Facebook Inc.'s Safety Check Malfunctioned After Terrorist Attack in Pakistan

The social media network publicly apologized for the malfunction of its safety feature.

The Safety Feature on the social media platform, Facebook Inc. has been there for a while now however, it is far from perfect yet. Yesterday, apparently the Safety Check feature malfunctioned; since there was a terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan, the social media network enabled its safety feature. However, instead of the people sitting in Lahore, the website sent push notifications to people all across the Pacific asking them if they were safe.

The blast happened at Gulshan-I-Iqbal in Lahore, Pakistan at a park on Sunday which left 65 dead and hundreds terribly injured. Most of these victims and casualties included women and children as the blast happened in a park, as per the reports. However, Facebook enabled its safety check feature which it usually does in case a disaster of such magnitude or a natural disaster occurs anywhere in the world. The sole purpose of the safety check is to ensure that people in the affected areas are safe and it has become another way of families to reach their loved ones and know if they are okay or not.

However, this time, the safety check feature on the social media website malfunctioned and sent push notifications to people where all across the globe. The social media organization has come forward and apologized publicly for this mishap and addressed it as a ‘glitch’ and ‘bug’ in their system. Even though a lot of people were affected because of this incident, the feature failed to serve its purpose and did exactly opposite of what it was actually intended to do.

The company has a user base strength of over 1.55 billion and it has not yet disclosed how much of these active users were affected by this glitch in their system. The news came out after a number of people expressed their frustration and annoyance at the confusing notifications they were receiving from Facebook. The people who reported this glitch in various cities include people from Washington D.C., London, New York etc.

These people who received these push notifications stated that they received notifications of a blast near their area and the location was not even specified which caused a panic as they believed that the blast took place in their own city. However, there were only a few people who faced this issue in those areas while others did not receive any such notification from the social media site. The social media company is still working on what went wrong with the feature however this is not the first time something like this has happened with the specific feature.

In October 2014, the social media network introduced this safety check feature which was meant to keep users informed regarding any natural disaster that took place in their city including earthquakes, cyclones etc. However, they pondered over human based attacks as well and decided that they would enable the feature for such incidents as well. In November last year, during the Paris Terrorist Attack, the organization enabled the safety feature so users were able to inform their loved ones that they were alright. Since then, the safety feature has been activated for numerous such events especially in the first three months of 2016.

Despite the fact that this false alarm annoyed and confused a lot of Facebook users, it might not be as bad as it seems as it managed to keep people of the world informed regarding such an attack in another country.

Apple Inc. Employees Might Quite if They Are Forced to Create a 'Backdoor'

Apple might start to lose its employees if the government keeps pushing them to build 'GovOS'

F.B.I. has been on Apple, Inc.’s case for way too long even if the Federal Authority manages to win against the technology giant in the court fight, it’s safe to say that it won’t be able to win from the company’s engineers. Forcing a private organization to break its own security system might not be as easy as the FBI thinks it is.

As per a report by the New York Times, even if the authorities win at the court fight against the Silicon Valley organization, the engineer who will be working on the ‘backdoor’ software might quit or leave the company entirely – because they would rather leave their jobs than be forced into doing something that they don’t want to do. If all the employees associated with this task take action against it, it will be next to impossible for FBI to convince them otherwise.

As per a recent filing released by the iPhone maker, it will take up to two to four weeks to create a backdoor which they are calling ‘GovOS’ and six to ten engineers will be assigned to perform the devious task. This timeline is likely to fulfill provided the team is consistent and motivated to work on it. If anyone on that specific team lags, there’s a possibility that the creation of the software could take an indefinite time.

The CEO, Tim Cook has been constantly emphasizing on the fact that he or his lawyers are not anti-law; they are on the government’s side but they just don’t believe in creating a backdoor for something that could be destructive to millions of iPhone users all across the globe. Cook further explained that in the case of the San Bernardino suspect’s iPhone, he does not have the key to that iPhone and at this point, the government simply wants a key for iPhones to use for unknown purposes in the future. He added during an interview with the Time that he was not trying to annoying the FBI; he was simply trying to protect thousands of his customers.

Apple has mentioned in its legal documents that the government’s demands are taking speech freedom awake from the people by asking for something that is offensive for millions of iPhone users. A venture capitalist, Jean-Louis Gassee stated that the culture followed at the most valuable company in the United States is an independent and rebellious one. Jean once worked as an engineer at the technology company and says if the government forces the engineers to go forward with creating this software, they are pretty much on their own.

Tim Cook even mentioned in one of his telegraphs last month to its customers how the engineers are likely to respond to this request; he stated that these are the workers who create strong encryptions for the protection of its customers and now they are being ordered to go against their work and weaken those protections which would ultimately make users less safe.

Yahoo Inc Let the Bidding Begin!

The search engine giant will be meeting with the activist hedge fund Starboard this week to settle important matters.

The last resort to save Yahoo! Inc. was to save it. The CEO, Marissa Mayer is been packaging a secret deal which is not so secret, to sell the core business of the search engine giant. However, Ms. Mayer has been offering this deal provided she remains the CEO of the company, as per a report by The New York Post.

As per the Post’s news, this deal has been pitched by Frank Quattrone, who is a banker hired by Ms. Mayer additionally they still have not disclosed how many people are interested to buy the core business of the search engine corporation but according to the news, over 40 parties had shown interest to buy the core business of the giant.

