This week, while BlackBerry was suing Facebook and its subsidiaries, Amazon's smart speakers were laughing at their users and a major crypto exchange made boss moves. Read on.
BlackBerry sues Facebook and Instagram
This week, BlackBerry Limited sued Facebook and its subsidiaries -- WhatsApp and Instagram -- to court for infringing on its messaging app patents. The Verge reports that BlackBerry is contending that Facebook infringed on its intellectual properties. The report says they stole innovative security, user interface, and functionality enhancing features that made BlackBerry’s products unique.
In response to the lawsuit, Paul Grewal, Facebook’s deputy general counsel, said;
“BlackBerry’s suit sadly reflects the current state of its messaging business. Having abandoned its efforts to innovate, BlackBerry is now looking to tax the innovation of others. We intend to fight.”
The Next Web has a list of 5 things the lawsuit claims Facebook stole from BlackBerry.
Amazon Alexa is cackling
On Wednesday, users on Twitter reported that their Amazon Echo speakers were emitting a ‘witch-like’ laughter without any prompts. So basically, their Amazon smart speakers erupted into weird and scary laughs without any voice commands prompting them.
The Independent has a video of this scary laugh; it is eerie indeed.
In a statement to The Verge, Amazon said; “We’re aware of this and working to fix it.”
According to a spokesperson, one of the ways they intend to do this is changing the “Alexa, laugh” command to “Alexa, can you laugh?” as the latter is “less likely to have false positives.”
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What's cryptocurrenting?
On Saturday, The Independent reported theft of 600 bitcoin mining computers after 4 burglaries in the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland.
Eleven people have been arrested in connection with the theft but the computers worth over £1.5m have still not been recovered.
Meanwhile bitcoin prices fell hard. Thursday was the second day in a row of cryptocurrencies' dips. Fortune reports bitcoin dropped 7.5% to $9,840 as Ethereum and Ripple also declined. However, Coinbase made a happy rise in this downward slip.
In a surprising swoop within the week, Coinbase snagged Eric Scro, former Head of Finance at the New York Stock exchange. Eric is joining Coinbase as Vice President of Finance.
A CoinBase blogpost says "As the VP of Finance, Eric will be focused on helping serve institutional clients and deal with the increasingly complex financial and regulatory requirements of the business."
More than anything, this move is a major legitimacy stance for the currency exchange.
