Techmeme
December 21, 2018, 1:50 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Facebook is developing a stablecoin for money transfers on WhatsApp, focusing first on the remittances market in India  —  - First focus will be on remittance market in India, people say  — Social network is still working out its blockchain strategy
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Epic Games is facing lawsuits over Fortnite dance emotes, real-life dance moves used in the game, raising questions about whether dance moves are copyrightable  —  Epic Games' Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now, but one of its biggest sources of revenue — the ubiquitous dance …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Blind, an anonymous chat app used by staff at companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Uber, left one database server exposed from Nov. 1 to Dec. 19  —  One of the company's servers was exposed without a password for weeks.  —  Thousands of people trusted Blind, an app-based …
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 …
New York Times:
Sources: Reid Hoffman funded a $100K project that secretly tested disinformation tactics against Roy Moore on Facebook and Twitter during Alabama Senate race  —  As Russia's online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try …
Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:
Sources describe how Amazon's efforts to make Alexa a better communicator through its Alexa Prize competition led to a hack and chats about sex and murder  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Millions of users of Amazon's Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa …
More: Android AuthorityThanks:@jldastin
Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News:
Indian government downplays order that seemingly authorizes ten government agencies to monitor, intercept, and decrypt data on all computers in the country  —  India's Ministry of Home Affairs, a federal government authority that controls the country's internal security …
Will Thompson / 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.
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.
Reuters:
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.

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More News

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Earlier Picks

Russell Brandom / The Verge:
BBC:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Arno Schuetze / Reuters:
Ime Archibong / Facebook: