Trump met with some of the
most prominent execs from
the tech industry
this week, including Eric
Schmidt and Larry Page of
Google, Tim Cook of Apple,
Satya Nadella of Microsoft
and Sheryl Sandberg of
Facebook. Oracle CEO Safra
Catz joined Trump’s
transition team
, and the Strategic and Policy
Forum picked up Uber CEO
Travis Kalanick and Tesla’s
Elon Musk as board members
. While it appears
advantageous for Uber to
strategically sign on to
ensure a smooth IPO
process, Musk’s motivations
remain unclear.
2. Yahoo suffered yet
another massive hack
. The company was alerted
by law enforcement to the
breach of 1 billion accounts
and has examined the data
with the help of outside
forensic experts. It appears
to be entirely separate from
the other breach we learned
about in September
. Verizon must be feeling just
stellar.
3. Uber’s self-driving cars
started picking up
passengers
in San Francisco, and were
promptly ordered to stop.
Uber began the launch with
Volvo XC90 SUVs outfitted
with sensors and
supercomputers in an
expansion of the self-
driving pilot project in
Pittsburgh. Uber didn’t have
a necessary state permit
needed to test autonomous
vehicles on public roads, but
launched anyway and is now
refusing to stop operating
these vehicles.
4. Google announced that it
is spinning out its self-
driving car unit as a
separate company called
Waymo
. It will operate under
Alphabet and will be more
focused on self-driving tech
rather than the cars
themselves.
5. Facebook made a move to
combat its fake news issue.
The network will now flag
and down-rank fake news
with help from outside fact
checkers at Snopes,
FactCheck.org, Politifact, ABC
News and AP. Baby steps?
6. Move over, Pokémon GO.
The hot new Super Mario Run
game became available on
the App Store for iOS and
iPad. It brings back all the
Mario nostalgia one could
hope for, and costs $10. It
also crushed Pokémon GO’s
record for Day One game
downloads, surpassing 5
million