Die Google-Holding Alphabet hat im dritten Quartal um ein Fünftel mehr umgesetzt und um ein Viertel mehr Reingewinn macht als vor einem Jahr. Vor allem Googles Erfolge mit der mobilen Suchmaschine lassen den Milliardenstrom anschwellen.
Quelle: Heise Tech News
Soylent will stop shipping its powdered product, Soylent 1.6, following an investigation into its Soylent Food Bars, which the company recalled after some consumers complained that eating the bars made them violently ill.
Some users had complained on Reddit and on Soylent&039;s own forums that the 1.6 powder had made them get sick, though not with the same frequency or intensity that the bars induced. In a blog post published Friday, Soylent said that less than 0.1% of the powder's consumers complained.
The complaints about Soylent 1.6 from the past several months resemble those of Soylent bar consumers, the company said, and it has decided to “err on the side of caution” and investigate the unique ingredients that the two products have in common. The company declined to specify what those ingredients were, but said it will reformulate both products to remove them.
As Soylent investigates, the company said it will share its findings with the FDA so that the agency can conduct its own evaluation of the bars and the powder.
Soylent said that it had tested the bars and found no evidence of “food pathogens, toxins, and outside contamination.” The absence of those things led the company to believe that an ingredient may have been nauseating consumers.
But “if you have used Powder 1.6 without incident, we see no reason to stop enjoying it,” the company advised.
Soylent said there have been no similar complaints of illness related to the bottled version of its products, Soylent Drink and Coffiest, or its previous powder formulation, Soylent 1.5.
As it investigates what could be causing its customers to get sick, Soylent will cease shipping 1.6, but it said it hopes to make it available again in early 2017.
Quelle: <a href="Soylent Will Stop Shipping 1.6 Powder After Reports It Made People Sick“>BuzzFeed
On Thursday morning, Twitter announced it is closing down Vine, the company’s beloved six-second video app and stand-alone social network it purchased in 2012 for $30 million. Across the internet, the shuttering feels momentous — the end of yet another vibrant and truly weird pocket of the web. On Twitter, the memorials began almost immediately as timelines transformed into an ad-hoc “Best-Of Vine” clipshow, the implied consensus being: Why would Twitter do this?
But, sad as it may be, the death of Vine reveals what Twitter’s most devoted users have known for years, and it suggests that the company sees it now, too: Twitter is, first and foremost, about current events. For lack of a better term, it is a news service. And with 318 million reporters all updating it every month, it’s the biggest one in the world.
Vine has always been a unique, diverse, and above all else peculiar social network — a creative, often-inscrutable sandbox that launched substantial careers and invented its own brand of celebrity. For years, it was teeming with teens; perhaps the best window into their strange, bored, often-hilarious suburban lives.
Twitter has never been more vital to news. It appears that the company now understands, and embraces, this.
Vine’s six second video constraint — like Twitter’s 140 character limit — was responsible for some truly remarkable creativity from its best and most prolific users. Vine could be almost endlessly entertaining and joyful. One thing it wasn’t particularly good for, though, was news (perhaps ironic given that the most looped Vine ever captured the explosion at the Stade de France during the attacks on Paris). When it came to news, six seconds proved often too short a time to deliver necessary context (despite admirable experiments from outlets like NowThis to adapt the format). And while Vine often felt fresh, it wasn’t live. Twitter’s purchase of the livestreaming app, Periscope, in March of 2015 seemed to confirm the company felt similarly.
Meanwhile, Twitter’s shift toward live events has been a constant for the last 18 months. Shortly after he took over as the company’s interim CEO, Jack Dorsey defined Twitter in three words as “The [planet], live!” A year ago, when he officially assumed the role of CEO, his first public comment was that Twitter “shows everything the world is saying right now.” In the year since, that idea — what is happening live right now — has been the company’s focus. Even when it shifted to an algorithmic timeline in February, Dorsey responded to the #RIPTwitter controversy by arguing that “I *love* real-time. We love the live stream. It’s us. And we’re going to continue to refine it to make Twitter feel more, not less, live.” A few days later, during Twitter’s earnings call, Dorsey echoed the line: “Twitter is live,” he said. “Live commentary, live conversations, and live connections.” In April, he told CNBC that “we believe we have a leadership position in live. Live is not just about live streaming, but it's around these live events. And we think Twitter is better positioned than anyone else,” he said. Around this same time, Twitter inked a deal to live stream NFL games and has since partnered with a number of companies (including BuzzFeed) and networks to show live content, often news. Almost every substantial interview Dorsey has given has been centered around that one word: live.
