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A worrying number of popular Android apps share user data with Facebook without user consent, new research from Privacy International shows (via Financial Times). 

Here's the worst part: Staying off Facebook doesn't protect you from this.  

Privacy International, a London-based charity that focuses on improving people's personal privacy, examined 34 popular Android apps, each installed from 10 to 500 million times, between August and December 2018.

All of these apps share data with Facebook through its SDK (software development kit), which is fine if the users have in some way consented to this. But the organization intercepted data as it was sent (using a freely available, open-source tool) and found that at least 20 of these apps (roughly 61 percent) "automatically transfer data to Facebook the moment a user opens the app." Read more...

Computer and home theater setups have at least one thing in common: The out-of-the-box speakers that come with both are just not that good. 

Thankfully, there are plenty of speaker setups to choose from to give your computer's audio that extra punch. And better yet, it doesn't just have to be for a desktop.

It should be noted that the best quality speakers are typically going to be for a traditional desk setup rather than a laptop. The right speakers will deliver booming audio, and might even allow for a surround-sound setup, which makes everything better.

Well, you did it. You made it through 2018. And whether you're a bit battered and bruised or had your best year ever, there's no denying that 2019 is swiftly rolling in.

Start the new year off right: With big savings. We're rounding up the best deals from Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Macy's, and more on tech like smart home devices and 4K TVs, kitchen products like Instant Pot's multi-cookers, and Amazon video streaming and home security devices. 

In addition, we also found great deals on Udemy online courses starting at just $9.99. If your New Year's resolution involves learning something new and exciting, Udemy has amazing online courses on web design, animation, and more.  Read more...

Being a newscaster is high pressure, reading the news live every day and knowing that if you slip up it'll be there for the internet to see.

And that's exactly what happened to Brianna Clark, an anchor on Kentucky's WPSD, who badly mangled the name of Deidre Mengedoht, a Louisville police officer who was killed in a Christmas Eve car crash.

Where her very off-the-mark pronunciation came from is a mystery — a painful, cringe-inducing mystery. But it's very unfortunate timing.

The Louisville Police Department has launched a fundraiser to benefit Officer Mengedoht's 9-year-old son here. Read more...

I thought the worst thing about Popsugar’s Twinning tool was that it matched me with James Corden.

Turns out, the hundreds of thousands of selfies uploaded to the tool can be downloaded by anyone who knows where to look.

The popular photo matching tool taking the web by storm is fairly simple. “It analyzes a selfie or uploaded photo, compares it to a massive database of celebrity photos to find matches, and finally gives you a ‘twinning percentage’ for your top five look-alikes,” according to Popsugar, which developed the tool. Then, you share those matched photos on Facebook and Twitter so everyone knows that you don’t look at all like one of the many Kardashians.

All of the uploaded photos are stored in a storage bucket hosted on Amazon Web Services. We know because the web address of the bucket is in the code on the Twinning tool’s website. Open that in your web browser, and you’re looking at a real-time stream of uploaded photos.

We verified the findings by uploading a dummy photo of a certain file size at a specific time. Then, we scraped a list of filenames uploaded during that time period from the bucket’s web address, downloaded them, and found our uploaded image by searching for that photo of a certain file size. (We didn’t download any more than necessary to preserve people’s privacy.)

TechCrunch reached out to Popsugar president Lisa Sugar and vice-president of engineering Mike Patnode, but did not hear back.

As data leaks go, this is definitely on the low-end. You might not care that their selfies were exposed and easily downloadable. (Many photos were already leaking out of Google’s search results — even before people shared their selfie matches on Twitter!) It’s not as if the site was leaking your passwords or your Social Security number. Most probably didn’t go in expecting any reasonable level of security or privacy to begin with.

But like any free app, quiz or some viral web tool, it’s worth reminding that you’re still putting your information out there — and you can’t always get it back. Worse, you almost never know how secure your data will be, or how it might end up being used — and abused — in the future.

This is Captain Buzzkill, signing off.

This time last year, the crypto bull market stole the spotlight. In the midst of bitcoin’s wild run, we announced the Matrix FinTech Index in recognition of the top 10 publicly traded U.S. fintechs quietly surpassing $100 billion in total market capitalization. We predicted that in 2018, the fintechs would prove to be the more relevant disruptors and their equity value would continue to outpace the incumbents.

As we look back, this prediction proved to be true. The market cap of the Matrix FinTech Index grew 50 percentage points in 2018, far outpacing the incumbent financial service giants and the S&P 500. Looking ahead to 2019, we predict that the fintechs will continue to steal the show—creating innovative tech-enabled products, providing access to underserved demographics, and putting consumers first.

The FinTech Index continues to outperform in 2018, though volatility has increased

In this 2018 year-end edition of the Matrix FinTech Index[1] , we are excited to provide a refreshed view of last year’s index. As a quick reminder, the index is a market-cap weighted index that tracks the progress of a portfolio of 10 leading public fintech companies. For comparison, we also included another portfolio of 10 large financial services incumbents (companies like JP Morgan and Visa), as well as the S&P 500. In 2018, the total market cap of the top 10 publicly traded U.S. fintechs grew to nearly $170B and the 2-year returns of the fintechs are now at 133%–100 percentage points higher than the 2-year returns for the incumbents.

Definition: Matrix Partners considers “fintechs” to be venture-backed organizations that are (a) technology-first companies that leverage software to compete with traditional financial services institutions (e.g. banks, credit card networks, insurers, etc.) in the delivery of traditional financial services (e.g. lending, payments, investing, etc.) or (b) software tools that better enable traditional finance functions (e.g. accounting, point-of-sales systems, etc.)

Compared to 2017, volatility increased in 2018. While part of this is the broader state of the equity markets in 2018, it’s worth noting a few specific headwinds (e.g. the TIO security breach that impacted PayPal, Amazon launching Amazon Pay) as well as a few general macro concerns like rising interest rates. But looking ahead to 2019, all 10 of the publicly traded fintechs are expected to continue to have double-digit growth. The only incumbents expected to squeak into double-digit territory in 2019 are card issuers like Visa (11%) and Mastercard (13%) –enabled, in part, by the growth of fintech payment companies like Square and PayPal.

2019 Prediction: The Matrix FinTech Index will deliver 200% returns over the three years ending in December of 2019, outperforming the incumbents and S&P 500 by at least 150 percentage points.

Liquidity is starting to trickle in for private fintech companies

While the FinTech Index performed well on the public markets in 2018, we also saw some very promising liquidity events for privately held companies. In 2017, there were only 3 fintech exits in the U.S. over $100M, totaling just over $700M in value. In 2018 that number grew by a factor of 10 to over $7B in value. More than half of that value came from the GreenSky IPO, but there were also a number of significant M&A events. We expect M&A activity to increase as financial services incumbents acquire fintech companies in an effort to stay competitive. And we continue to believe that the fintech sector will prove to be one of the most fruitful sectors for venture returns in the 15 years following the 2008 financial crisis.

2019 Prediction: Total aggregate value for fintech liquidity events will exceed $10B in one year for the first time ever.

The fintech unicorn pipeline is primed for some big outcomes

What’s even more exciting than 2018’s liquidity is the backlog of privately held fintechs, led by Stripe, that are valued at over $1B. There are now 20 fintech unicorns. In fact, there are more fintech unicorns than any other industry vertical in the Unicorn Club. More than 50% of these raised big growth rounds in 2018 and five of them (Circle, Plaid, Brex, Root and LendingHome) made their debut on the U.S. fintech unicorn list for the first time. The expansion of this list shows that there is no shortage of high-potential areas to disrupt in financial services.

2019 Prediction: Total aggregate value for fintech unicorns will cross $90B and the total number of fintech unicorns will begin to close in on 30.

The next wave of value creation from younger fintechs will be even bigger than the first

Despite these successes on the public markets, in liquidity events and among the unicorn ranks, we are still in the very early innings of the fintech revolution. 2019 will be even more impressive than 2018 as there are an additional 40 U.S. fintechs that have raised more than $100M in equity funding and are on the brink of entering the unicorn club. As many of these companies make that transition, they will sprout another wave of more interesting fintech companies as early employees go on to start their own companies in a virtuous wave of value creation.

We expect these newcomers, and others aspiring to follow in their footsteps, will threaten to end the rule of the financial establishment. They will continue to offer better financial products to consumers, empower more efficient payment channels, and create a more open financial system. At the same time, the incumbents will continue to struggle with innovation, hamstrung by their scale, regulatory burdens, and decades of accumulated technical debt.

Make no mistake. What new fintech companies are attempting is very ambitious and incredibly difficult to achieve. The existing ecosystem of incumbent providers dates back 150 years and represents some of the largest global financial institutions. That said, digital transformation is afoot and the financial service industry will not be spared.

Like porn, Internet Boyfriends are hard to define — but also like porn, you know them when you see them. And 2018 was downright lousy with them.

Some were fresh faces we'd never encountered before. (Well, most of us. We see you, Lady Who's Been Crushing On Winston Duke Since Person of Interest.) Others were guys we'd known about for years, but started seeing in a whole new light. And still more were dudes we already loved, but somehow came to love even more within the past 12 months.

