Coinbase (COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong, in a June 14 letter announcing an 18% staff cut, offered assurance despite the latest Bitcoin crash and walloping of other crypto prices. Armstrong said the cryptocurrency exchange “has survived through four major crypto winters” and is taking the steps needed to do so again.

Yet this storm is on an entirely different level. “It’s a crypto ice age,” Mizuho analyst Dan Dolev told IBD. “I think this is going to be very deep, very prolonged, and many cryptocurrencies will not survive.”

The blowup of supposed “stablecoin” TerraUSD, wiping out $40 billion in market value, has accelerated a deleveraging wave that has yet to run its course. This month, crypto lending platform Celsius Network, which oversaw $20 billion in crypto deposits and loans, halted withdrawals as it faced a liquidity crunch.

Both Terra, a blockchain payment and savings network, and Celsius offered double-digit interest payments that depended on bullish crypto scenarios. But the collapse of those Wild West business models is less a cause than a symptom of crypto’s unraveling. The real reason the cryptocurrency market is imploding: Bitcoin and the other roughly 19,000 digital currencies are up against their first Federal Reserve tightening cycle to stem an inflation outbreak.

Easy Money Fueled Cryptocurrency Prices

For most of their existence, cryptocurrencies have enjoyed the balmiest of monetary conditions. The period since Bitcoin’s launch has mostly seen the Fed trying to prop up demand. Over that time, the Fed bought up $6.5 trillion worth of Treasuries and government-backed mortgage securities. That suppressed rates in a bid to encourage risk-taking, boost asset values and stimulate demand through wealth gains.

The bulk of those Fed purchases — $4.5 trillion — came after the coronavirus lockdown cratered the economy in March 2020. Alongside multiple rounds of fiscal stimulus, ultra-easy Fed policy worked only too well. All that monetary fuel supercharged the vaccine-enabled economic reopening and touched off the biggest bout of inflation in 40 years.

Now the reversal of unprecedented Fed stimulus is deflating most asset values. The surge in the 10-year Treasury yield has hit growth stocks in particular. Their future earnings streams are less valuable when discounted to the present based on a higher risk-free rate of return. That helps explain why the tech-heavy Nasdaq has underperformed the broad market.

But when it comes to valuing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, there are no future cash flows to discount.

The Federal Reserve’s ‘Most Anticipated’ Recession In History May Be Coming

Bitcoin Crash Shows It’s No Digital Gold

The Bitcoin crash has “debunked” the idea that it offers a hedge vs. inflation, like digital gold, Deutsche Bank economists Marion Laboure and Galina Pozdnyakova wrote in May. Rather than trading like gold, the ups and downs of cryptocurrency prices have correlated with the Nasdaq to a “staggering” degree, they wrote.

Yet cryptocurrency’s roller-coaster ride makes the Nasdaq’s volatility seem tame. Through June 23, the Nasdaq is down nearly 31% from its Nov. 22 intraday high. Bitcoin, which peaked on Nov. 10, has dived 70%.

Fed Rate Hike And Other Tightening Moves

Just days before Bitcoin began its retreat, the Fed said it would scale back $120 billion in monthly asset purchases. The timing doesn’t appear to be a coincidence. In fact, the history of Bitcoin’s peaks and valleys mostly coincides with shifts in Fed asset purchases.

The first Bitcoin crash began in June 2011, just as the Fed ended its second round of financial-crisis-era asset buys. The second coincided with the spring 2013 taper tantrum over a possible wind-down of yet-another round of asset purchases. The start of actual tapering at the end of 2013 coincided with the third Bitcoin crash.

The late 2017 crash coincided with Federal Reserve rate hikes that came as the Fed began to gently unwind asset purchases. Yet none of those instances saw anything like today’s tightening.

In late 2018, when monetary tightening helped trigger a financial market rout, the Fed’s key interest rate only reached 2.5%-2.75%. That was the highest in Bitcoin’s history. Yet once the S&P 500’s drop approached the 20% bear market threshold, Fed policymakers signaled a change in course. By autumn 2019, the Fed was cutting rates and buying more assets.

But last week, though the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had already crossed into bear market territory, policymakers decided to accelerate their tightening plans.

The Fed doesn’t target any specific asset class. However, the $2 trillion wipeout for cryptocurrency markets is all according to plan.

“We’ve seen financial conditions tighten and appropriately so,” Fed chief Jerome Powell said June 15.

