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December 26, 2018, 1:30 PM
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| Don Reisinger / Fortune: |
Amazon announces a record-breaking holiday season with the number of voice-activated shopping orders placed using Alexa rising 3X YoY — Shoppers are increasingly using their voices to buy products online. — Amazon on Wednesday said that the number of voice-activated orders placed via …
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Amazon.com, Inc., Thurrott, The Guardian, TechCrunch, TechCrunch, CNET, GeekWire, Gizmodo, Business Insider, Gotta Be Mobile, PYMNTS.com, Axios, CNBC, and Bloomberg
Tweets: @yueqi_yang, @martinsfp, and @bluff_capital
| Julia Alexander / The Verge: |
Snapchat adds lenses specifically for dogs, after launching lenses for cats last month, available now — Now your dog can up his or her social clout, too — Snapchat first made users fall in love by creating lenses that could turn them into dogs. Now, the company is going full circle, and adding lenses specifically for dogs.
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Engadget, Digital Trends, YouTube, Bustle, Ubergizmo, SlashGear, Mashable, and iPhone in Canada Blog
| Wolfie Zhao / CoinDesk: |
Crypto mining startup Bitmain confirms layoffs, which, source says, may affect half of its total headcount, with some departments being laid off entirely — Months after it filed an application to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Beijing-based cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain …
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TechCrunch, South China Morning Post, Business Insider, TechNode, CCN, SiliconANGLE, NewsBTC, CoinGeek, Cointelegraph.com News, CryptoGlobe, The Block, Yahoo! Finance, and Bitcoinist.com
Tweets: @coindesk, @excellion, and @hernzzzzzz
| Wall Street Journal: |
Analysis: SEC and state regulators brought 90+ crypto-related cases in the past two years, recovering just ~$36M; cases increased as the market crashed — SEC and state regulators have brought more than 90 crypto cases over the past two years, but tracing funds is hard because of the elusive nature of the currency
More:
Wall Street Journal, PYMNTS.com, and The Block
Tweets: @eliotwb, @jeaneaglesham, and @jeaneaglesham
| Nisha Chittal / Vox: |
How indie bookstores are thriving by using Instagram to build communities, and creating “Instagram walls” that often lead to viral photos and free marketing — Stores like Books Are Magic and the Last Bookstore are benefiting from love on #bookstagram. — The internet is killing independent bookstores.| Daniel Frankel / Multichannel News: |
Google says Android TV has now been deployed by 100+ pay TV operators worldwide and is used by “tens of millions” of customers, mostly in Europe and Asia — Google's open video operating system proliferates as AT&T readies deployment of set-top powered by platform in the U.S.
More:
9to5Google and Engadget
| Catherine Shu / TechCrunch: |
In 2018, smartphone makers, users, and some academics began to appreciate the affects of excessive smartphone use, leading to iOS' Screen Time and other tools — But will we actually reclaim our time from smartphones? — At the beginning of this year, I was using my iPhone to browse … | Nellie Bowles / New York Times: |
As some prominent creators leave in protest after Patreon bans anti-feminist for hate speech, a look at its approach to policing speech with human moderators — Sam Harris, the polemical atheist neuroscientist known for his popular podcast “Waking Up,” was making tens of thousands of dollars … | Raymond Zhong / New York Times: |
As Huawei comes under government scrutiny worldwide, a look at the company's aggressive culture that encouraged employees to bend the rules, up to a point — SHENZHEN, China — Earthquakes, terrorist attacks and low oxygen levels on Mount Everest could not hold them back.
More:
Android Authority, Wall Street Journal, and Digital Trends
Tweets: @nytimesbusiness and @nytimesbusiness
| Abrar Al-Heeti / CNET: |
| Zachary Fryer-Biggs / Wired: |
Sources describe DOD's plan to win “hearts and minds” in Silicon Valley, amid frustration and anger inside the Pentagon after Google pulled out of Project Maven — THE AMERICAN MILITARY is desperately trying to get a leg up in the field of artificial intelligence … | Rita Liao / TechCrunch: |
Chinese startup Yuanfudao, which provides a homework help app, live courses, and a database of exam problems, raises $300M led by Tencent at a $3B+ valuation — Academic exams are a big deal in China as they determine the kind of universities, high schools and elementary schools that students … | Megha Rajagopalan / BuzzFeed News: |
How efforts by independent investigators and NGOs to document human rights violations in war zones are hampered by proactive content removals by social networks — Investigators depend on photos and videos posted online from war zones. But takedowns by Facebook and YouTube are putting …
Tweets: @tobiaschneider, @miriamelder, @meghara, @saliltripathi, and @buzzfeednews
| Pete Brown / Columbia Journalism Review: |
A content analysis of mobile news alerts in 2018 shows their number and length rose since 2017; companion case study confirms shift from just breaking news — EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — In 2017, we did a deep dive into mobile push alerts, publishing a report in collaboration …
Tweets: @pushthepush, @cjr, @towcenter, and @cjr
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