France’s competition watchdog has slapped Google with a €150 million (~$166 million) fine after finding the tech giant abused its dominant position in the online search advertising market.

In a decision announced today — following a lengthy investigation into the online ad sector — the competition authority sanctioned Google for adopting what it describes as “opaque and difficult to understand” operating rules for its ad platform, Google Ads, and for applying them in “an unfair and random manner.”

The watchdog has ordered Google to clarify how it draws up rules for the operation of Google Ads and its procedures for suspending accounts. The tech giant will also have to put in place measures to prevent, detect and deal with violations of Google Ads rules.

A Google spokesman told TechCrunch the company will appeal the decision.

The decision — which comes hard on the heels of a market study report by the U.K.’s competition watchdog asking for views on whether Google should be broken up — relates to search ads which appear when a user of Google’s search engine searches for something and ads are served alongside organic search results.

More specifically, it relates to the rules Google applies to its Ads platform which set conditions under which advertisers can broadcast ads — rules the watchdog found to be confusing and inconsistently applied.

It also found Google had changed its position on the interpretation of the rules over time, which it said generated instability for some advertisers who were kept in a situation of legal and economic insecurity.

In France, Google holds a dominant position in the online search market, with its search engine responsible for more than 90% of searches carried out, and holds more than 80% of the online ad market linked to searches, per the watchdog, which notes that that dominance puts requirements on it to define operating rules of its ad platform in an objective, transparent and non-discriminatory manner.

However, it found Google’s wording of ad rules failed to live up to that standard — saying it is “not based on any precise and stable definition, which gives Google full latitude to interpret them according to situations.”

Explaining its decision in a press release, the Autorité de la Concurrence writes [translated by Google Translate]:

[T]he French Competition Authority considers that the Google Ads operating rules imposed by Google on advertisers are established and applied under non-objective, non-transparent and discriminatory conditions. The opacity and lack of objectivity of these rules make it very difficult for advertisers to apply them, while Google has all the discretion to modify its interpretation of the rules in a way that is difficult to predict, and decide accordingly whether the sites comply with them or not. This allows Google to apply them in a discriminatory or inconsistent manner. This leads to damage both for advertisers and for search engine users.

The watchdog’s multi-year investigation of the online ad sector was instigated after a complaint by a company called Gibmedia — which raised an objection more than four years ago after Google closed its Google Ads account without notice.

Source: France slaps Google with $166M antitrust fine for opaque and inconsistent ad rules | TechCrunch

Airbnb will be breathing a sigh of relief today: Europe’s top court has judged it to be an online platform, which merely connects people looking for short-term accommodation, rather than a full-blown estate agent.

The ruling may make it harder for the “home sharing” platform to be forced to comply with local property regulations — at least under current regional rules governing e-commerce platforms.

The judgement by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) today follows a complaint made by a French tourism association, AHTOP, which had argued Airbnb should hold a professional estate agent licence. And, that by not having one, the platform giant was in breach of a piece of French legislation known as the “Hoguet Law.”

However, the court disagreed — siding with Airbnb’s argument that its business must be classified as an “information society service” under EU Directive 2000/31 on electronic commerce.

Commenting on the ruling in a statement, Luca Tosoni, a research fellow at the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law at the University of Oslo, told us: “The Court’s finding that online platforms that facilitate the provision of short-term accommodation services, such as Airbnb, qualify as providers of ‘information society services’ entails strict limitations on the ability to introduce or enforce restrictive measures on similar services by a Member State other than that in whose territory the relevant service provider is established.”

Source: Airbnb is a platform not an estate agent, says Europe’s top court | TechCrunch

Amsterdam was hoping to make Airbnb collect tourist taxes too, which the county of Amsterdam will now have to do themselves. Also, Amsterdam – a 100% tourist city – is now whining that it doesn’t want tourists any more and is blaming Airbnb for having them.

It’s been about a year since users of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX were informed that the company’s CEO unexpectedly died, taking the password that accessed most the money from their accounts with him to the grave. And now, those clients want to know what’s inside that grave.

The majority of QuadrigaCX’s holdings were kept offline in “cold storage,” with a password known only by 30-year-old CEO Gerald Cotten. On January 14, the company posted a Facebook note announcing Cotten had died about month earlier “due to complications with Crohn’s disease” while on a trip to India “where he was opening an orphanage to provide a home and safe refuge for children in need.”

The news meant that 76,000 people lost cryptocurrency and cash that amounted to about $163 million USD, collectively, according to Bloomberg. The story became more suspicious in June when a bankruptcy monitor revealed that Cotten funneled most of the money into fraudulent accounts and spent much of it on his wife and himself. Growing skepticism around the mysterious death has driven lawyers representing Quadriga CX users to request that Cotten’s grave be exhumed.

On Friday, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court-appointed lawyers sent a letter asking Canadian police to conduct an autopsy on the body in Cotten’s grave “to confirm both its identity and the cause of death” citing the “questionable circumstances surrounding Mr. Cotten’s death” and “the need for certainty around the question of whether Mr. Cotten is in fact deceased.”

Richard Niedermayer, a lawyer representing Cotten’s wife Jennifer Robertson told the New York Times in an email that Robertson was “heartbroken to learn” about the exhumation request, adding that Cotten’s death “should not be in doubt.”

The QuadrigaCX users’ counsel is asking that the exhumation and autopsy happen by the Spring of 2020 due to “decomposition concerns.”

Source: QuadrigaCX Want to Exhume Body of CEO Gerald Cotten

Microsoft has once again flipped the switch on small banner ads in the Windows 10 Mail and Calendar UWP app for Windows 10.

We last saw these ads in November last year, when Microsoft said they were an experiment.

Then the ads only showed for those who were not Office 365 subscribers, but on this occasion, they are present for everyone and appear non-removable.

The ads are not fixed – when you read your Gmail if offers to let you read your Gmail on mobile, and for Outlook.com accounts it offers the Outlook app for mobile.

Most annoyingly, the ads are still present, even if you use the Outlook app on mobile, and take up considerable vertical space in the menu.

When asked Microsoft said;

“The ads within the app itself will be displayed regardless of which email address you use it with. It is not removable, but you can submit it as a suggestion within the Feedback Hub on Windows 10 here: https://msft.it/6012TVPXG . “

Ads in Mail and Calendar app are of course not in and of themselves evil, but most people feel they have paid for the built-in software in Windows, such as the mail app, when they purchased the computer, and it appears the ads will show even if you use a non-Microsoft email provider.

Source: Ads in Mail and Calendar app for Windows 10 are back – MSPoweruser

Amazon.com is blocking its third-party sellers from using FedEx’s ground delivery network for Prime shipments, citing a decline in performance heading into the final stretch of the holiday shopping season. The ban on using FedEx’s Ground and Home services starts this week and will last “until the delivery performance of these ship methods improves,” according to an email Amazon sent Sunday to merchants that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Amazon has stopped using FedEx for its own deliveries in the U.S., but third-party merchants had still been able to use FedEx. Such sellers now account for more than half of the merchandise sold on Amazon’s website, including many items listed as eligible for Prime.

FedEx said the decision impacts a small number of shippers but “limits the options for those small businesses on some of the highest shipping days in history.” The carrier said it still expects to handle a record number of packages this holiday season. “The overall impact to our business is minuscule,” a FedEx spokeswoman said. In its email to merchants, Amazon said sellers can use FedEx’s speedier and more expensive Express service for Prime orders or FedEx Ground for non-Prime shipments.

Source: Amazon Blocks Sellers From Using FedEx Ground For Prime Shipments – Slashdot

How can a marketplace justify controlling marketpeoples’ logistics?

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is adding another responsibility to his job: Pichai will also be the CEO of parent holding company Alphabet going forward, taking the helm from co-founder and longtime CEO Larry Page.

Additionally, co-founder Sergey Brin will be resigning from his post as the president of Alphabet. Brin and Page jointly announced the leadership change in a blog post Tuesday afternoon, writing:

“Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President. Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. He will be the executive responsible and accountable for leading Google, and managing Alphabet’s investment in our portfolio of Other Bets.”

“We are deeply committed to Google and Alphabet for the long term, and will remain actively involved as Board members, shareholders and co-founders. In addition, we plan to continue talking with Sundar regularly, especially on topics we’re passionate about,” the duo wrote.

Pichai has been with Google since 2004, and oversaw several of the company’s key products before becoming CEO of Google in 2015 when the search giant reorganized its corporate structure.

