Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, April 1st

• Where's the lane? Self-driving cars confused by shabby U.S. roadways, Volvo CEO is not amused: Volvo's North American CEO, Lex Kerssemakers, lost his cool as the automaker's semi-autonomous prototype sporadically refused to drive itself during a press event at the Los Angeles Auto Show. "It can't find the lane markings!" Kerssemakers griped to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was at the wheel. "You need to paint the bloody roads here!" Shoddy infrastructure has become a roadblock to the development of self-driving cars, vexing engineers and adding time and cost. Poor markings and uneven signage on the 3 million miles of paved roads in the United States are forcing automakers to develop more sophisticated sensors and maps to compensate, industry executives say. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently called the mundane issue of faded lane markings "crazy," complaining they confused his semi-autonomous cars. In other developed countries, greater standardization of road signs and markings makes it easier for robot cars to navigate. In the U.S., however, traffic lights can be aligned vertically, horizontally or "dog-house" style in two columns. Pavement markings use paint with different degrees of reflectivity - or don't exist at all. "If the lane fades, all hell breaks loose," said Christoph Mertz, a research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. "But cars have to handle these weird circumstances and have three different ways of doing things in case one fails." To make up for roadway aberrations, carmakers and their suppliers are incorporating multiple sensors, maps and data into their cars, all of which adds cost. Mercedes says the "drive pilot" system found in its recently unveiled luxury E Class 2017 sedans works even with no lane markings. The system - which incorporates 23 sensors - takes into account guard rails, barriers, and other cars to keep cars in their lanes up to 84 miles (135km) per hour, under "suitable circumstances." Boston Consulting Group estimates that initial semi-autonomous features add $4,000 to a car's price.

• Facebook’s Live Video Effort Entices Media Companies: When severe weather passed through the Atlanta area early this month, Brad Nitz, a meteorologist for a local television station, WSB-TV, fed viewers live video updates on the station’s website, as he has done for years. But then he did something new: He turned away from the television camera and addressed an iPhone that was streaming him live — on Facebook. And the station’s social media manager, Jonathan Anker, watched this new Facebook audience swell. At its peak, the stream reached 8,800 viewers at once, and the segment has been played more than 77,000 times in total, far more than the station’s typical online audience. The numbers, Mr. Anker said, were “seriously out of whack, in a delightful way.” Experiences like this have media companies swooning over the possibilities of posting live video to Facebook, a feature made widely available two months ago. For years, companies have searched for ways to unlock three tough questions: How do you attract people to live online videos? How do you reach people on their mobile devices? And how do you get more out of Facebook’s 1.6 billion users? Now, they hope, they have found a key for all three. Yet it is also raising some questions inside the companies about if — and when — they will see any meaningful money come from the push. The feature, called Facebook Live, has largely lived under the radar so far. But it is one of the company’s highest-priority projects, according to three people directly involved with the initiative, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Internally, Facebook Live is seen as a way to move beyond hosting conversations about television and live events to becoming a venue for both. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has made Facebook Live one of his pet projects, two of the people said, devoting significant resources and effort to the initiative. Facebook plans to announce a suite of new features and partners in early April and at F8, Facebook’s developer conference in San Francisco later in the month. Facebook, though, has prioritized getting live video in front of as many users as possible. The company has been eager to talk with media companies about getting started with streaming, but remains vague in conversations about revenue sharing or subscription models. It is pushing a build-first, make-money-later philosophy, one that can be frustrating to media partners, particularly those struggling to navigate broader changes in the online media industry. But whatever the frustrations, they are outweighed by the prospect of reaching Facebook’s huge audience.

• LinkedIn Buddies Up Closer to Lynda.com, Adds Course Recommendations Based on Your Career: LinkedIn is finding more ways to pair its professional network with Lynda.com, the online video library it bought for $1.5 billion last April. The most recent integration: LinkedIn is using data around which jobs are most popular among its users to suggest collections of videos that can help train someone interested in that career. If you were interested in becoming a Web designer, for example, Lynda.com could now recommend a collection of classes to help you learn the skills necessary for that job. Some extra revenue would be great news for the company, and would also help justify the $1.5 billion it paid for the video library last year. It’s one of the reasons LinkedIn is also putting Lynda.com courses on Virgin America flights. LinkedIn stock has fallen by nearly 50 percent since the start of the year, and just this week Barclay’s analyst Paul Vogel downgraded the stock over fear of slowing revenue growth. It’s unclear whether a “shopping list” of videos will actually open any wallets, but it certainly can’t hurt.

