Facebook is launching a number of new features to help fight Ebola.
A donate prompt will be rolled out across Facebook which it hopes will encourage users to give money and then share the news with others in order to spread the word. Users will have the choice to donate to three non-profits: West Africa International Medical Corps; the Red Cross; and Save the Children.
In addition Facebook is working with UNICEF to help deliver important education about Ebola symptoms and treatment to people in affected and neighbouring regions.
Finally the company is working with NetHope, a consortium of 41 leading international non-government organisations, to provide emergency voice and data services to those fighting Ebola on the ground.
Facebook has donated 100 mobile satellite communication terminals which will be deployed by NetHope in remote areas of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to meet the communication needs of medical and aid workers in those regions.
Former LinkedIn engineers raise $6.9 million for new startup Confluent
Three former LinkedIn engineers, led by Jay Kreps – the individual behind many of LinkedIn’s recent infrastructure advances – have left the company to start their own startup called Confluent, Gigaom reports.
Confluent is centred around the open source Apache Kafka real-time messaging technology that Kreps and his co-founders, Neha Narkhede and Jun Rao, created and developed. They’ve raised $6.9 in venture capital from Benchmark, LinkedIn and Data Collective.
Silk Road 2.0 seized
A year after Silk Road 2 came online promising to revive the Dark Web, international law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and Europol have shut down the site and arrested its alleged operator Blake Benthall, Wired reports.
Benthall has been charged with narcotics trafficking, as well as conspiracy charges related to money laundering, computer hacking, and trafficking in fake ID.
Overnight
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 69.94 to 17,554.47. The Australian dollar is currently trading at US85 cents.
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