Sand Technologies

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.

https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-app-apparently-suffering-outage/

Uber app apparently suffering outage Uber Eats seems to be affected as well.

https://gizmodo.com/apps-you-use-every-day-are-tracking-your-every-move-ac-1830980646

Apps You Use Every Day Are Tracking Your Every Move: Report While you probably already know enabling location services for third-party apps might compromise your privacy, an investigative New York Times report details just how creepy and personal smartphone location data can be.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/7/18130635/amazon-alexa-skills-contextual-awareness-ai

Alexa is implementing self-learning techniques to better understand users Alexa will understand you meant to say "Play Nice for what" instead of "Good for what."

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/8/18132096/fbi-investigating-fake-net-neutrality-comments-fcc-new-york-washington-dc-massachusetts

The FBI is now investigating fake anti-net neutrality comments Following the lead of state-level investigations from New York, Massachusetts, and Washington DC

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/7/18130925/fcc-investigation-coverage-maps

FCC investigating whether carriers gave inaccurate information on rural coverage maps Chairman says there could be "significant violations"

https://youtu.be/WBkgs4u5tW0

Riding a Waymo self-driving taxi Today, Waymo rolls out a driverless taxi service called Waymo One in Arizona. The company has been operating self-driving cars, occasionally without safety d...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/post-mortem-tying-edge-to-windows-10-was-a-fatal-error/

Edge dies a death of a thousand cuts as Microsoft switches to Chromium An unnecessary coupling between browser and operating system made compatibility too hard.

Google is discontinuing Hangouts in 2020.

Google to simplify messaging strategy, will support only five messaging apps Quintuple-app strategy offers "a simpler and more unified communications experience."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/fcc-still-hiding-possible-evidence-of-russia-meddling-in-net-neutrality-comments/

“What is the FCC hiding?” Pai still won’t release net neutrality server logs FCC denies NYT appeal, says producing requested records is too hard.