Science won't be silenced, Facebook picks a familiar face to lead VR and Oculus, and GM gets serious about in-car apps. All this and more in The Daily Crunch for January 26, 2017. And if you're looking to live longer, there's good news below. 1. Science isn't so easy to censor Devin takes an in-depth look at why science is under threat under the new White House administration, enumerating the causes for concern. We've seen some of these walked back, with a stay of execution for EPA pages that tout climate change, but there's still plenty of room for concern. The issue is that effectively censoring something as impactful as proven science around climate change has become far more difficult than it was in the past, and part of the reason is that scientists themselves are not easily contained in the age of global, easy communication. ![](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/2016globaltempstill-newsletter.jpg) 2. Facebook's new head of VR helped make Android what it is today Facebook has hired Hugo Barra, longtime Google executive in charge of Android, to lead its virtual reality efforts. Barra is coming off a stint as the international lead of Xiaomi's business, but he's likely better suited to helping Facebook take VR mainstream, given his proven track record of making nerdy things appealing to a broad audience. 3. Facebook just made logins safer Facebook is not just hiring well-respected Android talent, it's also boosting its security measures. Facebook users can now opt to use a physical security key to prove their identity, with gadgets like the Yubico USB key. It's a physical two-factor that's even more secure than getting authorization via SMS. 4. GM's making it really easy to build apps for its cars You don't traditionally see a lot of third-party apps in your car, and that's probably because it's very hard to do it. Like you have to fly to Detroit to use the one console where testing can take place hard. But now GM has a new SDK that makes it easy to build apps for anyone with front-end web dev experience, and it's opening up the doors with a lot of available vehicle data, too. This could make infotainment interesting. 5. Alphabet's Verily lands $800 million to help it commercialize We've seen a lot of signs that Alphabet is pushing its various subsidiary companies to actually improve their balance sheets and start bringing in revenue, and life sciences company Verily taking $800 million in investment from Singapore's Temasek is a good sign that it's really happening. This could help them bring their life-saving tech to market faster. 6. Twitter risks for Trump in the oval office There are a lot of ways that an effusively Twittering President could be dangerous to things like global security, and Natasha outlines just a few of the top choices in detail. 7. Plus, Twitter doesn't think much of Trump He might also want to get off the platform since it seems to hate him, given where his account is popping up when you search for terms that are unrelated on the surface. Twitter updated to fix that, but should it have if that was the will of the algorithm? |