Amid Cryptocurrency Price Meltdown, Players Look For Next Catalysts

Bitcoin Price Has Crossed This Line

In recent days, this Bitcoin price crash crossed a line that previous bear markets in cryptocurrency prices didn’t even approach.

Bitcoin tumbled as much as 75% from November’s record $68,990.90 to the June 18 low near $17,800. That briefly undercut its last major peak near $19,600 in December 2017. At its worst, in early 2015, Bitcoin’s low was nearly 40% higher than the previous peak.

Bitcoin has since bounced to slightly above $21,000. That’s right around the average $21,000 purchase price, Mizuho’s Dolev says.

Wiping out Bitcoin’s gains over the past 4.5 years is challenging the notion that long-term holders can’t lose. That will test the faith that ultimately determines the value of all cryptocurrencies.

That faith probably has limits, yet it clearly runs deep. Nearly 50% of Bitcoin traders on Coinbase say they won’t sell, no matter how low cryptocurrency prices go, Dolev wrote on May 19. “For the remaining ~50%, the tipping point is about $9,000,” a Mizuho survey found.

Despite the cryptocurrency price carnage, Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz announced a $4.5 billion crypto fund on May 25. Venture firms plowed $4.2 billion into early-stage crypto firms last month, a sizable sum, though down from $6.8 billion in April. In 2021, VC funding of blockchain firms totaled $33 billion.

Cryptocurrency’s Killer App?

What have all those billions bought? The main excitement, if not the primary purpose, of cryptocurrencies seems to be digital alchemy — creating money out of code.

No doubt, creating nearly $3 trillion out of code — then erasing $2 trillion — was an incredible feat.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, may be the closest thing to a killer app. NFT ownership is tracked on the same blockchain ledgers that record ownership of cryptocurrencies. The tokens can provide ownership to digital art, sports cards, music videos and the like.

But these digital collectibles may have even flimsier support than the cryptocurrencies.

The digital rights to the first-ever tweet famously sold for $2.9 million in March 2021. When put up for auction a year later, the top bid came in around $12,600.

The most expensive NFT sale over the past month was a digital print from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Owning one of the 10,000 images has become a pseudo status symbol. Club members include Jimmy Fallon and Justin Bieber.

Yet Bored Apes’ valuations have plunged. The floor price — the lowest current auction price for part of the collection — has crashed 77% since the May 1 peak of $420,000, to about $97,250.

Bear Market News And How To Handle A Market Correction

Crypto Payment Functionality Revisited After Bitcoin Crash

What separates Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies from being mere collectibles is their utility for conducting transactions.

Progress on that front has been slow. In 2014, Stripe was the first major payments firm to support Bitcoin transactions. By 2018, it had cut off that support, citing slow transaction times, high fees and little customer interest.

Four years later, Stripe has rekindled its Bitcoin ties, while some crypto players are winning plaudits for transaction efficiency.

In April, Morgan Stanley touted Bitcoin’s Lightning Network as more practical for retailers than debit cards for small purchases. The secondary network allows for fast, low-cost transactions between off-network parties.

These transactions don’t require Bitcoin’s slow, costly, energy-intensive proof-of-work calculations to update the blockchain ledger. The Lightning Network works more like Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA), allowing for funds settlement after the transaction is complete.

Ethereum is gearing up to shift its entire network to the same kind of lightning-fast transactions, while cutting energy use by 99%.

In April, Lightning Labs, the team behind Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, announced $70 million in funding. Its new big project is to enable the network to handle transactions via stablecoins backed by fiat currencies such as the dollar.

Yet if paying with $1 stablecoins makes more sense than using Bitcoin, why should Bitcoin be valued at $20,000 or more?

“I’m a big believer in blockchain technology and smart contracts and decentralized finance,” Dolev said, citing the potential to reduce the cost of transmitting money globally. “But I make a big distinction between all these things and the hype around the coins.”

Market Forecast For Next Six Months Holds Big Risks — But Hope Too

Stablecoin Cryptocurrency Price Test

Stablecoins have been the biggest winners and losers of the latest crypto crash. Tether and USD Coin, now the third- and fourth-largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, have held essentially 100% of their value.

The coins’ value is backed by an equal amount of extremely safe assets like cash and U.S. government debt. Tether also holds short-term high-rated commercial debt. Amid crisis, they have had liquid cash at the ready to cover withdrawals.

