YouTube CEO on Facebook's video ambitions: 'They should get back to baby pictures'

Facebook should ditch its video ambitions and "get back to baby pictures and sharing," YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki quipped on stage Tuesday night.

Wojcicki fielded a question on increasing competition from Facebook during Recode's Code Media conference outside Los Angeles.

The social network has been beefing up its video offering in what sources have described to CNBC as a more direct assault on YouTube. Facebook has talked to advertisers about expanding its "Watch" video product to more individual creators and rolling out an advertising system similar to YouTube's where all parties get a split of the revenue.

When Recode co-founder Kara Swisher asked Wojcicki on stage about whether she worries about increased competition from Facebook, the YouTube CEO returned a very diplomatic answer:

"I mean you always have to take your competitors seriously, but you don't win by looking backwards and looking around," she said, adding that she didn't know anything about Facebook's plans beyond what was reported in the media.

But, when pressed, she conceded:

"I mean, I think they should focus on what they're focused on," she said. "I think they should get back to baby pictures and sharing."

Although Wojcicki spoke partially in jest, she likely would sleep easier if Facebook's looming video threat faded out. In the wake of controversy about inappropriate content on the service, YouTube recently announced changes to its advertising program that make it harder for small creators to make money from the platform, which gives Facebook an avenue for appealing to them. Meanwhile, both platforms have been vying for major content wins, like National Football League streaming.

"We should all compete for content," Wojcicki said. "I build our business and I focus on what we need to do, and I know that we have a lot of things to do ... And we're going to keep doing them because that's the way that we're going to get strong."

You can watch Wojcicki's interview in its entirety here (start at ~30:30 for the question on Facebook) and read the relevant excerpt below:

Swisher: Are you worried about [Facebook] as a video platform, in a competitive way?

Wojcicki: I mean you always have to take your competitors seriously, but you don't win by looking backwards and looking around. You win by looking forward, and looking at your customers and figuring out what do they want, how can I be better at what we do? And I look at YouTube and I look at the opportunity and we have a really wonderful ecosystem and so the priorities that we have this year are building trust among our advertisers and our creators, tightening our policies, building more engagement, increasing the creator ecosystem that we have with educational content… We have this amazing platform and we want to invest it that. And so, I don't know what Facebook is going to do…

Swisher: What do you think they're doing?

Wojcicki: I don't know!

Swisher: Oh c'mon. C'mon.

Wojcicki: I don't know what they're doing. I mean you read the press. I read your articles about what they're doing! And I read the analyst reports…

Swisher: What would you be worried about if they did?

Wojcicki: Well I'm not sure I would tell you because then they would read it and then maybe do it… But I mean…

Swisher: Make something up!

Wojcicki: I mean, I think they should focus on what they're focused on. I think they should get back to baby pictures and sharing.

Swisher: Aaaand that's the quote of the night, thank you.

Wojcicki: No, I mean look, I'm not an expert about Facebook. They're experts in it and they should do what's best for their business. And look, we should all compete for content. I build our business and I focus on what we need to do, and I know that we have a lot of things to do. You can always remind me of all the things that we need to do and we're going to keep doing them because that's the way that we're going to get stronger.

Baltimore is at more than 10 days without a homicide --the longest streak since 2015

Baltimore is at 11 days and counting without a homicide.

The streak is the longest since the 2015 unrest that saw a sharp and sustained spike in violence. And it coincides with the start of a 72-hour community-led “ceasefire” that kicked off Feb. 2.

“I am losing my mind thrilled,” said Baltimore Ceasefire organizer Erricka Bridgeford. For days, she said she’s been staying up until midnight, to see if the city has made it through another day without a killing.

“It’s really exciting,” she said. “Baltimore deserves this boost of love.” 

Bridgeford doesn’t give the ceasefire all the credit for the peace — she sees murder as a public health issue, with many causes — but rather it’s brought by “everything that everyone is doing,” she said. “Everything … is paying off.”

Still, she’s cautious: She said her stepson called earlier to say he’d run from bullets in West Baltimore.

“I’m praying that nobody dead,” she said.

There have been five nonfatal shootings during the span without a homicide, including three on Saturday.

The longest streak in Baltimore without a homicide that The Sun could find came in March 2014, when the city went about 17 days without a homicide. That month saw just seven killings, tied for the fewest in a month since 1970.

