June 29, 2018

California passes a big privacy bill. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
FRIDAY, JUNE 29 2018 By Anthony Ha

Silicon Valley's home state gives the nod to a major online privacy bill, Apple is rebuilding Maps and a new acquisition could deepen Pokémon GO's connection to the real world. Here's your Daily Crunch for June 29, 2018.

1. California passes landmark data privacy bill

According to the law, consumers can opt out of allowing their data to be sold, and businesses are not allowed to respond by changing the price or level of service. Companies can, however, offer "financial incentives" for data collection.

This is only a state law, but California is a big and populous state, and it's home to many of the Internet giants that have leveraged user data to build their businesses.

2. Apple is rebuilding Maps from the ground up

Maps needs fixing. Apple, it turns out, is aware of this.

3. Bird has officially raised a whopping $300M as the scooter wars heat up

This is the second round of funding that Bird has raised over the span of a few months, sending it from a reported $1 billion valuation in May to a $2 billion valuation by the end of June.

4. Niantic's latest acquisition lets AR Pokémon hide behind the real world

Niantic, the company behind Pokémon GO, has just acquired Matrix Mill, which has been working on a product it calls "Monodepth" — a tool that takes data from a single RGB camera, passes it through a neural network and spits out depth data fast enough to be integrated into a real-time game.

5. Twitter gets a re-org and new product head

The changes will see Twitter dividing its business into groups including engineering, product, revenue product, design and research, while also bringing on Kayvon Beykpour, the GM of video and former Periscope CEO, as product head.

6. Instagram Stories now lets its 400M users add soundtracks

Thanks to Facebook's recent deals with record labels, users will be able to choose from thousands of songs from artists including Bruno Mars, Dua Lipa, Calvin Harris and Guns N' Roses.

7. Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison is dead

He was one of my childhood heroes.

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