Source: Sundar Pichai Becomes Alphabet CEO, Larry Page to Step Back – Variety

Whether we decide to take out that insurance policy, buy Bitcoin, or switch jobs, many economic decisions boil down to a fundamental gamble about how to maximize our wealth over time. How we understand these decisions is the subject of a new perspective piece in Nature Physics that aims to correct a foundational mistake in economic theory.

According to author Ole Peters (London Mathematical Laboratory, Santa Fe Institute), people’s real-world behavior often “deviates starkly” from what standard economic theory would recommend.

Take the example of a simple coin toss: Most people would not gamble on a repeated coin toss where a heads would increase their net worth by 50%, but a tails would decrease it by 40%.

“Would you accept the gamble and risk losing at the toss of a coin 40% of your house, car and life savings?” Peters asks, echoing a similar objection raised by Nicholas Bernoulli in 1713.

But early economists would have taken that gamble, at least in theory. In classical economics, the way to approach a decision is to consider all possible outcomes, then average across them. So the coin toss game seems worth playing because equal probability of a 50% gain and a 40% loss are no different from a 5% gain.

Why people don’t choose to play the game, seemingly ignoring the opportunity to gain a steady 5%, has been explained psychologically— people, in the parlance of the field, are “risk averse”. But according to Peters, these explanations don’t really get to the root of the problem, which is that the classical “solution” lacks a fundamental understanding of the individual’s unique trajectory over time.

Instead of averaging wealth across parallel possibilities, Peters advocates an approach that models how an individual’s wealth evolves along a single path through time. In a disarmingly simple example, he randomly multiplies the player’s total wealth by either 150% or 60% depending on the coin toss. That player lives with the gain or loss of each round, carrying it with them to the next turn. As the play time increases, Peters’ model reveals an array of individual trajectories. They all follow unique paths. And in contrast to the classical conception, all paths eventually plummet downward. In other words, the approach reveals a fray of exponential losses where the classical conception would show a single exponential gain.

Encouragingly, people seem to intuitively grasp the difference between these two dynamics in empirical tests. The perspective piece describes an experiment conducted by a group of neuroscientists led by Oliver Hulme, at the Danish Research Center for Magnetic Resonance. Participants played a gambling game with real money. On one day, the game was set up to maximize their wealth under classical, additive dynamics. On a separate day, the game was set up under multiplicative dynamics.

“The crucial measure was whether participants would change their willingness to take risks between the two days,” explains the study’s lead author David Meder. “Such a change would be incompatible with classical theories, while Peters’ approach predicts exactly that.”

The results were striking: When the game’s dynamics changed, all of the subjects changed their willingness to take risks, and in doing so were able to approximate the optimal strategy for growing their individual wealth over time.

“The big news here is that we are much more adaptable than we thought we were,” Peters says. “Theseaspects of our behavior we thought were neurologically imprinted are actually quite flexible.”

“This theory is exciting because it offers an explanation for why particular risk-taking behaviors emerge, and how these behaviors should adapt to different circumstances. Based on this, we can derive novel predictions for what types of reward signals the brain should compute to optimize wealth over time” says Hulme.

Peters’ distinction between averaging possibilities and tracing individual trajectories can also inform a long list of economic puzzles— from the equity premium puzzle to measuring inequality to detecting Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

“It may sound obvious to say that what matters to one’s wealth is how it evolves over time, not how it averages over many parallel states of the same individual,” writes Andrea Taroni in a companion Editorial in Nature Physics. “Yet that is the conceptual mistake we continue to make in our economic models.”

Source: This ‘fix’ for economic theory changes everything from gambles to Ponzi schemes

Eighteen states rang in 2019 with minimum wage increases — some that will ultimately rise as high as $15 an hour — and so far, opponents’ dire predictions of job losses have not come true.

What it means: The data paint a clear picture: Higher minimum wage requirements haven’t reduced hiring in low-wage industries or overall.

State of play: Opponents have long argued that raising the minimum wage will cause workers to lose their jobs and prompt fast food chains (and other stores) to raise prices.

But job losses and price hikes haven’t been pronounced in the aftermath of a recent wave of city and state wage-boost laws.

• And more economists are arguing that the link between minimum wage hikes and job losses was more hype than science.

What we’re hearing: “The minimum wage increase is not showing the detrimental effects people once would’ve predicted,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at international accounting firm Grant Thornton, tells Axios.

• “A lot of what we’re seeing in politics is old economic ideology, not what economics is telling us today.”

[…]

Axios used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to compare job growth rates in four states with low minimum wages vs. eight states with high minimum wages:

• Since 2016, when California became the first state to pass the $15 minimum wage law, all 12 states have seen growth in restaurant, bar and hotel jobs.
• Three of the four states with job growth higher than the U.S. median have passed laws that will raise the state minimum wage to at least $13.50.
• Three of the five states with the slowest job growth rates did not have a state minimum wage above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.
• An outlier was Massachusetts, which had the slowest job growth in the sector and currently has the highest state minimum wage: $12 an hour.

The big picture: A number of peer-reviewed academic studies have found little to no impact on hiring as states and municipalities have raised the minimum wage.

• Rather, such increases are likely to have increased hiring in the strong U.S. economy, Bill Spriggs, chief economist at labor union AFL-CIO, tells Axios.

Source: Job loss predictions over rising minimum wages haven’t come true – Axios

Hackers didn’t waste any time and have started hijacking Disney+ user accounts hours after the service launched.

Many of these accounts are now being offered for free on hacking forums, or available for sale for prices varying from $3 to $11, a ZDNet investigation has discovered.

A stream of user complaints

The Disney+ video streaming service launched this week, on November 12. The service, although being available only in the US, Canada, and the Netherlands, has already amassed more than 10 million customers in its first 24 hours.

The Disney+ launch was marred by technical issues. Many users reported being unable to stream their favorite movies and shows.

But hidden in the flood of complaints about technical issues was a smaller stream of users reporting losing access to their accounts.

Many users reported that hackers were accessing their accounts, logging them out of all devices, and then changing the account’s email and password, effectively taking over the account and locking the previous owner out.

Source: Thousands of hacked Disney+ accounts are already for sale on hacking forums | ZDNet

Aside from traditional cable, which remains a must for any sports fan at the absolute least, there now exist more than a half-dozen prominent streaming services (and lots more small ones), all filled with a couple of buzzy shows, some old favorites, and endless filler crap that makes the library of content seem more valuable than it is. And if keeping up with the Emmy-nominated offerings of services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime didn’t already feel like a financial strain, the launch of Apple TV+ and the fawned-over premiere of Disney+ might have done it.

By my count, if you want to watch shows on HBO, Apple TV+, Disney+, CBS All-Access, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix, it’d run you $60.93 a month or $731.16 a year, and that’s before factoring in a standard cable package for live events and other shows, or the other streaming services sure to launch in the near future. (NBC’s got one coming down the pike.)

[…]

Instead of letting viewers just pay for the stuff they watch, they’re forced, instead, to choose between equally flawed packages where the fun and/or high-quality shows get bundled with pointless crap that jacks up the price. Unlike Spotify and its clones, which include essentially all the music a person could want, one relatively cheap subscription to any Movie/TV streaming service doesn’t give you access to more-or-less the entire history of moving pictures. And unlike Spotify and its clones, which have caused a massive downturn in music piracy, the shows on all these platforms are ripe for stealing.

[…]

A simple glance at torrent websites shows that plenty of people are stealing from the brand new steaming services—episodes of The Mandalorian and Dickinson all have hundreds or thousands of seeders and are among the most popular shows on torrent sites. I reached out specifically to Disney, Apple, and Netflix to ask what their policy was on going after pirated content, and haven’t heard back, but it’s obvious that these companies assume that at least some of their viewers aren’t paying the full price for their services. Given that you can watch as many as six simultaneous streams with Apple TV+, and four with Disney+ and the top Netflix package, the more common form of piracy—password sharing—is built into the system.

Source: Disney + and ‘The Mandalorian’ Are Driving People Back to Torrenting

Google will soon offer checking accounts to consumers, becoming the latest Silicon Valley heavyweight to push into finance. The Wall Street Journal: The project, code-named Cache, is expected to launch next year with accounts run by Citigroup and a credit union at Stanford University, a tiny lender in Google’s backyard. Big tech companies see financial services as a way to get closer to users and glean valuable data. Apple introduced a credit card this summer. Amazon.com has talked to banks about offering checking accounts. Facebook is working on a digital currency it hopes will upend global payments. Their ambitions could challenge incumbent financial-services firms, which fear losing their primacy and customers. They are also likely to stoke a reaction in Washington, where regulators are already investigating whether large technology companies have too much clout.