• Government report details Theranos quality control issues: A government report released late Thursday accuses Theranos of producing inaccurate test results, of failing to meet its own lab standards and hiring unqualified personnel. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service visited Theranos’ main facilities in Newark, California last November and found the one drop blood test startup’s machines produced wildly inaccurate test results – including one for cancer detection, according to a redacted version of the report put out by the Wall Street Journal. The newly released 121-page report, obtained in full by the WSJ details quality control issues – including the failure to meet Theranos own standards. According to the report, erratic test results were frequent when tested in July 2014, and from February to June of 2015 on Theranos’ proprietary blood test machine Edison. One example – a test to measure a hormone affecting testosterone levels failed 87 percent of the time when run on Edison. It is unfathomable Theranos would be allowed to run test results for the public during this time. and these new details provide an inside look at some very real issues surrounding Theranos as a company, particularly around its code-named Edison technology – the supporting reason for the company’s $9 billion valuation.

• Amazon Expands Buttons for Reordering Essentials -- Like Doritos: Amazon.com Inc. is expanding the number of products available for instant re-ordering through its wireless Dash Buttons, citing high customer demand. After last year rolling out the WiFi-connected plastic tabs that can be mounted to the fridge, washing machine or kitchen cupboard, the online retailing giant is increasing the number of brands that can be re-ordered by pushing a button to more than 100, Amazon said in a statement Thursday. Now Amazon Prime customers who suddenly find themselves low on supplies -- from Trojan condoms to Doritos chips, Energizer batteries, Purina dog food and more -- can hit the button to reorder the product and get it delivered for free. The buttons cost $4.99 each, with the cost reimbursed after the first order through Dash. When the buttons were first introduced in March 2015 they were met with some skepticism as to whether people would want or use them. But Amazon said orders placed through Dash have grown by more than 75 percent in the last three months alone and now take place more than once a minute. 

• Inside the Little-Known Japan Firm Helping the FBI Crack iPhones: The little-known Japanese company at the center of a legal tussle between Apple Inc. and the U.S. government over the hacking of an iPhone built its business on pinball game machines and stumbled into the mobile phone security business almost by accident. Cellebrite Mobile Synchronization Ltd. worked with the FBI to crack an iPhone connected in a terrorist attack, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as the matter is private. Neither Cellebrite nor the FBI have confirmed the link, and a spokesman from parent Sun Corp. on Thursday said the company isn’t able to comment on specific criminal cases. Sun, based in a small town of 100,000 southwest of Tokyo, has been building pinball-like game machines found in Japan’s pachinko parlors since the 1970s but has often displayed bigger tech ambitions. The Konan, Aichi-based company developed personal computers in the late 1970s, computer games and more recently, iPhone mahjong apps. In 2007, as sales slumped, Sun acquired Petah Tikva, Israel-based Cellebrite. Cellebrite hadn’t ventured into forensics at the time, and the purchase was mainly to add phone-to-phone data transfer to Sun’s fledgling telecommunications business, said the Japanese company’s spokesman Hidefumi Sugaya. When Cellebrite later took on investigative agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation as clients, the business took off, he said in a telephone interview. Today, the bulk of Sun’s mobile data solutions business comes from Cellebrite, said Sugaya. "Although the FBI didn’t get a legal decision that would require Apple to hack around its own security software, it created a situation where they can go to third parties to do that," said Matt Larson, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. "Companies like Cellebrite may have found a niche industry of assisting the FBI unlock personal devices in select cases moving forward." Cellebrite sells hardware and software for extracting data from hand-held devices, even if it has been encrypted or deleted. It employs more than 500 people and has offices in Israel, the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Singapore and the U.K., according to its website.Founded in 1999, Cellebrite was bought by Sun Corp. for a reported $17.5 million. 

• Huawei 2015 revenue jumps 37 percent, strongest in seven years: China's Huawei on Friday posted its strongest revenue growth since 2008 as China's adoption of fourth-generation (4G) mobile technology and strong smartphone sales worldwide boosted sales for one of the world's largest telecom equipment makers. The Shenzhen-based company said global revenue rose 37 percent to 395 billion yuan ($61.10 billion) in 2015, slightly above its forecast of 390 billion yuan. Net profit rose 32 percent to 36.9 billion yuan, from 27.9 billion yuan a year earlier, while operating margins dipped to 11.6 percent from 11.9 percent.Revenue in Huawei's carrier business, which competes with Sweden's Ericsson for the top spot globally for telecommunication equipment, increased 21.4 percent in 2015 on strong demand for 4G telecommunication equipment. In Huawei's enterprise division, which builds private networks for companies and organizations, revenue rose 43.8 percent.