Open source sustainability

Open source sustainability has been nothing short of an oxymoron. Engineers around the world pour their sweat and frankly, their hearts into these passion projects that undergird all software in the modern internet economy. In exchange, they ask for nothing in return except for recognition and help in keeping their projects alive and improving them. It’s an incredible movement of decentralized voluntarism and represents humanity at its best. The internet and computing giants — the heaviest users of open source in the world — are collectively worth...

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Are scooter startups really worth billions?

It’s been hard to miss the scooter startup wars opening fresh, techno-fueled rifts in Valley society in recent months. Another flavor of ride-sharing steed which sprouted seemingly overnight to clutter up sidewalks — drawing rapid-fire ire from city regulators apparently far more forgiving of traffic congestion if it’s delivered in the traditional, car-shaped capsule. Even in their best, most-groomed PR shots, the dockless carelessness of these slimline electrified scooters hums with an air of insouciance and privilege. As if to say: Why yes, we...

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How backups, backups, backups protect NYC’s cellular infrastructure

{rss:content:encoded} How backups, backups, backups protect NYC’s cellular infrastructure https://ift.tt/2tncyqT https://ift.tt/2lqKbDE June 23, 2018 at 04:11PM The infrastructure that underpins our lives is not something we ever want to think about. Nothing good has come from suddenly needing to wonder “where does my water come from?” or “how does electricity connect into my home?” That pondering gets even more intense when we talk about cellular infrastructure, where a single dropped call or a choppy YouTube video can cause an expletive-laden...

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Konsus looks to give companies a way to get specially designed documents in under a day

Fredrik Thomassen as a consultant used to have the resources to offload the annoying project tasks — like making PowerPoint presentations — but now that it’s gone, he and his team wanted to make that available for everyone. Now the startup, called Konsus, wants to turn that around even faster. Konsus is a design marketplace where companies can quickly post design projects that they need for various parts of their jobs, like presentations, and designers can pick up those jobs and submit their work back — a task that could take up a lot of unnecessary...

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Facebook mistakenly leaked developer analytics reports to testers

{rss:content:encoded} Facebook mistakenly leaked developer analytics reports to testers https://ift.tt/2MfANON https://ift.tt/2ltHWiS June 22, 2018 at 06:57PM Set the “days without a Facebook’s privacy problem” counter to zero. This week, an alarmed developer contacted TechCrunch, informing us that their Facebook App Analytics weekly summary email had been delivered to someone outside their company. It contains sensitive business information including weekly average users, page views, and new users. After two days of Facebook investigating, the...

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Facebook mistakenly leaked developer analytics reports to testers

Set the “days without a Facebook’s privacy problem” counter to zero. This week, an alarmed developer contacted TechCrunch, informing us that their Facebook App Analytics weekly summary email had been delivered to someone outside their company. It contains sensitive business information including weekly average users, page views, and new users. After two days of Facebook investigating, the social network now confirms to TechCrunch that 3 percent of apps using Facebook Analytics had their weekly summary reports sent to their app’s testers, instead...

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WordPress.com parent company acquires Atavist

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Longreads, Simplenote and a few other things, is acquiring Brooklyn-based startup Atavist. Atavist has been working on a content management system for independent bloggers and writers. With an Atavist website, you can easily write and publish stories with a ton of media. You might think that this isn’t particularly groundbreaking as anyone can create a website on WordPress.com or Squarespace and do the same thing. But the company also lets you create a paywall and build a subscription base. Many...

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Lime scooters are live in Paris

Lime is the hot new thing in San Francisco, but will it work in other countries? The company just launched its electric scooter service in Paris. This isn’t the first European city as Lime is also operating in Berlin, Bremen, Frankfurt and Zurich. But it’s a significant launch as alternative mobility solutions have all been trying to grab some market share in Paris. Yesterday, you could see 200 scooters in the South East of Paris ready to be deployed. Lime plans to expand its fleet over time. Every day, the company will collect all the scooters...

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Sphero acquires a music education startup

It’s hard to say precisely how Sphero’s pivot to education is going in these early stages, but it recently got an infusion of funding and is already out acquiring new startups. The BB-8 maker announced this morning that it’s picked up Specdrums​ — the fellow Boulder, Co-based startup is a Kickstarter success story that lets users create music with an app connected ring. It’s a strange fit at first glance, but Sphero clearly sees the company’s wearable technology as a strong addition to its newfound STEAM education focus. “We firmly believe that...

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Facebook prototypes tool to show how many minutes you spend on it

Are you ready for some scary numbers? After months of Mark Zuckerberg talking about how “Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits”, Facebook is preparing to turn that commitment into a Time Well Spent product. Buried in Facebook’s Android app is an unreleased “Your Time On Facebook” feature. It shows the tally of how much time you spent on the Facebook app on your phone on each of the last seven days, and your average time spent per day. It lets you set a daily reminder that alerts you when you’ve reached your self...

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Facebook prototypes tool to show how many minutes you spend on it

{rss:content:encoded} Facebook prototypes tool to show how many minutes you spend on it https://ift.tt/2tm99IC https://ift.tt/2MhTSzU June 22, 2018 at 05:08PM Are you ready for some scary numbers? After months of Mark Zuckerberg talking about how “Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits”, Facebook is preparing to turn that commitment into a Time Well Spent product. Buried in Facebook’s Android app is an unreleased “Your Time On Facebook” feature. It shows the tally of how much time you spent on the Facebook app on...

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Citymapper lets you find Ofo, Mobike and scooters around you

Urban transportation app Citymapper quietly rolled out an app update that lets you find many alternative mobility services in the app. You can now find the nearest dockless bike or electric scooter around you (not the Bird and Lime kind, the motorcycle kind). The integrations are already live in many cities. The company didn’t add new buttons for each service because it was already getting quite crowded with buses, subways and ride-sharing services. If you tap the bike button, you get a map view of the streets around you. In addition to traditional...

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Citymapper lets you find Ofo, Mobike and scooters around you

{rss:content:encoded} Citymapper lets you find Ofo, Mobike and scooters around you https://ift.tt/2MgS2yW https://ift.tt/2MfhncR June 22, 2018 at 04:49PM Urban transportation app Citymapper quietly rolled out an app update that lets you find many alternative mobility services in the app. You can now find the nearest dockless bike or electric scooter around you (not the Bird and Lime kind, the motorcycle kind). The integrations are already live in many cities. The company didn’t add new buttons for each service because it was already getting quite...

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