The tie-ups between banking and technology have sometimes been fraught. Apple irked its credit-card partner, Goldman Sachs Group, by running ads that said the card was “designed by Apple, not a bank.” Major financial companies dropped out of Facebook’s crypto project after a regulatory backlash. Google’s approach seems designed to make allies, rather than enemies, in both camps. The financial institutions’ brands, not Google’s, will be front-and-center on the accounts, an executive told The Wall Street Journal. And Google will leave the financial plumbing and compliance to the banks — activities it couldn’t do without a license anyway.

Source: Next in Google’s Quest for Consumer Dominance — Banking – Slashdot

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players will no longer be able to trade container keys between accounts because the trade was part of a massive worldwide fraud network. Players earned cases in Counter-Strike containing weapons and cosmetic upgrades, but had to purchase the keys to open the boxes. Developer Valve runs an internal marketplace on Steam where it allowed players to trade the boxes and the keys. Valve patched the game on October 28 and explained the problem in its patch notes.

“In the past, most key trades we observed were between legitimate customers,” the statement said. “However, worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced.”

This isn’t the first time Counter-Strike’s microtransactions were at the center of fraud. In September, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission settled with two YouTubers who ran popular websites that allowed fans to gamble their Counter-Strike skins. The influencers advertised the gambling site to fans on YouTube with video titles like HOW TO WIN $13,000 IN 5 MINUTES CS GO Betting without disclosing that they owned it.

Source: ‘Nearly All’ Counter-Strike Microtransactions Are Being Used for Money Laundering – VICE

Forty-seven state attorneys general have now joined a sweeping investigation into Facebook’s business practices aimed at determining whether the company has engaged in anti-competitive behavior, ignored privacy laws, or violated any other laws, according to the New York Attorney General’s office.

In a statement on Tuesday, Letitia James, the Democratic attorney general of New York, said in a statement that investigators would use every tool at their disposal “to determine whether Facebook’s actions stifled competition and put users at risk.” The officials also aim to determine whether Facebook has “reduced the quality of consumers’ choices” and “increased the price of advertising.”

“When competition is blocked, innovation can be stifled and consumers are harmed. Facebook, like every other company, must comply with our antitrust laws, and this investigation is looking into whether it has,” said Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, adding: “No one is above the law.”

The probe is the latest sign of a growing bipartisan unease with the immense sway a small number of tech companies hold over the digital economy. Google’s market power is likewise being scrutinized by attorneys general in four dozen states. And the U.S. Justice Department, reflecting concerns that “Big Tech” is abusing its control to stifle competition in markets, announced a broad antitrust review of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple this summer.

Source: Facebook Under Investigation by 47 Attorneys General

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With Tether’s monthly trading volume about 18% higher than that of Bitcoin, it’s arguably the most important coin in the crypto ecosystem. Tether’s also one of the main reasons why regulators regard cryptocurrencies with a wary eye, and have put the breaks on crypto exchange-traded funds amid concern of market manipulation.

“If there is no Tether, we lose a massive amount of daily volume — around $1 billion or more depending on the data source,” said Lex Sokolin, global financial technology co-head at ConsenSys, which offers blockchain technology. “Some of the concerning potential patters of trading in the market may start to fall away.”

Coins With Biggest Daily Trading Volumes

In billions of U.S. dollars

Source: CoinMarketCap.com

Values as of Sept. 27, 2019

Tether is the world’s most used stablecoin, a category of tokens that seek to avoid price fluctuations, often through pegs or reserves. It’s also a pathway for most of the world’s active traders into the crypto market. In countries like China, where crypto exchanges are banned, people can pay cash over the counter to get Tethers with few questions asked, according to Sokolin. From there, they can trade Tethers for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, he said.

“For many people in Asia, they like the idea that it’s this offshore, opaque thing out of reach of the U.S. government,” said Jeremy Allaire, chief executive officer of Circle, which supports a rival stablecoin called USD Coin. “It’s a feature, not a problem.”

