Pentagon, no network will ever be safe because networks are operated by humans.
So AI is the answer, right?
Indeed, the data stolen in the Marriott hack had probably been stolen before in some previous assault. Just last year, a breach at the massive data brokerage Equifax exposed immense quantities of sensitive information on 147 million Americans, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers. That single break-in captured personal data on 45 percent of the US population. Throw in countless other identity hacks over the past decade, and it’s a near-certainty that nearly every American’s private data is private no longer.
I suppose all things being Equifax..... you want to see your file (think of it as a gift from Snowden)?
Long before the Marriott breach, data security researcher Brian Krebs began issuing a somber warning: “Assume your credit card data is for sale on the underground, and assume your Social Security number and other static data are for sale,” said Krebs, publisher of the KrebsOnSecurity website, “because it probably is.”
This doesn’t let Marriott off the hook. The breach occurred in the reservations database of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, a company Marriott acquired two years ago for nearly $14 billion. Apparently, none of the money went for an upgrade to Starwood’s data security systems because the breach began two years before Marriott made the acquisition and continued for two more years under new management.
Jake Olcott, vice president of communications at BitSight, a Boston-based data security company, said this suggests that Marriott failed to exercise “cyber diligence.” Olcott said it is a common problem when companies merge because “the IT and IT security folks are often not brought into the transaction until very late in the deal flow.” By then, both buyer and seller aren’t eager to hear any bad news that might derail the transaction, so any bad news about weak network security may have been shoved into the shadows.
Is that what happened this time? We may find out when the lawsuits are filed. At the least, the Marriott case is a good reason to insist on tougher state and federal sanctions against corporations that misplace our personal data.
Will that stop the data theft?
For now, we’re the ones who’ve got to pay attention.....
Well, $omeone should.
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Don't Google it:
"Google reveals new security bug affecting more than 52 million users" by Tony Romm and Craig Timberg Washington Post December 11, 2018
WASHINGTON — Google revealed Monday that its soon-to-be shuttered social network had suffered another security lapse, a software bug that could have allowed third-party apps and developers to gain access to 52 million users’ personal information without their permission.
For six days in November, an update to the underlying code of Google+ meant that apps seeking to access users’ profile information — including their names, e-mail addresses, occupations, and ages — could view that data even if it was ‘‘set to not-public,’’ Google said in a blog post. Apps could have accessed some non-public profile data that had been shared with a user as well.
Google said that its systems had not been compromised and that there’s ‘‘no evidence that app developers’’ were aware of the bug or ‘‘misused it in any way,’’ but the revelation threatens to sharpen the scrutiny of the company’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, when he testifies to Congress on Tuesday.
See: Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies on Capitol Hill
The security mishap is the latest stumble for Google’s problematic social media offering. In October, Google admitted it had failed for six months to reveal information about a bug that put at risk the data of hundreds of thousands of users.
Among those looped into discussions about delaying public notification was Pichai, a person familiar with the matter said at the time. Google said it delayed release of information because it was initially uncertain which users were affected or that data had been misused.
In response to its latest findings, Google said Monday that it would shutter its social network in April 2019, five months sooner than it initially announced. The company also said it would inform affected users, including ‘‘any enterprise customers.’’
That's like closing the barn door after the horse is out.
‘‘We understand that our ability to build reliable products that protect your data drives user trust,’’ wrote David Thacker, a vice president for product management at Google. ‘‘ We will never stop our work to build privacy protections that work for everyone.’’
Google discovered its earlier Google+ security bug in March, the same month that Silicon Valley rival Facebook was facing scrutiny over its role in allowing people affiliated with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to collect data on 87 million users. That incident prompted demands that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testify on Capitol Hill, as he soon did.
Advertisement
The Federal Trade Commission has investigated privacy incidents at Google and other leading technology companies on several occasions.....
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Time to Face facts:
"Facebook says bug opened access to private photos" by Mike Isaac December 15, 2018
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook announced Friday that it had discovered a bug that allowed outsiders access to private photos, potentially affecting some 6.8 million people who use the service.
I hope there weren't any nudies in there.
“We have fixed the issue but, because of this bug, some third-party apps may have had access to a broader set of photos than usual,” said Tomer Bar, an engineering director at the company, in a blog post.
The announcement is the latest in a string of problems the social network has had with consumer data. In March, The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica, a third-party firm, harvested the data of Facebook users without their express knowledge or consent, and in September, a separate, more serious breach gave hackers full access to the Facebook accounts of tens of millions of users.
That last one was played down.
Facebook has pledged to better protect user information.
“If we can’t, then we don’t deserve to serve you,” said Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, in a note to users this year.
This most recent incident is somewhat less severe than previous ones, but it is still another headache for Facebook, which has faced intensifying scrutiny from regulators and the public after a year of embarrassing failures to protect customer data.....
Yeah, they are “sorry this happened.”
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Now what about your headache?
"Facebook offered advertisers special access to users’ data, activities" by Adam Satariano New York Times December 06, 2018
NEW YORK — Facebook used the mountains of data it collected on users to favor certain partners and punish rivals, giving companies such as Airbnb and Netflix special access to its platform while cutting off others that it perceived as threats.
