Tech Roundup: Disney+ Debut, Facebook Pay & More

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

• The Russian parliament tables bill that will force all electronic equipment sold in Russia — such as smartphones, computers, and smart TVs — to ship pre-installed with apps from Russian tech firms; government to publish, per each device type, a list of Russian software that equipment vendors will need to include on devices sold in the country, with vendors who fail to comply eligible for fines of up to 200,000 rubles (roughly US$ 3,100) and an eventual ban, following repeated offences.
• Microsoft debuts Project Cortex, a new Office 365 service for knowledge management that uses machine learning to classify documents into topics and collections, a new Office app for iOS and Android, combining Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single download and with a new logo, and adds new features to Teams, including Outlook and Yammer integrations, pinned channels, private channels, polls, tasks, and surveys; to release Chromium-based Edge browser on January 15, with new privacy features including InPrivate browsing and tracking prevention.
• Apple reportedly considering bundling News+, Apple TV+, and Apple Music as soon as 2020 to attract more subscribers, as it pivots to a services model to bolster its revenue to shore up falling iPhone sales slow due to market saturation, longer-lasting devices, and the company's difficulty entering developing markets where its products are too prohibitively expensive for many consumers.
• Google officially rolls out rich messaging services — aka RCS, with support for read receipts, typing indicators, improved group chats, and high-quality images — to all US users via Android Messages following RCS launch in the U.K. and France earlier this year and weeks after major carriers in the country announced their own plans for an RCS variant called Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI); becomes the company's ninth shot as part of its messy messaging strategy after Google Talk, Google Voice, Google Buzz, Google+ Messenger, Hangouts, Spaces, Allo and Hangouts Chat.
• It's worth noting that RCS is an SMS replacement, so the service isn't end-to-end encrypted. Hangouts and Messages are nowhere comparable, aside from the fact that RCS is how Google envisions messaging — for now, before it changes its mind again — and Hangouts is already on the death watch. Plus, Apple is not expected to support RCS on its devices, as it could threaten the dominance of iMessage in places like the U.S.
• So, it's hard to imagine Google putting its efforts into a solution that's so limited in scope and severely lacking in privacy and security protections when it could have simply stuck with Hangouts. On the other hand, though, the carriers ended up making their own RCS rollouts as messy as possible, up to the point where Google really didn't have an option but to do this itself.
• Whatever be the case, this is something Google should have done right off the bat: offer a simple and universal way for Android users to have a better texting experience with each other by default. The question that remains is whether users are ready for yet another messaging app that's tied to their phone numbers in 2019.
• Microsoft to launch its xCloud game streaming service in the U.S. in 2020, with plans to expand xCloud preview to Canada, India, Japan, and Western Europe.
• TikTok owner ByteDance's long-rumored smartphone Jianguo Pro 3 officially launches in China under the Smartisan brand (after ByteDance acquired a number of Smartisan's patents and employees earlier this year) for 2,899 yuan (around US$ 412), allowing users to get into the viral video app by just swiping up on the lock screen; TikTok reports its first ever growth slowdown on a quarterly basis after it registers a four percent decline in the number of first-time downloads for the three month period ending September.

• Adobe debuts Photoshop Camera app for iOS and Android, leveraging its Sensei AI to recognise subjects and suggest appropriate image filters to apply.
• Dropbox rolls out WeTransfer-like file transfer tool Transfer that allows paid users share 100GB files with expiry time set for seven, 30, 60, or 90 days, while those on the free tier can share files up to 100MB in size that will expire after seven days.
• Disney officially makes live Disney+ streaming service at a price of US$ 6.99 per month (US$ 69.99 annually), or in a bundle with ESPN+ and ad-supported Hulu for US$ 12.99 per month, with a lineup featuring nearly 500 movies from Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Disney, and National Geographic; hits 10 million sign-ups within a day of launch.
• With several new streaming services launching this year and next year, the companies involved are offering enticing deals to sign up for free. This will help Apple, AT&T, Disney and NBCUniversal gain a large base of subscribers quickly. But don't expect the party to last forever. Just like Netflix, its new streaming rivals appear to be following the same strategy: get subscribers in with a broad offering of engaging stuff to watch for cheap, then gradually raise the price over time.
• Google to stop sharing information with buyers in ad auctions about the type of content on a page where an ad could appear, starting in February next year, following privacy concerns.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok begins testing a new feature for some users that lets them link to online shops in their bio or directly from their posts; the platform's foray into social commerce could make it easier for TikTok influencers to make money from their followers on the app.
• Google's sister company Sidewalk Labs details its plans for Quayside smart neighbourhood in Toronto; to implement a pay-as-you-throw system of garbage deposition, with volume sensors installed on each bin to indicate when it should empty itself, and optical sensors that would allow each self-driving bin to navigate through the public realm, monitor residents' noise levels in apartments to ensure tenants are adhering to an acceptable nuisance threshold, and reiterates that it will not use facial recognition or sell data collected to third parties, use it for advertising purposes, or share personal information with third parties without explicit consent, with 60 percent of services to generate no personal information.
• Google reported made 3,200 changes to its algorithms in 2018, in contrast to 2,400 changes in 2017 and 500 in 2010, per a detailed investigation by The Wall Street Journal; finds that Google changes its algorithm to favour bigger businesses like Amazon, eBay and Facebook over smaller independent sellers, and keeps blacklists to either remove or prevent sites from showing up in certain search results.
• Google makes it easy to beam personal media collection to Chromecast devices; updates Files app with support for playing audio, photos and videos on any Chromecast-capable device, including speakers, smart displays or TVs.
• Payments service PayPal stops supporting payments for PornHub, impacting thousands of performers using the site as a source of income; says it took the decision after Pornhub "made certain business payments through PayPal without seeking our permission."
• New investigation finds toxic content hiding within popular GIF-sharing community GIPHY, including illegal child abuse content, depictions of rape and other toxic imagery associated with topics like white supremacy and hate speech despite its ban on illicit content.
• Amazon-owned medical prescription service PillPack adds 'Amazon Pharmacy' to its logo and says it has filed paperwork that adds 'Amazon Pharmacy' to the licensed name of its pharmacy fulfilment centres; retail giant to open its first non-Whole Foods grocery store in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Woodland Hills as it continues to expand its brick-and-mortar footprint in a bid to rival Walmart.

• Researchers find that Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are vulnerable to attacks that use lasers to inject inaudible — and sometimes invisible — commands into the devices and surreptitiously cause them to unlock doors, visit websites, and locate, unlock, and start vehicles.
• 8chan — a haven for far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists — briefly comes back online as 8kun, with new policies that remove any content that's considered illegal in the U.S.
• Facebook debuts new logo with text that has context-dependent coloring (Facebook - Blue, WhatsApp - Green and Instagram - Pink) in an attempt to further distinguish the company from its flagship social network; says "the generous spacing and open letterforms allow clarity at small sizes, and the subtle softening of corners and diagonals adds a sense of optimism."
• This is strictly a cosmetic change, but one that reinforces the tight integrations between its three flagship products. It's hard to say what kind of optimism the change will bring about when the company isn't serious about addressing its ongoing privacy issues or the possible financial effects of its quasi cryptocurrency. Viewed in that light, the design refresh may feel like more of a distraction than anything. It's still likely to be one of the more conspicuous changes to Facebook in a while — just not the most meaningful.
• Xerox reportedly considering making a cash-and-stock offer for HP, which has a market value of US$ 27 billion and is more than three times the size of the popular digital printing firm. (It's worth pointing out that HP is now a different company from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which sells servers, data storage, and services to companies.)
• Facebook reveals that an unspecified number of third-party apps from as many as 100 developers may have improperly accessed Groups members' data without adequate permissions to do so; comes as it seeks to clean up its data practices, honor its $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, and embark on a privacy-focused vision for the social network. (Facebook didn't disclose the names the developers or the apps that were flagged during the review, nor did it reveal the number of users who may have been affected by the issue.)
• Malaysia green lights motorcycle-hailing firms such as Indonesia's Gojek to start limited operations from January 2020, signalling a potential end to Grab's near-monopoly in Malaysia's broader ride-hailing market.
• Google open-sources phone-based VR software for its Cardboard headset, less than a month after the company discontinued its Daydream View VR headset; to drop official support for original Pixel phones released in 2016, three years after launch, starting next month post which the phones will no longer receive security updates and new software features.
• Home rental service Airbnb announces major safety changes to the platform, a week after five people died in a shooting at an Airbnb "party house" in California; to now verify all listings and have a 24/7 help line available in an attempt to ease safety and trust concerns.
• Twitter announces politics-free Topics, which lets users follow 300 subjects — such as sports, the entertainment world and gaming — in their timeline with an idea of letting people follow topics in addition to (or instead of) individual accounts.
• Facebook-owned WhatsApp begins rolling out an update that allows users block specific individuals from adding them to Groups; launches a catalog feature that makes it easy for small businesses to display a "mobile storefront" showcasing their wares with images and prices as it opens a new chapter in e-commerce on the platform (the feature, however, stops short of letting users buy the products from within the app, something Facebook added to Instagram with a "checkout" option on items tagged for sale and pay for them directly within the app) and begins testing a new feature in its flagship app that detects motion in a video selfie to check whether a face in the video to determine is a real person operating an account rather than a bot. (It's unclear at the moment on how Facebook will store and use this data.)
• Adobe previews new AI-powered About Face feature that analyses the pixels of an image, showing a heat map of which ones have been edited, and then reveals a probability that the image may have been manipulated.

