Tech Brew Ride Home - Thursday, Mar. 29, 2018 - The Big Microsoft Re-Org

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

A big re-org at Microsoft, Facebook cuts out third party ad data, iOS 11.3 is out, Trump tweets his “concerns” about Amazon, Atlanta is digitally held hostage and Ripple donates to charity. Tweets from: @tomwarren, @caro_milanesi Stories from: @atbwebb Credits: Produced by @brianmcc and the @techmeme staff Music by @jpschwinghamer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Thursday, March 29, 2018. Today, a big reorg at Microsoft. Facebook cuts out third-party ad data.

iOS 11.3 is out. Trump tweets his concerns about Amazon. Atlanta is digitally held hostage and Ripple donates to charity. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. News of a huge executive and organization. reshuffling at Microsoft today. Terry Meyersson, Microsoft's executive vice president of Windows, will leave the company, quote, in the coming months. In his wake, a new group will be formed at Microsoft called Experiences and Devices, which will now group Windows and office operations

together under a single banner. Microsoft CEO Sacha Nadella said in an email to employees, quote, the purpose of this team is to instill a unifying product ethos across our end-user experiences and devices. Computing experiences are evolving to include multiple senses and are no longer bound to one device at a time, but increasingly spanning many as we move from home to work and on the go, end quote. The Verges Tom Warren tweeted about this news, quote, I think it's clear from Microsoft's rework today

that the future of Windows will power Microsoft's cloud, and AI efforts. Microsoft needs to swing towards thinking about software and services that follow people across devices that aren't running Windows. And Carolina Milanesi tweeted, it seems to me that Nadella is setting up Microsoft to deliver what really matters, not an OS, but an experience.

Not to say that Windows no longer matters, but it's part of the formula, not the only ingredient. More Facebook news, of course. I almost feel like I should get some special Facebook bumper music if we're going to have to keep talking about this story every single day. Facebook today said that it will stop using data from third-party data aggregators to supplement its own data for the purposes of ad targeting. Facebook had previously allowed advertisers to target people in three ways. First, using data from Facebook itself based on user activity and profiles. second, using data that the advertiser might already have itself, for example, your email address,

but also third, using data from third-party services like Experian, which collect and monitor offline data such as purchasing activity, credit ratings, and the like. Facebook's product marketing director Graham Mud said in a statement, quote, We want to let advertisers know that we will be shutting down partner categories. This product enables third-party data. providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook. While this is common industry practice, we believe this step, winding down over the next six months, will help improve people's privacy on Facebook, end quote.

Kurt Wagner at Recode wrote that this move from Facebook is, quote, indicative of a broader effort by Facebook to clean up its data practices given backlash from users, advertisers, and investors. Former Facebook employee Antonio Garcia Martinez tweeted, this was a weird slash bad idea anyhow, and Facebook is probably closing this due to lack of adoption, plus scoring some easy PR points in the midst of a debacle. So long as custom audiences is still there, the magic will continue.

TechCrunch's Josh Konstine speculated, quote, was Facebook properly auditing third-party ad-targeting providers to ensure their data wasn't wrongly attained? I wonder if this is trying to preempt the next scandal. Well, the current so-called scandal that we seem to still be embroiled in was rolling on yesterday as New York Magazine's Select All Vertical was reporting that when users are downloading their data archives from Facebook's Download Your Information Tool,

some users have been surprised to discover the archive contains videos that users never actually posted to Facebook. How did this happen? I'll let Select All's Madison Malone Kirchner describe it. In the pre-Facebook live era, leaving videos on your friend's walls was something of a crude face time. You'd post a video, they'd respond with a video, and so forth. Importantly, Facebook had a feature that let users film videos via webcam on Facebook itself, that is, without ever leaving the Facebook site to use a video recorder.

