An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Cards Against Humanity, the card game company, purchased ClickHole.com from its owners at G/O Media on Monday for an undisclosed amount in an all-cash deal, BuzzFeed News has learned. ClickHole's employees will become the majority owners of the site. Although terms were not disclosed, the Wall Street Journal reported in November that the sale price was likely to be less than $1 million. The Onion, which created ClickHole, will remain a part of G/O Media. Max Temkin, the cofounder of Cards Against Humanity, told BuzzFeed News that the deal will allow ClickHole to bring on additional staff -- it currently has only five full-time employees -- and explore new revenue streams. He also said the site would operate independently, with financial support from Cards Against Humanity. ClickHole staffers will not be involved in writing any Cards Against Humanity content. "We're giving them funding, and if they ask us, we'll be an advisor," Temkin told BuzzFeed News, saying that the ClickHole team will operate independently, with financial support. "We just want to give them a chance to do their thing. They're really capable -- really smart and innovative. And I don't know if they've had that opportunity before to try all these creative [ideas for the site]." Steve Etheridge, editor-in-chief of ClickHole, told BuzzFeed News, "we're leaving a place with a very robust editorial infrastructure to essentially go build a new digital media company from scratch. Cards is giving us total freedom to do our thing, but that freedom comes with a lot of new responsibility, and we really just want to get it right. Our goal is to make ClickHole better than ever before."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Fiber, the division of Google parent company Alphabet that provides fiber-to-the-premises service in the U.S., today announced that it will no longer offer traditional TV bundles with news, sports, premium, and local broadcast channels. From a report: Current subscribers to Fiber plans that include TV won't see their existing service modified or changed, but new customers won't have the option of signing up for cable content going forward. "As we return our focus to where we started -- as a gigabit Internet company -- we're also ready to challenge the status quo, to finally come right out and say it: customers today just don't need traditional TV," wrote Fiber in a blog post. "The best TV is already online. And we want to help you watch it, in the ways that work best for your budget and your own viewing preferences."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is making it easier for developers to purchase the latest version of its smart glasses, with the company saying on Tuesday that the Glass Enterprise Edition 2 is now available from some hardware resellers. From a report: "We've seen strong demand from developers and businesses who are interested in building new, helpful enterprise solutions for Glass," Google said in a blog post, adding that the new headset was already being used by people with jobs in logistics, manufacturing and field services."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From a report: I'll just pay a little more attention to the Android bit: a total of $80 billion paid out to Android developers, which is significantly less than the $155 billion Apple has paid out via the iOS App Store. Even if you account for Google allowing developers to use their own payment methods and made a bunch of other caveats, I suspect you can't avoid the truth. The vast majority of phones on Earth run Android, and yet it is almost surely the case that there's more money for developers in iPhone apps. That's always been the conventional wisdom, but Google's own numbers all but confirm it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California helped create the modern Big Data industry, in which tech companies vacuum up and profit off personal information. Now a new law in the state is creating something like a solution to the loss of privacy. From a report: The California Consumer Privacy Act, which took effect Jan. 1, gives people the right to know what large companies know about them and the right to block the sale of that information to others. In effect, it created a market for privacy expertise and software. A wave of privacy-focused technology startups is offering a variety of services, from personal data scrubbing to business-focused software meant to help companies comply with the law. A brief list of the nearly 300 companies now selling privacy services includes Privacera, Privsee, Privally, Privitar and Privaon. There's DataFleets, DataGrail, DataGravity, Dataguise, DataTrue and Datastream.io. And there's HITRUST, Mighty Trust, OneTrust, trust-hub, TrustArc and The Media Trust, as well as SecureB2B, Securiti.ai, Security Scorecard and Very Good Security. Personal privacy is still under threat from data breaches, data harvesting and elsewhere, but it may also finally be living up to its promise as a profitable business.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Iowa caucus debacle represents one of the most stunning failures of information security ever. From a column: This failure was delivered by the same Iowa Democratic Party officials who have said for the last four years they were "ramping up" their technology capabilities, convening seemingly endless security task forces to ensure foreign powers did not disenfranchise voters, and collaborating with federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security to make sure everyone was in the loop on voting security. Voters will be paying close attention to how party leaders ensure that votes going forward have clear contingency plans in place, not just to protect against hackers, but from all types of technology failures, including applications that might not work. Iowa officials counting the results coming in Monday from the caucusing app reported irregularities that required them to switch from the app to counting votes manually. Party officials said the "underlying data" put into the app was fine, but it is unclear as of yet how they know this or even what they consider "underlying data." "Last night, more than 1,600 precinct caucuses gathered across the state of Iowa and at satellite caucuses around the world," the Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement Tuesday. "As precinct caucus results started coming in, the IDP ran them through an accuracy and quality check. It became clear that there were inconsistencies with the reports. The underlying cause of these inconsistencies was not immediately clear, and required investigation, which took time."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One thing people don't get about Bloomberg is that he is a tech entrepreneur and a media mogul in one package. As if Steve Jobs, instead of making Macs and iPhones, made magazines and terminals. Different characters, similar thought process.

The semiconductor industry last year suffered its worst annual slump in almost two decades, hurt by a trade war between the largest chip producer, the U.S., and the largest consumer, China. From a report: Revenue fell 12% to $412 billion in 2019, the Semiconductor Industry Association said Monday in a statement. That's the biggest drop since 2001, when industry sales slumped 32% as the dot-com bubble burst. The rate of decline last year abated with sales growing slightly in the fourth quarter from the preceding three-month period, the industry association said. For that to continue, China and the U.S. need to build on the phase one trade agreement announced last month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I don't know why people take the shortcut of saying other people are tone deaf. Obviously the person who they're saying it to doesn't agree. Do they really want to argue about that? What's the point. It's like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where Donald Sutherland is screaming and pointing at someone who is not yet possessed. Look I found a human, the accuser seems to be saying. It's not a good look.

Truecaller, one of the world's largest caller-identification service providers, has amassed 200 million monthly active users and is increasingly proving that it can turn a profit, it said Tuesday. The company also noted that India is its largest market with 150 million active users. From a report: Reaching the 200 million milestone gives the Swedish firm a significant lead over its Seattle-based rival Hiya, which had about 100 million users as of October last year. But unlike its rivals, Truecaller has expanded beyond its caller ID and spam monitoring service. In recent years, it has added messaging and payments services in some markets. Both of these are gaining adoption, said Truecaller co-founder and chief executive Alan Mamedi (pictured above) in an interview with TechCrunch. The payments service, currently available only in India, would soon be expanded to some African markets, said Mamedi. In India, Truecaller plans to offer lending service in a few weeks, he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google security engineers said last week they have successfully cut down the "patch gap" in Google Chrome from 33 days to only 15 days. From a report: The term "patch gap" refers to the time it takes from when a security bug is fixed in an open source library to when the same fix lands in software that uses that particular library. In today's software landscape where many apps rely on open source components, the "patch gap" is considered a major security risk. The reason is because when a security bug is fixed in an open source library, details about that bug become public, primarily due to the public nature and openness of most open source projects. Hackers can then use details about these security flaws to craft exploits and launch attacks against software that relies on the vulnerable component, before the software maker has a chance to release a patch. If the software maker is on a fixed release schedule, with updates coming out every few weeks or months, the patch gap can provide hackers with an attack window that most software projects can't deal with.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is the story that should have been on MSNBC last night. They spent three years getting ready for it. And instead they tried to show a feel-good family hour of Americana. And it fell apart. It's a Heidi moment.

The big lesson of all our lives is that we have to learn to work together or it doesn't work.

Japan's first robot bartender has begun serving up drinks in a Tokyo pub in a test that could usher in a wave of automation in restaurants and shops struggling to hire staff in an aging society. From a report: The repurposed industrial robot serves drinks in is own corner of a Japanese pub operated by restaurant chain Yoronotaki. An attached tablet computer face smiles as it chats about the weather while preparing orders. The robot, made by the company QBIT Robotics, can pour a beer in 40 seconds and mix a cocktail in a minute. It uses four cameras to monitors customers to analyze their expressions with artificial intelligence (AI) software. "I like it because dealing with people can be a hassle. With this you can just come and get drunk," Satoshi Harada, a restaurant worker said after ordering a drink. "If they could make it a little quicker it would be even better." Finding workers, especially in Japan's service sector, is set to get even more difficult.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A 21-minute voicemailcast to Doc. The speech maker I was trying to think of was Ann Richards. One of the best political speeches of all time. Mr Schiff Goes to Washington. Three requests of LO2 fans. 1. Write a blog post in LO2, send me a link. 2. If you don't have an AWS account, please set one up. 3. Use the outliner as a file system.