Davemichels

Missouri governor Eric Greitens, along with his staff, are the targets of a recently-filed public records-related lawsuit [PDF]. Two St. Louis County attorneys are accusing the governor of dodging public records laws with his use of Confide, an app that deletes text messages once they're read and prevents users from saving, forwarding, printing, or taking screenshots of the messages.

The governor's use of the app flies in the face of the presumption of openness. The attorneys are hoping the court will shut down the use of Confide to discuss official state business. The governor has argued an injunction would constitute prior restraint.

In the brief filed Tuesday, Greitens’ attorneys argue that blocking use of the app is improper because it would prevent the governor and his staff from using Confide to send “purely personal, non-work-related messages.”

“Such an injunction also would run afoul of these employees’ First Amendment right to freedom of speech,” the governor’s attorneys said.

Certainly the use of Confide is no different than government employees discussing official business in conversations, either in person or by phone. The conversations occur and then vanish into the ether with no publicly-accessible paper trail to prove their existence. But the use of self-destructing text messages certainly invites government officials to "talk around" their constituents by preventing the creation of FOIA-able records.

There's no telling what's being discussed via Confide and that's kind of a problem. The governor claims no official business takes place within the app, but given his lack of candor about the subject, this claim is very difficult to believe.

First off, Greitens' office is still being investigated for its use of Confide. Reporters for the Kansas City Star uncovered this fact during early explorations of the new governor's penchant for secrecy. When asked about app use, Gov. Greitens refused to respond. A public records request seeking the date the app was installed on the governor and staffers' phones was greeted with this incredible response.

“As to Request No. 2, any responsive records would be considered closed … as the disclosure of this information would impair the Office of the Governor’s Security Division’s ability to protect the Governor and his staff, and the interest in non-disclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

The governor basically claimed allowing the public to learn what date the app had been installed would compromise the safety and security of the governor and his employees. This bizarre use of a security exemption followed the governor's spokesman stating clearly -- and incorrectly -- that no one in the office used the secretive messaging app.

This new wave of opacity has Greitens' name all over it. Once he took office, the clampdown on transparency began.

Members of his taxpayer-funded transition team were required to sign gag orders banning them from discussing their work publicly. His office continues to withhold emails from the transition, refusing to turn over emails from individuals who played key roles but who conducted public business using private email accounts.

He broke with tradition when he refused to disclose how much lobbyists and corporations donated to fund his inaugural festivities, and his use of private planes for official travel often leaves Missourians in the dark about who is picking up the tab.

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When responding to requests for public records, the governor’s office often charges fees some argue are exorbitant, and the time it takes to turn over those records can stretch out for months.

Given the background, it's hard to believe the app is solely used to discuss personal matters. If it's being used to discuss official business, those conversations need to be moved to a platform that allows saving and retrieval of messages. Or, if the governor so desires, he can move all these conversations to the physical plane and speak directly to staffers and other government employees. If he feels his office deserves this level of secrecy, he should put a little more sweat/elbow grease into his opacity efforts. If there's truly nothing to hide, then there's nothing to fear from using normal, non-self-destructive communications channels.

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 Microsoft is targeting its cloud storage rivals including Dropbox, Box, and Google today by offering to essentially buy out customers’ existing contracts if they make the switch to OneDrive for Business. The company says that customers currently paying for one of these competitive solutions, can instead opt to use OneDrive for free for the remainder of their contract’s term. The… Read More

Exclusive first look at Vaunt, which uses retinal projection to put a display in your eyeball

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 Apple and Cisco announced this morning a new deal with insurer Allianz that will allow businesses with their technology products to receive better terms on their cyber insurance coverage, including lower deductibles – or even no deductibles, in some cases. Allianz said it made the decision to offer these better terms after evaluating the technical foundation of Apple and… Read More

• Lloyds Banking Group becomes the first major lender in the UK to ban the buying of cryptocurrencies using its credit cards.
• The move follows similar bans from US banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup.
• The price of bitcoin is hugely volatile and banks are worried about customers taking big losses and being unable to repay their debts.

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LONDON — Lloyds Banking Group has become the first British lender to ban its customers from using their credit cards to purchase bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

The Telegraph reports that Lloyds will tell its 9 million credit card holders that attempts to buy digital currencies will be blocked. Debit card transactions will not be blocked, according to the report.

The move will impact customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, and credit card firm MBNA, all of whom come under the Lloyds umbrella. Lloyds Banking Group accounts for around a quarter of all credit cards in the UK

A spokesman for Lloyds said the decision was made to "protect customers" from making unaffordable losses on Bitcoin, the Telegraph said.

The ban will be implemented using a blacklist of major cryptocurrency sellers, which will see attempted transactions with those sellers blocked.

Lloyds' ban on credit card cryptocurrency spending is the first such move from a British-based bank, but follows the announcement of similar bans by three major US lenders.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup have already announced similar bans.

Lloyds' ban on using its credit cards to buy digital currencies comes amid a period of enormous volatility in the market. Bitcoin's price has plummeted in the last couple of months, falling from around $20,000 per coin to as low as $7,700 on Friday, with wild swings in both directions remaining a frequent feature.

On Friday, bitcoin lost as much as 15% of its value during morning trading, before managing to end the trading day in positive territory.

Banks are concerned that such wild swings will expose their customers to heavy losses, making them unable to repay their credit card debts.

The price of bitcoin is back below the $8,000 level on Monday, roughly 2.5% lower in early morning European trading, as the chart below illustrates:

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• Facebook is banning all ads related to cryptocurrencies, from ICOs to bitcoin.
• The social network says the ban, which includes both Facebook and Instagram, is to crack down on scams.
• Cryptocurrencies are "frequently associated with misleading or deceptive practices," it said.

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Cryptocurrencies are a Wild West of sorts — and Facebook has had enough.

The social network is banning all ads related to bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and ICOs, it announced on Tuesday, as it attempts to crack down on scams and fraud.

The new rule "prohibits financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency." 

It's a far-reaching policy, and Facebook describes it as "intentionally broad." 

(For the uninitiated, initial coin offerings, or ICOs, are a largely unregulated method for company fundraising that involves selling investors cryptographic assets, in a similar vein to an IPO.)

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are insanely hot right now — but the space is also riddled with scams, fraud, and other risks.

This week, the SEC shut down one allegedly fraudulent ICO that claimed to have raised $600 million, and it's not uncommon for exchanges to lose hundreds of millions of dollars worth of customer funds in apparent hacks.

A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that the new rule bans all ads related to cryptocurrencies — not just those directly trying to sell cryptocurrencies or cryptographic tokens. So ads for Bitcoin wallets are also banned, for example, as are ones for Ethereum-mining hardware.

In a blog post announcing the news, Facebook product management director Rob Leathern suggested Facebook may tweak the policy at some point in the future to let legitimate crypto-related businesses advertise again.

"We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception," he wrote. "That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith."

"This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms including Facebook, Audience Network and Instagram. We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve."

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Amazon is expanding Alexa’s ability to send messages by allowing it to send SMS text messages to any phone, instead of just messaging other people through the Alexa app, via TechCrunch.

The new feature only works for Alexa users with an Android device that also have the Alexa app installed. To set things up, navigate over to Conversations tab, then “Contacts,” then “My Profile,” then switch the “Send SMS” feature to on. There’s no word as to when or even if similar functionality will be available on iOS devices.

By default, asking Alexa to send “a message” will cause the device to first try to send messages to the Alexa app, assuming your recipient has it installed and configured, and will only send through SMS if that option isn’t...

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• Harley-Davidson's CEO said Tuesday that an electric motorcycle will be arriving in 18 months.
• The announcement happened after poor Q4 2017 earnings.
• Harley rolled out an electric concept bike four years ago, but didn't follow it up with a production two-wheeler.

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Harley-Davidson got the biking world pretty excited in 2014 when it rolled out the LiveWire electric concept. But a concept was what it remained, although over the years the company dropped some hints that it might, maybe, possibly take the plunge.

According to CEO Matthew Levatich, the electric hog will hit the streets in less than two years.

"The EV market is in its infancy today and we believe it will drive excitement into our sport globally in both traditional and nontraditional spaces," he said on a conference call with analysts, following Harley's reporting of weak fourth-quarter, alongside full-year 2017, earnings.

"You've heard us talk about Project LiveWire," he added. "LiveWire is an exhilarating, no excuses, electric Harley-Davidson. Over 12,000 riders told us so through the demo rides we provided around the world and it's an active project we're preparing to bring to market within 18 months."

The overall motorcycle market is facing some headwinds in the coming years. Sales have recovered in the US since the financial crisis, but they're less than half what they were when peak bike hit, back in 2016 with 1.6 million two-wheelers sold. The industry is struggling to attract new riders, despite an onslaught of smaller, less-intimidating machines from Ducati, Honda, and even Harley, which for decades has been king of the road with its hulking cruisers.

An aging customer isn't a bad thing: he or she can afford Harley's expensive, profitable bikes. But eventually, they'll age into that great biker bar in the sky. 

Electric motorcycles are promising both because they hold futuristic appeal and aren't as challenging to learn to ride as traditional bikes, with tricky clutches and big, loud rumbling motors. Best of all, electric bikes are plenty fast.

There could be something else going on as well for Harley. Fourth-quarter earnings weren't great, and they sent the stock into a swoon on Tuesday. The markets haven't been kind to HOG; over the past 12 months, shares are down over 12%, lagging the broader exchanges. 

Harley's challenges are well understood, so some futuristic position is certainly called for from management. It works for Tesla, and it's begun to work more recently for GM, which last year outlined a big electrification push.

The question for Harley investors is whether the new timeline for a real LiveWire bike is believable, or just a way to change a story that's losing traction.

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Microsoft introduced a new Surface Laptop model earlier today to bring its pricing down, and now the company is doing the same to its new Surface Book 2. While the Surface Book 2 only launched in November, the new base model price is $1,199 for the 13.5-inch version. That includes an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. The previous cheapest Surface Book 2 was $1,499 with more storage (256GB), so Microsoft has cut some space to bring the price down by $300.

Microsoft has consistently marketed the Surface Book 2 as a powerful laptop, and 128GB of storage will mean some people will have to consider external storage solutions for photo or video editing tasks. Still, a $300 saving for less storage could appeal to a lot...

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Microsoft is providing an update on Office 2019 today, revealing that the apps will only run on Windows 10. In a support article for service and support of Windows and Office, Microsoft has revealed you’ll need to upgrade to Windows 10 if you want the latest version of Office without subscribing to the company’s Office 365 service.

It’s a move that’s clearly designed to push businesses that are holding off on Office 365 into subscriptions, as the standalone Office 2019 software will only be supported on Windows 10 and not Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 machines. Microsoft is also altering the support lifecycle for Office 2019, so it will receive 5 years of mainstream support and then “approximately 2 years of extended support.”

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• A survey of 2,000 Americans showed people believe Facebook has more negative effects on society than Walmart or McDonald's.
• Facebook has spent the last several months working to eliminate fake news from users' feeds.
• Former Facebook executives have also publicly condemned the platform as destructive to society.

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Walmart and McDonald's may have negative effects on society, according to a new survey of 2,000 Americans, but Facebook beats them both.

Conducted by the research company Honest Data, the survey asked people to single out from a list of companies which ones they felt had the worst impacts on society. The companies included Marlboro, Walmart, Facebook, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola.

Facebook fit that criteria for 27% of respondents, coming in second behind Marlboro, which 43% of people said had negative effects. McDonald's and Walmart came in at 21% and 18%, respectively, while 36% of people said "None of the above."

Tavis McGinn, founder of Honest Data, wrote on LinkedIn that the findings weren't entirely surprising, given how much negative press Facebook has received in recent months.

"In the social sphere, people began to question the long-term impact of Facebook on the psychological well-being of users," McGinn wrote, noting that violent crimes and suicide have been broadcast on Facebook Live and that former Facebook executives have publicly condemned the platform as addictive and socially destructive.

The psychology research backs some of these claims up. Heavy users of social media have been shown to display greater rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies. The studies have managed to show the two factors aren't just correlated; social media appears to lead to negatives feelings.

"Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, initially dismissed some of these concerns as a 'crazy idea' and instead tried promote the benefits of his social network," McGinn wrote. In defense, Zuckerberg also recently claimed people were spending 50 million fewer hours on Facebook due to various changes to the site.

"But eventually, public opinion and dissatisfaction grew too loud to ignore," McGinn wrote.

A separate survey asking people which tech companies had negative effects on society found Facebook was the most common answer, followed closely by Twitter. Google, Netflix, and LinkedIn fell much further behind.

However, "None of the above" was still the most popular response overall, selected by 53% of people, perhaps suggesting the public outrage at tech companies has yet to hit its peak.

SEE ALSO: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs raised their kids tech-free — and it should've been a red flag

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• The six largest cryptocurrencies have all lost value in the last 24 hours.
• Bitcoin was down 4.6%, Ethereum was down 4.6%, and Ripple’s XRP was down 6.3%.

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The six largest cryptocurrencies, including the flagship bitcoin, have all sunk in the last 24 hours, according to data from Markets Insider, following a major cyberattack against a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange last week which resulted in the loss of $400 million.

Bitcoin, which still makes up 33% of the entire digital currency market cap, was down 4.6% at the time of writing. Ethereum and Ripple’s XRP token, the second and third largest cryptocurrencies, were down 4.6% and 6.3% respectively.

Smaller coins with market caps of less than $1 billion had also taken a hit.

Bitcoin cash, the rival that split from bitcoin in August 2017, was down 4.3%, giving the offshoot a market cap of $399 million.

There was only one speck of green in the sea of red Monday morning: Neo. The Chinese Ethereum spinoff is up 3.1% in the last 24 hours — and up a staggering 153% in the last month.

Cryptocurrency markets are struggling to match their stellar 2017. Threats of crackdowns in China and South Korea, as well as increased scrutiny from regulators in the US, have sent chills through price charts which previously seemed to only move up.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Deutsche Bank’s head of wealth management warned that crypto investments could eventually result in total loss. "It’s only for investors who invest speculatively," Markus Mueller told the network. "There is a realistic risk of total loss."

You can track the prices of 12 cryptocurrencies in real-time here>>

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The idea of being able to update your car’s infotainment system may have sounded like a good one when it was first introduced nearly a decade ago. Automakers gradually introduced upgradable operating systems and cars with Wi-Fi, with some like Tesla going so far as to introduce over-the-air updates to add features and improve system response times without owners ever having to visit the service department.

But with all of the convenience that brought, connected cars may change the way we pay for features in cars. Whereas there was often a base price and a list of optional equipment you could add to a new car, owners may have to pay monthly or yearly fees for more than just telematic services or satellite radio if they want to keep...

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Regardless of how or why a company decides to explore blockchain solutions, the market is showing no signs of slowing down.

As we've been warning for a while, the next phase in the war on net neutrality for giant ISPs is pushing a new "net neutrality law" in name only. ISPs are nervous that the FCC's net neutrality repeal won't survive a court challenge due to the numerous instances of fraud and other procedural gaffes. As such, they've convinced blindly-loyal lawmakers like Marsha Blackburn to push fake net neutrality legislation whose entire purpose is to prevent the FCC's 2015 rules from being restored, or real, tough rules from being passed later.

These proposed "solutions" ban behaviors ISPs had no intention of doing (like the ham-fisted blocking of websites), but avoid addressing any of the numerous areas where net neutrality violations now occur, from usage caps, overage fees and zero rating, to interconnection shenanigans designed to drive up costs for streaming video competitors like Netflix. But with Democrats hoping to use net neutrality as a wedge issue in the coming midterms (and pushing for a repeal reversal via the CRA), these bogus solutions haven't seen much traction outside of paid editorial support by telecom lobbyists.

Enter AT&T, who this week bought full-page ad space in the New York Times and Washington Post to publish this love letter from AT&T CEO Randal Stephenson to American consumers. In it, Stephenson proclaims that despite having spent millions trying to gut consumer protections of every color, the company is a breathless advocate for the "open internet," and is really eager to lead the charge for "new laws that govern the internet and protect consumers":

"But the commitment of one company is not enough. Congressional action is needed to establish an “Internet Bill of Rights” that applies to all internet companies and guarantees neutrality, transparency, openness, non-discrimination and privacy protection for all internet users. Legislation would not only ensure consumers’ rights are protected, but it would provide consistent rules of the road for all internet companies across all websites, content, devices and applications. In the very near future, technological advances like self-driving cars, remote surgery and augmented reality will demand even greater performance from the internet. Without predictable rules for how the internet works, it will be difficult to meet the demands of these new technology advances.

Of course if you've been following along at home, AT&T is the very last company that should be giving advice on any of these subjects. In recent years, AT&T has been fined $18.6 million for helping to rip off programs for the hearing impaired; $10.4 million for ripping off programs for low-income families; $105 million for helping "crammers" rip off its customers by making bills intentionally harder to understand, and for playing a starring role in gutting both net neutrality and broadband privacy protections.

AT&T's also repeatedly violated net neutrality and consumer privacy, whether that entailed blocking FaceTime to drive wireless users to more expensive options, or exempting its own content from usage caps to give itself an unfair advantage in the market. And who could forget that time that AT&T was caught alongside Verizon covertly modifying user packets to track people around the internet without their knowledge? AT&T's also smack dab in the middle of an effort to gut FCC, FTC and state authority over broadband providers.

Again, AT&T's actual goal here is three-fold. One, get a shitty, loophole-filled net neutrality law on the books that would pre-empt efforts to restore the FCC's 2015 rules or any Congressional or FCC attempt to pass real, tough rules down the line. Two, get a shitty net neutrality law on the books to supplant state efforts to protect net neutrality in the wake of AT&T-lobbied federal apathy. Three, impose new regulation on the likes of Google and Facebook as it attempts to buy Time Warner for $86 billion and jump into the Millennial advertising race.

AT&T has long complained that net neutrality and privacy rules applied to its broadband businesses aren't fair because the same, exact rules aren't being applied to the likes of Google and Facebook. But that argument ignores the fact that broadband is a uniquely broken market, where consumers often don't have the choice of numerous ISPs. Net neutrality violations were just a symptom of limited competition, and net neutrality rules were a temporary band aid until somebody in government grows a spine and embraces policies that drive actual competition. AT&T, as you might have noticed, wants neither competition nor real oversight.

Unsrurpsingly, groups that actually fight for consumer welfare weren't particularly impressed by AT&T's head fake:

“It would be a lot easier to take AT&T at their word if they hadn't spent more than $16 million last year alone lobbying to kill net neutrality and privacy protections for Internet users,” said Evan Greer, an activist with the pro-net neutrality group Fight for the Future. “Internet activists have been warning for months that the big ISPs plan has always been to gut the rules at the FCC and then use the 'crisis' they created to ram through bad legislation in the name of 'saving' net neutrality."

Keep in mind, Blackburn's fake net neutrality law is likely just the first of many shitty legislative proposals you'll see pushed by the mega-ISPs as they grow increasingly nervous the FCC's ham-fisted repeal won't survive court challenge. But you'll be hard pressed to get AT&T to actually sign off on a net neutrality law that actually does much of anything useful, and net neutrality supporters will need to tread carefully before throwing their support behind "solutions" to problems the ISPs themselves created.

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Back in December, the unsavory hobby of a Reddit user by the name of deepfakes became a new centerpiece of artificial intelligence debate, specifically around the newfound ability to face-swap celebrities and porn stars. Using software, deepfakes was able to take the face of famous actresses and swap them with those of porn actresses, letting him live out a fantasy of watching famous people have sex. Now, just two months later, easy-to-use applications have sprouted up with the ability to perform this real-time editing with even more ease, according to Motherboard, which also first reported about deepfakes late last year.

Thanks to AI training techniques like machine learning, scores of photographs can be fed into an algorithm that...

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YouTube is asking musicians to agree to non-disparagement clauses in exchange for promotional support, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Bloomberg. While non-disparagement clauses can be more common in partnerships or spokesperson deals, it is not a norm within the music industry and YouTube’s biggest competitors in this arena don’t use them. Over the past few months, YouTube has worked with select artists to promote their work by way of producing music videos and placing them on billboards.

The report states the campaign’s purpose is to help YouTube build a bridge with the music industry, and that non-disparagement clauses are a safeguard to keep these artists from saying negative things about the company. They...

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Stripe will no longer supporting bitcoin payments by April this year, the company announced today. Stripe said that customers aren’t using bitcoin as a method of payment as often anymore. The company plans to slowly end support with the cutoff point being April 23rd.

It’s a total reversal of the company’s position four years ago, when it announced it would become the first payment platform to accept bitcoin, citing bitcoin’s potential to be bought by anyone. At the time, Stripe CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison very aptly said, “We acknowledge that bitcoin is important today … it may or may not be important in five years.”

High transaction fees and volatile prices have made bitcoin a difficult and unreliable method of payment,...

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Acer has announced a new Chromebook called the Spin 11, a convertible design with a 360-hinge and 11.6-inch touchscreen. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because Acer and Google launched essentially the same thing a year ago for the education market. This model, however, will be available in regular retail channels.

The Chromebook Spin 11 has options for quad-core Pentium or Celeron processors, two USB-C 3.1 ports, Google Play support, and an 11.6-inch touchscreen at a resolution of only 1366 x 768 — though at least the panel is IPS. Acer claims up to 10 hours of battery life. The Spin 11 will go on sale in the US in March starting at $349.

Acer is also announcing yet another standard...

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Linux inventor Linus Torvalds has never been one for diplomacy. He previously said “fuck you” to Nvidia for not supporting Linux, and now Intel has angered him enough to generate some more expletives. In a message to the Linux kernel mailing list on the weekend, Torvalds has expressed his dismay at Intel’s security updates to protect against the major Spectre variant 2 CPU vulnerability. The industry has been scrambling to fix the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, and the variant 2 of Spectre has been particularly challenging.

“What the f*ck is going on?” asks Torvalds, claiming that Intel is doing “insane things” that “do not make sense” to protect against the Spectre variant 2 vulnerability. “As it is, the patches are COMPLETE AND...

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What happens when digital eyes get the brains to match?

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Cheap solar cells and panels from overseas will now be subject to a 30 percent tariff, the Trump administration announced on Monday. The decision is aimed at boosting the competitiveness of US-made solar panels. But opponents say that the tariffs could drive increases in pollution and endanger jobs in America’s $29 billion solar industry.

The announcement comes after the International Trade Commission’s ruling in September that the companies SolarWorld AG and Suniva couldn’t compete with cheap solar panel imports. Both companies manufacture panels in the United States but are in fact foreign-owned, Bloomberg reports: SolarWorld AG is the American arm of a German company, and Suniva has a Chinese majority owner.

The solar industry...

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By Sheila McGee-Smith
Dennis Fois takes on leadership with goal of bringing clarity to the role of the contact center in digital transformation.

Microsoft is making a bigger push to keep students and teachers using Windows this week. At the annual Bett education show in London, Microsoft is revealing new Windows 10 and Windows 10 S devices that are priced from just $189. The software giant is also partnering with the BBC, LEGO, NASA, PBS, and Pearson to bring a variety of Mixed Reality and video curricula to schools.

