The price of bitcoin — now over $57,000 — has nearly doubled in the last 7 weeks. Even Elon Musk tweeted that its price seems high — though one analyst tells Bloomberg that Tesla has already made a profit of nearly $1 billion from its recent Bitcoin investment, more than it earned selling electric cars in all of 2020.

Yet speaking about bitcoin, Bill Gates said "It'd be good to get rid of that" in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, arguing that cryptocurrency "allows for certain criminal activities."

And the world's third-wealthiest man also seemed dubious about the significance of GameStop's stock surge: Bill Gates told CNBC the Reddit-fueled trading mania in GameStop and other stocks was reminiscent of betting at a casino and not investing. "People enjoy gambling. Sadly, it's a zero-sum game," the billionaire philanthropist told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview that aired Thursday on Squawk Box. "The idea that you drive a valuation way, way beyond what is rational, it's hard to see that societally as a good use of time," Gates added. "And, you know, the people who get in it early get a windfall. The people who get in late feel like suckers...."

Gates expressed concern about the role social media played in the GameStop saga and its potential implications for the U.S. equity market. "Reddit forums where people have a reason to kind of push something and get out at those high prices, you know, the SEC has got to look at this because we don't think of the stock market as just performing a casino-like role," said Gates, the third-wealthiest person in the world. "We have restrictions on gambling activities...."

Some have said the GameStop craze carried populist characteristics, with smaller investors trying to stick it to hedge funds and big Wall Street firms. Gates said if that really were the aim of individual investors, it will not end well. "If the general public investor is pitted against the hedge funds, over time, the hedge funds will come out ahead," said Gates. "I'm sure there'll be lots of stories of people who got caught up in the frenzy, which really served no societal purpose."

Business Insider reports: Facebook executives knew for years its "potential reach" advertising metric was inflated and overruled an employee warning to adjust it to avoid a revenue hit, plaintiffs of a lawsuit against the social media giant argued in an unredacted court filing.
Gizmodo writes: In a nutshell, this class action suit, which was first filed back in 2018, alleges that Facebook massaged figures for "Potential Reach" — an estimate that Facebook gives its advertisers for the number of people that might see their ad — to goad advertisers into spending more money on the platform, all in the hopes of reaching the people that Facebook had promised. These filings detail that some of Facebook's top brass, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, were fully aware that the company spent years exaggerating the number of eyeballs its advertisers could reach...

Thanks to these unsealed filings, we know just how inflated some of those figures were. Here's an example: in 2018, Facebook told its advertisers that it had a Potential Reach of 230 million adults across the U.S., out of the 250 million adults that were counted by U.S. census data that year. But according to a 2018 Pew Research study, only about 68% (or 170 million adults) actually use the platform at all. Sandberg acknowledged in an internal email that "she'd known about problems with Potential Reach for years." But she repeatedly shot down employee's attempts to rectify those figures, according to the filing.

Internally, employees acknowledged that while the product bills itself as an estimate for how many "people" your ad might reach, it is, at best, an estimate for the number of accounts — including the untold numbers of fakes and duplicates. Some employees even ran the numbers in 2018, just to see what would happen if known duplicate accounts were cut out of Potential Reach, and saw a 10% drop in the numbers advertisers were given. Facebook chose not to cut them...

The suit points out that numbers Facebook continues to give its advertisers make even less sense, like telling them it can reach "100 million" 18-to-34 year old's across the country. Census data shows there's in fact only 76 million of them — and we know not all of them use Facebook.

Josiah Elleston-Burrell had done everything to make his dream of studying architecture a reality. But, suddenly, in the pandemic summer of 2020, he found his fate was no longer in his hands -- and began a determined battle to reclaim his future. From a long read at The Guardian: The algorithm did what it was supposed to do. Humans, in the end, had no stomach for what it was supposed to do. Algorithms don't go rogue, they don't go on mutant rampages, they only sometimes reveal and amplify the cruddy human biases that underpin them. Ofqual's mistake was to think this exercise -- which made plain our usual tricks for filtering and limiting young lives -- would be morally tolerable as it played out in public view.

Alphabet's Google on Friday fired scientist Margaret Mitchell, she said in a Twitter post, after weeks of being under investigation for moving thousands of files outside the company amid a battle over research freedom and diversity. From a report: Google's ethics in artificial intelligence research unit has been under scrutiny since December's dismissal of scientist Timnit Gebru, which prompted protest from thousands of Google workers. In a statement, Google said, "After conducting a review of this manager's conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees."

VentureBeat offers more context: In an email sent to management shortly before Mitchell was placed on investigation, Mitchell called Google firing Gebru "forever after a very, very, very bad decision." Mitchell was a member of the recently formed Alphabet Workers Union. Timnit Gebru has previously suggested that union protection could be a key part of protection for AI researchers. Mitchell and Gebru worked together on the Ethical AI team in 2018, eventually creating what's believed to be one of the most diverse divisions within Google Research. Friday's move comes hours after Google told employees it had wrapped up its investigation into the ouster of prominent AI researcher Timnit Gebru. Axios reports on that: The company declined to say what the internal inquiry found, but said it is making some changes to how it handles issues around research, diversity and employee exits. Under its new policies, Google says it will: tie pay for those at the vice president level and above partly to reaching diversity and inclusion goals; streamline its process for publishing research; increase its staff related to employee retention; and enact new procedures around potentially sensitive employee exits.

"I understand we could have and should have handled this situation with more sensitivity," Google AI head Jeff Dean said in a memo on Friday, obtained by Axios, outlining the changes. "And for that, I am sorry." "I heard and acknowledge what Dr. Gebru's exit signified to female technologists, to those in the Black community and other underrepresented groups who are pursuing careers in tech, and to many who care deeply about Google's responsible use of AI. It led some to question their place here, which I regret," Google AI head Jeff Dean, wrote in an internal email on Friday. Commenting on Axios' news, Gebru said: I expected nothing more obviously. I write an email asking for things, I get fired, and then after a 3 month investigation, they say they should probably do some of the things I presumably got fired asking for, without holding anyone accountable for their actions. Editor's note: The story was updated at 22:54 GMT with Google's statement.

Comcast is delaying a plan to enforce its 1.2TB data cap and overage fees in the Northeast US until 2022 after pressure from customers and lawmakers in multiple states. From a report: "[W]e are delaying implementation of our new data plan in our Northeast markets until 2022," Comcast said in an announcement yesterday. "We recognize that our data plan was new for our customers in the Northeast, and while only a very small percentage of customers need additional data, we are providing them with more time to become familiar with the new plan." Comcast has enforced the data cap in 27 of the 39 states in which it operates since 2016, but not in the Northeast states where Comcast faces competition from Verizon's un-capped FiOS fiber-to-the-home service. In November 2020, Comcast announced it would bring the cap to the other 12 states and the District of Columbia starting in January 2021. But with yesterday's announcement, no one in those 12 states and DC will be charged overage fees by Comcast in all of 2021.

Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee has said Australia's plan to make tech giants pay for journalism could render the internet as we know it "unworkable." From a report: The inventor of the World Wide Web claimed that proposed laws could disrupt the established order of the internet. "Specifically, I am concerned that that code risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web by requiring payment for linking between certain content online," Berners-Lee told a Senate committee scrutinizing a bill that would create the New Media Bargaining Code. If the code is deployed globally, it could "make the web unworkable around the world," he said.

Uber has lost a long running employment tribunal challenge in the UK's Supreme Court -- with the court dismissing the ride-hailing giant's appeal and reaffirming earlier rulings that drivers who brought the case are workers, not independent contractors. From a report: The case, which dates back to 2016, has major ramifications for Uber's business model (and other gig economy platforms) in the UK -- and likely regionally, as similar employment rights challenges are ongoing in European courts. European Union lawmakers are also actively eyeing how to improve conditions for gig workers, so policymakers were already feeling pressure to clarify the law around gig work -- today's ruling only increases that.

The court rejected Uber's argument that it merely acted akin to a booking agent for drivers, noting that the company would have no means of performing its contractual obligations to passengers (nor complying with its regulatory obligations as a licensed private hire vehicle operator) -- "without either employees or subcontractors to perform driving services for it." The court also weighed how Uber's business operates in light of UK employment law which provides for a 'worker' status -- a classification which is neither employed nor self-employed -- considering other case law and the detail of the drivers' relationship with Uber in coming to its interpretation of the legislation. Its conclusion is that "the transportation service performed by drivers and offered to passengers through the Uber app is very tightly defined and controlled by Uber."

