q42019
Latest
Blue Apron considers selling itself as it bleeds customers
Blue Apron has been struggling in recent years, and that's leading the company to consider some extreme options. The online meal kit service has revealed that it's looking at "strategic alternatives" that include a merger, raising funds, offloading assets or selling the company outright. It warned that there was no guarantee anything would happen, but this is the kind of language companies frequently use when they're running out of options.
Facebook settles lawsuit over its use facial recognition for $550 million
After years of wrangling in courts, Facebook has settled a lawsuit over its use of facial recognition. Last year it agreed to stop turning on the tech to scan photos by default, which built a template of your facial data, and automatically suggested tags in photos based on it. During an earnings call on Wednesday afternoon to announce that Q4 profits grew to $7.3 billion giving it a profit of over $18 billion for 2019, CFO David Wehner gave a one-line mention to the fact that they have a settlement in principle to pay $550 million to resolve the suit. Plaintiffs sued based on the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, arguing that its service did not receive "explicit consent" from users before collecting their data. Asked about the settlement, a spokesperson responded "We decided to pursue a settlement as it was in the best interest of our community and our shareholders to move past this matter." ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler pointed to the result as an example of what other states should do, saying "this case is a great example of how states can take the lead to protect their residents' privacy rights despite Congress' failure to do the same." According to one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, Jay Edelson, "Biometrics is one of the two primary battlegrounds, along with geolocation, that will define our privacy rights for the next generation. We are proud of the strong team we had in place that had the resolve to fight this critically important case over the last five years. We hope and expect that other companies will follow Facebook's lead and pay significant attention to the importance of our biometric information." The settlement will still need to be approved by a judge.
Tesla moves the Model Y release date up to 'spring 2020'
Tesla was on quite the roll in Q4 last year. The company unveiled its controversially popular electric Cybertruck at the Los Angeles Auto Show, Elon Musk won his "pedo guy" defamation suit, and the first Model 3s produced at Tesla's new Shanghai Gigafactory rolled off the assembly line. The company also delivered 112,000 vehicles in that quarter, and 367,500 vehicles over the full year -- that's a 50 percent increase over 2018.
Netflix changes how it counts viewing popularity, pumps up 'The Witcher'
Netflix's final earnings results for 2019 are out (PDF), and in a year where it suddenly started to face more competition than ever before, the company says its service and content is only becoming more popular. The letter to investors claims that its new series The Witcher "is tracking to be our biggest season one TV series ever," and explains a new method for measuring those statistics. The new phrasing it's using is "choosing to watch," and as such, 76 million households clicked play and let The Witcher stream for more than a couple of minutes in the first four weeks since it was released.