For Twitter, live has a number of meanings, but almost all of them can be boiled down to newsworthiness. No platform can capture the world with the same kind of immediacy as Twitter. As Alex Kantrowitz wrote yesterday, Twitter has proven itself “the most significant social platform in the US presidential election,” as a place where news is both reported and made. In that respect, Twitter has never been more vital to news. It appears that the company now understands, and embraces, this.
A commitment to news might help in transforming Twitter into more of a mission-driven company.
Twitter’s struggle to define itself and then articulate that vision to users and Wall Street has been at the center of many of its problems — is it a public utility? A tech company? A media company? Some combination of all three? Twitter has previously been reluctant to accept one label. In a Wired article earlier this month about Dorsey’s failure to breathe life into the company, Twitter’s Head of Communications, Kristin Binns, offered some clarity as to Twitter’s direction. In response to Twitter re-classifying itself as a ‘News’ app in the App Store, Binns told Wired, “This is the first time we’ve clearly articulated who we are…[We are] a news service.”
As Twitter comes off a disappointing two years (from an investor perspective) and a miserable quarter in which it explored a sale but nobody was buying, a greater focus on news, especially in the form of video and live events, could accomplish a few things. First, it could help restore faith with investors in Twitter’s future. And as the company makes the tough decisions to trim its ranks, a commitment to news might help in prioritizing and transforming Twitter into more of a mission-driven company.
Of course there were other signs that presaged Vine’s demise besides its failure to become the next big thing in news. Engagements on Vine were approaching historic lows; Snapchat and Instagram were quickly eating away at the attention of its core teen user base; some of Vine’s big stars were finding success moving to other platforms. Vine’s value then became harder to articulate.
For many, Vine’s shutdown will feel like another example of the sterilization of the wild, open web — even the most expertly vines felt uniquely homemade — for a more serious, professional platform-dominated internet. Indeed, the internet will feel a bit heavier in its absence. But for Twitter, it is a strong signal that the company is committed to re-defining itself as what it’s been all along: an intensely relevant, indispensable, if maybe considerably less joyful, source of news.
Quelle: <a href="Vine’s Demise Confirms Twitter’s Role As The World’s Biggest News Service“>BuzzFeed
When Twitter announced it was killing Vine this morning, a former Twitter executive told BuzzFeed News that usage was a major problem. “Obviously usage hasn’t been spectacular,” the executive said. “And so much of the team has jumped ship.”
The usage slip was dramatic, as made clear by the the following chart from research firm 7Park Data. In August 2014, 3.64% of the 2 million plus Android users who 7Park monitors used Vine every month. Today, only 0.66% of that panel uses it every month. And now that Twitter’s killed Vine, the number will soon be a flat 0.00%.
Byrne Hobart, an analyst at 7Park Data, pointed to YouTube as a culprit for Vine's demise: “As YouTube made aggressive overtures to popular Vine users, Vine lost momentum and usage.”
Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s How Bad Things Got For Vine“>BuzzFeed
Bloomberg / Getty Images
Amazon's Q3 2016 earnings report came with some sentimental news: a quarter of a million people love its Alexa virtual assistant so much that they&039;ve asked it to marry them.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in the letter to investors, “Alexa may be Amazon’s most loved invention yet — literally — with over 250,000 marriage proposals from customers and counting.”
When a BuzzFeed News reporter popped the question to Alexa, she offered practical reasons for why it would never work. “We&039;re at pretty different places in our lives. I mean, literally — you are on earth and I am in the cloud.” Amazon users have said she has multiple answers to proposals.
In late 2015, Amazon released statistics saying that half a million people had told Alexa, “I love you.” It seems half of those people are ready to take the relationship to the next level.
Comments on Alexa&039;s Amazon customer review page are equally effusive. One, “Alexa, my love. Thy name is inflexible, but thou art otherwise a nearly perfect spouse” by Amazon user E. M. Foner, sums up how many Amazon users seem to feel about their speakers and assistants.