Once you were done filming, Facebook would show you a video. preview of your clip. If you decided to do another take, you could click to discard that video and try it again, except the video wasn't actually deleted. Instead, Facebook apparently saved your unused clip. Kircher has reached out to Facebook, which reports that it is investigating. Over at Bloomberg Gadfly, Alex Webb pointed out that while a lot of the announced privacy and policy changes Facebook has been talking about recently, have been thought. to be a reaction to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, of course. But in fact, a lot of these changes, according to him, are ones that Facebook was going to have to make anyway. See, the European

Union recently enacted a general data protection regulation, or GDPR, which goes into effect May 25th. If Facebook did not bring its policies and operations into line with the GDPR, it would be on the hook for about 4% of global revenues as a fine. Last year, that would have meant Facebook writing a check to the EU for $1.6 billion. So, as Webb points out, quote, the ability to download your photos and posts and move them elsewhere, that falls under the GDPR's data portability stipulations. To delete data, the GDPR dubs that the, quote, right to be forgotten.

Seeing how your data is used to push ads, adds in your direction. That's the quote, right to access. Web concluded his piece by writing, the new measures are undeniably in the interest of the consumer, but only the timing is voluntary. Finally, CBS News has a piece up that outlines the way Facebook keeps making the same promises on data privacy, often using the exact same language. CBS looked at Facebook announcements and press release is going back to 2006 and found quite a pattern. For example, in September of 2006, Facebook announced, quote, additional controls for newsfeed and mini feed in response to user feedback and to reaffirm its commitment to industry-leading privacy practices. This was days after Facebook

first launched the news feed as a feature. People might not remember this, but when the news feed was first launched, it was hugely controversial and led to a backlash among users. Perhaps Facebook's first real taste of this sort of thing. If you read histories of the company, insiders were in a panic at the time and were briefly considering rolling back the news feed, which is historically ironic, of course, because the news feed proved to be Facebook's killer app. But then, two years later, it's March of 2008. Facebook announces that it would be, quote, introducing privacy updates that give users more control over the information they choose to share on Facebook. In December of 2009, quote,

many users have expressed that the current set of privacy choices are confusing or overwhelming. In response to the privacy settings page has been completely redesigned with the goal of making the controls easy, intuitive, and accessible. In May of 2010, quote, over the past few weeks, the number one thing we've heard is that many users want a simpler way to control their information. Today, we're starting to roll out changes that will make our controls simpler. and easier. In September 2014, Facebook announced its privacy checkup tool by saying, quote, we know you come to Facebook to connect with friends, not with us, but we also know how important it is

to be in control of what you share and who you share with. And then, just January of last year, Facebook rolled out a feature called Privacy Basics, which it said was, quote, built using your feedback. Everything is organized so that information about protecting your privacy is easy to find. So Facebook seemingly really wants to allow us to control our data and privacy because we've seemingly been very vocal about that. But somehow, I guess they've never gotten things just right because they've tried to crack this same nut over and over again for many years. You might already be aware because you've gotten a notification about this on your phone. But this afternoon, Apple released iOS 11.3, the 12th update of the latest version of iOS. Devices capable of installing the update include the iPhone 5S and later, the iPad Mini 2 and later,

the iPad Air and later, and the 6-generation iPod Touch. This update is more on the major side as it's bringing along with it several new features, including the new battery health feature that Apple promised to include following the backlash over power management settings in older iPhones. There's also AR Kit 1.5, which will allow for more and better augmented reality apps, and the new health records feature that stores your medical records in one place. If you're on the iPhone 10, there are four new an emoji, a dragon, a bear, a skull, and a lion. There are also, of course, the usual bug fixes and other tiny tweaks and updates.

As always, to install the update, go to settings, then go to general and then software. update. P.S. Apple HomePod connected speakers got their first ever software update today, and WatchOS 4.3 is also out, which has a few slightly new tweaks for the Apple Watch fans out there. Interestingly, after you update your phone, you'll see a new page appear, introducing you to the data privacy icon that iOS will apparently be using going forward. The icon shows two people shaking hands and will appear every time an Apple feature needs to ask to use your personal data. On the update page, users will see after installing Apple wrote, quote, Apple believes privacy is a fundamental human right.

So every Apple product is designed to minimize the collection and use of your data, use on-device processing wherever possible, and provide transparency and control over your information, end quote. I think we know who that's a none too subtle dig at. A quick follow-up to that story yesterday about how President Trump is reportedly, quote-unquote, obsessed with Amazon. As he is wont to do, President Trump himself confirmed this story after a fashion by tweeting about it this morning. From his at real Donald Trump account at 4.57 a.m. Eastern, the president tweeted this morning, quote, I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the election.

Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state and local governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy, causing tremendous loss to the U.S., and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business. I hope author Brian Klass won't mind being the stand-in to offer a rebuttal to the president's assertions. Class tweeted, quote, Number one, Amazon paid $412 million in income tax in 2016 and collects sales tax in every state that has them. Number two, being angry at a business for using the post office to deliver mail is unhinged lunacy. Number three, Trump has explicitly linked his attacks on Amazon to Bezos owning the Washington Post, end quote.

According to CNBC, Amazon's shares were up as much as 1.6% in pre-market trading. Before the president's tweet, the stock fell 2.6% after the market opened. Many people are making the point that Amazon's business is one of the things actually keeping the USPS afloat. Although, as CNBC notes, critics argue that the Postal Service could have negotiated a better deal with the online retail giant. But other analysts have said that the biggest threat to the Postal Service would actually be if Amazon were to fully roll out its own delivery service and cut the U.S. PS out of the loop entirely. The Postal Service actually added Sunday deliveries in 2013, specifically to make delivery of Amazon packages.

There's a story that's been sort of simmering under the surface all week that I wanted to highlight because it's really kind of fascinating and not a little scary. The lead here is this. Digital hackers hijacked data services operated by the city of Atlanta, Georgia, and have been demanding that a ransom be paid. before they allow access to the services again. Beginning a week ago today, Atlanta was hit by a ransomware attack, which is when hackers lock up a victim's computer files with encryption

and give the victim a week or so to pay up before the files are made permanently inaccessible. Atlanta officials said that the ransom demand they received amounted to about $51,000. Some major systems, such as 911 calls and controls for wastewater treatment were not affected, by the attack, but courts were unable to validate warrants all week. The city government could not feel job applications, traffic tickets and water bills could not be paid online, and all of Atlanta's 8,000 municipal employees were told to turn off their computers and keep them off for several days. The Wi-Fi at Atlanta's airport is still reportedly not able to be used. We are dealing with a hostage situation. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said this week, in Atlanta,

A man-based threat research company, DELS SecureWorks, has been helping the city dig out from this mess and has reportedly identified the perpetrators as a hacking gang known as Sam-Sam. The New York Times reports that, quote, the Sam-Sam group is known for choosing targets that are the most likely to accede to its high ransom demands, typically the Bitcoin equivalent of about $50,000, and for finding and locking up the victim's most valuable data, end quote. The group apparently likes to attack hospitals, police departments, and universities, groups with just enough money to pay up to avoid the hassle. And it is believed that Sam Sam has extorted more than $1 million from 30 target organizations in 2018 alone. At the time of this recording, it is not known if Atlanta has paid the ransom or not. Mayor Bottoms reported that the city has been able to make due by resorting to old school pen and ferns. paper to keep the city operating. Quote, it was a sustainable model until we got computer systems, the mayor told the New York

Times. It worked for many years. And for some of our younger employees, it will be a nice exercise in good penmanship. Finally, today, the cryptocurrency company Ripple made a $29 million donation to a public school charity to fund school supplies for students all across the U.S. The donation was made through donors' donors. choose.org, a nonprofit organization that allows individuals to donate directly to public school classroom projects, and the donation was made using Ripple's own XRP tokens. According to Stephen

Colbert, who noted the donation on his show recently, the donation represents the largest ever gift made on the DonorsChoose.org platform. Apparently, in one fell swoop, it fulfilled every single one of the 35,000 open requests listed on the site at that time. Teachers across the country took to various social media platforms to sing Ripple's praises after learning of the news, and Hunter Walk tweeted, quote, if the different cryptocurrencies want to battle for legitimacy via charitable donation, I'm here for that.

That's the tech meme ride home for today. I've been your host, Brian McCullough. follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. The editors at TechMeme helped me with the production, of course. Be sure to check them out at Techmeme.com for the very latest. Talk at you tomorrow.