Alphabet announced last month that it was winding down Loon, a nine-year-old project and a two-and-a-half-year-old spin off firm, after failing to find a sustainable business model and partners for one of its most prominent moonshot projects. Business Insider shares more details on why the project failed. From the report, which may be paywalled: CEO Alastair Wingarth told The New York Times last year that the team chose Kenya because it was open to adopting new technologies, yet it took two years for Loon to get the project off the ground. Meanwhile, a contract to bring internet to users in Peru remained stuck in a similar regulatory hell. "To get these government sign-offs and actually put our balloons on the stratosphere? That was hard," said one former employee. "That was really hard." Unlocking more airspaces would have also allowed Loon to share balloons between countries. For example, if a balloon in Kenya flew off course, it could be rerouted to Mozambique and used there. Clearing these aerial pathways meant Loon could also deliver its balloons to their destinations efficiently -- surfing any particularly good stratospheric winds that appeared en route.

But as time went on, Loon realized how tough it was to land these agreements. The company tried to get clearance to fly balloons over Venezuela, which would have made it easier to travel to other parts of South America, but the country's authoritarian government would not allow Loon to do so, one former employee said. Some governments were also suspicious of allowing Loon in their airspace. Employees say it was not uncommon for foreign dignitaries to visit Loon's sites and offices to inspect their balloons for surveillance technology. As Loon wrestled with sticky geopolitics, SoftBank's money was fast drying up, and the company spent most of 2020 trying to attract new investment. Loon had some leads, the most promising of which was a new deal with SoftBank for a second cash injection, according to two former employees familiar with the negotiations. The amount Loon hoped to get from the new deal could not be learned, but one said they expected it would have had to be at least $100m to be worth it.

Almost exactly a year after Google announced the first developer preview of Android 11, the company today released the first developer preview of Android 12. From a report: Google delayed the roll-out of Android 11 a bit as the teams and the company's partners adjusted to working during a pandemic, but it looks like that didn't stop it from keeping Android 12 on schedule. As you would expect from an early developer preview, most of the changes here are under the hood and there's no over-the-air update yet for intrepid non-developers who want to give it a spin. Among the highlights of the release so far -- and it's important to note that Google tends to add more user-facing changes and UI updates throughout the preview cycle -- are the ability to transcode media into higher-quality formats like the AV1 image format, faster and more responsive notifications and a new feature for developers that now makes individual changes in the platform togglable so they can more easily test the compatibility of their apps. Google also promises that just like with Android 11, it'll add a Platform Stability milestone to Android 12 to give developers advance notice when final app-facing changes will occur in the development cycle of the operating system. Last year, the team hit that milestone in July when it launched its second beta release. Developers who want to get started with bringing their apps to Android 12 can do so today by flashing a device image to a Pixel device. For now, Android 12 supports the Pixel 3/3 XL, Pixel 3a/3a XL, Pixel 4/4 XL, Pixel 4a/4a 5G and Pixel 5. You can also use the system image in the Android Emulator in Google's Android Studio.

Top lobbying groups backed by Amazon, Facebook, Google and other technology giants sued Maryland on Thursday, seeking to scuttle a new state tax on their massive online-advertising revenue -- and stop other local governments from following its lead. From a report: The legal challenge contends that Maryland's first-in-the-nation tax is unfair, unconstitutional and incompatible with federal laws that prohibit state policymakers from instituting levies specifically targeting online services. The lawsuit is backed by a broad coalition of businesses nationwide through a series of trade groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association, a Washington-based organization that counts Silicon Valley's most prominent companies among its members. It carries great legal and political significance at a time when lawmakers well beyond Maryland's borders are starting to eye the tech industry's eye-popping pandemic profits as a potential source of much-needed new revenue.

"In light of the current pandemic and economic uncertainty, increasing taxes on services used by small businesses to keep themselves running is a particularly poor and ill-timed policy," Caroline Harris, the vice president for tax policy at the U.S. Chamber, said in a statement. In the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland, the tech giants and their political allies argue that the state's online advertising tax suffers from "many infirmities" and, as a result, threatens to "raise costs for consumers and make it more difficult for businesses to connect with potential customers."

Apple launched its first iPhones with 5G wireless speeds a few months ago. Now it's looking to start work on sixth-generation cellular connectivity, or 6G, indicating it wants to be a leader in the technology rather than relying on other companies. From a report: The Cupertino, California-based company this week posted job ads seeking wireless system research engineers for current and next-generation networks. The listings are for positions at Apple's offices in Silicon Valley and San Diego, where the company works on wireless technology development and chip design. "You will have the unique and rewarding opportunity to craft next generation wireless technology that will have deep impact on future Apple products," according to the job announcement. "In this role you will be at the center of a cutting-edge research group responsible for creating next generation disruptive radio access technologies over the next decade." People hired for the positions will "research and design next generation (6G) wireless communication systems for radio access networks" and "participate in industry/academic forums passionate about 6G technology." Industry watchers don't expect 6G to roll out until about 2030, but the job listings indicate Apple wants to be involved at the earliest stages in the development of the new technology.

Matt Levine: Last August, Citigroup wired $900 million to some hedge funds by accident. Then it sent a note to the hedge funds saying, oops, sorry about that, please send us the money back. Some did. Others preferred to keep the money. Citi sued them. Yesterday Citi lost, and they got to keep the money. I read the opinion, by U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman, expecting to learn about the New York legal doctrine of finders keepers -- more technically, the "discharge-for-value defense" -- and I was not disappointed. But I was also treated to a gothic horror story about software design. I had nightmares all night about checking the wrong boxes on the computer.

In its bid for TikTok, Oracle was supposed to prevent data from being passed to Chinese police. Instead, it's been marketing its own software for their surveillance work. From a report: Police in China's Liaoning province were sitting on mounds of data collected through invasive means: financial records, travel information, vehicle registrations, social media, and surveillance camera footage. To make sense of it all, they needed sophisticated analytic software. Enter American business computing giant Oracle, whose products could find relevant data in the police department's disparate feeds and merge it with information from ongoing investigations. So explained a China-based Oracle engineer at a developer conference at the company's California headquarters in 2018. Slides from the presentation, hosted on Oracle's website, begin with a "case outline" listing four Oracle "product[s] used" by Liaoning police to "do criminal analysis and prediction." One slide shows Oracle software enabling Liaoning police to create network graphs based on hotel registrations and track down anyone who might be linked to a given suspect.

Another shows the software being used to build a police dashboard and create "security case heat map[s]." Apparent pictures of the software interface show a blurred face and various Chinese names. The concluding slide states that the software helped police, whose datasets had been "incomprehensible," more easily "trace the key people/objects/events" and "identify potential suspect[s]" -- which in China often means dissidents. Oracle representatives have marketed the company's data analytics for use by police and security industry contractors across China, according to dozens of company documents hosted on its website. In at least two cases, the documents imply that provincial departments used the software in their operations. One is the slideshow story about Liaoning province. The other is an Oracle document describing police in Shanxi province as a "client" in need of an intelligence platform. Oracle also boasted that its data security services were used by other Chinese police entities, according to the documents -- including police in Xinjiang, the site of a genocide against Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic groups. In marketing materials, Oracle said that its software could help police leverage information from online comments, investigation records, hotel registrations, license plate information, DNA databases, and images for facial recognition. Oracle presentations even suggested that police could use its products to combine social media activity with dedicated Chinese government databases tracking drug users and people in the entertainment industry, a group that includes sex workers. Oracle employees also promoted company technology for China's "Police Cloud," a big data platform implemented as part of the emerging surveillance state.

Microsoft has begun deploying this week KB4577586, a Windows update that permanently removes the Adobe Flash Player software from Windows devices. From a report: The update was formally announced last year at the end of October when Microsoft and other browser makers were preparing for the impending Flash end-of-life, scheduled for the end of 2020. According to a support document published at the time, the update was initially supposed to be optional. System administrators who wanted to remove Flash before the EOL date could access the Microsoft Update Catalog, download the KB4577586 packages, and remove Flash to avoid any security-related issues. But this week, multiple Windows 10 users reported that Microsoft is now forcibly installing KB4577586 on their devices and removing Flash support from the OS. While users might think this would cause issues for some enterprises, it actually does not. Last year, Adobe introduced a time bomb in the Flash Player code that prevents the Flash Player app from playing content after January 12.

schwit1 writes: With a pair of votes, Maryland can now claim to be a pioneer: it's the first place in the country that will impose a tax on the sale of online ads. The House of Delegates and Senate both voted this week to override Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of a bill passed last year to levy a tax on online ads. The tax will apply to the revenue companies like Facebook and Google make from selling digital ads, and will range from 2.5% to 10% per ad, depending on the value of the company selling the ad. (The tax would only apply to companies making more than $100 million a year.)

Proponents say the new tax is simply a reflection of where the economy has gone, and an attempt to have Maryland's tax code catch up to it. The tax is expected to draw in an estimated $250 million a year to help fund an ambitious decade-long overhaul of public education in the state that's expected to cost $4 billion a year in new spending by 2030. (Hogan also vetoed that bill, and the Democrat-led General Assembly also overrode him this week.) Still, there remains the possibility of lawsuits to stop the tax from taking effect; Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh warned last year that "there is some risk" that a court could strike down some provisions of the bill over constitutional concerns.