Since the unrest, the longest period of consecutive days without a homicide was almost eight days from February 28 to March 8 in 2017.

This year started with 11 killings in the first 12 days, followed by more than six days without a homicide. Mayor Catherine E. Pugh fired Commissioner Kevin Davis, citing impatience with violence, and replaced him with Darryl De Sousa. The next 13 days saw 15 killings, followed by the current streak.

The most recent victim this year was Jerrell Brice, a 27-year-old who was fatally shot on Feb. 1 at around 1:20 p.m. in East Baltimore and who police said died two days later. The case is unsolved.  

Teacher Died After Not Getting Flu Meds Due To Price, Husband Says

A Texas elementary school teacher died of complications from the flu after the woman delayed in picking up her medication because of its cost.

Heather Holland, a second-grade teacher and mother of two, reportedly held off getting her prescription drugs because of a $116 copay. Holland’s husband Frank told the Weatherford Democrat that his wife thought the price was too high for her family. Mr. Holland reportedly bought the medication a week later, however, the teacher’s condition quickly deteriorated.

“Friday night, things escalated and she ended up in the ICU,” Holland said. “The doctors got the blood cultures back and they had to put her on dialysis early Saturday.” Heather Holland passed away on Feb. 4 at the age of 38.

“She wouldn’t go get medicine because she’s a mama. Mama’s are tough. She just kept going. She had a job; she had kids,” Holland’s pastor Clark Bosher said, via KCCI. “I don’t think she thought she was that sick. It happened so quick.”

Report: Teacher who died from flu delayed picking up meds because of copay https://t.co/ScSkxAynXo pic.twitter.com/3rj14FEvPf

— KCCI News (@KCCINews) February 12, 2018

The CDC announced that this year’s flu season is track to be the worst for flu hospitalizations since the organization began tracking that information in 2010. “Unfortunately, more deaths are likely to happen,” the CDC’s acting director Anne Schuchat said, according to CBS News. U.S. health officials maintain that the best defense against fatal complications from the flu is to get a flu shot.

Schuchat added that flu symptoms can quickly escalate if a person does not stay home from work or school when they’re sick. “What may be mild symptoms for you could be deadly for someone else.”

A Facebook employee asked a reporter to turn off his phone so Facebook couldn't track its location — and it reveals a bigger problem within the company

To corporate giants like Facebook, leaks to rivals or the media are a cardinal sin.

That notion was clear in a new Wired story about Facebook's rocky time over the last two years. The story talks about how Facebook was able to find two leakers who told a Gizmodo reporter about its news operations.

But one source for the Wired story highlighted just how concerned employees are about how their company goes after leakers. According to the story, the source, a current Facebook employee, asked a Wired reporter to turn off his phone so Facebook wouldn't be able to use location tracking and see that the two were close to each other for the meeting.

From the Wired feature:

One current employee asked that a Wired reporter turn off his phone so the company would have a harder time tracking whether it had been near the phones of anyone from Facebook.

Whether or not Facebook actually does track its employees this way doesn't matter. The fact that an employee would think such an option was on the table is telling of the culture at the company.

Steve Kovach, writing for BusinessInsider:To corporate giants like Facebook, leaks to rivals or the media are a cardinal sin. That notion was clear in a new Wired story about Facebook's rocky time over the last two years. The story talks about how Facebook was able to find two leakers who told a Gizmodo reporter about its news operations. But one source for the Wired story highlighted just how concerned employees are about how their company goes after leakers. According to the story, the source, a current Facebook employee, asked a Wired reporter to turn off his phone so Facebook wouldn't be able to use location tracking and see that the two were close to each other for the meeting.The Wired's 11,000-word wide-ranging piece, for which it spoke with more than 50 current and former Facebook employees, gives us an inside look at how the company has been struggling to curb spread of fake news; battling internal discrimination among employees; and becoming furious when anything leaks to the media. Another excerpt from the story:The day after Fearnow (a contractor who leaked information to a Gizmodo reporter) took that second screenshot was a Friday. When he woke up after sleeping in, he noticed that he had about 30 meeting notifications from Facebook on his phone. When he replied to say it was his day off, he recalls, he was nonetheless asked to be available in 10 minutes. Soon he was on a video-conference with three Facebook employees, including Sonya Ahuja, the company's head of investigations. According to his recounting of the meeting, she asked him if he had been in touch with Nunez (the Gizmodo reporter, who eventually published this and this). He denied that he had been. Then she told him that she had their messages on Gchat, which Fearnow had assumed weren't accessible to Facebook. He was fired. "Please shut your laptop and don't reopen it," she instructed him.

