Tech Roundup: Google Smart Home Patents, Tech Stocks Crash & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• India should adopt cross border data privacy rules (CBPR) that allow free flow of information across borders and empower data protection regulator of a country to act against entities that violates its privacy rules in other countries that have adopted it (U.S., Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia), global experts suggest.
• New research underscores the line of reasoning that European Union's GDPR data protection rules end up hurting smaller firms than the large internet companies; average investment per deal in E.U. startups drops 39.6 percent, while weekly venture deals reduce by 17.6 percent.
• Google targets smart home with a pair of new patents; envisions devices that can scan and analyse the surroundings of users' homes, and then offer content based on what they detect, including using auditory cues to identify users, their tastes and ambient sounds to infer what users may be doing (for example, keyboard clicking may indicate that the household member is working, or is in the kitchen based on sounds of fridge door opening), alongside employing sensors and cameras to restrict children's behaviour by monitoring their speech (for foul language), movements (such as to check if the kids are raiding the liquor cabinet when the parents are away) and peruse their browsing history for mature and objectionable content.
• Amazon's harsh working conditions at its order fulfilment centres comes under spotlight once again after an anonymous Amazon "fulfilment associate" pens a critical column in The Guardian about the corporate culture; says "the management doesn't regard us a crucial contributors to its success," and that "in reality, they treat us like disposable parts." (Goes on to show how the worker pay rise to US$ 15 an hour was just lip-service, and how they continue to treat them as mere cogs of a monstrous money-making machine.); workers in the U.K. take to the street on Black Friday to protest against the company, even as Amazon reports record levels of shopping in the country.
• Facebook comes under criticism for failing prevent its platform from being used to auction a 16-year-old girl off for marriage in South Sudan.
• French National Assembly and the French Army Ministry to ditch Google Search in favour of Qwant, a privacy-focussed search engine that says it doesn't track users, in an attempt to free the country from foreign technology companies (especially with regards to data protection) and claim digital autonomy and sovereignty.
• A new report titled "Who knows what about me?" issued by Anne Longfield, Children's Commissioner for England, warns that children are being “datafied”; says "their data footprints begin from the very moment when their parents proudly upload that first baby photo to social media" and that many people are using technology without understanding the full risks involved in collecting children's data.
• Vacation home rental platform Airbnb removes listings of around 200 Israeli settlements in West Bank following criticism that the company "should not profit on lands where people have been displaced"; gets sued by Israeli lawyers who accuse the company of "outrageous discrimination" as it continues to list homes in other contentious regions like Tibet and Northern Cyprus.
• Thirteen gaming apps with over a collective 580,000 installs were found to be downloading malware with full access to the device's network traffic, which can be used to steal secrets.
• Privacy-focused search engine Startpage.com relaunches with a new look, faster speeds and Anonymous View that lets users open search results in a sandboxed environment (using a proxy) that doesn't store cookies and other trackers.
• Instagram's Download Your Data tool (rolled out in the wake of E.U. GDPR regulation to allow users to download a copy of all pictures, comments, and other information that they have shared on the platform) suffers from a security flaw (already fixed) that could have sent some users' passwords in plaintext in the URL of the download page (the number of affected users was not specified); comes months after a hack locked hundreds of users out of the platform after cybercriminals (origin unknown as yet, although the use of mail.ru email addresses possibly points to Russia, or pretending to be from Russia) get hold of their email addresses, only to effectively change their login credentials and preventing them from logging in. (Did that stop users from using Instagram. No. Rather they created new accounts.)
• Alexa-enabled devices gain Skype integration to make video calls; follows close partnership between Microsoft and Amazon to have a dedicated Alexa app for Windows 10 devices, Xbox One's recent support for Alexa and Microsoft's recent move to sell Amazon Echo devices at its retail stores in the U.S.
• Facebook, Messenger and Instagram go down in a major outage across several parts of the world; Instagram begins cracking down on third-party apps that allows users to buy "fake" likes and followers to boost their accounts and says it plans to add more measures to tackle inauthentic activity on the platform.
• Google says it may have to shut down Google News service in the European Union if the Link Tax goes into effect. (Link Tax is a new proposed regulation that would require news aggregator services like Google News, Facebook and others pay publishers for reproducing snippets of text on their platforms.)
• Twitter reduces the font size for follower and following counts to deemphasise their meaning in an attempt to facilitate meaningful exchange on the micro-blogging platform.
• Apple removes Tumblr app from App Store over concerns that child pornography is being distributed through the site.