The tactics came to light on Wednesday from internal Facebook e-mails and other company documents released by a British parliamentary committee that is investigating online misinformation. The documents spotlight Facebook’s behavior from roughly 2012 to 2015, a period of explosive growth as the company navigated how to manage the information it was gathering on users and debated how best to profit from what it was building.
The documents show how Facebook executives treated data as the company’s most valuable resource and often wielded it to gain a strategic advantage. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, were intimately involved in decisions aimed at benefiting the social network above all else and keeping users as engaged as possible on the site, according to e-mails that were part of the document trove.
In one exchange from 2012 when Zuckerberg discussed charging developers for access to user data and persuading them to share their data with the social network, he wrote: “It’s not good for us unless people also share back to Facebook and that content increases the value of our network. So ultimately, I think the purpose of platform — even the read side — is to increase sharing back into Facebook.”
The release of the internal documents adds to Facebook’s challenges as it wrestles with issues as varied as how it enabled the spread of misinformation and whether it properly safeguarded the data of its users. Zuckerberg and Sandberg are under scrutiny for their handling of the matters; the executives have publicly said they were slow to respond to some of the problems.
Facebook had tried to keep Parliament from releasing the documents. The materials had been under seal in the United States as part of a lawsuit in California with an app developer. In a statement, Facebook said the documents were selectively chosen to be embarrassing and misleading as part of a “baseless” lawsuit. The company said, “The facts are clear: We’ve never sold people’s data.”
No, they GAVE IT AWAY like a drug dealer does at first!
Much of what was disclosed in the documents was not new, but the e-mails provide insight into the calculations of top executives as they worked to cement Facebook’s position as the world’s dominant social network. The documents’ publication coincides with a more hawkish shift in public opinion toward online collection of user data, prompted partly by revelations this year of how the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica misused Facebook users’ information.
The 250 pages of documents cover a period when Facebook was shifting its business from a focus on desktop computers to mobile devices. After years of being largely open in sharing data with partners, Facebook was beginning to debate how to be compensated for the data it was sharing.
For companies it liked, including Airbnb, Lyft and Netflix, Facebook made special “white list” agreements. The deals gave the partners preferred access to data that other companies had been restricted from receiving after a Facebook policy change, but for other companies that Facebook perceived as a threat, the company was less accommodating. In 2013, after Twitter released the video app Vine, Facebook shut off the access to its Facebook friends data.
“Unless anyone raises objections, we will shut down their friends API access today,” Justin Osofsky, a Facebook executive, said in an e-mail at the time.
Zuckerberg responded: “Yup, go for it.”
E-mails also show that Facebook was hungry for more data and that user privacy, at least at the time, was an impediment to its goals of growth and engagement. In one e-mail exchange, employees discussed avoiding a potential public backlash about an update to its Android app that would log calls made by people on their phones.
It was a “pretty high risk thing to do from a PR perspective,” but they charged ahead anyway.
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A veiled threat:
"These Facebook holdouts are very glad they stayed away" by Steve Annear Globe Staff December 21, 2018
With yet another privacy scandal rocking perceptions of the Harvard-born company, those like Bethanie Grenier, 33, who managed to navigate life without ever embracing Facebook and is now a schoolteacher and lives in Maine, are rejoicing over that decision, and, in some cases, they’re casting a big “I told you so” at their friends or family who chastised them for bucking the trend.
“[I’m] pretty pleased with myself for dodging that bullet,” said Jill Rodgers, a 36-year-old yoga instructor and marketing freelancer from Somerville.
The latest Facebook lapse that’s left some people reconsidering how much information they put online was detailed in a New York Times investigation this week.
In its report, the Times claimed that Facebook “gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed,” and in some cases without permission.
For its part, Facebook has denied the accusations, saying none of the partnerships or features gave companies access to information without consent.....
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We all know breaking up is hard to do, but after a trial separation the first three weeks of this month, I have decided that I no no longer fear missing out on what is in the Globe and will shortly be saying goodbye forever.
UPDATES:
McLean beefs up computer security after breach
"Scarcely a day goes by in Boston’s technology sector without a promising company raising what in most businesses would be a monumental sum. Tens and sometimes hundreds of millions fly around with scarcely an eyebrow raised, but there are still some cash infusions big enough to astonish....."
SoftBank just invested $500 million, which makes the $80 million the Cambridge biotech got look like $pit in the hand.
"MetLife has agreed to pay $1 million in a settlement with Secretary of State William Galvin and to provide payments, with interest, to hundreds of Massachusetts retirees and beneficiaries that the insurer had wrongly designated as “presumed dead.” MetLife had acquired the obligations to pay the pensions from the retirees’ former employers, making the insurer responsible under a group annuity contract. Galvin said his office began an investigation a year ago after MetLife disclosed that it had failed to make payments to thousands of retirees because the company couldn’t find them. A spokeswoman for the insurer said the company’s focus since identifying the issue has been to enhance its processes to deliver better service."
Apple plans to lease space in Kendall Square
Apple’s holiday deals
They expected us all to upgrade every two years, and sorry I lost the signal.
