Techmeme: Epic's PC and Mac games store, announced last week, is now live with Epic's own Fortnite and Unreal Tournament, Hades from Supergiant Games, with more to come (Jon Russell/TechCrunch)

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December 9, 2018, 2:00 AM

Top News

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:

Coinbase adds Civic, district0x, Loom Network, and Decentraland to its Coinbase Pro trading platform and is considering 27 other tokens — UPDATE, 12/7/18 18:00 UTC: Four hours after announcing the list, Coinbase Pro said it was launching support for Civic, District0x, Loom Network and Decentraland's tokens.

More: The Coinbase Blog, TechCrunch, NewsBTC, Crypto Recorder, Cointelegraph.com News, CryptoSlate, CoinSpeaker, PYMNTS.com, SludgeFeed, The Block, and CryptoGlobe

Tweets: @coinbasepro, @jonrussell, @cryptogat, @lawmaster, and @deaterbob

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Uber has confidentially filed for an IPO; filing indicates it could go public as soon as the first quarter of 2019 — The filing indicates a public listing could come in early 2019, pitting the ride-hailing service against rival Lyft — Uber Technologies Inc. filed paperwork confidentially …

More: VentureBeat, New York Times, Engadget, TechCrunch, Fortune, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Hill, Forbes, CNET, Reuters, Business Insider, and Washington Post

Tweets: @jimprosser, @mdudas, @mikeisaac, @docolumide, @joshelman, @reggievaitz, @evangoldin, @mikeisaac, @techledes, @adamnash, @mikeisaac, @mikeisaac, @gregbensinger, @teddyschleifer, @alex, @maureenmfarrell, and @gregbensinger

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Facebook bans sexual solicitation including vague suggestive statements, sexualized slang, and using sexual hints such as mentioning sexual preference — Well, well. As we've covered for a while now, FOSTA became law almost entirely because Facebook did an about-face on its position on the law …

More: Community Standards, PCMag, The Verge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Engadget, and The Federalist

BuzzFeed News:

Sources: FBI is now investigating fake net neutrality comments on the FCC website and has delivered subpoenas to at least two organizations — People's names and addresses were listed on the FCC's website beside net neutrality comments they didn't make. Now the FBI is interested.

More: The Verge, Engadget, The Hill, Gizmodo, and NY State Attorney General. Tweets: @kevincollier

Mix / The Next Web:

Researchers: 415,000+ routers from around the world, including a majority from MikroTik, have been infected with malware to mine CoinHive, Omine, and CoinImp — Researchers have discovered over 415,000 routers across the globe have been infected with malware designed to steal their computing power and secretly mine cryptocurrency.

Ali Tamaseb:

An analysis of 195 startups with valuations over $1B, using 65 factors like founder background, industry sector, competition, and funding — I Spent 300 Hours Gathering Data On Billion-Dollar Startups and Here's 100 Charts You Shouldn't Miss — About 15 months ago, I embarked on a journey …

Tweets: @ediggs, @randfish, and @zdwigder

Owen Williams / Motherboard:

By putting Edge on Chromium and planning to invest in the engine, Microsoft is showing it is committed to the web as a platform for the future of apps — The move will allow deeper integration of Chromium and Chrome on Windows, which will lead to major improvements in performance and battery life.

More: MSPoweruser, Engadget, Digital Trends, TechSpot, and Windows Central

Tweets: @jason_koebler, @getify, @martinsfp, @ow, and @ow

Lux Alptraum / The Verge:

Tumblr's initial embrace of pornography helped it grow users, but it has since been phased out following Yahoo acquisition — When censoring sex becomes preferable to acknowledging its existence — About a decade ago, I met up with Tumblr founder David Karp at a SoHo coffee shop.

More: BuzzFeed News, Wired, and Boing Boing

Tweets: @youngvulgarian and @broderick

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

Epic's PC and Mac games store, announced last week, is now live with Epic's own Fortnite and Unreal Tournament, Hades from Supergiant Games, with more to come — It's a busy week for Epic Games . Fresh from pushing out a major season 7 update for Fortnite, so the gaming giant has taken the wraps off its own games store.

