Techmeme
March 18, 2018, 4:10 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Sources and documents reveal how Cambridge Analytica used harvested personal information from 50M Facebook profiles to build psychological profiles of US voters  —  LONDON — As the upstart voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica prepared to wade into the 2014 American midterm elections, it had a problem.
Paul Grewal / Facebook:
Facebook suspends Trump- and Brexit-affiliated data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica after reports it and affiliated psychologist lied about data retention  —  We are suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), including their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, from Facebook.
Carole Cadwalladr / The Guardian:
Profile of Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee who is now blowing the whistle on his ex-employer's data harvesting practices  —  Now, 28-year-old Christopher Wylie goes on the record to discuss his role in hijacking the profiles of millions of Facebook users in order to target the US electorate
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
How Facebook's old terms of service allowed Cambridge Analytica to get data on 50M people from just 270K users of an app that used Facebook Login  —  Facebook says it isn't at fault.  —  Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm that helped Donald Trump get elected president …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon is rolling out a new “Brief Mode” for Alexa that replaces verbal confirmations with chimes  —  Amazon confirmed it's rolling out an optional “Brief Mode” that lets Alexa users configure their Echo devices to use chimes and sounds for confirmations, instead of having Alexa respond with her voice.
James Cook / Business Insider:
YouTube Kids app suggested conspiracy theory videos in search results and related videos sections  —  - The YouTube Kids app is meant to filter out unsuitable content, but we found that it suggested that children watch conspiracy theory videos.  — The app suggested several videos …
Ananya Bhattacharya / Quartz:
Google Maps adds “plus codes”, a simple digital addressing system, to help with navigating to places without clear addresses in countries like India  —  Mapping a city like New York, where streets and avenues are neatly arranged in a grid, is a piece of cake.  But a city in India is a different animal.
MIT Technology Review:
An analysis of legal arguments on who or what is criminally liable when an AI-controlled machine kills someone shows that the future of AI litigation is murky  —  Here's a curious question: Imagine it is the year 2023 and self-driving cars are finally navigating our city streets.
Lauren Goode / The Verge:
Sources say mixed reality company Avegant has laid off more than half its staff in recent weeks and replaced CEO Joerg Tewes with founder Ed Tang in February  —  Unfortunate Reality  —  Light-field display and “mixed reality” startup Avegant laid off a significant portion of its staff in recent weeks …
Lauren Goode / The Verge:
Fitbit will add period tracking to its app and Versa and Ionic smartwatches this Spring  —  But it's stopping short of tracking fertility  —  Fitbit's new smartwatch Versa isn't being overtly marketed at women.  Doing that might alienate its male customers, who currently make up more than half of Fitbit's user base.

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