Lenovo has created a $189 100e laptop. It’s based on Intel’s Celeron Apollo Lake chips, so it’s a low-cost netbook essentially, designed for schools. Lenovo is also introducing its 300e, a 2-in-1 laptop with pen support, priced at $279. The new Lenovo devices are joined by two from JP, with a Windows Hello laptop priced at $199 and a pen and touch device at $299. All...

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• Major tech companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Uber, and Google have an enormous amount of access to, and influence on, the average person's life.
• In some cases, the companies have admitted to using their access in data in ways that tend to make people uncomfortable.
• Most recently, Apple apologized for slowing down the performance of batteries on older model iPhones. 

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Tech companies have done a lot of questionable things over the years, from slowing down old batteries to collecting data on users' sex lives.

Chris Gilliard, a professor who researches privacy and tech policy, provided several examples in a December Twitter thread featuring some of the most notable companies in the world, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

Read on to see some of the things tech companies have done that sound too strange to be true: 

SEE ALSO: Millennials have taken down dozens of industries — but it looks like Gen Z will be the ones to hurt Facebook

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In 2009, Amazon removed books people had purchased from their Kindles, including 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'

Amazon gave customers a full refund if they had purchased certain books, including George Orwell's dystopian classic "Nineteen Eighty-Four," saying they had been mistakenly published.

Needless to say, removing a book about a totalitarian government that censors information was not a good look.

In 2012, the LinkedIn app uploaded users' entire calendars from their iPhones and Androids.

Users of the LinkedIn app woke up to the creepy realization that their iPhone and Android calendars had been uploaded to the social networking site.

That didn't just include calendar entries, but also any notes users had added, including sensitive meeting notes, participants, and dial-in information.

LinkedIn argued that users voluntarily agreed to the practice when gave the app permission to access their calendars, but the company did not communicate the extent to which it would upload users' information to its servers.

The company soon stopped uploading information from the "meeting notes" section of users' calendar entries.

Facebook once conducted a psychological experiment on 700,000 unwitting users

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg apologized in 2014 when data scientists discovered the company manipulated the newsfeeds of 700,000 users for one week to see how they would react.

The researchers found that two years earlier, Facebook tweaked the users' newsfeeds to show more positive or negative posts and then gauged whether they posted positive or negative updates about their lives in response.

The experiment raised numerous ethical issues, including whether the unwitting participants had given informed consent or were ever allowed to opt out.

 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Montana’s governor signed an executive order today that would force internet service providers with state contracts to abide by net neutrality rules, even while the FCC has repealed those rules nationally.

Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, said in a tweet announcing the order that “Montana’s future depends on a free and open internet,” and noted that it was the first state in the country to attempt the plan, which would go into effect July 1st. The New York Times reports that several major service providers, including Charter, AT&T, and Verizon, operate with state contracts.

To obtain a state contract after July 1st, any service provider will have to follow core tenets of net neutrality, and agree to not block or degrade content, or allow...

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WhatsApp has launched a separate app designed for use by small businesses to more easily connect with customers. WhatsApp Business adds key features like dedicated business profiles for details like email address, business description, store addresses, and website; smart messaging tools like greetings, quick replies, and away messages; and metrics for how many messages were sent, delivered, and read.

For those who use a business number and a personal one, both the WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Messenger apps can be used on the same device and registered with your different numbers. WhatsApp Business is also compatible with WhatsApp Web, the app’s desktop web browser client.

Image: WhatsApp

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While tectonic shifts in the tech industry have seen CES and its ilk decrease in relevance over the past decade, some product categories have been less affected by the rise of all-encompassing platforms pushed by software titans. For these forms of consumer electronics, it remains entirely appropriate to be trotted out on a Las Vegas stage with incremental updates every year.

To put it another way, it’s never not going to be fun to go to CES and look at a bunch of awesome screens.

TV manufacturers were out in force this year, as they are every year. LG added Google Assistant and Alexa to its industry-leading OLED sets, and unveiled an 88-inch 8K OLED prototype. Sony added Dolby Vision support to its own OLED and LED TVs, while Panasonic...

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