Techmeme
August 15, 2018, 8:35 AM

Top News

Steven Musil / CNET:
Twitter puts account of Alex Jones in read-only mode for seven days after a tweet violated policy; he can browse but can't tweet, retweet, or like other posts  —  Twitter has cut off Alex Jones from key functions of his account after the founder and star of conspiracy site Infowars violated another Twitter policy.
Selina Wang / Bloomberg:
Y Combinator names former Baidu COO Qi Lu as CEO of Y Combinator China, a new Chinese arm it says may start as soon as next summer  —  - This marks the seed investor's first international program  — Former Baidu COO, Qi Lu, will oversee the rollout in China
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Researchers detail Foreshadow, a speculative execution flaw in secure enclaves on Intel processors, mitigated by May/June microcode fixes, patches coming today  —  IN CYBERSECURITY CIRCLES, this has been the year of Spectre and Meltdown, not only because the chip vulnerabilities …
Bloomberg:
Sources: China freezes game approvals amid a restructuring within regulatory administrations, affecting all online, mobile, and console games  —  - The halt has shaken Tencent as smaller players struggle  — Regulatory administrations are said to be under restructuring
Karissa Bell / Mashable:
Hundreds of Instagram users have reported their accounts hacked and their emails and phone numbers tied to accounts changed, preventing account recovery  —  Krista, an Instagram user with more than 4,500 followers on her fitness account, noticed something strange on Saturday evening: she had been logged out of her account.
CNNMoney:
Tinder co-founders, 8 former and current execs sue parent firm IAC, alleging Tinder's valuation had been depressed and seeking $2B+ in damages for money owed  —  Co-founders of Tinder and eight other former and current executives of the popular dating app are suing the service's current owners …
Nicholas Confessore / New York Times:
How a few activists, concerned by the lack of regulation of US internet firms' data collection practices, led an effort that resulted in CA's new privacy bill  —  Facebook and Google made billions mining personal data, and fought off anyone who threatened to stop them.  Then came a challenge in their own backyard.
Zeynep Tufekci / MIT Technology Review:
How digital technologies and social media went from being hailed as tools of freedom during the Arab Spring to being blamed for upheavals in Western democracies  —  To understand how digital technologies went from instruments for spreading democracy to weapons for attacking it, you have to look beyond the technologies themselves.
Erin Griffith / New York Times:
A look at the proliferation of startup fundraising “mega-rounds” of $100M+, of which there were a record 273 last year and even more projected for this year  —  Start-ups raising $100 million or more from investors used to be a rarity.  Now, this scale of fund raising is commonplace.
Claire Ballentine / New York Times:
Data shows VC investment into ad tech has fallen sharply in recent years, speeding consolidation, as Google and Facebook solidified their grip on digital ads  —  Online advertising companies have struggled for several years as Google and Facebook solidified their grip on digital dollars, slowing revenue for the others.

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