Facebook has restricted access to news in Australia, and so far the tech giant seems to have taken a pretty broad definition of news. From a report: Some pages that don't fit the traditional news genre have been stripped out as part of the stoush between Facebook and the federal government over whether the social media company should pay for Australian content it runs on its site. In response to the outages, Facebook said government pages should not be hit by the changes. A spokesperson said any inadvertently impacted pages would be fixed. "As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted," the spokesperson said in a statement. [...] Post are down for the Bureau of Meteorology, the government agency responsible for providing weather service updates. [...] The health departments for the ACT, South Australia and Queensland have had posts taken down. [...] Law enforcement has also been caught by the ban. Content under the "latest news" tab for the Victoria Police Facebook page is unavailable. [...] Domestic, family and sexual violence services 1800RESPECT and DVConnect have had posts taken down. Also affected is the Australian Council of Trade Unions. [...] Other pages which have been stripped of their content include Urban List, which offer restaurant reviews, satire sites like the The Betoota Advocate and The Shovel, and even homemaker magazines like Home Beautiful.

Ford has pledged that all of its cars on sale in Europe will be electric by 2030, in the latest move by the world's biggest auto manufacturers to set out plans to move away from polluting internal combustion engines before looming bans on fossil-fuel vehicles across the world. From a report: The US car giant said on Wednesday that it was going "all in" on electric vehicles and would invest $1 billion converting a vehicle assembly plant in Cologne, Germany, to become its first electric vehicle facility in Europe. It said the first all-electric cars would start rolling off the production line there in 2023. Ford promised that all of its passenger cars in Europe would be "zero-emissions capable all-electric or plug-in hybrid" by mid-2026, before ramping up its ambitions to be "completely all-electric by 2030." "We are charging into an all-electric future in Europe with expressive new vehicles and a world-class connected customer experience," Stuart Rowley, the head of Ford's European operations, said. "Our announcement today to transform our Cologne facility, the home of our operations in Germany for 90 years, is one of the most significant Ford has made in over a generation. It underlines our commitment to Europe and a modern future with electric vehicles at the heart of our strategy for growth."

Facebook said Wednesday that it would no longer allow Australian publishers to share news on Facebook or allow Australian people to view or share international news sources. From a report: The change comes as Australia prepares to pass a law that would require companies like Facebook and Google to pay news publishers to carry their stories. "The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content. It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia," Facebook's managing director of Australia and New Zealand, William Easton, wrote in a blog post. "With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter." Before Facebook's announcement Wednesday, Google and News Corp struck a deal through which Google will pay the company -- which owns The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and The New York Post -- to feature their stories in Google News Showcase. Facebook addressed the companies' divergent responses in the blog post. "Our platforms have fundamentally different relationships with news. Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content," Easton wrote. "On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue." Easton went on to describe the "business gains" of news on Facebook as "minimal," writing that it accounts for 4% of all content on the platform.

New numbers show 2020 was the first year that Chromebooks outsold Macs, posting impressive market share gains at the expense of Windows. From a report: Computers powered by Google's Chrome OS have outsold Apple's computers in individual quarters before, but 2020 was the first full year that Chrome OS took second place. Microsoft's Windows still retained majority market share, but also took a big hit as both Chrome OS and macOS gained share. The milestone is based on numbers provided by IDC, which doesn't typically break out sales based on device operating system. But when we went looking to see how the pandemic may have impacted the PC market, IDC analyst Mike Shirer confirmed the findings to GeekWire. This is a big win for Google and a warning for both Apple and Microsoft. It also signals to app and game developers that Chrome OS can no longer be ignored. Frankly, any business that provides a product or service over the internet should be setting aside resources to ensure the Chrome OS experience is comparable to Windows and macOS.

AmiMoJo writes: The use of "invisible" tracking tech in emails is now "endemic", according to a messaging service that analysed its traffic at the BBC's request. Hey's review indicated that two-thirds of emails sent to its users' personal accounts contained a "spy pixel", even after excluding for spam. Its makers said that many of the largest brands used email pixels, with the exception of the "big tech" firms. Defenders of the trackers say they are a commonplace marketing tactic. And several of the companies involved noted their use of such tech was mentioned within their wider privacy policies. Emails pixels can be used to log: if and when an email is opened, how many times it is opened, what device or devices are involved, the user's rough physical location, deduced from their internet protocol (IP) address - in some cases making it possible to see the street the recipient is on.

This information can then be used to determine the impact of a specific email campaign, as well as to feed into more detailed customer profiles. Hey's co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson says they amount to a "grotesque invasion of privacy". And other experts have also questioned whether companies are being as transparent as required under law about their use.