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Amy Maxmen / Nature : As anonymized phone records of millions of people in low-income countries are used in big data projects for saving lives, critics worry about potential misuse   —  Researchers have analysed anonymized phone records of tens of millions of people in low-income countries. from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2Z1dajm

Dieter Bohn / The Verge : What to expect from WWDC 2019: new Mac Pro, iOS 13 with Dark Mode and updates to core apps, macOS 10.15 with Marzipan apps, and 31.6-inch 6K pro display   —  Apple's big Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote is happening on Monday, June 3rd, and this year looks to be more consequential than most. from Techmeme http://bit.ly/3118hZ6

Tony Romm / Washington Post : Sources: DOJ began work on a possible Google antitrust investigation after brokering a deal with FTC, which considered and opted not to pursue the case in 2013   —  The potential probe could open a new chapter in the tech giant's troubles with regulators around the world who contend that the company is too large. from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2W1Od5r

Alex Kantrowitz / Tech Giant Update : Camera app VSCO, which has an ad-free social feed and makes its money on subscriptions, says 2M+ people paid $20 in 2018 for its premium service   —  Friday, May 31 The camera app VSCO is unlike its social counterparts.  Though it has a feed similar to Facebook's News Feed and Twitter's Timeline … from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2W5igcl

Good news: Apple now allows you to download bigger apps over a cellular connection than it used to. Bad news: there’s still a cap, and you still can’t bypass it. As noticed by 9to5Mac , the iOS App Store now lets you download apps up to 200 MB in size while on a cell network; anything bigger than that, and you’ll need to connect to WiFi. Before this change, the cap was 150 MB. And if you’ve got an unlimited (be it actually unlimited or cough-cough-‘unlimited’) plan, or if you know you’ve got enough monthly data left to cover a big download, or you just really, really need a certain big app and WiFi just isn’t available? You’re still out of luck. That 200 MB cap hits everyone. People have found tricky, fleeting workarounds to bypass the cap over the years, but there’s no official “Yeah, yeah, the app is huge, I know.” button to click or power user setting to toggle. The App Store being cautious about file size isn’t inherently a bad thing; with many users only getting an allotment...

Wall Street Journal : Sources: DOJ is preparing an antitrust investigation into Google's practices related to search and other businesses   —  The Justice Department is preparing an antitrust investigation into Google's practices related to search and other business, sources say. from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2JP4IzZ

Taylor Lorenz / The Atlantic : A look at the terms “creators” vs. “influencers” on YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms, and how recent digital history has shaped the terms   —  It's not a gender thing.  —  It was 2011, and YouTube had a problem.  The company, which was then a hub … from Techmeme http://bit.ly/311gWuD

On Wednesday, Google rolled out new policies around kids’ apps on Google Play following an FTC complaint claiming a lack of attention to apps’ compliance with children’s privacy laws, and other rules around content. However, kids’ apps weren’t the only area being addressed this week. As it turns out, Google also cracked down on loot boxes and marijuana apps, while also expanding sections detailing prohibitions around hate speech, sexual content and counterfeit goods, among other things. The two more notable changes include a crackdown on “loot boxes” and a ban on apps that offer marijuana delivery — while the service providers’ apps can remain, the actual ordering process has to take place outside of the app itself, Google said. Specifically, Google will no longer allow apps offering the ability to order marijuana through an in-app shopping cart, those that assist users in the delivery or pickup of marijuana or those that facilitate the sale of THC products. This isn’t a huge surp...

Let’s rewind a decade. It’s 2009. Vancouver, Canada. Stewart Butterfield, known already for his part in building Flickr, a photo-sharing service acquired by Yahoo in 2005, decided to try his hand — again — at building a game. Flickr had been a failed attempt at a game called Game Neverending followed by a big pivot. This time, Butterfield would make it work. To make his dreams a reality, he joined forces with Flickr’s original chief software architect Cal Henderson, as well as former Flickr employees Eric Costello and Serguei Mourachov, who like himself, had served some time at Yahoo after the acquisition. Together, they would build Tiny Speck, the company behind an artful, non-combat massively multiplayer online game. Years later, Butterfield would pull off a pivot more massive than his last. Slack, born from the ashes of his fantastical game, would lead a shift toward online productivity tools that fundamentally change the way people work. Glitch is born In mid-2009, forme...

Susan Fowler’s forthcoming memoir, titled “Whistleblower,” is scheduled to hit bookshelves March 3, 2020. The book will be available for pre-order beginning June 12. In late 2017, Penguin Random House imprint Viking Books acquired the rights to the memoir, which chronicles the harassment and discrimination Fowler faced during her tenure as a site reliability engineer at Uber. Her memoir “will expose the systemic flaws rampant in the startup culture,” with “previously unreported details of what happened after she went public with the harassment and discrimination she faced [at Uber],” according to Viking. Additionally, it will touch on themes such as women’s role in the American economy, navigating challenging work environments, with an “eye-popping depiction and broad indictment of a work culture where a woman can do absolutely everything right and still encounter tremendous obstacles.” Twenty-eight-year-old Fowler is best known for her infamous blog post, “Reflecting On One...

Disney has been cranking out live-action remakes of its animated library for the past few years — in fact, Tim Burton’s “Dumbo” just left theaters, and Guy Ritchie’s take on “Aladdin” is currently at the top of the box office . But these distinctions get tricky with the growing reliance on computer-generated visual effects. “The Jungle Book,” for example, mostly features a single live actor (Neel Sethi as Mowgli) interacting with CGI animals. And “The Lion King” — scheduled for release on July 19 — takes that approach even further: Everything you see onscreen has been created on a computer. I got a chance to visit the production in Los Angeles back in December 2017, where I participated in a group interview with “Jungle Book” and “Lion King” director Jon Favreau . When asked whether he considers this a live-action or animated movie, he said, “It’s difficult, because it’s neither, really.” “There’s no real animals and there’s no real cameras and there’s not even any performance that’...

Google today announced two major changes to how it expects Chrome extension developers to protect their users’ privacy. Starting this summer, extension developers are required to only request access to the data they need to implement their features — and nothing more. In addition, the company is expanding the number of extension developers who will have to post privacy policies. The company is also announcing changes to how third-party developers can use the Google Drive API to provide their users access to files there. All of this is part of Google’s Project Strobe, an effort the company launched last year to reconsider how third-party developers can access data in your Google account and on your Android devices. It was Project Strobe, for example, that detected the issues with Google+’s APIs that hastened the shutdown of the company’s failed social network. It also extends some of the work on Chrome extensions the company announced last October . “Third-party apps and websit...