More: Epic Games, Ars Technica, The Verge, PCGamesN, Comic Book, BGR, IGN, Polygon, The Verge, Polygon, The Next Web, VentureBeat, Neowin, Kotaku, VentureBeat, SlashGear, Tom's Guide, Gamasutra, Neowin, The Verge, destructoid, Blue's News, Motherboard, WRAL TechWire, KnowTechie, and BBC. Tweets: @toadsanime

Kate Conger / New York Times:

Canada's DOJ argues Huawei CFO committed fraud by misrepresenting a Huawei subsidiary as an independent company, tricking US banks into violating Iran sanctions — VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The reasons that the United States asked the Canadian authorities to arrest a top executive …

Dami Lee / The Verge:

Amazon says Alexa can now better recognize context, such as playing the right song after an inaccurate request or launching a skill without hearing its name — Alexa will understand you meant to say, ‘Play Nice for What’ instead of ‘Good for What’ — In a developer blog post published today …

More: Amazon Developer Services, 9to5Toys, and VentureBeat

Louise Matsakis / Wired:

Amazon robots caused bear repellent explosions both in 2018, when one punctured a can and hospitalized dozens, and 2015, when another ran over a can in Texas — Two dozen Amazon warehouse employees in New Jersey were hospitalized Wednesday, one in critical condition, after a robot punctured …

More: CNBC, The Mac Observer, and Fox News

Tweets: @jwjnational, @mattoswaltva, @joshelman, @mgsiegler, and @sub8u

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:00 AM ET, December 9, 2018.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

Major brands were replaced by direct-response advertisers during commercial breaks of CBS News' December 13 town hall with Erika Kirk, moderated by Bari Weiss

Kanis Leung / Associated Press:

Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai is found guilty of colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring to publish seditious articles

Chris Morris / Variety:

Acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele Singer were found dead in their home; LAPD is investigating the deaths as a homicide

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More News

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

UK-based Boku, a carrier billing services provider, says it has acquired Danal, a US-based mobile identity and authentication service, and will pay up to $68M

More: PaymentsSource

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Google has found three malicious ad network SDKs as part of Cheetah Mobile and Kika Tech ad fraud probe; sources: SDKs are from AltaMob, BatMobi, and YeahMobi

More: Google Online Security Blog, Softpedia News, and ZDNet

Katie Collins / CNET:

Italy's competition authority fines Facebook a total of $11.4M for using people's data for commercial purposes in ways that break the country's laws

More: The Independent and The Local. Thanks:@katiecollins

Zheping Huang / South China Morning Post:

China has set up the Online Games Ethics Committee, which has reviewed a first batch of 20 games and rejected 9 of them, according to the state broadcaster CCTV

More: Engadget, Polygon, and VentureBeat. Tweets: @zhugeex

Reuters:

Sources: Slack has hired Goldman Sachs to lead its IPO, expected in 2019, which it hopes will fetch a valuation of well over $10B

More: TechSpot, TechCrunch, Financial Times, and Fortune

Tweets: @matthewwu and @alex

Lauren Thomas / CNBC:

Walmart to acquire the assets of Art.com, an online seller of art and wall decor which, a source says, was recently bringing in $300M in sales annually

More: Walmart Corporate, ZDNet, Reuters, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Business Journals, The Verge, Digital Commerce 360, PYMNTS.com, and Business Insider

Tweets: @profgalloway, @levynews, @walmartinc, and @artnome

Earlier Picks

Anirban Sen / Livemint:

Andy Rubin's Essential has acquired CloudMagic, maker of the Newton email app that the India-based startup shut down in September

More: TechCrunch, Android Authority, The Economic Times, Android Central, Droid Life, Thurrott, The Verge, and 9to5Google

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Sources: Apple acquired Platoon, a UK-based startup that uses analytics to source talent like musicians and writers to produce, distribute, and sell their work

More: Music Business Worldwide, Mashable, Digital Trends, CNBC, Fortune, Telegraph, The Verge, MacRumors, Apple Must, iPhone in Canada Blog, iDownloadBlog.com, RAIN News, and CNET

Tweets: @shellypalmer, @jonesjourno, @ingridlunden, and @techcrunch