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Charlotte Henry

Charlotte is a media junkie, covering how Apple is not just a revolutionary tech firm, but a revolutionary media firm for TMO. She is based in London, and writes and broadcasts for various outlets.

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YouTube Kids Rejected by...Kids

Four years ago, YouTube released a kids-only version. The idea was to keep those under 13-years-old off the main site. The problem, Bloomberg News, found, is that lots of kids don’t want to use it.

Not many kids use YouTube Kids, and those who do don’t stick around. Several of the most popular channels on the main site, which has more than 2 billion monthly users, specialize in programming designed for young kids, but that doesn’t mean they are free of advertising or screened for safety. One, Cocomelon, a channel of nursery rhymes, has more than 50 million subscribers. That’s double the weekly audience for all of YouTube Kids, which is used by more than 20 million people a week, according to a company spokesperson. (Much of the audience for a channel like Cocomelon could be parents trying to keep up with popular rhymes, a spokesperson said.) Children who do watch YouTube Kids tend to shift over to YouTube’s main site before they hit thirteen, according to multiple people at YouTube familiar with the internal data. One person who works on the app said the departures typically happen around age seven.

An Amazing Look Inside NASA's Unseen Archive

NASA has an amazing archive of items from its various missions. Following five years of begging for access, photographer Benedict Redgrove is set to publish over 200 photos of the archive in a new book, Nasa – Past and Present Dreams of the Future. It will launch on Kickstarter on July 20 – the 50th anniversary of man setting foot on the Moon for the first time reported Wired.

Redgrove has spent nine years photographing items from the space agency’s rich history in loving detail. It took him five years just to arrange access, and to persuade Nasa to open up archives that had been left untouched since the original missions. “Some items were so fragile I was nervous just putting the lights near them,” he says. Others, like some of the gloves and helmets, were in cabinets that hadn’t been opened in five years and had to be broken into.

GOP Senator Josh Hawley Takes Aim at Big Tech

Washington has turned its fire on Big Tech in recent months. Big names on the Democratic side have been keen to put forward policy proposals during their runs for the White House. However, a freshman Republican is also making waves. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley gave an interesting interview to Fast Compay on a variety of tech issues, including privacy.

I think we need to be deeply concerned about the level of privacy invasion and violation that we’re seeing from these tech companies. My concern is that it’s baked deeply into their business model of extracting data from consumers without telling them, and then monetizing that data, and then also working to ensure they have very large numbers of people online for large portions of the day so that you can make these ads profitable. I mean, that really is the model for Facebook, for the Google platforms, and for Twitter in many ways.

Facebook's Cryptocurrency Has Big Backers

Facebook is preparing to launch a new cryptocurrency. The Wall Street Journal found that the project has backing from some of the biggest names in finance and e-commerce.

Facebook Inc. has signed up more than a dozen companies including Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., MA +0.20% PayPal Holdings Inc., and Uber Technologies Inc. to back a new cryptocurrency it plans to unveil next week and launch next year. The financial and e-commerce companies, venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will invest around $10 million each in a consortium that will govern the digital coin, called Libra, according to people familiar with the matter. The money would be used to fund the creation of the coin, which will be pegged to a basket of government-issued currencies to avoid the wild swings that have dogged other cryptocurrencies, they said.

Tim Cook Talks Privacy and Trade With President Trump

Tim Apple Cook met with U.S. President Donald Trump Thursday. Reuters reported that the two discussed the ongoing trade dispute with China, U.S. investment, immigration, and privacy.

Trump’s meeting with Cook was disclosed by daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump during an event that Trump held with governors on skills development. Cook is a frequent visitor to the White House and has worked with Ivanka Trump on her job training and education initiatives. The president often name-checks Cook as a business leader who has brought jobs and investment back to the United States. On Thursday, Trump spoke with Cook about “trade, U.S. investment, immigration and privacy,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said. A spokesperson for Apple could not be immediately reached for comment.

