| Lauren Feiner / CNBC: |
Apple says it will stop selling iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 in its 15 retail stores across Germany after Qualcomm was granted an injunction by a Munich court — - Last week, a Chinese court ordered an injunction against Apple over an alleged patent violation filed by chipmaker Qualcomm.| CNBC: |
DOJ charges two alleged members of China's state sponsored hacking unit APT10 with stealing data from at least 45 US tech companies and government agencies — - They are accused of stealing information from at least 45 U.S. tech companies and government agencies.| Russell Brandom / The Verge: |
Slack is deactivating accounts it says are linked to Iran to comply with US sanctions without warning the users — ‘They are either incompetent at OFAC interpretation or racist’ — This morning, many Slack users with ties to Iran discovered their accounts had been abruptly deactivated.| BBC: |
UK's Gatwick airport was shut down on Wednesday and Thursday after drones were seen flying over the runway; about 760 flights were due to fly on Thursday — Tens of thousands of passengers have been disrupted by drones flying over one of the UK's busiest airports.| Arno Schuetze / Reuters: |
Amazon gives a German Alexa user, who requested his personal data under GDPR, access to 1,700 audio files of another user; Amazon says it was due to human error — FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A user of Amazon's (AMZN.O) Alexa voice assistant in Germany got access to more than a thousand recordings … | Juli Clover / MacRumors: |
Apple says AI chief John Giannandrea, who joined from Google in April, has been promoted to its executive team as SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy — Apple today announced John Giannandrea, who handles machine learning and AI for the company, has been promoted to the Apple's executive team … | Josh Constine / TechCrunch: |
NGO report finds WhatsApp groups spreading child pornography; WhatsApp says it recently banned 130K accounts for violating policies against child exploitation — Facebook fails to provide enough moderators — WhatsApp chat groups are being used to spread illegal child pornography, cloaked by the app's end-to-end encryption.| Dara Kerr / CNET: |
Uber says it will bring its self-driving cars back on the road on Thursday in Pittsburgh, nine months after a fatal crash — Uber took its self-driving cars off the road last March, after a fatal accident, the first known pedestrian death caused by a vehicle in full autonomous mode.| Loup Ventures: |
Voice assistant test involving 800 commands shows Google Assistant answered 88% correctly, Siri got 75% right, Alexa got 73%, and Cortana got 63% — We recently tested four smart speakers by asking Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana 800 questions each.| Kate Clark / TechCrunch: |
Earnin, which develops a money management platform for workers, raises $125M Series C from DST Global, a16z, and others and says it has 1M+ downloads — Before Ram Palaniappan founded Earnin, he developed a system for employees at a payments company called UniRush, where he spent eight years as president.| Charlie Hall / Polygon: |
Microsoft says Xbox All Access, its subscription program to buy an Xbox, Xbox Game Pass, and Xbox Live, will end on Dec. 31, return in a revised format in 2019 — Microsoft promises program will be ‘expanding’ soon — This summer, Microsoft unveiled a novel new subscription program called Xbox All Access.| Bijan Stephen / The Verge: |
Sources: blockchain incubator ConsenSys, which helps ~36 startups, will spin some of them off; source speculates layoffs will be between 600 and 700 — As many as 50 to 60 percent of the company's employees could be let go — Layoffs are coming to ConsenSys, the Ethereum-focused startup incubator … | Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac: |
Corel, which makes products like CorelDraw and WordPerfect, says it is acquiring virtualization company Parallels for an undisclosed sum — Popular virtualization software company Parallels has been acquired by Corel. The creative software veteran who has produced Corel Draw and Painter Pro … | Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: |
FBI has seized the domains of 15 high-profile DDoS-for-hire websites, including downtime.org and deacon.pro, and charged 3 men in US with operating the sites — The FBI has seized the domains of 15 several high-profile distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) websites, after a co-ordinated effort … | Reuters: |
| Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: |
Zynga says it will buy 80% of Helsinki-based Small Giant Games for $560M in a deal expected to close Jan. 1 and will buy remaining 20% over the next three years — Zynga has agreed to acquire the Helsinki-based mobile game maker Small Giant Games, the creator of the hit title Empires & Puzzles.| Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: |
Amazon says it is rolling out an Alexa integration with Wolfram Alpha to users in US — Alexa's getting a bit smarter, courtesy of Wolfram Alpha. Amazon today announced that its cross-platform assistant will integrate with Wolfram Research's computational knowledge engine to answer math- and science-related questions.| Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed News: |
Report: some apps using Facebook's SDK, like Grindr and Bible+, send user info to Facebook, including location, where users click, and how long the app is used — Facebook provided developers with tools to build Facebook-compatible apps like Tinder, Grindr and Pregnancy+.| Ime Archibong / Facebook: |
| Ryan Vlastelica / Bloomberg: |
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| Washington Post: |