Author: azeeadmin

News broke this morning that Bumble would be taking Tinder parent company, Match Group, to court. Its lawsuit alleges that Match Group fraudulently obtained trade secrets, publicly disparaged Bumble, and impacted Bumble’s other investment and acquisition offers at a time when Match Group itself was trying to acquire Bumble’s business. Now, Match Group has responded to the news in a statement that dismisses Bumble’s suit as having “no substance.”

Reached for comment, a Match Group spokesperson said the following:

Our statement on this lawsuit is the same today as it was six months ago: we obviously think this has no substance. To our knowledge, Bumble still has not served us. However, we understand their desire to distract from ongoing, actual litigation, regarding their misappropriation of trade secrets and infringing on our intellectual property. Bumble is required to file a response to our original claims next week and we look forward to proving these in court.

Bumble claims it has, in fact, served Match Group  -despite Match Group’s comment here – through the Texas Secretary of State’s office. (Match Group’s HQ is Dallas.)

Match Group’s statement is referencing the lawsuit it has against Bumble, regarding patents, announced in March 2018.

That filing is embedded below.

According to Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe, the company intends to donate its winnings if it prevails in its efforts against Match Group.

“Any of the proceeds we win — which we’re very confident we will — we will donate to female empowerment causes that further our mission and our values, and further our northern star of trying to combat misogyny at large,” Wolfe said.

Bumble’s original filing from March is below:

Stripe, the fast-growing payments startup that is now worth over $9 billion, is working on a new product to help it fill out some of the gaps in its product suite as it bids to become the go-to financial services partner to startups and other businesses. It has been testing a new cash advance service, providing financing to its business customers, that would provide funds to businesses 1-2 days after applying for them.

Stripe has already started to reach out proactively to customers to market and issue the loans, which appear to be getting tested under the brand name Advance.

One of those businesses provided us with details of what Stripe is proposing: the business was offered a $25,000 advance by Stripe, with a 10 percent premium (in other words, a loan for $25,000 will total $2,500 plus the $25,000 loan amount). Users are given a fixed percentage rate, taken from daily sales, to pay back the Advance — meaning the minimum amount you pay back can vary by the day based on your sales for that day. In the case of our tipster, that payback rate was three percent of his daily sales.

Asked about the cash advance service, Stripe acknowledged that it was testing something out and pointed us to this tweet without elaborating more. So we don’t know if Stripe has been offering other users different premiums or payback percentages, nor if $25,000 is the cap or if it’s loaning more, nor if it’s working with a third-party to provide the financing, or whether it is offering it off its own balance sheet.

As a point of comparison, today Square works with Celtic Bank to provide loans through Square Capital, and the loans come the next day and range from $500 to $100,000, with what appears to be variable premiums; like Stripe, customers are given an option to pay back by way of a fixed percentage of daily sales.

Amex offered the same customer approached by Stripe the ability to take a loan of $250,000 with a lower overall cost for the money, four percent. PayPal provides loans of up to 30% of your annual sales “in minutes” after approval.

For those reasons, we think that when (if) Stripe fully launches its Advance product, you might see different numbers based on this feed back and what’s already out in the market.

Building a cash-advance service makes sense for a number of reasons.

For one, it will help Stripe diversify its business as it continues to grow. Payments — the core of Stripe’s business — generally make a thin margin and require economies of scale. Financing works on a different principle, potentially giving the company a way of making an instant return on money that it already has.

And there is a demonstrably large appetite for business loans. Square Capital has loaned out more than $3.1 billion to businesses since May 2014, and it has been successful enough that the company is now working on a way to make the loan feature a part of its successful Square Cash app, opening it to consumers as well. The basic Square Capital business is also growing: the company said that in its most recent quarter, Square Capital facilitated over 60,000 business loans totaling $390 million, up 22 percent year over year.

Issuing business loans, in that regard, also would help Stripe compete better against the rest of the payments and financial services pack, including other tech-first companies like Square and PayPal, more established payment and credit firms like American Express, and of course traditional banks.

Stripe has already been expanding into other business services, such as helping companies incorporate in Delaware, and better manage fraud on transactions. Financing fits in with those: like the fraud product, it’s another example of how Stripe can build products based around data that it is already picking up about its business customers and their transaction histories.

You can also see Advance (or whatever it might be called) as as way for Stripe to better hold on to customers.

Our tipster said that he was actually considering leaving Stripe because getting full records of his company’s accounts on Stripe, to arrange financing through out companies, has been too difficult. This financing service doesn’t solve that problem — but it would give customers who are otherwise happy with Stripe an alternative rather than becoming a deal-breaker.

Indeed, you could also argue that not offering a financing product puts Stripe somewhat behind the game and missing out on a key financial service for smaller and younger enterprises, a service that others have been offering for years now. SMBs typically take loans to smooth out cash flow, invest in a part of their businesses as they are growing, or to make up for an unexpected cost in a given period.

Some prefer to take out financing instead of working with VCs. “The thing a lot of startup founders don’t realize is the cost of VC capital,” our source said. “VC capital is by far the most expensive way to access capital as a company, more expensive than credit card debt.”

As a nearly constant traveler I’ve been looking for something like the Surface Go all my life. I’ve lugged around everything from massive ThinkPads to iPad Pros and I’ve always found myself stuck in one of two situations – the laptops that made the most sense were too heavy to be comfortably portable and the tablets and ultraportables I used, including the Surface Pro, offered too much of a performance trade-off to warrant swapping from a full desktop device.

I tried a number of other laptops over the past year including my daily driver, the TouchBar-powered MacBook Pro, as well as a Lenovo’s oddly designed YogaBooks. Nothing quite clicked. The trade offs were always drastic. Wanted power? Sacrifice weight. Wanted thin and light? Sacrifice the keyboard. Want battery life and compatibility? Sacrifice the desktop experience. So when the Surface Go came out I wasn’t too excited.

Now I am.

When Brian Heater first reviewed the device he found them lacking. “And the Surface Go isn’t a bad little device, at the end of the day. At $400, it’s on the pricier side for a tablet, and certain sacrifices have been made for the sake of keeping the price down versus the souped up Surface Pro,” he wrote. “And unlike other Surface devices, the Go is less about pioneering a category for Windows 10 than it is simply adding a lower-cost, portable alternative to the mix. As such, the product hits the market with a fair bit of competition. Acer and Lenovo have a couple, for starters, most of which fall below the Go’s asking price.”

He’s right. There are thin and lights available for far less, and the Surface Go, with its 6-hour battery life and mid-range specs, is no hard core gaming machine. However, the user experience of the Go when matched with a keyboard cover have blown other contenders out of the water. Why? Because, like Google’s Pixel line, Microsoft knows how to tune its hardware to its software.

The Surface Go easily replaced by MacBook for most activities including light photo editing, writing, and communications. The Go ships with Windows 10 in S mode, a performance improving mode that reduces the total number of available apps available but, thanks to a certification process, ensures the apps will be more performant. It is trivial to turn off S Mode and install any other app you want and most people will do this, realizing that while noble, S Mode just doesn’t fly if you’re trying to use the whole breadth of the Windows universe.

Once I turned off S Mode I could install Scrivener and a few other tools and even got some games running, although the tablet gets a little hot. That’s the real benefit of the Surface Go – you don’t compromise on apps, performance, or size and all of it is specially tuned to the software it runs.

If you’re thinking of exploring the Surface Go you’ll find it’s not the cheapest ultraportable on the market. At $399 for the entry level model – I regret not splurging on the $150 upgrade – and $99 for the keyboard cover – it’s still more expensive than similarly appointed devices from Asus and Lenovo . That said none of those manufacturers could hit on all of the sweet spots that Microsoft hit. In terms of design and ease-of-use the Surface Go wins and in terms of price you’re basically paying a little more for more compatibility and performance.

So if you’re looking for a portable, usable, and fun device that beats many other current laptops hands down, it might be time to turn your gaze on Microsoft. As someone who got sciatica from lugging around too many heavy laptops, your buttocks will thank you.

Enjoy reading lots of words about new operating systems? Good news! There are plenty of those here. Enjoy actually downloading and running said new operating systems? Gooder news! macOS 10.14 Mojave is now available in final public form over at the Mac App Store.