Video Shows Apple's Look Around is Much Smoother than Google Maps Street View

Apple revealed that there would be a new Look Around feature in Apple Maps at iOS 13. It is similar to Street View in Google Maps. However, a new video posted on Twitter by WordPress developer Reüel van der Steege shows that Apple may have beaten its rival. Look Around seems to be much smoother.

Pre-order Dead Cells on iOS Now

Dead Cells is now available to pre-order for iOS,  Cult of Mac reported. The popular console game costs $9.99, or $7.99 if you order now.

Dead Cells is a roguelike-metroidvania game that has been incredibly well received by fans and critics. It boats a “very positive” rating on Steam after more than 23,500 reviews, and has sold 1 million copies on the Switch alone. If you haven’t already had a chance to play it, you’ll soon have no excuse. Having Dead Cells in your pocket means you can play it anywhere, at almost any time.

 

App Only Bank Monzo to Launch in U.S.

Monzo plans to launch in the U.S. Yahoo Finance reported. It will be the first time the app-only bank has ventured outside of the UK. It could potentially be a challenger to the forthcoming Apple Card as it offers some similar facilities.

“We’ve just crossed 2m customers, our TV ad is going great, we should have a quarter of a million new customers this month, and we’re contribution margin positive here in the UK, so it feels like the UK business is on track to be really successful,” Tom Blomfield, the CEO and founder of Monzo told Yahoo Finance UK. “Now feels like the right time to start thinking about our next market.” Blomfield said sign-up events will be held in LA, San Fransisco, New York, and other major US cities before rolling out online applications.

 

Telegram Says China Behind Cyber Attack

Telegram said China was behind a massive cyber attack on it during recent protests in Hong Kong.  The firm’s founder Pavel Durov tweeted the accusations, Bloomberg News reported.

The encrypted messaging app said it experienced a powerful distributed denial of service attack after “garbage requests” flooded its servers and disrupted legitimate communications. Most of those queries came from Chinese internet protocol addresses, founder Pavel Durov said in a subsequent Twitter post. This case was not an exception,” he tweeted without elaborating. Hong Kong is in the throes of political unrest as the Beijing-backed government attempts to force through controversial legislation that would for the first time allow extraditions to China, which protesters fear could be used to squelch government opposition.

Twitter Co-Founder Laments Rise of Instant Feedback

Twitter co-founder and Medium CEO Ev Williams described preparing to post on the social network he helped create as “armoring up for battle.” He told the Recode Code conference that he misses the day’s when bloggers did not get instant feedback.

“Part of the beautiful thing about blogging was you were always looking for feedback but you didn’t get it as momentarily — things could marinate,” said Williams, who was speaking onstage at Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Tuesday with Vox founder and editor-at-large Ezra Klein. “Now, there’s an addiction to short-term feedback that is detrimental sometimes to thought.” Williams, who is now leading Medium, compared the mindset of getting ready to post on social media platforms like Twitter as “armoring up for battle.” This isn’t the first time Williams has expressed regret over what some view as the potentially negative effects of Twitter.

Bolt's Cut Price Offer to Challenge Uber in London

Ride-hailing service Bolt is back in London, and ready to take to on Uber. It will find doing so a tough challenge. However, as Wired noted, the service previously known as Taxify has one big advantage – it is much cheaper.

Bolt has spent the last two years going through the licensing process properly, and now it’s ready for action. But it is not new to ride hailing. The company was founded in 2013 by 19-year-old Estonian Markus Villig, and began by targeting markets – such as his home town of Tallinn – where Uber was slow to expand. It now operates in more than 30 countries, and has found particular success in Africa, where it offers rides on mopeds as well as in cars – the continent makes up about half of its revenue. But Uber is already deeply embedded into London’s transport system. It accounts for 80 per cent of all ride-hailing journeys, and is integrated into Google Maps and Citymapper.