When the TerraUSD stablecoin faced an old-fashioned bank run in May, the collateral for some $18 billion in coins was composed of other coins. That included more than $20 billion worth of Luna coins issued by the same company. Yet when push came to shove, Luna turned out to be worth next to nothing. TerraUSD broke its dollar peg on May 7, crashed to 15 cents within a week and is now worth a fraction of a penny.

Five Best Bitcoin Stocks To Watch, But None To Buy Right Now

Cryptocurrency Regulation

In some respects, stablecoins are like a crypto version of money market funds, a safe place to park cash for a modest return. But the returns weren’t modest and investors’ cash wasn’t safe in the case of TerraUSD.

While the going was good, TerraUSD holders enjoyed a 20% interest rate. That should have been a red flag.

But even money market funds struggled during the 2008 financial crisis, with the Primary Reserve Fund famously “breaking the buck.” The Securities and Exchange Commission followed with reforms requiring funds to hold more liquid assets and stress-test for crisis situations.

Something along those lines could be coming for stablecoins. That would kill off algorithmic funds such as TerraUSD that are backed by nonstable cryptocurrencies. Regulators might also impose limits on the interest paid by stablecoins.

While it’s unclear whether Congress will pass legislation regulating crypto, SEC Chair Gary Gensler has made the case that most coins are securities and already fall under the agency’s authority.

Bitcoin Crash And The ‘Wild West’ Crypto Market

Gensler compared crypto to the Wild West in a speech last August, calling it “rife with fraud, scams and abuse.” He began taking steps to rein in those practices well before the latest blowups.

Last September, Coinbase said the SEC threatened to sue the company, forcing it to shelve its about-to-launch Lend program. Coinbase had planned to offer 4% interest to customers who deposited stablecoins for lending out to others. The SEC said the stablecoin deposits amounted to an investment in a security because Coinbase doesn’t fall under banking regulations, with leverage restrictions and deposit insurance.

In February, BlockFi agreed to pay $100 million in fines after the SEC charged that its interest accounts for those who deposited crypto qualified as unregistered securities. Further, the SEC said BlockFi was operating as an unregistered investment company because it had more than 40% of assets in investment securities, including loans of crypto to institutional borrowers.

Reportedly, similar investigations were aimed at crypto lender Celsius and its 18% interest rate. But they didn’t come soon enough to prevent this month’s train wreck. Celsius raised $750 million in funds from investors last fall, but it still had to halt withdrawals as the crypto sell-off intensified after the crash of the TerraUSD stablecoin.

Bitcoin Is About The Worst Thing You Could Invest In

Cryptocurrency Prices Hangover

If you’re wondering whether cryptocurrencies are a good bet at recent crypto prices, keep in mind that the mania has only just begun to break. While Bitcoin peaked in November, the Luna cryptocurrency that was supposed to keep TerraUSD pegged to the dollar only peaked in April — before crashing to zero the next month.

The unwinding of excessive leverage, more regulatory scrutiny and a Federal Reserve tightening cycle meant to douse speculative fervor suggest a long crypto winter. A lot of business models that seemed viable and investments that seemed rational when crypto had never suffered a long losing streak are facing their first major reality check.

To some Bitcoin believers like MicroStrategy (MSTR) CEO Michael Saylor, who bet $4 billion of company funds on the cryptocurrency, the shakeout is overdue.

“What you have is a $400 billion cloud of opaque, unregistered securities trading without full and fair disclosure, and they are all cross-collateralized with Bitcoin,” Saylor said in an interview hosted by the Northman Trader market analysis site.

The implication is that shady practices across the crypto sphere and the cascading margin calls they’ve provoked are responsible for the latest Bitcoin crash. All those other cryptos also undermine Saylor’s notion that Bitcoin is a scarce resource. Bitcoin’s market cap now accounts for about 45% of total crypto value, down from 90% at the start of 2016.

What Will Follow The Ice Age In Cryptocurrency Prices

Saylor’s perspective may shortchange the role of Fed tightening and the extent to which the need for collateral to fuel crypto speculation helped boost Bitcoin’s price.

Yet inflation will eventually recede, and the Federal Reserve will end its tightening cycle. But the central bank is unlikely to return to a sustained super-easy monetary policy anytime soon.

A new crypto spring will eventually arrive. Just don’t expect it to be anything like the prior ones.

SOURCE: https://www.investors.com/news/bitcoin-crash-crypto-ice-age-fed-rate-hikes-are-reason/

They hope to initially help third-party contact-tracing apps run efficiently.

But ultimately, they aim to do away with the need to download dedicated apps, to encourage the practice.

The two companies believe their approach – designed to keep users, whose participation would be voluntary, anonymous – addresses privacy concerns.

Their contact-tracing method would work by using a smartphone’s Bluetooth signals to determine to whom the owner had recently been in proximity for long enough to have established contagion a risk.

If one of those people later tested positive for the Covid-19 virus, a warning would be sent to the original handset owner.

No GPS location data or personal information would be recorded.

“Privacy, transparency and consent are of utmost importance in this effort and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders,” Apple and Google said in a joint statement.

“We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyse.”

President Trump said his administration needed time to consider the development.

“It’s very interesting, but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a person’s freedom,” he said during a White House press conference.

“We’re going to take… a very strong look at it, and we’ll let you know pretty soon.”

The European Union’s Data Protection Supervisor sounded more positive, saying: “The initiative will require further assessment, however, after a quick look it seems to tick the right boxes as regards user choice, data protection by design and pan-European interoperability.”

But others have noted that the success of the venture may depend on getting enough people tested.

SOURCE: BBC

It blogged the firms would create computer dashboard screens to show the spread of the virus and the healthcare system’s ability to deal with it.

These will draw on data gathered via 111 calls and Covid-19 test results.

The first should be made available to government decision-makers next week.

Four tech firms were named in the blog. Three are US-based: Microsoft, Google and Palantir. The fourth is Faculty AI, which is headquartered in London.

Amazon was not referenced but the BBC has confirmed that it is also involved. The NHS intends to add details of the company’s role later.

Many of the details of the scheme were first reported by the BBC on Thursday.

Vulnerable groups

The blog confirmed that NHSX – a unit responsible for digital innovation – was heading the effort to harness a range of data sources, so that they could be used in combination.

The aim is to create dashboards that draw on the information as soon as it becomes available in order to help the government and health chiefs to:

• Understand how the virus is spreading and identify risks to particularly vulnerable groups of people
• Proactively increase resources in emerging hot spots
• Ensure critical equipment is supplied to hospitals and other facilities in greatest need
• Divert patients to the facilities best able to care for them based on demand, resources and staffing capacity

It added that the information would “largely” be drawn from existing data sources, and would be anonymised so that individual patients could not be identified. It said this would involve removing names, addresses and other identifiers, and replacing them with a “pseudonym”.

In time, it said, the aim was to provide a separate dashboard that could be viewed by the public.

Regarding the tech firms, it said:

• Microsoft had built a data store on its Azure cloud computing platform to hold the information in a single, secure location
• Palantir was providing use of its Foundry software tool, which analyses records to deliver a “single source of truth”
• Faculty AI was developing the dashboards, models and simulations that decision-makers would be presented with
• Google’s G Suite of productivity apps might be used to collect and aggregate real-time operational data such as occupancy levels and A&E capacity

“Microsoft remains steadfastly committed to supporting the NHS every way it can at this critical time,” Cindy Rose, the firm’s UK chief executive said.

Although not mentioned, Amazon’s AWS division will also provide additional cloud computing facilities.

Source: BBC

Leak of 1,000 private conversations in Dutch language by some of Google’s partners to a Belgian news site further proved that third-party contractors working for Google were also able to access these multiple sensitive user conversations, that were reportedly recorded unintentionally.

Usually, users with Google Assistant on their phones and smart speakers have to say “Ok, Google” to start a conversation with the AI-powered virtual assistant. But even when users didn’t call up the virtual assistant, various user conversations that were personal and sensitive in nature were recorded.

As per the Belgian broadcaster VRT NWS, the recordings were done despite the fact that some of Google Home users did not even say the wake word, “Ok Google”.

In its terms and conditions, Google states that audio recordings between users and their Google smart speakers and Google Assistant devices are recorded and stored but does not mention its employees can listen to excerpts from these recordings, which further raises serious questions about the privacy of users. “We’ll share personal information outside of Google when we have your consent,” the company’s privacy policy states.

In response to the report, Google provided an in-depth explanation over a blog post by David Monsees, Product Manager-Search. The statement stated that these recordings were necessary to improve voice responses from their smart assistants.

“As part of our work to develop speech technology for more languages, we partner with language experts around the world who understand the nuances and accents of a specific language. These language experts review and transcribe a small set of queries to help us better understand those languages. This is a critical part of the process of building speech technology, and is necessary to creating products like the Google Assistant,” Monsees said in the blog post.

In the official statement, Google insisted that the human workers listen to parts of the conversation to help Assistant improve its responses and help it to work well with multiple languages. The company further stated that contract workers do have access to audio recordings and can listen in on user conversations with Google’s virtual assistant platform, although added that they are supposed to be kept confidential.

David Monsees further said that “The company has launched an investigation because the contractor breached data security policies. We apply a wide range of safeguards to protect user privacy throughout the entire review process.”

“We’re always working to improve how we explain our settings and privacy practices to people, and will be reviewing opportunities to further clarify how data is used to improve speech technology,” said Monsees.

The tech giant also admitted that it does not always delete the stored data. The company keeps the transcripts until a user “manually delete the information” and mentioned that users can turn off storing audio data to their Google accounts completely, or choose to auto-delete data after every 3 or 18 months.

Source: msn.com

Streaming Happens Bit by Bit

When you want to watch a video or play a song on your computer, you need to download it first. There’s no way around that. Knowing this, you may look at Netflix or Spotify and ask “how did we figure out how to make videos and music download instantaneously?” Well, that’s just the thing. When you stream media, it isn’t downloading to your computer instantaneously; it’s downloading piece by piece in real-time.

The word “streaming” is self-descriptive. Information arrives at your computer in a continuous, steady stream of information. If downloading movies is akin to buying bottled water, streaming movies is like using a faucet to fill an empty bottle.

You could compare streaming a movie to watching a VHS tape. When you play a VHS tape, every second of video and audio is scanned piece by piece. This happens as you’re watching in real-time, which means that any interruptions will suddenly pause or end your movie watching experience.

When you stream a movie or a song, your computer downloads and decodes itty-bitty pieces of a media file in real-time. If you have an unusually fast internet connection, then the file may be fully downloaded before you’re finished watching or listening to it, which is why a stream will sometimes go on for a while even if the internet cuts out. That being said, anything that you stream doesn’t go into your computer’s permanent storage (although some services, like Spotify, will put some small cache files on your device to make future playbacks faster).

Businesses Work Hard to Make Streaming Fast

Streaming video and audio from the internet isn’t new; it just feels new because it’s finally convenient. Watching a video or playing a song from a website happened bit by bit used to be an annoying and time-consuming affair. The stream would constantly stop and start, and you could spend minutes just waiting for media to buffer (and sometimes, it wouldn’t buffer at all).

But the way that streaming works has mostly stayed the same. Files download bit by bit as you’re watching or listening to them. It’s the infrastructure that’s changed, and businesses like Youtube and Netflix have worked hard (and spent a lot of money) building that infrastructure.

Youtube and Netflix used to use only one or two servers to host their content, and it didn’t work. Users that were far away from the servers experienced a lot of lag, and high-traffic days (Saturday night, for example) would slow streaming servers to a crawl. Companies have solved this problem by building Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), to store and send content. A CDN is a dense, global network of servers that all contain the same content. This reduces lag, keeps servers in densely populated areas from becoming overloaded.

Of course, a powerful CDN is useless if all of your users have crappy internet connections. In some ways, this issue solves itself over time. ISPs are always competing for faster, more powerful internet connections, and advances like worldwide Google Fiber and 5G home internet connections are just over the horizon.

But some streaming services and ISPs have realized that, despite fast home internet connections and dense CDNs, high global internet traffic can cause streaming lag. Not to mention, services like Netflix use more than 15% of the world’s global internet bandwidth. When a lot of people are streaming the newest season of Stranger Things, the whole internet can slow down.

As a result, streaming services tend to provide Open Connect Appliances (OCAs) to ISPs. These OCAs are basically hard drives that are full of popular movies, songs, and other streamable content, and they reduce the need for your ISP to redirect your internet traffic to a Netflix or Hulu server. This not only makes streaming faster, but it also prevents the whole internet from slowing down at the mercy of Netflix.

Live Streaming Presents New Problems

With live video streaming on platforms like Facebook Live or Twitch, the information that you’re receiving on your computer is happening in real-time (or as close to that as possible). So as you can imagine, a live streamer needs to be able to upload content as fast as you can download content.

As a livestreamer is recording their video, every millisecond of that video (and its accompanying audio) is broken down into tiny little files. These tiny files are compressed and organized by an encoder, they fly across the internet, and your computer downloads them bit by bit. Since the files are encoded, your computer can put them together in a comprehensible video, and there shouldn’t be much lag between you and the streaming source.