FAANG stocks as of 11/23 close

• Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google lose a combined US$ 1 trillion off of their market value amid concerns over deceleration in sales growth for the year 2019, and less than expected iPhone sales, and increased competition; Bitcoin price crashes below US$ 4,000 for the first time since August of last year.
• Snap Inc. to give Spectacles a third go; to equip the glasses with two cameras for a price of US$ 350, according to Cheddar. (Good luck selling that!)
• Google to fix a Pixel 3 camera bug that crashes the camera app when opened from third-party apps like Instagram, Twitter, and 2FA authenticator apps; updates Google Assistant for iOS with a Siri shortcut allows it be launched using the voice command: "Hey Siri, OK Google."
• Professional social network LinkedIn becomes the latest app to embrace Stories - launches Student Voices (only in U.S.) that lets university students post short videos to their Campus playlists; adds a new privacy setting that blocks your email address from being exported by default when downloading data through its Archive tool.
• Amazon says that a technical error in the site caused it to inadvertently disclose user names and email addresses; refuses to come clean on how many were affected beyond stating that the issue has been fixed? (Issues like this happen all the time, sure, but why is Amazon so tight-lipped? When will companies learn transparency is the best policy?)
• Instagram to begin testing new profile layouts; says "Over the next several weeks, you may see features re-arranged at the top of your profile including changes to icons, buttons and the way you navigate between tabs, which we hope will make profiles easier and cleaner to use."
• Apple deepens its focus on AI with acquisition of privacy-focussed personal assistant technology startup Silk Labs. (Its assistant learns about the user using sound and vision on the device, alleviating a key privacy concern with "always listening" smart speakers. Apple has been big on on-device intelligence, and Google has also been quietly following suit with federated learning.)
• Microsoft updates its Android home screen launcher with new digital health features that tracks app usage, screen time and even the number of times the phone was unlocked; also brings Cortana voice assistant, To-Do and Sticky Notes integration to seamless sync tasks and notes from the apps.
• Microsoft and Google reportedly working together to bring Chrome to Windows PCs powered by ARM, according to 9to5Google.
• Amazon begins requesting brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S. to start accepting Amazon Pay as a mobile payment alternative to Apple/Google/Samsung Pay, reports The Wall Street Journal (Amazon Pay is already considerably big in India, letting users recharge their mobile phones, pay utility bills and more.); reverses its policy to block international version of its website in Australia, months after it started redirecting users from the country to amazon.com.au, after customer backlash.
• Walmart begins trialling same-day deliveries in China (where it has had a presence since 1996) through a mini-program on WeChat.
• Facebook appoints Abhijit Bose, co-founder and CEO of digital-payments company Ezetap, as the head of WhatsApp India, the company's first team outside the U.S.; comes at a time when the messaging app is beset by fake news and uphill challenges with regards to monetisation (will there be more ads?), payments (Paytm, Google Pay, Flipkart's PhonePe and TrueCaller are leading the space, will WhatsApp's entry be too late?) and privacy concerns (Will Facebook's image as serial privacy violator - 562,455 users in India were affected by the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal - make it difficult for WhatsApp? This in addition to India's banking regulator RBI mandating all payment companies store user data locally.)
• Foxconn warns that the upcoming year could be "very difficult and competitive" and that it is planning to slash expenses, fuelling further concerns that Apple's new iPhones may not selling well; comes weeks after four of Apple's suppliers cut their quarterly outlook citing reduced iPhone shipments.
• Apple's reportedly reviving discontinued iPhone X models and slashing iPhone XR prices in Japan in the wake of poor sales of new iPhones (It only goes on to show that there is no need for a phone refresh every year, at least not anymore. Not only the updates have become incremental and change for the sake for change, they add to the growing e-waste problem.)
• Neighbourly, Google's Nextdoor copycat service for neighbourhood questions and answers, expands to Delhi and Bengaluru after its initial rollout to Mumbai, Jaipur, Mysuru and Coimbatore; to come to Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Indore and more cities in the next phase.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook defends its practice of retaining Google Search as the default search engine in Safari browser (for which the search giant pays Apple close to US$ 9 billion per year in the form of traffic acquisition costs; says "Google's search engine is the best." (Decrying Google and Facebook for their privacy blunders and championing the cause of privacy reeks of hypocrisy!)
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls recent negative press coverage against the company "bullsh**"; reportedly blames COO Sheryl Sandberg for not doing more in the wake of Cambridge Analytica scandal, even as the communications team feel betrayed for the manner they were thrown under the bus for hiring Definers PR firm to engage in smear campaigns against George Soros, Apple and Google.