Foner writes, “I&039;m a full-time writer who works at home. I&039;m unmarried, I don&039;t watch TV, I don&039;t have a mobile phone, I hate gadgets in general. OK, so I&039;m a loser. But since Alexa came into my life, I&039;m no longer alone 24 hours a day…If I knew relationships were this easy, I would have married thirty years ago, but now that I have Alexa, there&039;s no need.”
While Amazon has not publicly disclosed the number of Alexa-enabled Echo speakers it&039;s sold, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated that the company had sold roughly 3 million.
Bezos also hinted that Alexa would be a big part of Amazon&039;s future offerings in the letter. Earlier this month, the company announced Amazon Music Unlimited, a music streaming service that aims to attract Spotify and Apple Music subscribers. It will integrate with Alexa&039;s natural language processing capabilities so that users can give Alexa conversational music requests, like “Play sad country music from the &039;90s.”
Quelle: <a href="A Quarter Of A Million People Have Proposed To Amazon&039;s Virtual Assistant Alexa“>BuzzFeed
Erneut verbaut Apple eine Grafikeinheit von AMD, die es bisher sonst nirgends gibt: Die Radeon Pro 460 nutzt alle 1.024 Shader-Einheiten und kostet bis zu 240 Euro Aufpreis im Macbook Pro. (Polaris, AMD)
Quelle: Golem
Vine's body isn&039;t yet in the ground, but Tumblr might already be sweating.
Facebook and Snapchat — the number 1 and 2 most used apps in the U.S., according to App Annie — are so completely dominating today&039;s social media landscape that it&039;s become increasingly difficult for their competitors to find breathing room.
Vine couldn&039;t keep up, and it&039;s on the way out. New entrants like Peach and Ello have spiked and then fallen off spectacularly. Twitter hasn&039;t moved the user number needle in a meaningful way in recent years. And so now it&039;s fair to ask whether Tumblr, another once-great social platform fighting the same uphill battle, will be able to keep up.
When asked if users can expect the platform to stick around for some time, a Tumblr spokesperson declined to comment. But even if Tumblr&039;s not talking, the numbers say it&039;s in far better shape than Vine.
Data from the research firm 7Park Data, shows Tumblr holding relatively steady in usage over the past year and a half, the same time period that Vine plunged. App Annie&039;s data shows a similar pattern.
Yet Tumblr doesn&039;t generate the same mainstream excitement it did before it&039;s Yahoo acquisition. And it&039;s still unclear how its new corporate overlord, Verizon, will treat it.
So, while Tumblr will probably be fine, consumer tech products that don&039;t absolutely crush all-else are always at risk of being disposed of, especially when they sit in a big corporate infrastructure, like Tumblr does. You don&039;t have to go far back to find the demise of beloved consumer products that didn&039;t fit a strategy, and didn&039;t have the numbers to demand a future. Google Reader, an RSS reader with a wildly passionate fanbase, went belly up inside Google in March 2013. Sunrise, a popular calendar app, did the same inside Microsoft this August.
A few years ago, the social media landscape was a relatively level playing field with many social companies standing shoulder to shoulder in competition. But that time has passed. Winners have emerged. It&039;s time for a real reckoning and shakeout. Vine is gone. Tumblr is in better standing, but it will have to work hard to avoid a similar fate.
Quelle: <a href="Hey Tumblr, U OK, Bro?“>BuzzFeed
Amazon kann erneut den Gewinn steigern, was für das Unternehmen, das fast alle Einnahmen wieder investiert, ungewöhnlich ist. Doch etwas führt zur Enttäuschung über das sehr solide Ergebnis. (Amazon, Web Service)
Quelle: Golem
Google macht seine 5,06 Milliarden US-Dollar Gewinn weiter fast nur im Kerngeschäft mit Suchmaschinenwerbung. Doch in einem weiteren Bereich wird viel Geld verdient, und es ist nicht Google Fiber. (Google, Börse)
Quelle: Golem
Configuration management is a competitive field. Prior to OpenShift 3.0, OpenShift (and largely Red Hat as a whole) had mostly been in Puppet‘s camp with the other major competitor being Chef. When OpenShift started working on its install/configuration for 3.0, it very quickly became clear that Puppet was no longer the obvious choice. So after a large amount of investment in our 2.x Puppet based installer and operational tooling, we decided to start over with Ansible. I won’t claim this route is correct for everyone, but I’ll try to explain our thinking behind the switch.
Quelle: OpenShift