Donald Trump's NASA budget includes a Mars mission and a return trip to the moon

While NASA will move forward with plans to create a new space station around the Moon – the Lunar Orbit Platform-Gateway – the budget confirmed earlier reports indicating plans to end funding for the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025.

The Donald Trump administration on Monday announced the 2019 budget estimate for NASA and as it appears, the US is all set to return to the moon and will also be aiming to send humans to Mars.

Nearly half of the proposed $19.9 billion budget – $10.5 billion – is earmarked for "an innovative and sustainable campaign of exploration and lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations," according to a NASA overview.

"In short, we are once again on a path to return to the Moon with an eye toward Mars. NASA is called to refocus existing activities towards exploration, by redirecting funding to innovative new programmes and support for new public-private initiatives," acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement.

"We are leveraging multiple partners both here at home and internationally in developing a sustainable approach where the Moon is simply one step on our truly ambitious long-term journey to reach out farther into the solar system to reap the economic, societal, and expanding knowledge benefit such an endeavor will bring," Lightfoot added.


While NASA will move forward with plans to create a new space station around the Moon – the Lunar Orbit Platform-Gateway – the budget confirmed earlier reports indicating plans to end funding for the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025.

"This budget proposes for NASA to ramp up efforts to transition low-Earth activities to the commercial sector, and end direct federal government support of the ISS in 2025 and begin relying on commercial partners for our low-Earth orbit research and technology demonstration requirements," Lightfoot said.

"Further, drawing on the interests and capabilities of our industry and international partners, we'll develop progressively complex robotic missions to the surface of the Moon with scientific and exploration objectives in advance of human return there," he added.

Lightfoot said that the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft are critical backbone elements for moving farther into deep space.

"Their momentum continues this year toward the first integrated launch of the system in fiscal year 2020 around the Moon and a mission with crew in 2023," Lightfoot said.

When that mission launches, it will be the first human mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Parasitic worms known to infect only cattle extracted out of US woman's eye

According to researchers, the worms can cause corneal scarring and even blindness if they remain inside a person's eye for a long time.

A tiny worm species till now only seen in cattle has been found inside the eye of a US woman for the first time.

Abby Beckley from Oregon has become the first person worldwide known to have had an eye infestation by the worm, that is spread by flies that feed on eyeball lubrication.

Scientists at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extracted 14 translucent parasitic worms of the species Thelazia gulosa, all less than half an inch (1.27 cm) long, from the 26-year-old woman's eye over a 20-day period before her symptoms dissipated.

This species of Thelazia worm was previously seen in cattle throughout the northern United States and southern Canada, the researchers reported in a study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. They said the study indicates that North Americans may be more vulnerable than previously understood to such infections.


According to researchers, the worms can cause corneal scarring and even blindness if they remain inside a person's eye for a long time.

"Cases of eye worm parasitic infections are rare in the USA, and this case turned out to be a species of the Thelazia that had never been reported in humans," said study lead author Richard Bradbury, who works with the CDC's Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria.

It was previously thought that there were only two different species of these eye worms that infected humans worldwide, Bradbury said. But now, Thelazia gulosa is the third.

Abby felt irritation in her left eye, which she thought was due to a stray eyelash that might have found its way inside the eye.

She rubbed and washed her eye with water, but the discomfort remained. As she looked closely in the mirror, she noticed a small, translucent worm. She pinched it and pulled it out.

Her frequent outdoor pastimes during the summer months exposed her to the infection, researchers said.

She was from the city of Gold Beach, located on Oregon's coast along the Pacific Ocean about 40 miles (65 km) north of the California border.

Previous cases of such eye worm infections have been reported worldwide, predominantly in Europe and Asia and in rural communities with close proximity to animals and with poor living standards, the researchers said.

Eye worms are found in a variety of animals including dogs, cats, and certain wild carnivores.

Man Has An Awesome Response After He's Rejected By The Military (6 Pics)

This man was told he's too old to join the military. That's when he decided to respond by letting the military know everything that's wrong with their recruitment process.