Yahoo launches a TV watching site, Yahoo View, in partnership with Hulu | TechCrunch

August 8, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo this morning is making a play for cord cutters with the launch of a new TV watching site called Yahoo View, featuring Hulu’s free content. The site will now become one of the only ways to watch Hulu’s TV shows and movies for free, as the company is planning to wind down its free version in favor of its subscription services – a plan that was already in the works ahead of the Yahoo partnership.

Yahoo [disclosure: Yahoo and TechCrunch are now both owned by Verizon] and Hulu have had a long-standing relationship for years, which saw Yahoo acting as a distributor of Hulu content, but this particular deal has been in the works for around six months.

And while Yahoo now has the status of “preferred partner,” it’s not an exclusive distribution partner – Hulu content is also available through a number of other sources, including Comcast, and on websites that carry its player, like People.com, EW, New York Magazine, and others.

Will China’s ‘elevated bus’ really work? | Money CNN

August 8, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The test run of a futuristic elevated bus cruising over the top of cars in China has generated a lot of buzz. But can it really work?

Experts say the massive vehicle faces a raft of challenges, and even if they’re overcome it will be many years before any of the country’s congested cities adopts the new transportation system.

“This is a unique idea to encourage people to improve the quality of transportation,” said Daizong Liu, China transport program director at the World Resources Institute. “But there are many related concerns.”

“Safety is the most important,” he said. “How would cars drive and turn under the bus? If there is an accident, how would you move passengers and vehicles out from underneath?”

Comcast Is Facing a $100 Million Lawsuit Over Its Service Plan | WIRED

August 3, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

YOU DON’T NEED us to tell you that Comcast has a bad reputation when it comes to customer service. For seven years in a row Comcast ranked at the bottom of 24/7 Wall St.’s annual customer satisfaction poll. Now the company’s business practices may land it in court.

This week Washington state filed a $100 million lawsuit against Comcast, accusing the company of 1.8 million violations of the the state’s Consumer Protection Act. The state isn’t suing Comcast for bad customer service per se, but for the sorts of misleading claims and practices that have given Comcast such a poor public image. (Comcast denies any wrongdoing.)

Bitcoin drops more than 10% after security breach | BBC News

August 3, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The price of bitcoin has fallen more than 10% after the Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange Bitfinex said it had suffered a major hack.

The security breach led to the possible theft of bitcoin worth $65m (£49m).

Bitfinex told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday that nearly 120,000 bitcoin were stolen from its exchange platform.

All transactions on the virtual exchange have been suspended while the security breach is investigated.

In a statement on its website, Bitfinex said that it was “deeply concerned about the issue and we are committing every resource to try to resolve it”.

The hack is one of the biggest thefts in bitcoin’s history and is being treated as a “major deal” by many in the virtual currency community.

Will this Company Disrupt Traditional Banking? | Inc.com

July 29, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I recently had the chance to sit down with Chris Britt, the CEO of Chime. Chime is an innovative company in the FinTech space that aspires to be the banking solution for Millennials.

There are several outstanding companies in mobile banking/fintech space right now, such as Acorns, Atom, Robinhood, Betterment and Wealthfront. It’s a particularly exciting time to be in fintech for entrepreneurs and investors.

Why did you decide to start Chime?

Chris Britt: Millennials hate the traditional banking options. Of the 10 LEAST loved brands among Millennials, four are financial institutions you know well – Bank of America, Chase, Citi and Wells Fargo. They’re moving away from bank branches and want to manage everything in their lives on their phone, including their finances.

Paramount settles EU pay-TV probe but other studios hold out | Money CNN

July 26, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Paramount has broken ranks with other Hollywood studios and agreed to ditch contentious contracts that restricted who could watch its movies on pay-TV in Europe.

Europe’s top regulator said Tuesday that Paramount will now allow customers across the European Union to access pay-TV content that had previously been restricted to the U.K. and Ireland.

Last year, the regulator accused Paramount and five competitors of illegally curbing European access to movies and TV shows through anti-competitive contracts with Britain’s Sky TV (SKYAY), part of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.

The other five studios the regulator fingered are: Disney (DIS), Comcast (CCV)-owned NBCUniversal, Sony (SNE), Twentieth Century Fox, also owned by 21st Century Fox (FOX), and Warner Bros. (Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner (TWX), which owns CNN.)

Dove’s new campaign challenges how the media portrays women in sports | Mashable

July 26, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Too muscular. Too short. Too stocky. Too young-looking.

Former gymnast and Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson was called a lot of things by the media in her time as an athlete. Often, few of them had anything to do with her athleticism.

Her mother would tell her over and over: “Honey, look at your success. Look how happy you are when you are out there on the floor. Don’t let what someone else is saying affect you.” Now, Johnson wants to be that voice for the next generations of girls, advocating for a shift in how we talk about female athletes.

Johnson announced on Tuesday that she’s teaming up with Dove to launch the #MyBeautyMySay campaign, encouraging the media and the general public to focus on the athletic ability of women in sports, not their looks.

Verizon Will Acquire Yahoo for $4.8 Billion with Advertising Assets Being Added to AOL | Small Biz Trends

July 25, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Verizon Communications Inc. today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Yahoo! Inc. for $4.83 billion. The acquisition only includes Yahoo’s core operating business, not its more valuable assets: Yahoo Japan and its $41 billion stake in Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce company.

This is not the first time Verizon purchased an aging Internet giant. Last year, the company picked up AOL for $4.4 billion.

“The addition of Yahoo to Verizon and AOL will create one of the largest portfolios of owned and partnered global brands with extensive distribution capabilities,” says the announcement.

The purchase gives Verizon access to Yahoo’s more than 1 billion monthly users — 600 million of whom are mobile users — which is most likely what piqued its interest in the first place.

Twitter Is Running Out of Time to Get Real About Fighting Abuse | WIRED

July 22, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER eruption of abuse on Twitter. This time, it was Breitbart writer and self-anointed “supervillain of the Internet” Milo Yiannopoulos, whom the company finally banned after he stoked his followers into flooding Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones with hateful and racist messages. Yiannopoulos went so far as to tweet out fake screenshots of things Jones supposedly but did not actually say on Twitter. In the end, Jones said she would leave Twitter altogether.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was apparently aware of the situation, tweeting at Jones as early as Monday evening. But Twitter still took another day to finally kick Yiannopolous off the platform after facing considerable public pressure. On Thursday afternoon, Jones posted a short tweet saying she was grateful for the public’s support. “People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter,” Twitter said in a statement addressing the incident. “But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.”