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Techmeme
January 5, 2019, 12:05 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Amazon SVP Dave Limp talks about company's strategy for Alexa, says 100M+ devices with Alexa on board have been sold to date  —  More than 100 million devices with Alexa on board have been sold.  That's the all-too-rare actual number that Amazon's SVP of devices and services, Dave Limp, revealed to me earlier this week.
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:
A machine-learning model in Flint that once helped predict lead pipe locations with 70% accuracy was abandoned due to political decisions to excavate everywhere  —  A machine-learning model showed promising results, but city officials and their engineering contractor abandoned it.
Owen Churchill / South China Morning Post:
LinkedIn restores Chinese access to the profile of US-based activist Zhou Fengsuo after blocking it a day earlier, says the profile was blocked in error  —  - Zhou, a student leader during the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, says he thinks media attention led to the change
Julie Steinberg / Wall Street Journal:
Chinese startups raised $69.4B in 2018, up 63% YoY as per CB Insights, but VCs have gotten more conservative after Chinese IPOs like Tencent Music disappointed  —  Thousands of private Chinese tech companies raised a record $69.4 billion in equity in 2018, but the volume of stock sales has dropped off sharply of late
Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire:
SEC filing: smart home camera maker Wyze Labs has raised $20M  —  Wyze Labs, the Kirkland, Wash.-based makers of a low-cost, smart home security camera, has raised $20 million in new funding according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.
More: SEC and Wyze
Bloomberg:
Hackers dump private info of Angela Merkel and hundreds of other German politicians including email addresses, phone numbers, and personal chat transcripts  —  - Leak includes emails, chat transcripts, photos, phone numbers  — Hack is ‘elaborate’ social-engineering attack, IT expert says
Randy Nelson / Sensor Tower Blog:
Research: Nintendo revenues from mobile apps reached $348M in 2018, up 15% YoY, with the game Fire Emblem Heroes accounting for ~66% of 2018 sales  —  Nintendo's mobile ambitions saw the publisher reach a new record of nearly $117 million in worldwide player spending across the App Store …

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Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Sijia Jiang / Reuters: