Techmeme
January 22, 2018, 9:00 AM

Top News

Jason Del Rey / Recode:
Amazon Go, a high-tech version of a 7-Eleven, will finally open on Monday — with no checkout lines and no cashiers  —  Amazon Go allows customers to grab items and just walk out without stopping to pay.  —  Amazon's store of the future has been five years in the making.  But the unveiling is just about here.
David Meyer / Fortune:
Facebook to spend €10M expanding its French AI center, doubling Paris-based team to 60, and will also open digital training centers in Spain, Poland, and Italy  —  Facebook will double the number of scientists working on artificial intelligence (AI) research at its Paris base to 60, the company has announced.
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:
Facebook should explain how it will design surveys ranking trust in news sources, whether media can contest rank, whether user ideologies will be a factor, more  —  Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that Facebook will begin surveying users about which news sources they trust, in an effort to rank publications on “trustworthiness.”
Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:
Matthew Gault / Motherboard:
A look at VRChat, a free app for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive with over 1.5M installs on Steam, which lets users create and explore virtual worlds with other people  —  It was in the depths of the Mickey Mouse dungeon, the music of the Mouse's rap album coursing through my headphones, that I decided VRChat was brilliant.
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
Instead of limiting time children spend on devices, some researchers argue for increasing it, provided children use the time for learning and creative play  —  New guidance on children and technology makes the distinction between passive exposure and active play and learning with screens
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
The rise of cryptocurrency mining has created a global shortage of high-end graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD, driving up prices for retail gamers/buyers  —  “Cryptocurrency can't crash soon enough,” one gamer fumes.  —  The market for high-end graphics cards used to work like the market for almost any other piece of computer gear.
Doug Bock Clark / Wired:
Profile of Megan Squire, the activist and CS professor who created a database for tracking far-right extremists to feed info to organizations such as the SPLC  —  THE EMAIL ARRIVED just as Megan Squire was starting to cook Thanksgiving dinner.  She was flitting between the kitchen …
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Tile, maker of Bluetooth trackers for physical objects, lays off 30 after holiday sales disappoint  —  Tile, one of the best known item-tracking gadgets out there, has laid off some 30 people and reportedly stopped the potential hires of another 10, TechCrunch has learned.

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