What unites them is the way they brought so many of us together in 2018. These guys weren't just our crushes, they were everyone's crushes, and we collectively got personally invested in a way we don't for just any pretty, famous face.  Read more...

What's ahead for Nvidia in 2019? The company is remarkably well-positioned as the year turns.

The post It’s Easy Being Green: Looking Ahead to Nvidia in 2019 appeared first on ExtremeTech.

Despite being "mildly frightened," comedian Holden McNeely tackles the Bob Ross Challenge.

The Bob Ross Challenge is not affiliated with The Joy of Painting or its producers. Read more...

Netflix is notoriously cagey about audience statistics, but even the most secretive among us can't help bragging sometimes.

Following the release of the sci-fi thriller Bird Box, the company claimed in a tweet that a staggering 45 million accounts watched the film over its debut week.

According to Netflix, this is the best debut week for any of its films ever. It's worth pointing out that the 45 million number refers to accounts, not views or streams. So the figure isn't even taking into consideration how many of us share Netflix or watched it with one or more viewing companions. Read more...

A huge blue light flashed brightly over over the New York City skyline late Thursday night. New Yorkers filled social media with photos and videos of the phenomenon, which appeared to be centered over the borough of Queens. In short, people freaked out.

Con Edison quickly put everyone’s alien-conspiracy theories to bed. The utility company tweeted that what New Yorkers were seeing was the effect of a brief electrical fire that broke out at a substation in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is reportedly moving full speed ahead when it comes to autonomous driving.  

Based on an email Electrek obtained this week, Musk is searching for Tesla employees to test out a new hardware update for the currently semi-autonomous driver assistance feature, Autopilot.

We reached out to Tesla to confirm the authenticity of the email, but haven't heard back.

The new self-driving program has "over 1000% more capability than [previous hardware]!" Musk exclaimed in the email. Now he needs "a few hundred more internal participants" to test out new capabilities made possible by Tesla's neural net, which the company has called the "world’s most advanced computer for autonomous driving." Musk also revealed in an earnings call that Tesla is developing its own AI chip instead of working with a chipmaker. Read more...

The American is the first person in history to cross the frozen continent without any assistance. Read more...

It's the end of the year, and for many of us that means taking a moment to reflect on decisions past. For Mark Zuckerberg, however, it means taking a moment to bask in your manifold and unqualified successes. 

The Facebook CEO published a roughly 1,000-word post on Dec. 28 detailing his company's various wins over the course of 2018 that, while admittedly helpfully informing the most oblivious of readers that there is still work to be done, seems completely at odds with how the rest of the world views Facebook's 2018. Namely, that it was an unmitigated disaster. 

Alexa is a powerful tool — and one that's easy for little kids to weaponize.

One mother, Yerelyn Cueva, recently caught her son Jariel using Alexa to do his math homework.

Can we blame him? What else is Alexa for except to perform the most basic operations we could otherwise complete ourselves?

Give the kid credit — subtraction isn't easy, and at least he's not asking Alexa to add two plus two.

Amazon reported selling "tens of millions" of Echo devices in 2018. So expect this homework-cheating crisis to grow, not contract, in the upcoming years. Read more...

For North Korean defectors, this is a nightmare come to life.

Hackers stole the personal information of 997 North Korean defectors living in South Korea, the South Korean government reported Friday. 

The identity of the hackers is still unknown. But experts are reportedly worried for the safety and security of defectors and their families, according to the BBC.

Hana centers are South Korea's resettlement agencies that work with defectors to introduce and acclimate them to life outside of the North Korean dictatorship. There are 25 centers servicing approximately 32,000 defectors. The centers keep track of defectors with digital records. Read more...

AT&T's Netgear Nighthawk 5G hotspot, the first consumer mobile 5G device, has been on the market for about a week now, but it's hard to find any evidence that anyone's using itOne post on Reddit shows a Speedtest result of 194.88Mbps down — impressive, until you see that the Redditor got 187.44Mbps on AT&T's 4G network in the same location.

Otherwise, AT&T's, Netgear's, and Reddit's forums are deathly quiet when it comes to any actual 5G users, and Ookla's Speedtest Intelligence database doesn't seem to show any dramatic speed upticks in AT&T's 12 announced 5G cities. The carrier doesn't seem to have shown the 5G device to any journalists, and there are zero hands-ons being shown on YouTube. The company declined to make a unit available to me when I asked, saying they needed to save the relatively small inventory for customers. Read more...

The eco-friendly push will start in 2029, when the state will mandate all new buses to stop using fossil fuels. Read more...