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The second largest data breaches reported in November that Marriott’s Starwood reservation system has been breached since 2014, affecting up to 500 million guests.
A few days later, another major breach was reported – Quora users’ account info and private chats were exposed, affecting around 100 million people.
While the largest hack in history involved around 3 billion accounts of Yahoo in 2013, Marriott’s will probably have the most “impact” as it not only involves usernames, emails, passwords, etc. (as in the case of Yahoo/Quora), but also includes passport info and date of birth among others. The latter two kinds are more personal and sensitive and could be combined to get access to many other things.
This is just another reason why companies should move (at least part of) their info system to cloud services providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Technically, those companies have much better security expertise and do provide an edge in protecting users from those breaches.
And for corporate executives, the data security and related issues are outsourced and liabilities are kinda transferred. Media and users might focus more on why tech companies could be breached. (so how did FB data get hacked?)
It seems that most advices on breaches include change password, double-check card transactions and credit reports, freeze your cards… All about what customers should put extra efforts on themselves.
But I thought users should be reimbursed for their trust being failed. Corporates should take more responsibilities and be forced to provide appropriate remedies; otherwise every company could just save money and let those breaches happen again, when
prob(breach) * loss on breach(including remedies, future loss business, etc.) < cost of good data protection
While financial institutions would take some financial damage in those breaches for users, the identity damage might be hard to recover.
Much more efforts should be beforehand in protecting data. Or it’s not only a full network of tracing, but also a future fake network of people.
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Companies’ plans announced
See who is joining and their IPO targets –
Other tech companies include – Pinterest ~$15-20 bn, Robinhood ~$10 bn
A CB Insights report, a good summary.
共享自行车已经进入市场很多年，模式上在近年有多方面突破；另一方面，以 Birds 为首的美国 scooter 的热潮从 2017 年开始迅速蔓延，之前的共享自行车公司也找到了美国新的突破口，毕竟相比于中国自行车的普及和流行，美国自行车一直处于出行需求的角落（有安全监管、道路等因素）。
大多数共享自行车和共享 scooter 诞生之初，就内涵了与 uber/lyft 相近的模式和基因，又同时在解决一个大问题的不同局部。它们早晚会相遇是公认的事实。
各自 2019 年 IPO 计划的临近，出于公司定位和战略说明的角度，以及财务角度，uber 和 lyft 的出手之快出乎一些意料（相比于市场的成熟度和发展时间），却也极其合理。这篇 blog 主要关于 lyft 的收购。
2018 年 4 月，uber 率先宣布了第一笔交易，$100 – 200 mn 收购 JUMP Bike。
2018 年 6 月，有报道 Lyft 在寻求 $250 mn 收购 Motivate（旗下拥有纽约的 Citi Bike 和加州的 Ford GoBike 等）；uber 也尝试参与，竞价收购，最后 7 月初由 Lyft 拿下。
– Motivate 2017 rev. $100 mn, ~ half coming from sponsorship
– Motivate has ~30k bikes, operating in 8 US cities – Citi Bike (New York), Ford GoBike (San Francisco Bay area), Divvy (Chicago), Blue Bikes (Boston metro area), Capital Bikeshare (Washington, D.C. metro area), BIKETOWN (Portland metro area), CoGo (Columbus, Ohio), and Nice Ride (Minneapolis)
– 纽约的 Citi Bike 用户数约 15 万；For GoBike 17 年6 月与 Ford 达成合作正式 launch，截至 18 年 1 月用户数近 1 万
– Motivate has an advantage of exclusive deal terms with cities including NYC, SF, among others
– Motivate’s bikes are dock-based, which was an old model but fit with cities like NYC
– Unionized workers (~600) are a major issue, which was not included in the acquisition
收购后，Lyft 将投入 $100 mn 发展 Citi Bike，五年内自行车数量增加两倍将达近 4 万。
在湾区，尽管开始时 Motivate 有 exclusive 合同，但由于纽约和 SF 有一个区别在于 SF 很多上下坡，在曼哈顿适用的自行车在 SF 的使用场景大幅缩减，电动助力自行车 (e-bike) 的需求凸显。这给了其它 bike-sharing 公司一个绝佳的机会，以 e-bike 的形式抢进 SF 市场，绕开 Motivate 的排他性条款，比如 Social Bicycles。随后 SF 与 Motivate 达成和解，基本算允许了其它电动自行车的试验，尽管有数量限制。
Ford GoBike 在今年 1 月展示了 e-bike 之后，于 4 月在 SF 正式 launch 了电动自行车。
18 年 1 月，SF 的第一个无桩 bike-sharing permit， 250 辆，给了 JUMP (formerly Social Bicycle，见上文)，JUMP 自行车是全电动 (和 scooter，也是电动)。
这也是 uber CEO 后来解释 JUMP 收购时一直强调的每个城市/地区的不同，需要 city-by-city 地考虑。uber 选择从 SF 开始发力。
Lyft 选择了更高的起点。Motivate 确实是体量更大、更成熟的 bike-sharing 公司。加之 e-bike 的额外成本，以及 permit 的数量显示，仅依靠 JUMP 或许会让 uber 在这个局部战场输给 Lyft。
加之 scooter 的起飞（全部为电动），尤其在加州主要城市的流行，不出意外，uber 在寻求另一起收购，一起这个领域决定性的收购，Uber said to be negotiating a multibillion-dollar takeover of scooter-sharing startup。
Consolidation 不仅没有缺席，而且会来得更快。
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A video of a very interesting experience that involves VR settings and an live actor (motion captured and built in VR simultaneously)!
This might be the new start of VR enthusiasm. With 5G launching as soon as 19H1, its use in VR should not be far away. By that time, VR theater should be feasible and even in a interactive way (for front rows maybe); interactive VR party will come to reality (think of VR halloween party and maybe people don’t even need to actually wear costumes). The consumer level applications may focus on entertainment, but enterprise/government uses will also play an important part, perhaps in a way that most people won’t know.
If we go further.. and make robots instead of live human actors, things will be wild. When a connection is built, tactile internet + VR = do anything with anybody anywhere.
Recently I saw the state flag a few times with the bear and the name of “California Republic”. While the name may have new meanings now, it also represents its history.
Originally part of Mexico, the 1846 revolt declared independence of California Republic with its capital in Sonoma. Only lasted for 25 days, the republic later became part of the United States.
Despite the republic origin, California has been a strong democratic state since 1992.
It appears to me tho, that the “republic” or “democratic” name itself won’t convey much meaning going forward. Sure a party will start with a name that is closely related a specific opinion. After decades or hundreds of years, most of the founding ideas will fade away; it might be okay to just call them “party A” and “party B”.
Ultimately, most ordinary voters only care about if their feel good or not. And most of that feeling is correlated with economic status. So the flipping of the economy will change the control between parties.
California has been booming for years with the help from semiconductors, PCs, internet, etc. As long as tech industry remains strong, so does California and it will continue be won by the current party.
There are two aspects of the impact – 1) in terms of deserts itself including creatures that originally live deserts 2) in terms of deserts’ expansion to external environments
Although desert species are thought to be live in the hottest and driest places around the world, they can only thrive under limited conditions. It takes thousands and millions of years for creatures to adapt to new environments, but climate change is happening dramatically within 100-200 years.
According to a study on sensitivity to climate change for two reptiles, a moderate climate change of +2 °C and -50 mm precipitation, desert tortoises’ suitable habitat was reduced by nearly 88% in the Sonoran Desert and nearly 66% in the Mojave Desert regions.
The distinctive Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) in Joshua Tree National Park could lose up to 90 percent of its distribution if we increase temperature by +3 °C.
What is more, as creatures need to move to cooler and higher-elevations areas, another problem arises – mismatch and imbalance. Joshua trees are hard to move with in 10 years, where animals are more free to find new inhabitants. Even within critters, movement speeds are different, e.g. tortoises are slow-moving while side-blotched lizards are faster. But ecosystem is constituting of species depending on each other. The difference in moving speeds alone will cause lots of chaos.
Desertification has been talked up for years. In a 2018 study, Sahara Desert has expanded 10% since 1920. And the newest desert on earth is Aralkum Desert, which appeared since 1960 on the seabed once occupied by the Aral Sea.
As deserts are mostly measured by rainfall, it would be more interesting to look at land degradation. The World Atlas of Desertification claimed that “Over 75% of the Earth’s land area is already degraded, and over 90% could become degraded by 2050; Globally, a total area half of the size of the European Union (4.18 million km²) is degraded annually, with Africa and Asia being the most affected.” In a 1991 study, 35% of the world’s land surface is currently at risk and more than 20 million hectares are reduced annually to near or complete uselessness.
The measures are different, but the trend is certain.
