Techmeme
December 17, 2017, 9:30 PM

Top News

Stan Higgins / CoinDesk:
A man in New York allegedly stole $1.8M worth of ether cryptocurrency, kidnapping victim, forcing him to give up his digital wallet, then transferring the funds  —  The New York County District Attorney's Office has filed armed robbery and kidnapping charges against a man alleged …
Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:
In 2017, big tech platforms began accepting some responsibility for negatively affecting the real world, but questions remain about companies' next steps  —  This was a terrible year for the tech industry.  —  That's an odd thing to say at a time of record growth and profits.
Benedict Evans:
How Amazon's decentralized operating structure and small, independent teams that use common internal systems, are integral to the company's unending scalability  —  When you look at large manufacturing companies, it becomes very clear that the machine that makes the machine is just as important as the machine itself.
Kate Conger / Gizmodo:
After slipping an unexplained promotional plugin for the TV show Mr. Robot into Firefox and angering users, Mozilla will move the extension to its add-on store  —  This week, Mozilla slipped a browser extension that promoted Mr. Robot into Firefox.  The goal was to give Firefox users access …
Business Insider:
Interview with the “founding father of virtual reality”, Jaron Lanier, on Silicon Valley culture, VR, #MeToo backlash, AI, and the future  —  Widely recognized as a founding father of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier has been hugely influential in shaping the technology of today.
Thanks:@lexnfx
Axios:
Source: Amazon in advanced talks to acquire Sqrrl, a startup that analyzes big data to detect cybersecurity threats; Sqrrl has raised nearly $30M in VC funding  —  Amazon is in advanced talks to acquire Sqrrl, a Massachusetts-based cybersecurity software company whose founders used to work for the NSA, Axios has learned.
Garrett M. Graff / Wired:
Inside the investigation led by the FBI to identify key perpetrators behind the Mirai Botnet, which was created initially to DDoS Minecraft servers  —  THE MOST DRAMATIC cybersecurity story of 2016 came to a quiet conclusion Friday in an Anchorage courtroom, as three young American computer …
More: New World NotesThanks:@gfififi
Jonah Engel Bromwich / New York Times:
Profiles of three current and one former volunteer moderator of KnowYourMeme, a Brooklyn-based website explaining the internet's inside jokes  —  Social networks produce inside jokes at a relentless pace.  The best, worst, stupidest and funniest of those jokes become memes, and either you get them or you don't.

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