The Global Linkup is a summary roundup of important tech news curated from all around the globe. In this week’s edition, Bozoma Saint John left Uber, one thousand people have taking delivery of their flamethrowers, and Uber is developing a system to detect drunk passengers. Read on.
Why Bozoma Saint John is leaving Uber
Nearly one year ago, Bozoma Saint John resigned from Apple to become Uber’s first chief brand officer. She came into the company at a time when it was plagued by allegations of sexism, sexual assaults among other cultural problems. At the time, she was brought in to help rebrand Uber.
On Monday, Recode reported that Bozoma Saint John has left Uber for Endeavour a giant holding company that encompasses entertainment, sports and talent management among other things. She will be the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Endeavour.
In an interview with TechCrunch, she said nothing bad caused her departure from Uber, but that a lot of things still need to be put in place especially around Uber’s corporate culture.
The UK fines Yahoo for 2014 data breach
In 2014, a hacker stole personal information from at least 500 million Yahoo users. Stolen information included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords and responses to security questions.
The company confirmed it 2 years later and said they believed it was a state-sponsored act.
On Tuesday, TechCrunch reported that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) of the European Union (EU) has fined Yahoo $330,000 under the new GDPR laws.
The fine is in connection to more than 515,000 UK accounts affected by the data breach.
Uber is developing technology to spot drunk passenger
On Tuesday, a BBC report said Uber has filed application with the US patent office for a technology to detect "uncharacteristic user activity". The new technology will tell drivers how accurately their intended passengers are typing and even the angle they are holding their phones. This will help drivers who do not want to pick up drunk passengers.
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The Irish Times says the system will be powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and use machine learning to predict user state.
As good as the technology is for driver safety, critics say it can also be used to identify vulnerable passengers.
The Elon Fire Machine is here
Over last weekend, 1,000 people formed lines outside The Boring Company's headquarters in Los Angeles to receive their flamethrowers in a pickup party of sorts.
Business Insider said even though Elon Musk’s company had sold 20,000 pre-order pieces of the $500 fire breathing machine, this were the first set of people to receive theirs.
The flamethrower, which was named Not-a-Flamethrower to bypass shipping and customs regulations, has gotten popular really fast.
A Twitter Moment showed proud new owners ‘having fun’ and torching things they shouldn't with it.
