Techmeme
December 23, 2018, 11:25 PM

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.”
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.
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.
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
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.
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 …
Danny Crichton / TechCrunch:
An overview of the new global and regional satellite navigation systems being built by China, Japan, India, and the EU  —  Where are you?  That's not just a metaphysical question, but increasingly a geopolitical challenge that is putting tech giants like Apple and Alphabet in a tough position.
KNSD-TV:
The San Diego Unified School District says a phishing attack exposed personal info of 500K+ students and staff, including full names, addresses, and SSNs  —  Student records from 2008 up to the present are impacted, district officials told NBC 7  —  500K Student Records Compromised in SDUSD Data Breach

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Featured Podcasts

Access:
ACCESS Wrapped: Our favorite guest moments so far
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Big Technology Podcast:
Best of Big Technology: Demis Hassabis On AGI, Deceptive AIs, Building a Virtual Cell
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Craig Finn on Friendship, Fans and The Hold Steady's Second Life
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
The Social Radars:
Jared Friedman, Partner, Y Combinator; Co-founder, Scribd
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
Hard Fork:
The Wirecutter Show: Tips for Using A.I. Smartly With Kevin Roose
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

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More News

Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News: