Google expands Waze Rider pilot program to San Francisco users

By Jose Vilches on September 30, 2016, 11:15 AM


Google has quietly begun rolling out its Waze ride-sharing service to users in the San Francisco Bay Area, following a pilot program that was initially available to more than 25,000 employees at select companies such as Adobe and Walmart. The service puts Google in competition with Uber’s UberPool and Lyft’s Line services, but with some key differences in the business model.

While the aforementioned Uber and Lyft services are basically swapouts for taxis that let you split the cost of your trip with another rider headed in the same direction, Google said it intends to have the Waze app match drivers and riders already looking to move in the same direction.

The driver is only reimbursed for mileage driven at a maximum of 54 cents per mile — Google says it doesn't believe drivers need to report any payment as income because it is considered gas money. Coordination, communication, and payment are automatically handled through the mobile apps.

According to an account by a Wall Street Journal reporter taking a trip from San Francisco’s financial district to Oakland — roughly a 20-minute ride — Google paid the driver $6.30 and charged the rider just $3 — factoring in a discount for the service’s launch. The

Apple building $45 million research center in Beijing to develop new hardware

by Rich McCormick Sep 30, 2016, 12:52a


Apple is building a $45 million research facility in Beijing, the Wall Street Journal reports, focusing on the creation of new hardware. The company's first Chinese research center will employ 500 people and will develop computer hardware, communications, audio, and visual equipment, the Zhongguancun Science Park Administrative Committee said in a post on social media, shedding more light on Chinese expansion plans that CEO Tim Cook first detailed last month.

TIM COOK SAID APPLE WOULD BUILD AN R&D CENTER IN CHINA LAST MONTH

Tim Cook promised to invest more in China during a visit to the country in August, pledging to open such a research and development facility in the country in 2016. Apple declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal about the planned facility, which is reportedly set to be placed in a new science park in Beijing's Wangjing district, but it would be the latest in a string of investments the company has made in the country in an effort to shore up sliding sales, including $1 billion in Didi Chuxing, a ride-hailing app seen as China's Uber.

China has been both a base of manufacture for Apple's devices and an important market for their sale, but Apple has faced a turbulent time in the country lately. Chinese authorities shut down the iBooks and iTunes Movies services earlier this year — a move that reportedly prompted Tim Cook's first of two visits to the country in one year to smooth over relations with government officials. Despite these issues, Cook said in August that Apple remained "very optimistic about the long-term opportunities in Greater China," and that it would continue to invest there. This new R&D facility certainly seems to be proof of that plan.

Security group claims Yahoo hack was not "state-sponsored"

By Rob Thubron on September 29, 2016, 1:30 PM



When Yahoo last week confirmed that 500 million of its accounts had been leaked following a hack that took place in 2014, the company said that state-sponsored actors were behind the attack. But according to an independent security firm, a gang of cybercriminals-for-hire was responsible.

Arizona-based InfoArmor, which provides companies with protection against employee identify theft, released an investigative report claiming there is no evidence that a nation-state stole the data.

Last year, Yahoo became one of several companies, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, to say it would alert users who they suspect have accounts that have come under attack by state-sponsored hackers. It has never revealed how it determines this, or what evidence it has to prove the 2014 hack was orchestrated by a government.

Andrew Komarov, InfoArmor’s chief intelligence officer, concluded that the Yahoo hackers were cybercriminals after reviewing a sample of the leaked data. The firm acquired this from “operative sources” as part of an investigation into a five-person criminal gang located in Eastern Europe known as Group E.

“They have never been hired by anyone to hack Yahoo," said Komarov "They were simply looking for well-known sites that had many users […] According to our information, most of the group's clientele are spammers."

Komarov added that Group E has sold the Yahoo data to at least three different clients. One was a state-sponsored party who had an interest in exclusive database acquisition, and the other two were notable criminal gangs who planned to use it for spam campaigns. "We don't see any reason to say that it's state-sponsored. Their clients are state sponsored, but not the actual hackers," Komarov told the Wall Street Journal.

InfoArmor also believes that Group E was behind the high-profile hacks of LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Dropbox.