Popular live streaming services like Twitch and Youtube utilize a global network of servers to reduce lag and to improve video streaming quality. But all live streamed videos are at the mercy of a livestreamer’s internet connection. As you can imagine, livestreamers can’t use OCAs. Luckily, the development of fast home internet connections, like Google Fiber, has made live streaming possible, and the implementation of 5G home internet connections will take the quality of live streams a bit further.

The Future of Streaming is Video Games

The idea of playing video games in your browser isn’t very new. A good bit of the internet is dedicated to small games, and there’s plenty of people that go on Facebook specifically for Farmville and Candy Crush. But some companies are trying to take browser gaming a step further by creating streaming services for resource-heavy console games.

Just to be clear, we aren’t talking about livestreaming Farm Simulator on Twitch, we’re talking about remotely playing video games, without a dedicated console or a $1000 computer. With game streaming, a server far away from your home handles all the number crunching that’s needed to power resource hungry games. Services like Google’s Project Stream and Nvidia’s GEFORCE NOW promise that your crappy $100 laptop will be able to play even the biggest, most beautiful games. This can save people a lot of money, and it’ll eliminate the barrier that hardware limitations have set for video games.

Of course, streaming a video game to someone’s computer is a lot more difficult than streaming a movie. You aren’t progressively downloading a static file; you’re manipulating and interacting with a file with real-time. If there’s any lag between controller inputs and on-screen activity, then the game is unplayable. You could look at services like Skype and Facetime as a pre-cursor to game streaming, as they require fast two-way connections. But game streaming needs to be much more seamless.

Resource-heavy game streaming services aren’t mainstream or super reliable yet, so companies have been tight-lipped about their trade secrets. But we do know that they’re essentially following in Netflix’s footsteps. Companies like Nvidia are building CDN’s that are full of superpowered graphics cards, and Google is trying to figure out how to pair Open Connect Appliances that are full of games to the high-speed Google Fiber home internet services. Either way, game streaming is the next step in the story of streaming media.

SOURCE: howtogeek.com

The year of 2018 was a transitional one for how CIOs deal with technology advances, and this will continue in the next 12 months. Leaders can only address so much change within their organisations, and only handle so much of the resulting disruption, according to IT management experts.

As organisations adapt and become more operationally complex, technology is also reflecting the complexity of the businesses it is attempting to serve, which creates a challenge for IT decision makers, says Spencer Izard, researcher and advisor at the Leading Edge Forum.

“Over the past year, I’ve continued to witness CIOs and C-suite peers become weary and punch drunk in their attempts to both react to the continued evolution of technology and adapt to the changing demands of their organisation on the IT function,” he says.

Some CIOs have focused on addressing those demands in an “astute” manner in 2018, Izard argues, by solidifying the foundation of their digital strategy through service management, data analytics and cyber security, while handling the businesses’ cries for bleeding-edge innovation.

“While there is an ever-growing hype around technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), none have got to a commodity level of acceptance yet by defining industry essential use cases to drive unquestioned broad adoption,” says Izard.

When it comes to technologies CIOs should keep an eye on in 2019, Izard considers the evolution of blockchain, AI and ML will see them continue to be rolled into existing software products and service offerings from the large suppliers, rather than being distinct products used in conjunction with established technologies.

“For CIOs the true value of these technologies is the collective intelligence that can be derived from them when they are used in combination with existing service management, data analytics and cyber security technologies,” says Izard.

The themes that dominate the thoughts of leading CIOs he has spoken with over the last 12 months are around providing low-friction experiences to clients, consumers or citizens; shortening the value chain of business operating models; while transforming the collection and creation of data into business intelligence for the entire organisation.

Facing challenges

Looking back at conversations Izard has had with IT leaders in 2018, the main difficulties senior tech executives have faced to keep up with technology advances are related to a short-termism in delivery, combined with a “this is how we have always operated” mindset.

This way of thinking, says the researcher, has caught the leadership of many organisations off-guard since the onset of digital.

“CIOs are typically aware of their organisation’s ever-growing technology complexity and inefficiency but had little impetus to champion changing well established IT and business operating models prior to digital,” says Izard.

The questions he has been asked most by CIOs in 2018 are mainly around how to prepare for what comes after digital, or how to keep evolving without the pain they are having in adapting to digital.

“None of the CIOs who have asked me this or an equivalent question are looking for some fortune teller – rather, they have realised that their organisations don’t have the cultural and operational resiliency to comfortably absorb the all-encompassing disruptive impact of reacting to another mega-trend akin to digital,” he says.

Izard advises leaders to gain that resilience by divesting from owning and leading the operational component of the IT function, because it delivers commodity tech that any modern organisation needs. The way to go, he says, is to pivot into an intelligence function leveraging technology to improve operating practices.

“CIOs should be leading a function that provides technology services to assess and create new operating models and advocate the change required to evolve, or eliminate, existing operating models no longer fit-for-purpose in a 21^st century organisation,” he says.

“This requires CIOs to pivot the classic IT function away from its operations comfort zone into an internal intelligence function.”

Remaining relevant

Izard maintains that the CIO role should never have been allowed to become predominantly inward-focused on IT operations, but rather improving the operating mechanisms of how an organisation behaves through a collective of technologies.

The key to achieving that goal, he says, is converting data created and consumed into actionable intelligence in support of delivering products and services to clients, consumers or citizens.

“This means data will remain the lifeblood of organisations to drive value, provide visibility into organisational inefficiency and optimisations, as well as a means to support reactions to changing industry dynamics,” says Izard.

“In 2019, a core focus for CIOs should be the collective combination of trending technologies and established technologies to provide a resilient, and forward-looking operating pattern to leverage data as intelligence to address the demands exerted on organisations.”

Izard says that for CIOs to remain relevant through the impact of continued digital change, then rather than simply considering the yearly impact of trending technologies on how IT functions operate, their focus should be on “asking ourselves whether the established concept of an IT function is a once useful but outdated model, akin to vestigial organs in the human body.”

“This could be brushed off as an abstract concept and wistful thinking, but CIOs maintain relevance in 2019 by finally addressing the fundamental disconnect between the title chief information officer and what the CIO role currently is.”

Contributor :Angelica Mari
Source: computerweekly.com

According to AdAge, the video platform began releasing the movies in October with a “Free to watch” category in its movie section, where users have traditionally purchased or rented movies. The films come with commercial interruptions, with pop-up ads that appear at regular intervals.

Rohit Dhawan, YouTube’s director of product management, told AdAge that the company saw an opportunity for consumers and advertisers, and notes that there might be a way for advertisers to “sponsor” films or hold exclusive screenings. At the moment, the selection is limited to 100 films, a selection that Dhawan says will eventually expand.

The free films on the heels of Roku’s own foray into free, ad-supported films on the web.

The feature comes not long after Roku announced that its free, ad-supported movie selection, The Roku Channel, would be available on the web (it was previously only available to those with a Roku TV or box), which also includes a number of older films, like The Matrix and 50 First Dates. TechCrunch points out that Walmart has its own selection of free streaming films on Vudu, while service Tubi has its own large selection of free films.

YouTube’s foray into this field makes sense — AdAge notes that more people are accessing the site on smart TVs, and distributing ad-supported free films could be a huge new audience for the site’s extensive ad network.

Richard Allan, a Facebook vice president, was among witnesses set to answer questions at a committee hearing in London on Tuesday.

The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee had repeatedly asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear but he has ignored the requests.

Instead, the company sent Allan to the hearing, at which British lawmakers will be joined by counterparts from eight other countries.

The hearing comes after the committee’s chairman, Damian Collins, took the unusual move of forcing the CEO of an app maker to turn over confidential Facebook documents.

Google could face major fines from the European Union’s privacy watchdogs for the “deceptive” way it track users’ locations.

Consumer agencies in seven European Union countries on Tuesday asked privacy regulators to take action against the firm for allegedly breaching the bloc’s new privacy law.

Seven countries, including Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden, claim location data tracked by Google could help reveal someone’s religious beliefs, political activity, health and sexual orientation.

However, Google has failed to give users “straightforward information” about how their data is being used, they claim.

The allegations come in the wake of the discovery that tracking by Google continues even if users turn off “Location History”.

A separate function, Web & App Activity, must be turned off to fully prevent GPS tracking.

“Google’s data hunger is notorious but the scale with which it deceives its users to track and monetise their every move is breathtaking,” Monique Goyens, director general of EU consumer organisation, BEUC, said.

The firm “is not respecting fundamental GDPR principles, such as the obligation to use data in a lawful, fair and transparent manner,” she said.