As with the last several versions of the desktop OS, Mojave’s a free download — though every time the company launches a new one, there tends to be a bit of a bottleneck with downloads, so you may want to give this one a bit of time before attempting.

As far as what you’ve got to look forward to on the this new version, Dark Mode is the biggest marquee feature here. Mojave offers the ability to switch windows and backgrounds to a dark design with light text — which, like many of the OS’s new features, is targeted at the company’s core audience of creative pros.

Stacks is probably my personal favorite of the bunch. With a click of a button, it cleans your ridiculously messy desktop into piles of files sortable by type and various other categories. The first batch of iOS apps have been ported to the desktop here, as well, including Voice Memos, Stocks, Home and News.

Screenshots have been pretty thoroughly tweaked, while Safari’s got a bunch of new security features.

Against my better judgement and repeat warnings from those who knew better, I went ahead and installed Mojave on my work computer the first chance I got. Sure, there were certain standard beta bugs and capability issues that made me regret the decision on occasion, but the only way to sufficiently test a product like this is use it day to day.

I can’t claim to have used every feature with any regularity. But that’s just the nature of an operating system upgrade. There’s a lot of ground to cover, in order to assure the update covers as wide a swath of users as possible. There are international features and updates to Apple’s machine learning offering — things that, in my case, don’t really impact usage.

Even with the broad scope of updates contained herein, however, 10.14 represents what is arguably the most focused macOS release in recent memory. Unlike High Sierra, which felt, in many respects (name included), like a refinement over its predecessor, Mojave finds Apple with specific mission in mind.

The last few years have seen the company hit mounting criticism that it had taken its eye off the ball when it comes to creative professionals — a segment of users long regarded to be the spirital core of its desktop offerings. There was a backlash against Final Cut, when Apple made changes for the sake of simplifying/streamlining, removing the high level of customization videographers had come to rely on.

Last year, meanwhile, Apple presented an uncharacteristically transparent view into the trials and tribulations of the Mac Pro line. “If we’ve had a pause in upgrades and updates,” Phil Schiller said during a roundtable discussion, “we’re sorry for that — what happened with the Mac Pro — and we’re going to come out with something great to replace it.”

Companies like Microsoft have seen opportunity in Apple’s further push into populism, targeting the ever-growing Surface line at those creative Pros. After all, while the category isn’t ultimately a huge one, the videographers, artists, musicians, et al. who use the products are among the most influential when it comes to buying decisions.

But Apple has begun to address these concerns. While the Mac Pro won’t be arriving until next year, it’s made important strides on the hardware front. The iMac Pro, for instance, presents an all-in-one alternative to the modular desktop, while the latest MacBook pros offer up some downright nutty specs on the high-end.

Mojave plays a central role in all of this. Many of the operating system’s marquee features cater to precisely those power users. Dark Mode, Gallery View, file metadata and Stacks are among the top new features here, and each have creative pros firmly in their sights.

I’ll be the first to admit that you’ll need to broaden your definition of “creative professional” pretty damn wide before I start to fit in. When Apple trotted out photogs, producers and interactive artists for a recent event, I’d be lying if I said I felt like I belonged.

That said, I’ve found a place for many of the aforementioned features in my own daily workflow. In the interest of giving the most time to those features I’ve spent the most time with over the course of the last four or so months, let’s start with the Mojave additions I’ve found the most useful.

Stacks

Every new version of macOS comes with several features that I can easily visualize becoming a part of my daily process. I get excited about the ways in which these additions will help me become faster, more productive, better organize. Invariably, however, they slowly fade into the background. I stop making the effort to engage and ultimately forget they’re even there.

In the case of many of them, I know my own disorganization and idiosyncratic methods are as much to blame as anything. The features are well-intentioned, but workflows are stubborn. And besides, just because you pay for the gym membership doesn’t mean you’re going to keep that New Year’s resolution, right?

Stacks, on the other hand, is straight up useful. As Apple has moved away from the desktop-based folder system, I’ve found my desktop growing more and more messy. It’s become the throw the dirty laundry anywhere approach to computer use. It’s bad and I hate myself for it, but what are you going to do?

Upgrade to Mojave, for one thing. While it’s true the company’s leaning heavily on Dark Mode as the flagship feature, Stacks is quietly the best and most useful addition. If you’ve got a messy desktop, simply Control+click the wallpaper or chose Use Stacks under view in the menu bar. Choosing this will automatically sort files into piles.

By default, the feature groups files by type. From the drop down, you can toggle this to group things by Date Last Opened, Date Modified, Date Added, Date Created or Tags. Clicking the top of the pile expands them out, so you can view everything at once.

Oh, and if you click Use Stacks again, everything will fly back into place, resorting your unruly desktop in the process.

Dark Mode

When Apple announced Mojave back at WWDC, Dark Mode got far and away the biggest response from the crowd. That’s what you get for putting on a show in a room full of developers. Of course, they’re not the only ones who’ve been champing at the bit for the feature. Videographers, photographers — really anyone who spends a lot of time staring at screens in dark rooms will likely appreciate the option.

When the feature is enabled, those applications that support it will default to the mode. The borders and backgrounds turn dark and white text is highlighted on a black background. In my Mojave first look a few months back, I lamented the lack of apps supporting the feature. At the time, Dark Mode was largely the realm of Apple’s own apps. Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Safari Reader are among them.

Understandably so. Lead by example, I guess. Things have improved a bit since then. According to the site Dark Mode List, which aggregates examples from both macOS and iOS, there are at least 78 applications that currently support the feature .

It’s a start, but there’s still a long ways to go. After all, you lose some of the effect when you switch back and forth between apps that do and don’t offer the setting. For example, while Safari supports it, neither Firefox nor Chrome do. Also, some of Apple’s own, not pre-installed applications don’t support it either, including Pages. That said, the list is understandably pretty heavy on developer tools.

With Mojave launching today, however, I’d anticipate that we’re going to see more companies rolling out the option soon. In the meantime, it’s a handy feature for those who need it and it’s a nice option for the rest of us.

Dynamic Desktop is a fun addition — though there are two options at the moment. there’s the standard Mojave sand dune, and Solar Gradient. Both shift during the day, gradually darkening as the sun starts going down. It’s a nice complement to Dark Mode, and a neat spin on the blue light reducing Night Shift feature that’s been around for a while now. Of course, more wallpaper options would be welcome.

Screenshots

Okay, this is one of those ones I know I’m going to get a lot more use out of than most of you normal folks. Day to day, however, I’d say this is the feature I interact with the most. When you take a screenshot, a small thumbnail pops up in the bottom, right hand corner of the screen, similar to what you get on iOS.

It stays for a few seconds and then quickly slides off screen. It’s a quick and handy way to see if you got the job done. You can also click into the thumbnail to open it up to full size and edit it accordingly. Screenshots can now be saved to a number of different destinations to help avoid messing up your desktop, including Preview, Messages, Mail, Documents and Clipboard.

There’s a new control panel accessible by hitting Shift-Command-5. From here, you can capture the entire screen, capture a window, select a portion of the screen, record a video of the full screen or just record a piece of the screen. I used those last bits with a little less regularity, but all of the above really came in handy when putting together the images for this writeup.

Continuity Camera is a new feature worth mentioning in the same breath. It’s yet another avenue where the company is able to flex its cross-device functionality. The somewhat clunkily named feature is built into updates to first-party apps like Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Notes, Mail, Messages and Text Edit.

Once in the program, click Take Photo and it will utilize a connected iPhone or iPad to capture media. Take the shot, click Use Photo and boom, the image is inserted into the application. It’s a clever feature that works like a charm, though I’ll be honest — I haven’t found a ton of applications for it in my own life. The number of times I’ve been writing something on my laptop I felt would be enhanced by taking a shot of something nearby have been fairly limited, thus far.

That said, I could certainly see using it to scan a document into a PDF being a handy one. I probably could/should have used then when applying for a Chinese visa a few months back. With so many of these new features, however, the trick is making a point to make it a part of your workflow.

Finder

Gallery View is a nice tweak on the old Apple Cover flow feature, offering large thumbnails of files, with smaller, scrollable versions down below. Here, however, you get a full, straight on shot of the image. It’s particularly useful when scrolling through a lot of images quickly.