Furthermore, the board of directors are expected to meet with the activist hedge fund Starboard Value during the current week. This meeting comes as no surprise as both the parties have been having conversation back and forth. The hedge fund has been on Yahoo’s case for a while not to shake-up its management so that the company comes out of this black hole.

According to a recent letter sent by Starboard to Yahoo, it requested for the dismissal of Marissa Mayer and stated to include majority of Starboard people in the board of the company. It was not as much of a request as a threat as they further stated that if the demands of the hedge fund are not met, they might start a proxy battle.

New York Post states that this could be the last nail in the coffin to start a proxy battle by Starboard. In addition to that, the CEO of Starboard Jeffery Smith has clearly stated that the company needs to be sold now. Due to these reasons, the board is not pondering over whether to include two or more people from the hedge fund to Yahoo’s board.

The turmoil in the search engine giant started ever since Marissa Mayer was made the chief executive officer of the company; however she has taken drastic measures to turnaround the fate of the organization ever since her appointment in July 2012. Those measures have always caused much displeasure to the shareholders of the business.

The CEO as part of a revamp plan made public that she had decided to keep the $30 billion stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd but had decided to sell the core web business. Furthermore, the plan includes cost-cutting procedures as well which of course include cutting down the workforce. As per the plan, the company has planned to lay off as many as 1,600 employees by the end of the current year.

Twitter, Inc. Hit A New All-Time Low Share Price On Friday

The social media website has hit a new all time low yet again after its initial all time low share price back in August 2015.

On January 8, 2016, Twitter Inc.’s stock dropped by as much as 2% hitting its new all-time low at $19.76. In the past five trading days, the stock has managed to drop by 15% due to poor user growth. Investors have been quite unhappy because of the sluggish user growth of the social media network. Ever since ex-CEO and co-founder of Twitter, Dick Costolo stepped down from his position in June; the company has been constantly going through a rough patch.

The investors at Wall Street have continuously questioned the strategic direction of the micro-blogging company while others have pointed their fingers at the slow user growth for the decline in the stock. Ever since its one year high of $53.49 back on April 7, 2015 Twitter stock has fallen by as much as 60%. In October, the social media website reported better than expected earnings for the third quarter for fiscal year 2015. For upcoming further quarter, investors and analysts are predicting revenue to be somewhere between the range of $695 to $700 million.

For the latest quarter, 320 million active users were reported by the organization which shows that the monthly active users have just increase by 4 million since its last report. The fourth quarter earnings for the current fiscal year are expected to come out on February 10, 2016. The stock, at this point in time, is in a crisis situation.

In other news, Jack Dorsey stated that he has been looking for different ways in which Twitter users can post tweets specifically something that lets the users make longer tweets. He added that the customers of the social networking website are already doing that by posting the screenshots of the text but he said he would like the tweets to be short, sweet and conventional. According to the announcement, the tweets will now be of 10,000 characters per person from an initial 140-character limit.

It could mark as the end of Twitter when other smaller rivals such as Snapchat and Vine are giving its users more attractive features and options through which they are able to attract a good audience. Back in November 2013, when the company went public it was trading at a share price of $26 per share on the NYSE. The first fall that it witnessed was back in August when it dropped below its initial public offering price and this was the second hit.

Stock of the micro-blogging website is down 22% since it went public but it is not the lowest performing stock; in comparison Square stock is as low as twitter’s as well. It has fallen about 13.8% this week.

Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset Starts Shipping In March

The social media network's Oculus Rift's major deals have surfaced the tech world, finally and will be in the hands of customers by March of 2016.

On Wednesday, the social media giant announced that it will be taking pre-orders for its much anticipated Oculus Virtual Reality headset. When the announcement came out of the launch of the product, the two most important aspects were not specified; these included price and availability, however the company has finally disclosed these details as well.

The shipping will start from March and the Rift is priced at $599. Any pre-order that currently takes place has been given a delivery date somewhere in April. The order includes the Rift Headset, an Xbox One Controller, Two games, Oculus Remote and a sensor. It is essential to highlight that just the Rift is for $599 whereas to make it working properly the use will require to purchase a high-end gaming PC which is able to work with Rift.

According to a number of analysts, the sales of the latest virtual reality could be as low as hundreds – thousands while some experts are expecting it to be above 1 million. On the other hand, a whole lot of people have decline to present estimates as they believe this is not a big deal for Facebook, Inc.

One of the analysts who refused to estimate the sales of the product, Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal Research stated that the launch was this product would just be a rounding error inside of Facebook at this point in time. Additionally, another analyst from Piper Jaffray, Gene Munster stated that it is a “non-event in 2016” and is also expecting the company to sell a few units of the product at a loss.

However, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the social media network, believe that the headgear will be more popular amongst hardcore gamers, during its initial quarter and then go from there. For the first quarter, at least, they have kept the bar quite low for the latest product. According to estimations by Nvidia Corporation, the purchase of over 13 million PCs worldwide next year would be sufficient enough to run the VR provided it has the graphics capabilities.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the virtual reality market will be worth as much as $16 billion. Even though the start seems to be quite low for the Oculus Rift but the future seems quite bright for the virtual reality device. Facebook is not the only company that is working on getting a share from the pie of the lucrative market; many others are directing their resources towards developing this technology as well including Alphabet, Inc., Google Glass and Microsoft’s HoloLens.