• Tumblr launches a new group messaging feature that makes it easy for different fandoms on the site to chat more easily with each other instead of replying on re-blogs; the "group chats" can hold up to 100 members and function like public spaces, meaning that anyone can find and read them, though only approved members can send messages.
• Google debuts App Defense Alliance, a partnership with ESET, Lookout, Zimperium to catch Android malware early by streamlining and boosting data sharing efforts; YouTube for desktop web gains a new homepage design with larger thumbnails and features like adding videos to a queue, and fine-tune channel recommendations.
• Apple updates its privacy landing page to push privacy as a product and publish several technical whitepapers detailing how some of its most popular technologies work, including Safari, Photos, Location Services and Sign in with Apple; says app developers now must ask permission for Bluetooth access, for example, and explain why it is needed to prevent third-party apps from scanning for nearby Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices to approximate a user's location even when location-based services have been turned off.
• Walmart-owned Indian retail giant Flipkart to license Nokia's branding for a lineup of smart TVs with sound by JBL by Harman, months after Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus launched its own TV line in the country.
• Microsoft-owned code repository platform GitHub launches a native iOS app as a beta (Android app coming in 2020); announces improvements to code search and notification experience, as it launches a Security Lab to safeguard open-source code from security vulnerabilities.
• Facebook reportedly began cutting off access to user data for app developers from 2012 to squash potential rivals like MessageMe while presenting the move to the general public as a boon for user privacy, new court documents reveal, as the social media giant faces multiple investigations into possible antitrust violations by regulators around the world; CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives repeatedly called messaging apps a threat to Facebook, in the months leading up to the acquisition of WhatsApp, while considering entering the online dating business in 2014 but deferred, and instead gave Tinder special access to its user data.
• The fact that Facebook gave Amazon special access to user data because it was spending money on Facebook advertising, and cut off the messaging app MessageMe from accessing its users' data because it had grown too popular and could compete with Facebook, is indicative of the company's plans to consolidate the social network's power and control competitors by treating its users' data as a bargaining chip.
• If anything, the lack of a regulation in place, the fact that regulations are determined by those who don't fully understand what's going on, have led the big tech companies to continue functioning as they have been.
• It also proves that its anticompetitive behaviour is rooted in a deep sense of fear that it's vulnerable to rivals. To outsiders, it's a monolith that steamrolls entire industries and nation-states as it pursues its business goals. To insiders, it's a company stuck perpetually in panic mode, apprehensive of what may eat up the social media giant whole. Or to take a leaf out of its mission — If we don't create the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will.
• Chinese company Ziyan found to be actively marketing its Blowfish A3 — an autonomous helicopter-like drone armed with a machine gun — to international buyers, including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, that are capable of full autonomy, including the ability to conduct lethal targeted strikes.
• Ride-hailing platform Uber forays into ads business to cover up its mounting losses and find new streams of cash; to sell spots inside its Eats app to restaurants hoping to lure in more food delivery orders and grow their customer base, and enable eaters to discover new foods. (Uber's entry is the latest attempt by tech companies to break the Google-Facebook ad duopoly, with Snapchat, Pinterest, and Amazon emerging as profitable alternatives in recent years.)
• Apple releases iOS and iPadOS 13.2.2 update with a fix for a bug that unexpectedly terminated apps in the background far more aggressively, causing even a jump between two apps to reload Safari tabs or refresh YouTube and other media apps; Weather app stops showing air quality index data for Chinese cities after Weather Channel changes how it collects that data in China
• Uber to allow passengers and drivers to record audio of their trips in Brazil and Mexico, in response to rising safety concerns in the region; Chinese rival Didi Chuxing invites criticism for restricting women's freedoms over closing its Hitch carpooling service to female passengers after 8 PM. (Hitch was suspended in August 2018 following the deaths of two women passengers, but Didi announced plans to restart the service this month on a trial basis, allowing men to use from 5 AM to 11 PM, but imposing a 5 AM to 8 PM curfew for women.)
• Google rolls out Chrome OS 78 picture-in-picture support for YouTube, separate browser and device settings, cross-device sharing, and other Material Design improvements; brings document scanning feature to Google Camera on Android by integrating Google Lens into the viewfinder.
• Travel booking services Expedia and TripAdvisor trade at new year-to-date lows after missing quarterly expectations, pointing to weakened visibility in Google search results as a long-term revenue headwind.
• The U.S. Department of Justice charges two ex-Twitter employees, arresting one, with spying for Saudi Arabia by snooping on the kingdom critics, and accessing as many as 6,000 accounts in 2015.