Read more: A QuickTake explains the allure of stablcoins

Tether, which is being sued by New York for allegedly commingling funds including reserves, says using a know-your-customer form and approval process is required to issue and redeem the coin.

Asian traders account for about 70% of all crypto trading volume, according to Allaire, and Tether was used in 40% and 80% of all transactions on two of the world’s top exchanges, Binance and Huobi, respectively, Coin Metrics said earlier this year.

Many people don’t even know they use Tether, said Thaddeus Dryja, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Because traditional financial institutions worry that they don’t sniff out criminals and money launderers well enough, most crypto exchanges still don’t have bank accounts and can’t hold dollars on behalf of customers. So they use Tether as a substitute, Dryja said.

“I don’t think people actually trust Tether — I think people use Tether without realizing that they are using it, and instead think they have actual dollars in a bank account somewhere,” Dryja said. Some exchanges mislabel their pages, to convey the impression that customers are holding dollars instead of Tethers, he said.

Tether’s Market Cap Balloons

In U.S. dollars

Source: CoinMarketCap.com

The way Tether is managed and governed makes it a black box. While Bitcoin belongs to no one, Tether is issued by a Hong Kong-based private company whose proprietors also own the Bitfinex crypto exchange. The exact mechanism by which Tether’s supply is increased and decreased is unclear. Exactly how much of the supply is covered by fiat reserves is in question, too, as Tether is not independently audited. In April, Tether disclosed that 74% of the Tethers are covered by cash and short-term securities, while it previously said it had a 100% reserve.

The disclosure was a part of an ongoing investigation into Tether by the New York Attorney General, which accused the companies behind the coin of a coverup to hide the loss of $850 million of comingled client and corporate funds.

John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that half of Bitcoin’s runup in 2017 was the result of market manipulation using Tether. Last year Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating Tether’s role in this market manipulation.

Convenience Versus Risk

“Being controlled by centralized parties defeats the entire original purpose of blockchain and decentralized cryptocurrencies,” Griffin said. “By avoiding government powers, stablecoins place trust instead in the hands of big tech companies, who have mixed accountability. So while the idea is great in theory, in practice it is risky, open to abuse, and plagued by similar problems to traditional fiat currencies.”

Source: Bitcoin Isn’t the World’s Most-Used Cryptocurrency – Bloomberg

Mobile money is fast blossoming in Africa, boosted by rising mobile adoption across the continent, but in Zimbabwe—which is battling a severe financial crunch—the most common cash-in and cash-out functionalities have just been killed off as the government battles to contain the country’s economic crisis.

Cash-out is process of converting mobile wallet balances into hard cash while cash-in refers to the process of depositing cash into a mobile wallet. Mobile money agents facilitate these processes and normally, the agents have to get the cash from banks against their mobile money balances which are referred to as “float”. These agents then act as mini banks, basically facilitating deposit or withdrawal of cash (cash-in and cash out respectively) by account holders from mobile wallets.

These functionalities, in addition to sending and receiving money as well as payments at supermarkets and other merchants and cross transfers from and into bank accounts constitute the most impactful financial inclusion use cases that mobile money is hinged on across Africa. Success cases also include Kenya and Tanzania while MTN is ready to roll out mobile money in Nigeria.

Yet in Zimbabwe, cash-in and cash-out has just been killed off by the government, because authorities have concluded the functions are being abused. Zimbabwean mobile money agents, mostly with the dominant EcoCash platform, have been capitalizing on cash shortages in Zimbabwe to buy cash for re-sale to mobile wallet holders at a premium of up to 50%. This means that when trying to access funds in your mobile wallet through the agents, one would only get about 50% of their balance.

[…]

This has given rise to the high premiums on cash and also occasioned heavy discounts for cash purchases in retail outlets. However, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe justified the freeze on mobile money cash-in and cash-out functionalities, saying on Monday “some economic agents are engaging in illegal activities abusing the cash-in and cash-out facilities” which was compromising national payment systems.

[…]

Large chunks of the country’s economy runs through electronic systems and mobile money, which is dominated by Econet’s Ecocash with 95% market share. It’s estimated around 5 million transactions a day moving more than $200 million.

Most recently Ecocash has struggled to maintain the mobile money system working round the clock as the country has been hit with electricity shortages which have forced it to consider options including Tesla Powerwall storage batteries.

