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Was Facebook’s Libra Planning to Make Money in Dirty Ways?

Andrew Orr ·

I know that’s kind of a clickbait headline but it’s from a quote by Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, who dropped out of Facebook’s Libra organization after “multiple red flags.” Emphasis mine:

One reason was Libra’s leaders wouldn’t commit to abiding by laws around knowing their clients, money laundering, and data management, he told the newspaper.

“Every time you talked to the main proponents of Libra, I said ‘Would you put that in writing?’ They wouldn’t.”

It was also unclear to Banga how Libra would generate revenue, stoking his fears that it would make money in unscrupulous ways. “When you don’t understand how money gets made, it gets made in ways you don’t like,”

Facebook profiting off of money laundering?

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Amazon Creating 15,000 Jobs And Building New Giant Tower

Charlotte Henry ·

Amazon is set to create 15,000 new jobs in Bellevue, a suburb of Seattle. The firm is also building a giant 43-story tower there, it’s biggest ever.

Planning for the 43-story tower, its tallest yet, is currently underway. Amazon’s plans for the proposed building, referred to as Bellevue 600, were unveiled last July. The building will have about 1 million square feet of office space and is expected to be completed by 2024. Amazon said it expects to bring the 15,000 jobs to Bellevue over the next few years. More than 2,000 employees currently work in Bellevue, and the company has about 700 job openings in the city.

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Most Apple TV+ Seven Day Trial Users Don't Buy it

Charlotte Henry ·

Flixed surveyed Apple TV+ users. It found that 72 percent of those who signed up for a seven-day trial people didn’t purchase it once that trial expired, iMore reported.

According to their report, they surveyed 1090 Apple TV+ trial users. 73% of those people signed up with a seven-day trial, only 21% got the free year that comes with an Apple device purchase. Half of those surveyed said their trial had expired. Of those whose trial was over, 72% said they did not purchase Apple TV+ after it had expired, with only 28% going on to become paying subscribers. Of the rest whose trials had not yet expired, nearly 60% said they would pay the $4.99 fee once the time came. In comparison to Netflix, only 19% said that the service was either a little or much better. The rest all said that Apple TV+ was either the same, a little worse or much worse than Netflix.

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Twitter iPhone and iPad Apps Get Update

Charlotte Henry ·

Twitter shared news of version 8.7.1  of its iOS app on Thursday. 9to5Mac noted a number of welcome updates. They included fixing the issue that meant users did not see polls whilst using the mobile version and updating some criticized layout features on the iPad.

Twitter says that it is rolling out version 8.7.1 of the Twitter for iOS app with a fix for a bug that meant polls would not appear for users on iPhone: “Having trouble seeing polls in Tweets on iOS? Updating your app to version 8.7.1 when it becomes available for you in the App Store should help! Thanks for bearing with us while we worked on this.” [It] also made a change to the Twitter app on iPad.

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Wacom Tablets Track Your Open Apps, Sending the Data to Google

Andrew Orr ·

Software engineer Robert Heaton discovered that his Wacom tablet was tracking every app he opened and sending that data to Google Analytics.

I suspect that Wacom doesn’t really think that it’s acceptable to record the name of every application I open on my personal laptop. I suspect that this is why their privacy policy doesn’t really admit that this is what that they do. I imagine that if pressed they would argue that the name of every application I open on my personal laptop falls into one of their broad buckets like “aggregate data” or “technical session information”, although it’s not immediately obvious to me which bucket.