The addition of full metadata is clearly another bit aimed at appealing to professionals. Click a photo and you get a LOT of information in the side pane — more than most users will likely know what to do with. Along with the standard file size and dimensions, Apple now serves up things like camera model, aperture number and other EXIF data.

Quick Actions, meanwhile, brings some iPhone-style editing tools to the bottom of the side pane. From here, you can rotate an image — which is actually pretty helpful in my line of work — or mark it up in a number ways, including highlighting and the adding in a signature, a la Adobe PDF. Apple’s actually made Preview a bit redundant here, by bringing some of its best features directly to the desktop.

iOS apps on desktop

This is arguably the most interesting addition from an overall strategy perspective. Apple made a point of assuring its audience of developers and users that macOS and iOS are not merging, as has long been rumored. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief, before the company showed off one new way in which the lines are being further blurred.

The company is making it easier to convert mobile apps into a desktop versions. Why? For one thing, Apple would love it if more desktop applications were purchased through the Mac App Store — there are plenty of economic, ecosystem and security reasons for this, most of which should be fairly obvious. It’s also in the company’s best interest to have its most popular developers creating content for all of its platforms.

To kick things off, Apple made three of its own first-party apps available in desktop form: Voice Memos, Stocks, Home and News. Of the three, News is the one that’s made its way into my heavy rotation. It seems a bit silly to have a standalone news app, with all of the access desktop browsers afford. But after installing it and walking through the curation process, I’ve grown to appreciate the desktop notifications for breaking news.

Again, there are a thousand other ways to access that information, but News is a handy one-stop shop. That said, I rarely found myself interacting directly with the app. I mostly clicked through interesting notifications as they popped through. Thankfully, they never came through with too much frequency, which would be absolutely maddening.

Voice Memo is an interesting addition, as well. The cloud sharing with iOS devices is the killer app here. You can record something on your iPhone and listen to and edit it on the desktop. The use for desktop recording is a bit less clear. In most cases, it probably makes more sense to pull out your smartphone to record.

The gesture makes it clear that you’re recording the other person, it’s easier to move to device closer to the source of audio, and you don’t have to deal with the sound of your own typing during the recording process.

The desktop versions of iOS apps are also interesting from a UX perspective. Aside from scaling, not all that much appears to be tweaked — and that’s kind of the point. It’s a heck of a lot easier to essentially port something over than it is to rebuild from the ground up. Of course, without a touchscreen Mac, you’re interfacing with the applications through the cursor. In a few of my less proud moments, if found my hand wanting to reach out to tap the screen.

This is particularly the case with Home. The desktop version of Apple’s smart home app retains the square tiles from its predecessors. Still, the inclusion of the app in this original quartet makes sense from a user stand point. It’s handy, having access to all your connected home info in a single place accessible at work or on the road.

Odds and ends

Okay, time to bust out the bullet points.

• That 32-person FaceTime chat is arriving some time later this fall on macOS. That will be a fun one to test — and I suspect a bit more manageable on a larger screen.
• Both the Mac App Store and iTunes have gotten makeovers. The updates are in keeping with the company’s push toward editorial curation to help drive engagement. Anything that pays more humans to write about things like music is a good thing, in my book.
• Your Mac will now ask for consent when apps access your camera or microphone, similar to what the company does on the iPhone. I people won’t be in a rush to remove the masking tape from their webcams, but this is definitely a good thing.
• Safari’s protections have been beefed up. Passwords are stronger and last year’s cookie-busting Intelligent has been beefed up. Per Apple,

When you browse the web, the characteristics of your device can be used by advertisers to create a “fingerprint” to track you. Safari now thwarts this by only sharing a simplified system profile. And now improved Intelligent Tracking Prevention keeps embedded content such as social media Like buttons, Share buttons, and comment widgets from tracking you without your permission.

Time to upgrade

Is Mojave worth the upgrade? Well, yeah, duh. It’s free and brings a number of interesting new features. I’m not sure I’d call it a “love letter to developers,” to borrow a phrase from our iMac Pro review, but coupled with that new hardware, Apple’s clearly letting creatives know that there’s a place for them in the Mac’s future.

Your mileage will vary, of course, but I’ve found plenty of new features that integrate nicely into my own workflow. Stacks, Dark Mode and improved screenshots have all proven handy in the months I’ve been running the beta on both my work and personal systems. The final version of the operating system drops today for everyone, so you can partake without in all of those with a much more certainty.

Uber and similar services could be facing caps on the number of licenses for vehicles that can operate ride-hailing services in London and other UK cities under rule changes being recommended to the government.

CCTV being universally installed inside licensed taxis and private hire vehicles for safety purposes is another suggestion.

A working group in the UK’s Department for Transport has published a report urging a number of changes intended to modernize the rules around taxis and private hire vehicles to take account of app-based technology changes which have piled extra pressure on already long outdated rules.

In addition to suggesting that local licensing authorities should have the power to cap vehicle licenses, the report includes a number of other recommendations that could also have an impact on ride-hailing businesses, such as calling for drivers to be able to speak and write English to a standard that would include being able to deal with “emergency and other challenging situations”; and suggesting CCTV should be universally installed in both taxis and PHVs (“subject to strict data protection measures”) — to mitigate safety concerns for passengers and drivers.

The report supports maintaining the current two-tier system, so keeping a distinction between ‘plying for hire’ and ‘prebooking’, although it notes that technological advancement has “blurred the distinction between the two trades” — and so suggests the introduction of a statutory definition of both.

“This definition should include reviewing the use of technology and vehicle ‘clustering’ as well as ensuring taxis retain the sole right to be hailed on streets or at ranks. Government should convene a panel of regulatory experts to explore and draft the definition,” it suggests.

Legislation for national minimum standards for taxi and PHV licensing — for drivers, vehicles and operators — is another recommendation, though with licensing authorities left free to set additional higher standards if they wish.

The report, which has 34 recommendations in all, also floats the idea that how companies treat drivers, in terms of pay and working conditions, should be taken into account by licensing authorities when they are determining whether or not to grant a license.

The issues of pay and exploitation by gig economy platform operators has risen up the political agenda in the UK in recent years — following criticism over safety and a number of legal challenges related to employment rights, such as a 2016 employment tribunal ruling against Uber. (Its first appeal also failed.)

“The low pay and exploitation of some, but not all, drivers is a source of concern,” the report notes. “Licensing authorities should take into account any evidence of a person or business flouting employment law, and with it the integrity of the National Living Wage, as part of their test of whether that person or business is ‘fit and proper’ to be a PHV or taxi operator.”

UK MP Frank Field, who this summer published a critical report on working conditions for Deliveroo riders, said the recommendations in the working group’s report put Uber “on notice”.

“In my view, operators like Uber will need to initiate major improvements in their drivers’ pay and conditions if they are to be deemed ‘fit and proper’,” he said in a response statement. “The company has been put on notice by this report.”

Though the report’s recommendation on this front do not go far enough for some. Also responding in a statement, the IWGB UPHD’s branch chair, James Farrar — who was one of the former Uber drivers who successfully challenged the company at an employment tribunal — criticized the lack of specific minimum wage guarantees for drivers.

“While the report has some good recommendations, it fails to deal with the most pressing issue for minicab drivers — the chronic violation of minimum wage laws by private hire companies such as Uber,” he said. “By proposing to give local authorities the power to cap vehicle licenses rather than driver licenses, the recommendations risk giving more power to large fleet owners like Addison Lee, while putting vulnerable workers in an even more precarious position.

“Just days after the New York City Council took concrete action to guarantee the minimum wage, this report falls short of what’s needed to tackle the ongoing abuses of companies operating in the so-called ‘gig economy’.”

We’ve reached out to Uber for comment on the report.

Field added that he would be pushing for additional debate in parliament on the issues raised and to “encourage the government to safeguard drivers’ living standards by putting this report into action”.

“In the meantime, individual licensing authorities have an important part to play by following New York’s lead in using their licensing policies to guarantee living wage rates for drivers,” he also said.

London’s transport regulator, TfL, has been lobbying for licensing authorities to be given the power cap the number of private hire vehicles in circulation for several years, as the popularity of ride-hailing has led to a spike in for-hire car numbers on London’s streets, making it more difficult for TfL to manage knock-on issues such as congestion and air quality (which are policy priorities for London’s current mayor).

And while TfL can’t itself (yet) impose an overall cap on PHV numbers it has proposed and enacted a number of regulatory tweaks, such as English language proficiency tests for drivers — changes that companies such as Uber have typically sought to push back against.

Earlier this year TfL also published a policy statement, setting out a safety-first approach to regulating ride-sharing. And, most famously, it withdrew Uber’s licence to operate in 2017.

Though the company has since successfully appealed, after making a number of changes to how it operates in the UK, gaining a provisional 15-month license to operate in London this summer. But clearly any return to Uber’s ‘bad old days‘ would be dealt very short shrift.

In the UK primary legislation would be required to enable local licensing authorities to be able to cap PHV licenses themselves. But the government is now being urged to do so by the DfT’s own working group, ramping up the pressure for it act — though with the caveat that any such local caps should be subject to “a public interest test” to prove need.

“This can help authorities to solve challenges around congestion, air quality and parking and ensure appropriate provision of taxi and private hire services for passengers, while maintaining drivers’ working conditions,” the report suggests.

Elsewhere, the report recommends additional changes to rules to improve access to wheelchair accessible vehicles; beef up enforcement against those that flout rules; as well as to support disability awareness training for drivers.

The report also calls on the government to urgently review the evidence and case for restricting the number of hours that taxi and PHV drivers can drive on the same safety grounds that restrict hours for bus and lorry drivers.

It also suggests a mandatory national database of all licensed taxi and PHV drivers, vehicles and operators, be established — to support stronger enforcement, generally, across all its recommended rule tweaks.

It’s not yet clear how the government will respond to the report, nor whether it will end up taking forward all or only some of the recommendations.

Although it’s under increased pressure to act to update regulations in this area, with the working group critically flagging ministers’ failure to act following a Law Commission review the government commissioned, back in 2011, writing: “It is deeply regrettable that the Government has not yet responded to the report and draft bill which the Commission subsequently published in 2014. Had the government acted sooner the concerns that led to the formation of this Group may have been avoided.”

Slack announced today that it has acquired Astro, the Bay Area startup behind email assistant, Astrobot. The deal, which marks Slack’s largest to date, will go a ways toward helping the popular enterprise chat platform achieve its vision of fully integrating workplace mainstays like email and calendars into its channels.

As Slack notes, the company hopefully predicted last year that channels would usurp other forms of business comms in the next seven or so years. Achieving that optimistic goal, however, will mean convincing business users to shift from mainstays like email.

“We’ve taken some steps to make it possible to integrate email into Slack,” the company writes, “but now we’re in a position to make that interoperability much simpler and much, much more powerful. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to help teams shift conversations to where they would be most productive — in a channel, alongside the relevant context and software tools teams use at work, from ServiceNow and Salesforce to Workday and Box.”

Astro was founded in 2015 by Zimbra cofounders, Andy Pflaum, Roland Schemers and Ross Dargahi. Last year, it introduced Astrobot (along with $8.3 million in funding), a Slack app that integrates email and calendars directly into the chat platform. Among other things, it lets users search both at once, without leaving Slack.

“And as we explored with Slack how to bring together messaging, email and calendar,” Astro wrote in a blog post announcing the move, “it became evident that we would have the biggest impact on workplace communications and realize our original vision by joining Slack.

The standalone Mac, iOS, Android, Amazon Alexa, and Slack apps will be shut down on October, with signups for new users being disabled immediately. Existing users will still have access to changes made through the app, courtesy of syncing. Most of the company’s roughly 30 or so employees will be making the transition to Slack. 

A security researcher has claimed a new vulnerability in the latest version of macOS — just hours before the software is due to be released.

Patrick Wardle, chief researcher officer at Digita Security, tweeted a video Monday of an apparent privacy feature bypass that’s designed to prevent apps from improperly accessing a user’s personal data.

For years, Macs have forced apps to ask for permission before accessing your contacts and calendar after some iOS apps were caught uploading private data. Apple said at its annual developer conference this year that it would expand the feature to include apps asking for permission to access the camera, microphone, email and backups.

Wardle told TechCrunch that his findings are “not a universal bypass” of the feature, but that the bug could allow a malicious app to grab certain protected data, such as a user’s contacts, when a user is logged in.

The video shows the operating system initially rejecting access to his stored contacts, but later copying his entire address book to the desktop after running an unprivileged script simulating a malicious app.

Wardle isn’t releasing specifics of the bug yet, he said, because he doesn’t want to put users at risk, but dropped the video out of frustration at the company’s lack of bug bounty, which he said disincentives security researchers from reporting bugs to the company.

“Other operating system vendors have acknowledged that any software is going to have vulnerabilities,” but that Apple is “sticking its head in the sand.”

Apple was one of the last major companies to roll out a bug bounty program — giving security researchers money in exchange for responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities. Apple began offering cash bounties of up to $200,000 for the most severe iOS bugs. But the company has neglected to port the program over to macOS, for reasons unknown.

“Unfortunately until there’s a reason for Apple to change its approach to security, it’s not going to,” he said. “Generally, companies don’t change something until they realize it’s broken.”

We reached out to Apple for comment and will update if we hear back.

It’s the second time Wardle released details of a serious vulnerability in macOS on launch day — the most recent case was almost exactly a year ago at the launch of macOS High Sierra.

Wardle is expected to talk more of the technical details of the Mojave bug at the Objective-by-the-Sea conference in November, he said.

Apple will release macOS Mojave later on Monday.

Considering it’s been eight years since Red Dead Redemption came out, it’s no surprise that fans of the franchise are ravenous for the next installment of the game, which launches October 26.

Last week, Rockstar Games offered some publications the opportunity to preview the game, giving gamers even more to salivate over. But Sony is offering a way to take action.

Sony is offering a RDR2 + PlayStation 4 Pro bundle that actually makes sense for the game. Instead of changing up the physical design of the console, Sony is offering 1TB of storage on a jet black PS4 Pro alongside the RDR2 disc and a dual-shock controller.

Now, for a game like Red Dead Redemption, which offers a massive open world to explore and an extensive campaign, storage is key. That storage will come in handy for folks playing Red Dead alongside other games without forcing those players to make decisions about what to keep and what to delete.

Pre-orders for the bundle went live today on Amazon for customers in the U.S. and Canada, and costs $399 or $499 CAD.

The Los Angeles-based women’s subscription box and media business FabFitFun is expanding its video catalog with the launch of new live programming set to coincide with the launch of its latest seasonal box.

FabFitFun is creating a new slate of live programming which will air every day on its Facebook page from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pacific and is set to feature interactive product showcases, beauty demonstrations, DIY projects, and a game show.

It’s an expansion of video efforts that the company began last year with the launch of a new app for AppleTV and Amazon Fire.

FabFitFun also has been streaming live shows on its Facebook page; experimenting with subjects like sale previews, product showcases, and “Founder Chats” between its co-founder and editor-in-chief Katie Rosen Kitchens and various entrepreneurs. In early 2017, the company debuted its streaming FabFitFunTV, which includes shows focused on health and fitness, cooking, dating & relationships, and do it yourself projects.

The new slate of live programming will run from Sept. 24 to Oct. 5 and will include sneak peaks of the company’s Fall Edit Sale; industry experts for in-studio demos on fashion, beauty, fitness and hair; an expansion of the company’s produced FabFitFun TV content; and a game show called “the Fab Challenge”, where viewers can compete to win prizes.

With the push into live television, FabFitFun moves one step closer toward the vision of creating a millennial version of morning programming like the Today show or something like the Home Shopping Network . Daytime appointment television isn’t what it used to be, but the format does appeal to brands both historic and new.

“Initially we’re doing it in conjunction with the sales we have,” says Michael Broukhim, co-chief executive of FabFitFun. “The plan is to build on that. Make it more than just seasonal. Our goal is what is cheddar for women with commerce and community deeply integrated into it… As we learn about which formats are successful we’ll double down on those.”