Techmeme
September 26, 2018, 8:00 PM

Top News

David Marcus / Facebook:
David Marcus responds to Brian Acton's interview, defending Zuckerberg and his protection of WhatsApp within Facebook, says Acton's attack was “low-class”  —  [Disclaimer: no one at Facebook asked me to post this.  I just had to do it.  And these are my personal views exclusively.]
Parmy Olson / Forbes:
WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton talks about why he gave up $850M to quit Facebook early and his differences with Zuckerberg and Sandberg over monetization  —  hatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, 46, sits in a cafe of the glitzy Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto, California, and the only way you'd guess …
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Oculus announces the standalone Oculus Quest, shipping next spring for $399 with touch controllers and 50+ games at launch  —  Opening up the Oculus Connect 5 keynote with some announcements, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that its newest headset, called Oculus Quest …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Breakdown of the topics covered during Wednesday's US Senate hearing on privacy: big tech prefers federal legislation, Google evades questions on China, more  —  Another day, another hearing of tech giants in Congress.  —  Wednesday's hearing at the Senate Commerce Committee with Apple …
U.S. Senate Committee On Commerce …:
Video stream of US Senate hearing on “Examining Safeguards for Consumer Data Privacy” with testimony from AT&T, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Apple, and Charter  —  U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation …
Amazon US Day One Blog:
Amazon announces Amazon 4-star, a physical store that only sells items rated four stars and above with discounts for Prime members, with the first in NYC  —  Peek inside our newest store, inspired by our customers.  —  Tomorrow, we're opening Amazon 4-star, a new physical store where everything …
Kashmir Hill / Gizmodo:
Study: Facebook lets ads target your account using info given for security purposes, like your phone number, as well as info from your friends' address books  —  Last week, I ran an ad on Facebook that was targeted at a computer science professor named Alan Mislove.
Will Oremus / Slate:
Sources at media outlets say they're seeing little to no ad revenue from Apple News despite huge traffic growth  —  The world's most valuable company is wooing the media with a human touch and a huge audience.  One thing it hasn't delivered: money.  —  In the years leading up to the 2016 U.S. election …
Ashlee Vance / Bloomberg:
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison says the company has raised $245M at a $20B valuation, up from $9B in November 2016  —  The famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist Reid Hoffman often says that his biggest investing whiff was passing on Stripe Inc. As each year ticks by, it's becoming easier …
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Circle launches USD Coin (USDC), its dollar-backed stablecoin first announced four months ago, initially available to partner institutions  —  Four months after first announcing the creation of a dollar-backed stablecoin, cryptocurrency finance firm Circle is releasing it to the world.
Austin Carr / Bloomberg:
Iowa's attorney general says Uber will pay $148M to settle claims from all 50 states related to its 2016 data breach that exposed info of 25M+ US users  —  Uber Technologies Inc. will pay $148 million to settle claims related to a large-scale data breach that exposed the personal information …
Sean Captain / Fast Company:
Alphabet's DeepMind partners with Unity to accelerate machine learning by building virtual environments to develop and test AI algorithms  —  Intelligent design versus evolution isn't just a divide in people's worldviews.  It's also been a divide in the artificial intelligence community.
More: Engadget and ZDNet
Greg Bensinger / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: late 2017 probe of Cameron Poetzscher, a top dealmaker at Uber, found troubling behavior like sexually charged comments; he was censured, then promoted  —  Uber gave Cameron Poetzscher a warning, reduced his bonus and mandated sensitivity coaching after investigation found pattern of sexually suggestive comments
Kim Zetter / New York Times:
Two years after many voter-registration networks were penetrated by hackers, voting infrastructure in US remains largely unchanged, despite officials' warnings  —  As the midterms approach, America's electronic voting systems are more vulnerable than ever.  Why isn't anyone trying to fix them?
CoinDesk:
Crypto mining company Bitmain files for Hong Kong IPO; draft filing shows $2.8B in revenue as of June 30 and $422.05M raised in funding round that ended Aug. 7  —  Bitmain, the Beijing-based cryptocurrency mining giant, has officially filed an application to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX).

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Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News:
Zach Koch / The Keyword: