back to article Cash-sprinkler Softbank and Alphabet hand over $1.9bn to Manbang

Japan's investment cash firehose Softbank and America's definitely-not-Google holding company Alphabet want you to use Manbang, and are paying $1.9bn for the pleasure. They want workers at shipping companies to hail passing trucks in the same way that drunk revellers use popular app-based taxi hailing services. China's …

  1. Korev Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Sniggers

    My other favourite name, Uparse

  2. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Trollface

    Manbang, Dong Energy and Uparse.

    Right, any others that we can have a laugh at?

    1. S4qFBxkFFg
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        One of the very early websites from the 1990's, sadly long gone, belonged to a Mexican company called Grupo Industrial Arse.

      2. Sam Therapy
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Analtech.

      http://www.ichromatography.com/

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      So if Manbank, Dong energy and Uparse want to collaberate on a project, we should all look (away)?

      1. rskurat

        They merged a few years ago, it's called Grindr.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BAPS?

    The umbrella group for plastic surgeons in the UK changed it's name from British Association of Plastic Surgeons some years ago. Can't think why. I'm still feeling for an IT angle though.

    http://www.bapras.org.uk/

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Back in the mid 90's I worked for a software firm which, to get around the single-user limitations of MS Access, developed it's own multiuser database called "Batch User Level Location System for Hierarchical Information Tasking". We were told to not refer to it by it's acronym after it was pointed out to senior management shortly after the guy that created it left the company. This chap was clearly ahead of his time as even today DBA's still emit the same.

  5. Pliny the Whiner

    Okay, what about Huochebang?

    I wonder if the parent company's name Huochebang is pronounced who-chee-bang? Yeah. "Hootchie" is an Americanism that means something all on its own.

    1. hj

      Re: Okay, what about Huochebang?

      Maybe that's where the "whole shebang" comes from?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Danish internet exchange is known as the DIX.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Acronyms

    I once worked at a University (one of the ex poly ones) that merged with another and they set up a page to suggest new names. The one suggested by some lady colleagues of mine was City University North Thames!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Manbang is reportedly backed by China's Tencent group

    TenCent should be avoided at all costs!

    Recently, the Indian Army blacklisted 48 applications due to spying concerns.

    Almost all of them are related to TenCent:

    Over the past couple of days the Indian Intelligence Bureau has warned that the Chinese government has been collecting data through multiple apps made by Chinese developers. Many of these apps are made by Tencent, a known beneficiary of the Chinese government whose apps have been featured on this site a few times as well as DU Apps and Cheetah Mobile. Please uninstall any of these apps from your phone:

    360 Security

    Apus Browser

    Baidu Translate

    BeautyPlus

    CM browser

    CacheCleaner

    Clean Master

    DU Browser

    DU Cleaner

    DU Privacy

    DU Recorder

    DU Battery Saver

    ES File Explorer

    MI Store

    MI community

    Mail Master

    Mi Video Call

    NewsDog

    Parallel Space

    Perfect Corp

    Photo Wonder

    QQ International

    QQ Launcher

    QQ Mail

    QQ Music

    QQ Newsfeed

    QQ Player

    QQ Security Centre

    Selfie City

    ShareIt

    TrueCaller

    UC News

    UC browser

    Vault Hide

    Virus Cleaner

    Viva Video

    WeChat

    WeSync

    Weibo

    Wonder Camera

    YouCam Makeup

    What is even more interesting is that some of those apps that were blacklisted are produced at a company where one of the CEO's from Emerdata (Cambridge Analytica offshoot) used to be an admin.

    #Mr Johnson Chun Shun Ko used to be the "Independent Non-exucutive director" of: Meitu, Inc. that produce phones and apps such as:

    "Beauty Plus", "Beauty Cam", "SELFIECITY", "MeituPic" and others.

    More interesting than that is those Meitu apps I listed all contain the now infamous Facebook Graph API.

    Connecting the dots.

  9. Jtom

    "Someone here order a truck pickup through Manbang? Here I am, just load 'er up. See ya later."

    "Wait, he never got the delivery address, and what's this truck pulling in?"

    Should be fun. It will happen.

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