Techmeme
December 28, 2016, 11:35 AM

Top News

Billy Steele / Engadget:
Report: police sought Echo data with warrant in murder case; Amazon declined to share the data Echo logged on servers but did provide suspect's account details  —  Amazon's Echo devices and its virtual assistant are meant to help find answers by listening for your voice commands.
Flurry Blog:
44% of global mobile device activations during week before Christmas were iOS, down 5% YoY; 21% were Samsung devices; Pixel, Pixel XL not among top sellers  —  By: Chris Klotzbach, Director at Flurry and Lali Kesiraju, Marketing and Analytics Manager at Flurry
Se Young Lee / Reuters:
South Korea's antitrust regulator fines Qualcomm $850M+, says firm forced phone makers to pay royalties for too broad a set of patents on modem chip sales  —  South Korea's antitrust regulator said on Wednesday it fined U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc 1.03 trillion won ($854 million) …
Natt Garun / The Verge:
Facebook's Safety Check in Bangkok, Thailand falsely triggered by fake news reports about a bomb explosion, was deactivated after about an hour  —  There was no bomb scare in Thailand  —  Facebook got fooled by its own algorithm.  Today, the social network falsely activated its Safety Check feature …
Kevin McCoy / USA Today:
Three Chinese citizens charged in US for computer intrusion, insider trading, and more, after allegedly trading on information obtained by hacking law firms  —  Chinese traders hacked into the computer systems of U.S. law firms that handle mergers, then used the data for insider trading …
Brett Howse / AnandTech:
Lenovo updates Thinkpad lineup with Microsoft Precision TouchPad drivers, Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, Intel Optane SSD support; unveils Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C docks  —  Today Lenovo is announcing a refresh of most of its ThinkPad lineup, and although the model numbers have only changed a bit …
Martin Brinkmann / gHacks Technology News:
Open source cross-platform video transcoder HandBrake updated to version 1.0.0 after 13 years of development  —  HandBrake 1.0.0, a new version of the popular open source cross-platform video converter, was released on December 24, 2016.  —  I reviewed HandBrake for the first time in the year 2007 …
John Callaham / Android Authority:
T-Mobile rolls out update to Samsung Galaxy Note7 phones that prevents battery from charging, becoming the first major US carrier to do so  —  Samsung's previously announced plan to kill the battery in the remaining active Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in the US has begun.
David Streitfeld / New York Times:
Inside Snopes' increasingly prominent fact-checking operation, which added 12 staffers a couple of years ago and saw record ~2.5M uniques the day after election  —  SAN DIEGO — The last line of defense against the torrent of half-truths, untruths and outright fakery that make up so much of …
Aaron Tilley / Forbes:
Apple publishes an artificial intelligence paper for the first time, after recently promising to open up its AI research  —  Earlier this month, Apple made a splash when it told the artificial intelligence research community that the secretive company would start publishing AI papers of its own.

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
'The Daily' and 'The Opinions': How A.I. Is Changing Loneliness and Taste
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Writer's May Habib: Building AI Tools For Corporate 'Normal People' The Labs Leave Behind
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
A Nick, Dick, and Paul Buffet!
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Big Technology Podcast:
Anthropic's Labs Lead On Fable's Capabilities + Building AI-Native Products — With Mike Krieger
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Great Chat:
How much data do we actually want about our bodies?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
AI's Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

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