Web Performance News of the Week – LoadStorm

Google launches a new hub to streamline security, privacy, and account management

This week at Google I/O, Google announced its new center of control for privacy and security, My Account. Google noted that security and privacy are “two sides of the same coin,” and therefore, are giving users the ability to quickly access and control both from one place. My Account brings two new options, the Privacy Checkup and Security Checkup, to simplify and guide users through the array of settings available to them. You can also manage settings normally used to enhance your search history, such as Web/App activity and location history on Google Maps. From My Account, you can also use the Ads Settings tool to adjust ads shown based on your prior searches. And, last but not least, you can control which apps are connected to your account. In addition to My Account, Google set up a new site at privacy.google.com to answer additional questions and promote
user trust.

Bitcoin trading rules are finalized in New York

After an investigation into cryptocurrency that spanned two years, the first state in the US has now finalized trading regulations for virtual currency and Bitcoin. Announced during a speech at the BITS Emerging Payments Forum in Washington, the new rules will affect all traders who sell, buy, or accept the virtual currency. The new regulations require anyone engaged in Virtual Currency Business Activity apply for a license within 45 days of the regulation. The BitLicense regulations also outlines various specific conditions that must be met to keep the license updated “with regards to protections of consumers and anti-money-laundering compliance, capital adequacy, changes of ownership, and cybersecurity.” Unsurprisingly, the regulations have been met with a divided reaction.

Airbnb is making its machine learning technology open source

This week at Airbnb’s 2015 OpenAir developer conference, Airbnb announced two new open source technologies well worth checking out. Aerosolve, a tool written mostly in Java and Scala, uses “machine learning for humans” to assist with data discoveries within Airbnb. For example, Aerosolve can be utilized to easily depict the relationship between the price of a listing and the demand in the market. Airbnb also provided demos of the tool, including using
Aerosolve to teach the algorithm how to paint, pointillism style, or prediction income, based on US census data. Airflow, a workflow management platform, was used in house to streamline processes for their engineering team. The tool is built for authoring, scheduling, and monitoring data pipelines efficiently and scalably.

Both are readily available on their new site Airbnb, Inc., which now hosts all of its open-source projects.