Spotify's free version gets an upgrade, Amazon adds an intriguing new delivery option and Facebook and YouTube both offer more transparency. It's The Daily Crunch for April 24, 2018. 1. Spotify beefs up its free tier Spotify's improved free tier delivers personalized recommendations that take advantage of the company's investments in machine learning. It also allows users to listen to any song on their personalized discovery playlists (like Discover Weekly) on-demand as many times as they want. The new version also includes a low data mode that cuts usage by 75 percent. 2. You can now give Amazon the keys to your car My colleague Federic Lardinois has actually tried this out: A driver delivering an Amazon package used his phone to unlock the car in Frederic's driveway, put the package in the trunk and then locked the car again. 3. Facebook reveals 25 pages of takedown rules for hate speech and more In the past, the social network said it wanted to avoid making it easy to game the rules, but that's been outweighed by the public's constant calls for clarity, as well as protests about some of the takedown decisions. 4. YouTube releases its first report about how it handles flagged videos and policy violations Facebook isn't the only one working to be more transparent about these issues. YouTube's inaugural report, which covers the last quarter of 2017, follows up on a promise the company made in December to do a better job communicating how it handles abuse and decides what videos will be removed. 5. Google beats expectations again with $31.15B in revenue Google's parent company Alphabet is growing even faster than it was a year ago. 6. Andreessen Horowitz is planning to launch a dedicated crypto fund The rumor has been going around for a while — not a huge surprise since the firm has invested in the likes of Coinbase, Earn.com and CryptoKitties. Plus, co-founder Marc Andreessen is a big crypto advocate. 7. Huge numbers of job postings in China specify 'men only' or dictate women's appearance A new report from Human Rights Watch highlights widespread and blatant discrimination in Chinese job descriptions, despite the practice being ostensibly illegal there. In fact, the highest incidence rates were found in government jobs. |