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Yandex sells its Russian operations to local executives for $5.2 billion
The company sold its news aggregation service in 2022, not long after the founder was sanctioned at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Russian tech giant Yandex reportedly looking to break free from its home country
Alexei Kudrin, the country's former finance minister, is reportedly helping Yandex secure Vladimir Putin's blessing.
Anonymous claims responsibility for Moscow traffic jam tied to app exploit
On Thursday morning, Moscow’s busy Fili district became the site of a traffic jam unlike almost any before it.
Hackers deface Russian platforms and smart TVs to display anti-war messages
On the same day Russia celebrated its role in defeating Nazi Germany, many of the country’s online platforms were defaced in protest of the war in Ukraine. The Washington Post reported on Monday that Russians with smart TVs saw channel listings replaced with a message implicating them in the ongoing conflict. “The blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of murdered children is on your hands,” the message read, according to the outlet. “TV and authorities are lying. No to war.” In addition to Smart TVs, the apparent hack targetted some of the country’s largest internet companies, including Yandex. Hackers also went after Rutube, Russia’s alternative to YouTube. “Our video hosting has undergone a powerful cyberattack. At the moment, it is not possible to access the platform,” the service said in a statement it posted on its Telegram channel. Rutube later stated it had isolated the attack and that its content library wasn’t accessed in the incident. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, the country has come under consistent attack from hackers. In the early days of the conflict, Anonymous claimed responsibility for a series of DDoS attacks that left several official government websites, including one belonging to the Ministry of Defence, inaccessible. It’s believed Anonymous was also responsible for an incident that saw several Russian state TV channels play the Ukranian national anthem. At the same time, Ukraine, with help from Microsoft and other western companies, recently managed to prevent Russian military hackers from disrupting one of the country’s energy providers.
Russia threatens to block Wikipedia over Ukraine invasion article
Its communications regulator cited 'illegally distributed information' about casualty figures.
Uber looks to speed up sale of its stake in Russian ride-hailing app Yandex
The company currently owns a 29% stake in Russia's largest ride-hailing platform.
Grubhub and Yandex bring autonomous deliveries to US college campuses
Self-driving robots will start dropping off food at some campuses this fall.
Apple begins showing Russian iPhone owners state-approved apps during setup
Apple has been forced to show Russian iPhone users a recommended list of local apps following the implementation of a new law.
Yandex's autonomous cars have driven over six million miles in 'challenging conditions'
Yandex's self-driving cars have now driven over 10 million kilometres, mostly on Moscow's icy roads.
Yandex updates its self-driving tech on the 2020 Hyundai Sonata
Yandex revealed its fourth-generation self-driving car, a collaboration with Hyundai.
Yandex is testing autonomous delivery robots at its Moscow HQ
Delivery robots from Amazon, Postmates and Starship are already in the wild, but they're not the only ones with self-driving couriers. Another tech giant, Yandex, is working on its own autonomous package carrier, called Yandex.Rover.
Yandex will stream every NHL game for free in Russia
Over the last couple of years, we've seen more and more major tech companies step into sports streaming, from Facebook and Twitch to Twitter and Amazon. Yandex has just landed a major deal on that front, as it will stream every NHL game for free in Russia for the next several years.
Government hackers reportedly broke into Russian search company Yandex
According to a Reuters report, hackers working for Western intelligence agencies reportedly broke into Yandex, the company often referred to as "Russia's Google." The hackers were allegedly looking for technical information that would indicate how Yandex authenticates user accounts. That information could help a spy agency impersonate Yandex users and obtain access to their private messages.
Facebook's data sharing excesses even surprised its 'partners'
We regret to inform you that we may have published our article titled "Facebook's terrible 2018" just a few hours too early. Tonight the New York Times has once again dug into the social network and assembled -- based on internal documents and interviews with employees, former employees and business partners --an unflattering picture of the data it has been sharing for years with the likes of Bing and Rotten Tomatoes. Taken as a whole, these revelations make the Cambridge Analytica data leak revelations seem almost insignificant. Even with the last few months and years of revelations, the behavior described is surprising -- and not just for users. According to the article, companies like Apple and Russian search giant Yandex claimed to not know how much access Facebook had given them to user information. In the case of Yandex, the NYT said Facebook initially claimed the company wasn't an "integration partner" in October just months before telling Congress it actually is, and had access to Facebook's unique user IDs longer than others apps. It claims that Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada had access to read, write and delete private messages as well as see who was on a message thread. Apple had special access to phone numbers and calendar entries that the company said it was not aware of, while also leaving no trace that its devices were pulling in the data. According to a Netflix spokesperson, "At no time did we access people's private messages on Facebook, or ask for the ability to do so." Spotify has said it was unaware of this access, and Royal Bank of Canada disputed that it had such access. Microsoft had access to the names of Facebook's users friends and was apparently building profiles of Facebook users on its own servers, while Sony and Amazon could snag email addresses of a user's friends. Even the New York Times itself makes an appearance, with an app that was discontinued in 2011 still retaining access to users' friends list.
Russian search giant Yandex is making phones now
After self-driving cars and smart speakers, Russian search engine giant Yandex is getting into smartphones. Its debut handset, fittingly titled "Yandex.Phone," is an entry-level Android device that's hooked up to its massive ecosystem. That essentially means it comes pre-loaded with Yandex's software -- including its GPS, music, and weather apps.
Yandex begins public tests of its self-driving cars in Russia
Russia's Yandex has taken its self-driving efforts one step further, launching an autonomous ride-hailing service in the university city of Innopolis, Russia. The company claims it's the first such service to launch in Europe. For now, there will be two self-driving vehicles in operation and they'll provide rides to specific locations, such as the university, the stadium and residential blocks, for free. A safety engineer will ride in the passenger seat and around 100 people have agreed to test the service.
Russian search giant Yandex built a smart speaker for its AI assistant
Russia isn't going to sit on the sidelines while American companies like Amazon and Google conquer the smart speaker world. Search giant Yandex has launched the Yandex.Station, billed both as Russia's first smart speaker and the company's first hardware product. The device uses Yandex's in-house voice assistant, Alice, to handle upwards of 4,000 skills like checking traffic, ordering pizza or finding flights. However, its real specialty is video -- it's an unusual bridge between audio-only speakers and smart displays.
Yandex wants to ensure its self-driving cars can survive the winter
Many self-driving car tests are conveniently run in warm, sunny climates where the road conditions are rarely less than ideal. But what about that significant chunk of the planet that gets snowfall? Yandex is finding out. The Russian internet giant has started testing its autonomous Prius cars in winter conditions around Moscow's suburbs to see how they fare when snow obscures the roads and ice makes traction difficult. The video you see here is highly edited, but it suggests that the driverless machines are up to the job -- they can stay in their lanes, come to smooth stops and brake for pedestrians.
Uber gets the go-ahead for its Russian merger
Uber's merger with Yandex's taxi service is effectively a done deal. Russian antitrust regulators have approved the union between the two ride-hailing companies, clearing the way for its expected completion in January 2018. The deal gives Yandex majority control (59.3 percent), but prevents the newly united companies from blocking drivers, partners or passengers from getting involved with rival services.
Meet Alice: The virtual assistant from Russian search giant Yandex
Russian search giant Yandex has unveiled its virtual assistant Alice. Like Alexa or Siri, Alice provides users with directions, weather forecasts and news as well as incorporating access to other Yandex offerings like its music service. And, of course, it does all of this in Russian, which Yandex points out isn't an easy language for AI to tackle. "Speech recognition is especially challenging for the Russian language due to its grammatical and morphological complexities," Yandex it said in a statement. "According to word error rate measurements, SpeechKit provides world-best accuracy for spoken Russian recognition, enabling Alice to understand speech with a near human-level accuracy."
