Techmeme
December 24, 2018, 12:05 AM

Top News

Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:
A look at Joel Kaplan's growing sway at Facebook as he pushed against News Feed changes designed to reduce polarization, promoted The Daily Caller partnership  —  Joel Kaplan has emerged as the social-media site's protector against allegations of political bias
Craig Mod / Wired:
Although the functionality of digital books has largely remained the same for 10 years, technology has improved everything that goes into publishing a book  —  THE FUTURE BOOK was meant to be interactive, moving, alive.  Its pages were supposed to be lush with whirling doodads, responsive, hands-on.
More: kottke.org
Owen Williams / Charged:
As social media becomes ever more toxic, Fortnite has become the new social network and a place to hang out where you go to talk to friends  —  I've played a lot of Fortnite this year, and I was struggling to understand why I liked the game so much.  It's fun to play, but usually I get bored …
Josh Dzieza / The Verge:
Inside the cutthroat world of Amazon's Marketplace, where sellers live in fear of getting suspended and use Amazon's rules against each other  —  “These schemes really require the mind of someone whose depravity knows no bounds.”
Kate Kelly / New York Times:
Profile of Epic Systems, a privately held healthcare software company based in Wisconsin that claims to hold medical records for more than 50% of US patients  —  The engineers at Epic Systems work on a campus full of childish whimsy but also sit in on open-heart surgery.
Brian Barrett / Wired:
How Alexa has used machine learning to get smarter over the last year, with a 25% error rate reduction, carrying over context from one query to the next, more  —  IT'S FAIR TO say that when Amazon introduced the first Echo speaker in the fall of 2014, most people weren't quite sure what to make of it.
More: VentureBeat and Reuters
Wall Street Journal:
As Snap hits an all-time low, sources describe Evan Spiegel's instinctual and imperious management style that can stifle dissent and led to the redesign debacle  —  Snap, once seen as a viable competitor to Facebook, is struggling after the CEO ignored warnings about a redesign that proved unpopular
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Sources: Uber has offered to pay 11 cents for every mile driven for Uber to drivers who have been in individual arbitration over their employment classification  —  Uber is reportedly on track to go public in the first quarter next year, and in the lead up to that, it's sewing up some loose ends.
More: Engadget
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Crew, a chat app targeting businesses that employ shift workers like multi-store retailers and fast-food chains, raises $35M Series C  —  When it comes to shift workers communicating with each other in the workplace when they are not face-to-face, gone are the days of cork announcement boards.
Kyle Samani / Multicoin Capital:
A look at the state of crypto at the end of 2018 and a list of questions to consider as the ecosystem evolves in 2019 and beyond  —  As 2018 comes to a close, we've been thinking about some of the big questions that crypto still needs to answer.  —  Although there is some clarity …

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Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News: