Business

Everyone Needs to Update their Windows ASAP, or Risk Being Locked Out of Their Computers, Security Experts Say

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The WannaCry virus that shut down the UK health system this week is still making its rounds. It has now reached 150 countries and is continuing to spread.

It is expected that the hackers behind the ransomware will update it Monday, so it will be even more dangerous.

Computer security experts say that everyone should update their Windows OS, and back up all their data, because the virus is one that doesn’t even need computer users to click anything; it is making its way around the internet searching for Windows that aren’t updated. There is a known vulnerability in Windows that was exposed by an FBI data leak earlier this year. It seems hackers have based WannaCry on this known Windows vulnerability.

When a computer gets infected, all the data on it is encrypted and the owner no longer can access their files until they pay $300 in Bitcoin.

Alphabet’s (GOOG) 2017 Q1 Earnings Call

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Alphabet’s exec Ruth Porat spoke on a conference call this week about the company’s Q1:

“Our revenues of $24.8 billion in the first quarter demonstrate our broad-based strength globally, with revenues up 22% year on year. In constant currency, our consolidated revenues grew 24% versus 1Q 2016. Growth in advertising revenues was again driven by mobile search, with ongoing strength in YouTube and programmatic. We also had substantial growth in other revenues from Play, hardware, and Cloud. … We realized a negative currency impact on our revenues year over year of $304 million or $87 million after the benefit of our hedging program.”

Pharmaceutical Ad Spending Up 62% Since 2012

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The U.S. is one of only two countries that allow drug ads on TV (the other is New Zealand), and spending keeps rising. Most other markets have not increased spending since 2012.

$6b was the amount spent last year, mostly on TV, and the ads are shown most heavily during major network’s evening news, Mike & Molly, and General Hospital, according to Kantar Media, a consulting firm that tracks multimedia advertising.

The value of the industry in the U.S. is reported to be $425b nominally; $263b in pharmacy and drug store sales.

While drug ads are legal in American and not in Canada, Canadian authorities have more or less turned a blind eye to illegal ads targeting consumers, at least according to the research of UBS scientists. Plus, it’s always been legal to target health professionals in Canada, and a few years ago “reminder ads” (brand recognition aimed at consumers without any health claims) were made legal.

Facebook: ‘Governments Exploit Us’

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Facebook has acknowledged that they are exploited by governments in manipulating public opinion, and also said they would try to do something about reducing these types of “information operations.”

Governments use Facebook to amplify a view, sow distrust, and spread confusion, according to the company.

Recently, Facebook made an attempt to cut down this use of their platform by suspending 30,000 accounts in France before the French presidential election.

Facebook was a key tool in the campaign of current U.S. President Donald Trump as well, according to his campaign team.

Source: Facebook Newsroom

Factum Arte Is Recreating Art for the Masses, as Well as Private Buyers

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A team of software designers, technicians, conservators, architects, artists, artisans, working together as Factum Arte, are recreating works of art to be used by the public. Some of their work is already used by museums. The group makes its money by also producing works in the private market.

The goal of their public efforts are to give more people the chance to understand works of art and to help preserve them.

Workers at Factum Arte are now planning to replace works of art destroyed by ISIS. Their facsimiles are made from originals removed by Europeans in earlier eras from Iraq.

Because the works are not originals, there is less concern about damaging them, so they can be placed in their original setting, giving visitors what may be a more authentic experience of them.

How close are the facsimiles to the originals? In terms of resolution, around 100 microns (1 point of information per 1/10th of a millimeter), and technology continues to improve.

Snapchat: Where Are We?

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The app may be on every young person’s phone, but it’s losing money.

When it launched its IPO this year, it raised $3.4b.

But as of January, it’s lost $1.2b. Almost half of that loss was in 2016.

It was growing at 15m new daily users in the first 3 quarters of 2016, but the last quarter had just 5m new users.

Snapchat is trying to make money by employing industry experts, and they will be setting their sights on combating competitors who do basically the same thing as Snapchat — Instagram with Stories and WhatsApp with Status. They will also be trying to win away advertising investment from other platforms.

However, investment in video ads is growing steadily, adding about $5 per year since 2014. Growth expected to increase, and be worth $90m in 2020, up from today’s $75m.

Ricochet, A New Chat App, Aims to Be Even More Secure than Encryption

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The chat app aims to hide even metadata, the graph of its users’ connections and activity (as opposed to just hiding the content of messages).

Ricochet applies Tor-like tech to cloak the user’s device, not just web destinations. Messages also do not use a central server to send messages, so the data does not exist there.

“There’s no record in the cloud somewhere that you ever used it,” John Brooks, the 25-year-old developer said of his app. “It’s all mixed in with everything else happening in Tor. You’re invisible among the crowd.”

Streaming Up, Downloading Down

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Profits in the music industry are coming increasingly from streaming and subscriptions, looking at percentage, and even downloads are decreasing a little.

CD and DVD sales are becoming less common relatively, but vinyl sales are up.

Chinese Tech No Longer Just Copycat, Industry Expert Says

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“If you study Chinese products, you can get inspiration,” according to a woman who works for technology investment firm Andreessen Horowitz.

She also works helping U.S. startups learn from Chinese tech.

Connie Chan says Chinese tech is ahead of U.S. tech in everything from livestreaming (worth $5b) to messaging. For example, while Americans almost all use messaging apps daily to communicate, in China they use similar apps (such as WeChat) to pay utilities and traffic tickets, order medications to their door, and get marriage licences.

“I spend so much time teaching people what they can’t see,” she told Wired recently. “It won’t stay invisible for long.”

The idea that Chinese tech is just a copycat of other countries’ is now obsolete, she said.

Google Exec Makes $200m for the Year

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Now that Google is a sub-company inside Alphabet — which is run by founders Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin and Larry Page — Google is run by Sundar Pichai, and his earnings are up almost double from 2015.

In 2016, he made $199.7m. $650k is his base pay, and $198.7m was a stock award.

Google is reportedly more profitable under Pichai. It has boosted sales from its core advertising and YouTube business, and is working on cloud computing, machine learning, and hardware, including smartphones, VR headsets, routers, and smart speakers.

Alphabet is growing. GOOG’s stock rose above a $600b market cap this week for the first time.

Apple Talking of Returning to US Amid Trump Policy Statements

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According to Nikkei Asia Review, iPhone assemblers in the East — responsible for producing 200 million phones per year — are in talks about moving production to the U.S.

The move would mean roughly doubling costs — some of which would likely be passed on to consumers — but may be necessary. President Elect Donald Trump has repeatedly singled out Apple as an example of what’s bad in American business. Trump threatened a 45 percent tariff on goods made in China.

Apple is on record as countering that it has created and supports 2 million domestic jobs, and Apple’s Executive Tim Cook has stated that America doesn’t have enough enough skilled workers to handle production.

Trump’s position, on the other hand, was, “How does it help us when they make it in China?”

Just one of the Chinese factories producing phones employs almost 700,000 Chinese workers. However, Apple products are not made entirely in China: components are also made in Japan and Korea.

Economists have pointed out that Apple can move to another country rather than America, and possibly find production costs below even what it now has in China. Economists also have criticized the plan as not being focused on “value creation,” and noted that the mere production of goods provides dubious value to America.

Photo: Gage Skidmore