By leaving Facebook to play Frisbee, WhatsApp co-founder to lose $1 billion

Jan Koum’s exit from Facebook Inc. could prove costly. A speedy departure may prevent him from collecting as much as $1 billion in stock awards.

The chief executive officer of messaging unit WhatsApp confirmed in a Facebook post-Monday afternoon that he was leaving the company. The announcement comes before the final three vesting dates of restricted stock unit awards tied to Facebook’s $22 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014.

Koum, 42, got about 24.9 million restricted shares as part of the deal. The stock vests in increments until late 2018, with 1.9 million shares due to vest in mid-May and mid-August, plus a final tranche of 2.1 million set to be issued in November.

The awards are contingent on him still being employed through those dates. He would forfeit 5.8 million shares, worth $997.5 million as of Monday’s close, if he left before May 15, unless his exit is categorized as an involuntary termination or a good-reason resignation, regulatory filings show.

Zuckerberg defends Facebook's ad-driven model as a way to connect people

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said it will take “a few years” to solve the issues plaguing the social media company.

“I wish I could solve all these issues in three months or six months, but I just think the reality is that solving some of these questions is just going to take a longer period of time,” he said in a podcast interview with media publication Vox.

The company started investing more in security at least a year ago, Zuckerberg said,“so if this is going to be a three-year process, then I think we’re about a year in already. Hopefully by the end of this year, we’ll have really started to turn the corner on some of these issues.”

Zuckerberg is trying to steer Facebook through one of its worst public crises, after revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked on President Donald Trump’s election campaign, obtained the private data of some 50 million Facebook users. Facebook’s shares have dropped about 14 percent since the news emerged and Zuckerberg has been called to testify before Congress in coming weeks. Politicians in the UK and the European Union have also requested Zuckerberg to come explain how Facebook protects the privacy of its 2 billion monthly users, and Missouri’s attorney general announced Monday that he is launching a wide-ranging probe into Facebook.

Facebook scandal: Cambridge Analytica may be probed for breaking poll laws

A top American senator has sought an investigation into potential violations of federal election law by Cambridge Analytica (CA), the scandal-hit communications firm at the heart of the Facebook data scandal.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, a founding employee of CA, has accused that the firm, hired by Donald Trump during his primary campaign, illegally mined tens of millions of users' Facebook data and then used it to target potential voters.

In a letter to the FEC, Senator Richard Blumenthal said that Wylie's disclosures have raised significant issues that warrant the attention of the FEC pertaining to the involvement of foreign nationals and political action committees in the management of election campaigns.

"I urge the FEC to take these allegations seriously, open an investigation into possible violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) by Cambridge Analytica and its clients, and take enforcement action as necessary," Blumenthal wrote.

Uber paid hackers to delete data of 57 mn users, hid fact from public: CEO

Uber Technologies Inc failed to disclose a massive breach last year that exposed the data of some 57 million users of the ride-sharing service, the company's new chief executive officer said on Tuesday.

Discovery of the company's handling of the incident led to the departure of two employees who led Uber's response to the incident, said Dara Khosrowshahi, who was named CEO in August following the departure of founder Travis Kalanick.

Khosrowshahi said he had only recently learnt of the matter himself.

The company's admission that it failed to disclose the breach comes as Uber seeks to recover from a series of crises that culminated in the Kalanick's ouster in June.

"None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it," Khosrowshahi said in a blog post.

According to the company's account, two individuals downloaded data from a web-based server at another company that provided Uber with cloud-computing services.

The data contained names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of some 57 million Uber users around the world. The hackers also downloaded names and driver's licence numbers of some 600,000 of the company's US drivers, Khosrowshahi said in a blog post.
READ MORE

Digital transformation should not degrade humanity: Satya Nadella

With organisations across the globe going through an unprecedented level of digital transformation to enhance productivity, Microsoft's India-born chief Satya Nadella today cautioned that new technologies should not "degrade" humanity but provide new levels of inclusiveness.

In his keynote address at Microsoft's Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida Nadella spoke about the upcoming quantum computing era and gave examples of how it could help solve some of the planets biggest challenges.

"We want more productivity and efficiency but we do not want to degrade humanity," Nadella said at the conference being attended by some 25,000 technology experts and analysts.

"We want technology to provide new levels of inclusiveness," Nadella said, as his Ignite keynote was being translated for the first time in 12 languages with the use of artificial intelligence.

"As we talk about technology, one of the things we need as technologists and decision makers is keeping in mind the timeless values that drive what we do," he said, adding that the most critical thing "for us is to bring all of us, across our functional roles, across all our expertise and skills," to support this process of continuous change and renewal.

READ MORE

US jobless claims rise from three-month low

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rebounded from a three-month low last week, but remained below a level consistent with a tightening labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 244,000 for the week ended July 22, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Data for the prior week was revised to show 1,000 more applications received than previously reported.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 241,000. It was the 125th straight week that claims remained below 300,000, a threshold associated with a robust labor market. That is the longest such stretch since 1970, when the labor market was smaller. The labor market is near full employment, with the jobless rate at 4.4 percent.

Claims have been volatile in recent weeks as automakers shut assembly plants for annual retooling. Some manufacturers like General Motors are extending their summer shutdowns to manage excess inventory from declining sales.

Economists say this could be throwing off the model used by the government to strip out seasonal fluctuations from the data, causing swings in the weekly numbers.

A Labor Department official said there were no special factors influencing the claims data and that no states had been estimated.
READ MORE

China censors entertainment news outlets, cites 'socialist values'

Major social media platform operators including Weibo, WeChat, Youku, Baidu and Netease shut down a large number of social media entertainment news outlets after a June 7 meeting with Beijing's Office of Cyberspace Affairs.

The crackdown has been justified under China's newly implemented Cybersecurity Law, which emphasises ideological control as a core component of maintaining state security.

More than 60 outlets have been shuttered in less than a week, some of which are commercial news outlets funded by private capital investments, while others are entertainment sections of newspapers such as “Entertainment weekly of Southern Metropolis”. Other examples include “Care about gossip association”, which has a market value of up to RMB 100 million (approximately US $15 million) and “Movie Lambaste” with a market value of up to RMB 300 millions (approximately US $40 million dollars).

According to a report from state-run Xinhua news, Beijing's Office of Cyberspace Affairs cited China's Cybersecurity Law, enacted on June 1 2017, as impetus for the crackdown. They implored content platform operators to enforce the law:

Individuals and organisations cannot infringe on other people’s reputation, privacy, intellectual properties and other rights using the Internet. Operators should reinforce the management of their users and the distribution of user content. Once [the operators] find that information has violated related laws and administrative rules, they have to stop transmitting the information, eliminate the sources and prevent the information from spreading. The record should be preserved and reported back to the authorities.

China’s Cybersecurity Law went into effect despite deep concerns about the powers that it gives to law enforcement to obtain sensitive information, including encryption keys, from network operators. The law has also triggered major concerns among foreign companies, over its requirement that local data be stored within China.
READ MORE