Bitcoin is moving up, and it’s taking 99 of its best friends along for the ride. In the last 24 hours, every one of the top 100 coins by market cap was in the green, with 84 of them posting gains of over 5 percent. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was sitting at $7,310, up 14 percent in the last 7 days and up almost 10 percent in the last 24 hours.
Category: News and Views
Strikes, Boycotts, and Outages Mar Amazon Prime Day | WIRED
PRIME DAY, WHICH began Monday, is one of Amazon’s biggest promotions of the year, when the retailer offers deals to subscribers of its Prime service.
This year, some Amazon workers in Europe are striking during Prime Day, hoping to draw attention to working conditions like proposed cuts in wages and health benefits. In solidarity, some consumers have been boycotting the company and its many subsidiaries, like Twitch and Whole Foods.
FCC may soon charge you $225 to investigate your complaint | Mashable
Late last December, nearly 24 million comments poured into the FCC after the agency revealed its plans, spearheaded by its chairman Ajit Pai, to roll back net neutrality.
The FCC’s rules, as they stand, require all comments from the public to be forwarded to the commissioners, and for the commissioners to take these comments into consideration when casting a vote on a new measure.
Well, it seems like the current FCC doesn’t want to bother having to read through all your comments anymore. At least, not without getting paid for it.
Disney would dominate the US box office if it buys Fox | Money CNN
Disney is already the king of the box office. And if the company’s $71.3 billion deal for most of 21st Century Fox goes through, it will add even more big-name franchises — including Deadpool, the X-Men and Avatar — to its roster.
The end result: A company with clout unmatched by any other traditional movie maker.
This year’s box office sales show how formidable the new super-company could be. Thanks to “Black Panther,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Incredibles 2” and “Deadpool 2,” Disney (DIS) and Fox (FOXA) together control nearly half of the domestic market share so far in 2018, according to Box Office Mojo.
Can cult online brands go mainstream without selling out? | Econsultancy
Many brands have bloomed online by forging communities more akin to a subculture of fans than ‘consumers’.
Combining the appeals of ecommerce – low overheads and economies of scale – with an ability to tap incredibly engaged communities using social media and data has played out well for many brands, particularly in the fashion and lifestyle space.
But digital tools aren’t the whole story behind these brands’ success. In fact, for its capabilities in building tightly defined and highly engaged fan bases, digital targeting can wind up creating something of a brand’s own filter bubble – in which the scope of a brand’s potential audience is limited by those it already knows intimately. Of course, sustainable growth may require brands to diversify beyond a purely online strategy.
Gen Z & Millennial Females’ 10 Favorite Beauty Brands | Ypulse
WHO’S THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL? YPULSE’S YOUTH BRAND TRACKER RESULTS REVEAL THE FAVORITE BEAUTY BRANDS OF GEN Z AND MILLENNIAL FEMALES…
To be at the top of the beauty market, capturing young consumers is essential—because Millennials and Gen Z consumers are actually buying makeup more than Boomers. The makeup industry has seen a surge in recent years as chasing the latest makeup trends and shopping for products supported by fan-favorite influencers have gained traction with young consumers. The Financial Post reports that Ulta Beauty has seen sales surge from $3.9 billion two years ago to $5.9 billion in 2017, while Sephora revenues “have doubled since 2011.”
Thailand cave: Internet cables being wired to stranded soccer team | Business Insider
Authorities in Thailand are working on running a fiber optic cable into the flooded cave where a Thai soccer team is stranded, so the 12 boys and their coach can get on the internet.
Officials have been working with Thailand’s Navy SEALs to install the cable in the Tham Luang cave system, where the group is trapped, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
They tried to install the cable on Tuesday but the equipment was damaged by water.
Firms ‘running out of patience’ on Brexit | BBC News
Firms are running out of patience over the lack of progress in the Brexit talks, a major business organisation has warned Theresa May.
The British Chambers of Commerce has published a list of 23 “real-world” questions that it says urgently need answers as the UK’s EU exit approaches.
The list covers subjects including VAT, tariffs, customs and regulations.
The BCC said companies were no clearer on these critical issues than they were immediately after the referendum.
Facebook Is Patenting Technology to Spy on You Through Your Smartphone Camera and Microphone | Inc.com
Is Facebook using your computer camera to read your facial expressions and determine how you feel about what you see on your screen? Is it using your phone’s microphone to eavesdrop on you and find out what television programs you watch? Is it tracking your phone’s location in the middle of the night to find out where you live?
Maybe not, or at least not yet. But the company has applied for patents to do all these things, and many others, all of them intended to study your behavior and personality and even predict your future, in order to better serve Facebook’s customers. You may think that’s you, but it’s actually Facebook’s advertisers, which account for 99 percent of its revenue.
Facebook is buying UK’s Bloomsbury AI to ramp up natural language tech in London | TechCrunch
Perhaps rightly, there has long been a perception that Google-owned Deepmind has been the most aggressive in hoovering up a lot of the U.K.’s best talent in artificial intelligence, but now Facebook appears to be turning its eye to the country.
TechCrunch understands that the social network behemoth is acquiring London-based Bloomsbury AI, a startup that has built natural language processing (NLP) technology to help machines answer questions based on information gleaned from documents. According to sources, Facebook plans to deploy the company’s team and tech to work on combatting fake news and to tackle other content issues.
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