Money, games and privacy issues
Like any other week online
Some good reasons to change your Facebook password
On Thursday, following a report by Krebs on Security, Facebook acknowledged a bug in its password management systems that caused the passwords of 200 million and 600 million users on Facebook and Instagram to be stored in plain text. The passwords were accessible only internally on Facebook, but that still means 20,000 Facebook employees could have searched for and found them. According to Krebs, the passwords were created in 2012 or later.
Facebook says an ongoing investigation has found no indication that employees have abused access to this data. But Krebs' anonymous internal Facebook sources claim to have access to logs showing some 2,000 engineers or developers made approximately nine million internal queries for data that contained plain-text user passwords.
Pinterest prepares for IPO in April – doing much better than most startups going public
Pinterest took its first official step toward an IPO in 2019, two months ago, hiring Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as lead underwriters for its offering on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The San Francisco-based visual search engine has unveiled its S-1, a document containing the necessary business and financial information on the company needed before a specific securities offering.
In its prospectus, Pinterest called itself “a productivity tool for planning your dreams.” Emphasising the visual, image-driven nature of its product, as well as its ability to capture people’s intent to buy things related to their pins. The company has roughly doubled its monthly active user count since early 2016, hitting 265 million late last year. Last year, it created $700 million in ad revenue.
Pinterest's total revenue in 2018 was $755.9 up from $472.8 million in 2017. And the company’s net loss shrank to $62.9 million last year from $130 million in 2017. In total, Pinterest has posted $1.525 billion in revenue since 2016. The company employs 1,600 people across 13 cities, including London, Paris, São Paulo, Berlin and Tokyo.
Google revealed its "Netflix for gaming" service Stadia
Google revealed its cloud gaming service, Stadia, at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this week. Stadia is meant to be a platform for everyone, says CEO Sundar Pichai, who talked about Google’s ambitions to stream games to all types of devices during Google's GCD event. The platform will stream games from the cloud to laptops, desktops, TVs, tablets and phones – without the need to download or install any games. The company showed off a dedicated Stadia controller, but you’ll also be able to use your existing third-party controllers or keyboard and mouse.
Google hopes to use YouTube to amplify this game-streaming service, with many users already creating gaming content. They demonstrated a new YouTube feature that lets you view a game clip from a creator and hit “play now” to stream the title on Stadia instantly. This is also an advantage over competitors, like Microsoft, who have similar platforms in the market.
Google previously tested its cloud gaming service, "Project Stream," some months ago, allowing Chrome users to stream Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in their browser. The tests, which ended in January, appear to have been successful, as Stadia plans to launch in the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe sometime this year.