• Facebook-owned Instagram begins hiding like counts in the U.S. as part its broader efforts to reduce social comparison and "give people more space to focus on connect ing with the people they love and things that inspire them"; comes amid concerns that hiding like counts could hurt influencers and a new study by HypeAuditor, which found that influencers with 5,000 to 20,000 followers almost unanimously saw their Like counts fall by 3 percent to 15 percent in countries where the hidden Like count test was active — Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and the U.K.
• Google to offer checking accounts to users, in partnership with Citibank and Stanford Federal credit union, starting as early as next year; partners with U.S.' second largest healthcare system Ascension to access personal health datasets that can be used to develop AI-based tools for medical providers.
• Brave web browser hits 8.7 million monthly active users as the privacy-focused web browser officially launches version 1.0 almost four years after its first release across Android, iOS, Windows 10, macOS and Linux.
• Python overtakes Java to become second-most popular programming language on repository platform GitHub after JavaScript.
• Facebook says 80 percent of hate speech removed for the period July to September (Q3) was identified by software, up from 68 percent in Q1, as well as proactively detecting content affiliated with terrorist organisations 98.5 percent of the time on Facebook and 92.2 percent of the time on Instagram; 4.4 million drug-related posts were taken down, removes 3.2 billion fake accounts between April and September this year (a total of 5.4 billion fake accounts so far in 2019), along with 11.6 million posts in Facebook and 754,000 pieces on Instagram depicting child abuse, and 2.5 million posts that depicted or encouraged suicide or self-injury in the third quarter.
• Apple unveils new 16-inch MacBook Pro starting at US$ 2,399 with Intel Core i7/ i9 processors, improved speakers, and a new keyboard; launches Replay for Apple Music, letting subscribers look back at their favourite music in 2019, similar to Spotify's year-end review, Wrapped, but updated each week.
• China's DJI, the world's largest commercial drone maker, confirms it's developing a remote identification solution that would allow its users to track the registrations of drones (and identify them) in flight using just a smartphone.
• Popular health websites in U.K. are sharing sensitive user data with dozens of companies including Google and Facebook along with data-brokers and ad-tech firms, according to a new investigation by The Financial Times; comes after a report by The New York Times found companies like Airbnb, Yelp and Coinbase to employ the services of data brokers like Sift and Kustomer to glean insights about valuable consumers and their estimated lifetime value.
• Facebook updates iOS app to fix issues that activated the camera in the background without a user's knowledge; showcases Facebook Pay, a unified payments gateway that works across its family of apps Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, allowing users to shop, donate to causes, book tickets and send money to friends, as Indian banking regulator, the Reserve Bank of India, informs the Supreme Court that WhatsApp is non-compliant with data localisation norms, hitting a snag with regards to launching WhatsApp Pay (separate from Facebook Pay) in the country.
• Alipay and WeChat Pay begin allowing foreign visitors to link international credit cards to make mobile payments in mainland China; partners with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover Global Network, and JCB to allow foreign visitors to link their credit cards to the respective payment solutions.
• Firefox, the free and open-source web browser developed by non-profit Mozilla, turns 15 years old.
• Instagram debuts Reels, a TikTok-style video remix feature, which lets users make 15-second video clips set to music and share them as Stories, in Brazil as part of its strategy to bring it to countries where TikTok is not already big.
• Motorola resurrects the popular Razr handset as a foldable smartphone for US$ 1,500; replaces the T9 keypad and small LCD screen with a 6.2-inch foldable plastic OLED panel and Android 9 Pie.
• Apple's entry into financial services with Apple Card faces a formal investigation by Wall Street regulators over gender discrimination allegations; comes after web programmer and author David Heinemeier Hansson revealed that he was offered 20 times the credit limit of his wife, and that customer service representatives were dismissive of the issue.
• Apple removes iPhone app Like Patrol from App Store that made it easy for people to stalk the activity of their friends and partners on Instagram by letting subscribers follow what other Instagram users were liking and commenting on, after the photo-sharing network removed the "following" tab in October.
• Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba celebrates its annual Singles' Day shopping blitz; sales hit US$ 38.4 billion, topping last year's record of US$ 30.7 billion, in what's become the world's biggest online sales event overtaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S.
• Microsoft says it will honour California's digital privacy law throughout the US; says "our approach to privacy starts with the belief that privacy is a fundamental human right and includes our commitment to provide robust protection for every individual."
• Microsoft's HoloLens 2 mixed reality headset — an upgraded version of the device first released in 2016 and featuring a wider field of view and more complex gesture controls — begins shipping for US$ 3,500 to preorder customers in the U.S., France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.K.; to discontinue its Cortana apps for Android and iOS effective January 31, 2020.
• Researchers and engineers from organisations such as Google, Intel, and Microsoft unveil MLPerf, a machine-learning benchmark suite that aims to measure the speed of machine-learning platforms; Massachusetts-based Applause (formerly uTest) begins offering a new AI testing service that better detects AI bias by crowdsourcing larger, diverse training data sets.