Source: Zimbabwe shuts down mobile money cash options with ecocash — Quartz Africa

We love containers. And, for most of us, containers means Docker. As RightScale observed in its RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud report, Docker’s adoption by the industry has increased to 49 percent from 35 percent in 2017.

All’s not well in Docker-land

There’s only one problem with this: While Docker, the technology, is going great guns, Docker, the business, isn’t doing half as well.

[…]

What’s the business plan?

Docker’s problem is simple: It doesn’t have a viable business plan.

It’s not the market. According to 451 Research, “the application container market will explode over the next five years. Annual revenue is expected to increase by 4x, growing from $749 million in 2016 to more than $3.4 billon by 2021, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35 percent.”

But to make that revenue, you need a business that can exploit containers. So, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and all the rest of the big public cloud companies, earn their dollars from customers eager to make the most of their server resources. Others, like Red Hat/CoreOS, Canonical, and Mirantis, provide easy-to-use container approaches for private clouds.

Docker? It provides the open-source framework for the most popular container format. That’s great, but it’s not a business plan.

[…]

Docker’s plan had been, according to former CEO Ben Golub, to build up a subscription business model. The driver behind its Enterprise Edition, with its three levels of service and functionality, was container orchestration using Docker Engine’s swarm mode. Docker, the company, also rebranded Docker, the open-source software, to Moby while continuing to use Docker as the name for its commercial software products.

This led to more than a little confusion. Quick! How many of you knew Moby was now the “official” name for Docker the program? Confusion is not what you want in sales.

Mere weeks later, Golub was out, and Steve Singh, from SAP, was in.

[…]

As Dave Bartoletti, a Forrester analyst, told The Register at the time: “The poor guy has to figure out how to make money at Docker. That’s not easy when a lot of people in the community just bristle at anyone trying to make money.”

The rise of Kubernetes

Making matters much harder for Docker’s business plans is that Docker swarm and all other orchestration programs have found themselves overwhelmed by the rise of Kubernetes.

Today, Kubernetes — whether it’s a grand Google plan to create a Google cloud stack or not — dominates cloud orchestration. Even Docker adopted Kubernetes because of customer demand in October 2017.

When your main value-add is container orchestration and everyone and their uncle has adopted another container orchestration program, what can you offer customers? Good question.

[…]

In the last few months, Docker raised another $75 million in venture capital. This brings the total capitalization of Docker to a rather amazing $250 million from ME Cloud Ventures, Benchmark, Coatue Management, Goldman Sachs, and Greylock Partners. That’s a lot of money, but I still don’t see how Docker will pay out.

Cash from investors is great, but what Docker really needs is cash from customers.

For most enterprise users, there are no real worries here. Docker or Moby, the container standard is both open source and an open standard. For Docker investors, well, that’s another story.

Source: ​Docker has a business plan headache | ZDNet

This article suggests that if Docker the company goes bust, it won’t be a problem for Docker users because it’s open source and the community will pick it up and continue development. Unfortunately it’s often the case that the “community” are just the people reporting the bugs and it’s the original handful of developers that are all the people writing the bugfixes and carrying the project forward. In this case it’s a great team of people, who – if they are out of a job – will probably disband and the project will be forked by an internet giant who will repurpose for their own needs and wants.

What is more important is that this is yet another showcase for a hugely popular FOSS project showcasing how ridiculously impossible it is to make money. FOSS needs to change.

A cybercrime data center that was shut down by German authorities was housed inside a former NATO bunker in a sleepy riverside town, police revealed on Friday.

More than 600 law enforcement personnel including Germany’s elite federal police unit, the GSG 9, were involved in an anti-cybercrime operation that took place in the town of Traben-Trarbach on the banks of the Mosel river.

Police officers succeeded in penetrating the building, a 5,000 square meter former NATO bunker with iron doors that goes five floors deep underground. The building was located on a 1.3-hectare (3.2 acre) property secured with a fence and surveillance cameras.

“We had to overcome not only real, or analog, protections; we also cracked the digital protections of the data center,” said regional police chief Johannes Kunz.

Read more: Darknet operator gets six years in connection with 2016 German shooting rampage

The target of the operation was a so-called “bulletproof hosting” service provider. Bulletproof hosters provide IT infrastructure that protects online criminal activity from government intervention.

