11.10.2015
Good to Know: ICYMI, yesterday Google featured Hedy Lamarr who is more known for her acting chops back in the day than being the designer of a communication system during World War II that set the groundwork for modern Wi-fi.
THE SKINNY
When Tragedy Strikes …
Freelance journalist Zak Stone published a seriously tragic and heart-wrenching story about how his dad died while staying at an AirBnB rental during a family trip. The incident happened about two years ago but now he’s letting everyone know how a major safety hazard on the AirBnB property took his dad’s life.
Now What?
His family’s story adds fuel to the ongoing debate about sharing economy services and their consumers’ safety. In AirBnB’s case, questions are being raised about the company’s responsibilities regarding safety. The site offers safety pointers to hosts under the “Trust” section of its site. The company also suggests to hosts that getting renter’s or homeowner’s insurance is probably a good idea. The insurance issue a huge deal.
Why?
Well, the problem is a lot of home owner’s insurance policies out there don’t include commercial activity like AirBnBs. So basically, people can get the insurance, but it still wouldn’t cover their AirBnB rental. To fix that issue, the company began offering Host Protection Insurance for up to $1 million earlier this year.
What to Do?
AirBnB and other sharing economy companies are working to put more safety measures in place. But, Zak notes that AirBnB is still not held to same standards as hotels (which is a huge point of contention between AirBnB and regular hotels). Sharing economy companies say that users’ reviews will weed out all the bad folks in their system, but consumer advocates want more than that. The struggle continues between balancing the benefits of these services with issues like safety.
In the Meantime …
Here’s Zak’s post in full but please proceed with caution.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Not Many Things In Life Are Free …
Google is giving away its machine learning software TensorFlow. In normal people speak, TensorFlow is software the company uses to make computers “smarter” (e.g., teaching a computer to recognize cats by saturating its computer network with millions of cat images courtesy of YouTube). No, this doesn’t mean Google is going to kill its own business. The search company wants people to spend time with the software, come up with new ways to use the thing, and also hopefully improve the software. If you’ve got what it takes, then by all means, have at it!
When People Are Playing Games …
Immigration is a major issue in the United States (U.S.) and will continue to rage with upcoming presidential elections next year. The tech industry has been pretty vocal about the need for more H-1B visas, three-year work permits for foreign-born professionals to legally work in the U.S. With each passing year, the demand for these visas (only 85k available in total) are only going up. The demand is so high that the U.S. government had to put in place a lottery so regardless of whether people are qualified or not, their chances to legally stay in the U.S. to earn a living comes down to the luck of the draw. French born software engineer Théo Négri thought he had a promising career in San Francisco. But, that dream was cut short after he didn’t make it through the lottery. Négri later found out through data analysis that large global outsourcing companies are “gaming” the system by submitting thousands of applications and clogging up the system, leaving American companies with fewer chances of locking down a visa for their foreign-born applicants. Things definitely need to change.
The Clock Is Ticking …
A Belgian court wants Facebook to stop tracking people who aren’t users of its site. For the past five years, whenever an Internet user visits FB, a cookie (aka a file that tracks when someone visits a site and also certain online activities) is instantly triggered. This applies to non-FB users, which the court doesn’t think is right. The court says FB can only track people who directly give their consent; otherwise, the company will be fined 250,000 euros (£180,000) daily. The court gave FB two days to come into compliance, but the social networking is putting up a fight and plans to appeal the decision.
THE STREETS ARE TALKIN’
U.S. President Barack Obama got a Facebook for the country’s top position. His first post is about climate change.
Facebook Messenger is relying on facial recognition technology for its new Photo Magic feature. Photo Magic can i.d. your friends in photos and then asks if you want to send it to them or not. Photo Magic makes its first debut “Down Under.”
Match Group, Inc., parent company of many dating sites and apps that we know, is looking to get in the money. The company is looking at a $3.4 billion IPO and wants to raise $536.7 million to get there.
Tag Heuer Connected is Android’s answer to Apple Watch. You can get yourself one of these bad boys for $1500.
Indian e-commerce company Flipkart partnered with Google to revamp its new mobile website. One point for Google! It’s a good way to get new Internet users from emerging markets, especially since most of them live in India and will be accessing the web via mobile phones.
Social platform Twitter is looking to diversify its Board of Directors.
Some execs recently peaced out on Yahoo so its CEO Marissa Mayer came up with an idea. Mayer wants the remaining execs to sign a pledge saying they’ll stay on with the company for three to five years. Interesting.
Apple’s 12-inch iPad Pro hit stores tomorrow.