“The situation is more than alarming. Smartphones are being used for spying on our every move.”

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, came into force on May 25.

Under the rules, companies must provide details about how data is collected and retained. They must also give users the “right to be forgotten” and notify the EU’s Information Commissioner’s Office of breaches within 72 hours.

Failure to do so could see firms fined 4pc of the previous year’s annual global turnover, or €20m, whichever is the higher.

A Google spokesman said: “Location History is turned off by default, and you can edit, delete, or pause it at any time. If it’s on, it helps improve services like predicted traffic on your commute.”

“If you pause it, we make clear that – depending on your individual phone and app settings – we might still collect and use location data to improve your Google experience.”

“We’re constantly working to improve our controls, and we’ll be reading this report closely to see if there are things we can take on board,” he said.

Google is already facing a lawsuit in the US that for tracking the location of users using their searches and web activity.

San Diego resident Napoleon Patacsil issued the legal challenge in California. He stated that Google’s “principal goal was to surreptitiously monitor [the claimant] and to allow third-parties to do the same.”

In its 2018 third quarter earnings report out today, the social network confirmed that the number of daily active users in US and Canada has remained flat at 185 million, while the number of European users has slipped from 279 million to 278 million. The latter may be a direct result of recent European privacy regulations, namely GDPR, which initially caused Facebook to lose 1 million monthly active users after it went into effect in May.

Overall, the company continues to grow thanks to international expansion, adding 9 percent year over year to its daily active user base for a total of 1.47 billion people. The total number of month active users grew 10 percent from this time a year ago, to 2.27 billion people.

Facebook has stopped growing in its most lucrative markets

But despite that, and the fact that the company continues to grow its digital advertising business at an astonishing rate, the rate at which Facebook is growing continues to decline quarter to quarter and year over year. And it’s no longer growing in the markets in which it makes the most revenue per user (North America and Europe). So the fear of more user falloff and a lack of new user retention — and the inevitable ad revenue decline that would instigate — has some critics and analysts worried about its future.

Facebook says it grew ad revenues 33 percent year over to year, to $13.73 billion, coming in just under Wall Street analysts’ estimates. Profit was $1.76 a share, well over analyst expectations. Both monthly and daily active user growth figures came in under Wall Street estimates. Still, the company has done a good enough job warning its investors and the press of this eventual turn of events, leading to tempered Wall Street expectations this quarter after it suffered the biggest ever decline in the history of the American stock market last quarter. So Facebook’s share price has understandably remained steady in after-hours trading as a result.

But while Facebook’s short-term financial performance continues to keep it in the upper echelon of Silicon Valley, the company’s long-term future continues to look less rosy. Over the past two years or so, Facebook has sustained a number of high-profile data privacy and security scandals, most prominently in March with the Cambridge Analytica debacle and most recently involving a massive security flaw that allowed a hacker to steal the login information of tens of millions of users.

And since the 2016 US election, Facebook has become a cesspool of conspiracy theories, fake news, propaganda, and foreign government influence campaigns, the most recent of which appears to be conducted by an Iran-based group seeking to sow division in the US ahead of next week’s midterm elections.

While these controversies haven’t really affected Facebook’s bottom line, at least not yet, public perception of the company appears to be at an all-time low. Facebook will eventually feel the effects of users leaving the platform for greener pastures, unless it figures out how to better moderate its platform. (The company is spending heavily in that area, adding tens of thousands of new contract workers and ballooning its headcount by 45 percent, to nearly 34,000 employees, year over year.)

Given the gradual and consistent decay of its primary social network, it makes sense that Facebook is increasingly looking at its ecosystem of apps and services, like Instagram and WhatsApp, as the key to its future. Facebook pointed out in its earnings release that “more than 2.6 billion people now use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Messenger (our ‘Family’ of services) each month, and more than 2 billion people use at least one of our Family of services every day on average.”

It’s clear the core Facebook app will not remain on top forever, it seems, and the company is shifting resources toward ensuring its other platforms can fill the gap as teenagers grow up in a world where Facebook is profoundly uncool and more adult users grow disillusioned or uninterested and walk away. Instagram, although it just lost both of its co-founders, has a lot of room to grow its ad business, and Messenger and WhatsApp have just started to properly monetize channels for businesses to reach customers. Facebook’s role as the do-it-all social network may be winding down, but its future as a web of successful photo-sharing and messaging apps is just getting started.