In the raid, police seized 200 servers along with documents, cell phones, and large quantities of cash. Thursday’s operation was the first time German investigators were able to apprehend a bulletproof hoster, according to German media outlets.

Watch video 01:35

German police claim victory against cyber crime

Cracking the security codes to access the contents of the servers was another difficult task for the police. On the servers, they found countless websites facilitating the illegal sale of drugs, weapons, counterfeit documents, and stolen data as well as sites distributing child pornography. The servers hosted Wall Street Market, formerly the second largest darknet market place for drugs in the word before law enforcement shut the platform down earlier this year.

The police arrested 13 people between the ages of 20 and 59 allegedly tied to the operation. Seven are held in custody. The ringleader is a 59-year-old Dutch man with ties to organized crime in the Netherlands. He established the server in Traben-Trarbach in 2013. While his official residency is listed in Singapore, he had been living in the bunker.

Source: Darknet cybercrime servers hosted in former NATO bunker in Germany | News | DW | 28.09.2019

The United States House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee is launching an antitrust investigation into Apple and its anti-competitive behavior.

Part of the investigation will focus on Apple’s repair monopoly, which for years has given the company control over the useful life of its products. In a letter to Apple, the committee asked Apple to turn over all internal communications from 14 top executives at the company—including CEO Tim Cook—relating to “Apple’s restrictions on third-party repairs,” among dozens of other topics.

In particular, the committee wants information about:

• “Apple’s restrictions on third-party repairs, including but not limited to any rules with which Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs) must comply, such as rules restricting or prohibiting AASPs from making any specific repairs.”
• “Apple’s decision in December 2017 to offer iPhone battery replacements at a discounted price, or the actual or projected effects of this decision, including but not limited to, effects on iPhone sales.”
• “Apple’s decision to introduce the ‘Independent Repair Provider Program,’ including but not limited to, decisions covering which specific repair parts Apple will make available through the program and at what price.”
• “Apple’s decision in 2018 to enter into an agreement with Amazon to sell Apple products on Amazon and to limit the resellers that can sell Apple products on Amazon.”

This is huge news for the independent repair community (and nice for me; the committee cited two Motherboard articles I wrote about Apple’s repair restrictions.)

For years, the independent repair community has said that Apple has engaged in anticompetitive behavior by refusing to sell parts to repair shops who are not “authorized” by the company. The company has also lobbied heavily against so called right-to-repair legislation, which would require it and other electronics companies to sell parts and tools to the general public. It has sued independent repair companies for using aftermarket and refurbished parts and worked with the Department of Homeland Security to seize unauthorized repair parts from small businesses both at customs and from individual shops. And, as the committee’s letter notes, Apple cut a deal with Amazon that restricted who is allowed to sell refurbished Apple devices on Amazon.

Source: Congress Is Investigating Apple’s Repair Monopoly – VICE

Since I gave my talk on breaking up monopolies earlier this year, a whole spate of these investigations are starting!

Logius is absolutely minting it, considering that almost every interaction with the government, locality, insurance company is done through DigiID. Unbelievably, this price is down from EUR 3,50 in 2006, but up from last years’ 12 cents per login.

So now we know why government IT projects cost such an inane amount of money – if they can ask this amount for just a login server, even after having been paid to develop the system! Which idiot at government level negotiated this contract?

Source: Gebruik DigiID iets duurder – Emerce

New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced Friday she is launching a multistate investigation into Facebook for possible antitrust violations.

Facebook shares were down about 0.5% in Friday’s premarket, but did not seem to react to James’ announcement.

Attorneys general of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and the District of Columbia will join the probe, according to the announcement. It will focus “on Facebook’s dominance in the industry and the potential anticompetitive conduct stemming from that dominance,” according to the release.

“Even the largest social media platform in the world must follow the law and respect consumers,” James said in a statement. “I am proud to be leading a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in investigating whether Facebook has stifled competition and put users at risk. We will use every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising.”

Facebook is already facing a separate investigation by the Federal Trade Commission over antitrust concerns, the company confirmed in its quarterly report in July. That announcement came on the same day that the FTC announced its $5 billion settlement with Facebook over its privacy policies.

Source: New York attorney general launches an antitrust probe into Facebook