The Daily Crunch 08/05/16

Facebook and Gizmodo trade barbs, Black Hat gets a presidential pitch and Apple's casting is crazy. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for August 5, 2016. And if you're currently in VR, check to make sure you're not actually walking in circles.

1. Facebook jabs at Gizmodo while taking on clickbait

Facebook has a new News Feed algorithm feature that looks for common clickbait headline structures ("You Wont' Believe What..." blah blah, etc.) and weeds them out, with stricter punishment going to repeat and more grievous offenders. Overall, it's probably a good move that will be beneficial in terms of rewarding the creation of quality content. But the "why" moment in all of this comes from Facebook taking a swipe at Gizmodo by using a fictional publisher called "Gizmotecho.com" in its fictional example of worst practices. So, again, why? Gizmodo called out Facebook for apparently shutting down conservative content in its Trending Topics, which started a heated debate about its role in media distribution. Gizmodo wasn't going to let the slight slide, though, and even bought the domain Gizmotecho.com to redirect to the original article that likely started the whole debacle. Troll level: 9000.

2. Hackers for Hillary

The Black Hat security conference in Vegas is just wrapping up, but one of its most noteworthy news bites might be a presidential pitch. Black Hat founder Jeff Moss and Homeland Security consultant Jake Braun led a call at the conference to support Hillary – based basically on the premise that whether or not her policies line up with the views of Black Hat attendees, she's the only legitimate candidate running for president who isn't asking Russia to hack her opponent. Compelling.

3. The star-studded star search for App Store devs

Apple is looking at making a splash with its "Planet of the Apps" reality TV show, and now we have some clarity on what kind of star power will be involved in terms of on-screen talent. The weird trio includes wearable washout will.i.am, self-promotional speaker-at-large Gary V(aynerchuk) and Goopy Gwyneth Paltrow. It's... a very bizarre lineup, for a strange concept of a show with a name that sounds like a podcast title reject from 2010. The producers are vets of reality TV, though, including "The Biggest Loser" and "MasterChef Junior," so they know how to draw eyeballs to absolutely hollow drivel. And yet: Still weird.

4. Apple shares its bounty with security researchers

More Black Hat news: Apple is opening a bug bounty program, which is unusual because 1) Apple hasn't had a bug bounty program, despite the fact that most of its biggest competitors and fellow tech giants do; and 2) Apple almost never makes material announcements at events other than its own, these days. The program's payout of $200,000 isn't anywhere near what the FBI will pay for an exploit, which can go as high as $1 million, but it should help encourage more good actors, for whom money isn't the ultimate end goal, to go to Apple first – especially since Apple will double the amount to $400,000 if the researcher who finds the exploit gives the bounty to a charitable cause.

5. Netflix's first foray into VR shows it knows how to use the medium

Netflix is dabbling in original VR, with a short teaser for "Stranger Things," the spooky original sci-fi show about a plucky bunch of pre-teens and supernatural murder. The show is absolutely wonderful, let me tell you, and this VR experiment is perfectly suited to give people an immersive taste of what it's like. I'm too scared to watch it again, but it shows that Netflix is thinking smart when it comes to how to tell stories in a 360-degree environment best-suited to VR headsets.

6. Social concert VR is a thing

Silent raves are already bizarre enough (here's a nonsensical example) but TheWaveVR just raised $2.5 million in a seed round to bring concert-goers together in a shared, social VR environment. This is definitely going to up the idiotic look factor of the video mentioned above by a factor of 10, but it might be exactly what club kids are looking for in terms of getting even more out of their MDMA-fueled EDM concert-going experience. They could be walking in circles while raving in headsets, too, thanks to new tech that turns looped strolls into a virtual way of traversing long straight paths in VR.

7. Shipped, modular and money-back: The new model for furniture?

Let me tell you about Casper mattresses... oh sorry, this isn't a podcast. But if you've listened to any of those, you probably have heard about Casper, the company that builds its own mattresses, stuffs them into boxes and ships them to anyone with a multi-month, love-it-or-return it guarantee. Now YC class member Burrow wants to apply the same model to couches, with a modular design aimed at making it easy to move them between small spaces, and a 100-day, no-risk-trial, just like the bed peddlers. The couches also have built-in power outlets and USB ports because these folks know their audience.