Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Top Stories of the Day // February 7, 2017

THE DAILY CRUNCH
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7 2017 By Darrell Etherington

The self-congratulatory tech industry gets additional congratulations, Vizio's TVs answer the question of "who watches the watchers" and more in The Daily Crunch for February 7, 2017. And if you're a Twitter troll, it's time to get a new bag of tricks.

1. Here's who won the 10th annual Crunchies

Monday saw the annual bestowing of money statues upon people with lots of money, aka the Crunchies. The TechCrunch-run yearly awards ceremony celebrates the top apps, startups, VCs and more.

This year a lot of the winners were fairly predictable, including Pokémon Go, Snapchat Spectacles, Uber's Otto and more. But the real winner is you.

2. Vizio is settling a lawsuit based on its secret data collection practices

Vizio TVs have been watching you, watch them – the company settled an FTC lawsuit for $2.2 million, in a case where it was accused of collecting data from owners of its TV and selling them to third-parties. Names weren't included in the data, but other identifying demographics, including sex, age, income, marital status and more were. This is bad news for Vizio TV owners, but probably worse news for LeEco, Vizio's owner as of last year.

3. Tesla, Adobe and SpaceX sign on to oppose Trump's travel ban

More opposition to Trump's travel ban came in throughout the day yesterday, with additional tech companies adding their name to the amicus brief filed in a court case opposing the executive order. Noteworthy additions include Tesla and SpaceX, given Elon Musk's active participation in Trump advisory councils.

4. YouTube's live streaming exits open up – sort of

YouTube has a live streaming option to help it keep pace with Facebook and Twitter, and now it's turned on for users – provided you have more than 10,000 subscribers, that is. The lofty bar will only be a temporary hurdle, however, as live streaming will roll out more broadly. Smart to test it with the people with the highest engagement to start, to see how much potential it has.

5. Twitter's adding more features to fight its troll troubles

Twitter is tackling its troll problem more aggressively than ever before, with tool releases that come with high frequency and focus on a lot of its problem areas. Steps taken today include blocking of new, troll-heavy accounts by people who've been shut down already, and the ability to hide crap replies.

6. Logitech will get Alexa into your car

Alexa in the car is a great combo, since it's entirely voice-powered, and now Logitech is making it easy to combine the two with its ZeroTouch smart in-car mounting system. Basically all you need is one of their mounts, an app, and an Android phone. Hit the road.

7. Alexa Voice Service broadens to UK and Germany

The Alexa tools that make it possible to use Amazon's virtual assistant with a range of connected devices just got a little more global. It's still a very constrained group of countries relative to the global market, but here's hoping this means Amazon has Alexa's eyes set on wider global domination to follow.

Get more stories at techcrunch.com 

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