Techmeme
December 21, 2018, 11:15 AM

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
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Blind, an anonymous community chat app used by staff at Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and more, 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 $100K project that secretly tested disinformation tactics against Roy Moore on Facebook and Twitter during the Alabama Senate race  —  As Russia's online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try …
Reuters:
Sources: state-sponsored Chinese hackers breached networks of HPE and IBM, then used access to hack into their clients' computers in campaign called Cloudhopper  —  - Hackers working on behalf of China's Ministry of State Security breached the networks of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co and IBM …
CNBC:
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.
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 …
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
iflix, a Netflix-like streaming service targeting emerging markets, is selling its Africa business to concentrate on Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines  —  Iflix, the emerging market Netflix competitor that's backed by Sky, is leaving Africa to double down on its business in Asia.
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.

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