Techmeme: Robinhood says it will roll out its cryptocurrency trading product in New York in the coming months after NY regulators grant the firm a BitLicense (Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk)

Top News

Nathan Halverson / Reveal:

Unsealed documents show Facebook orchestrated a multi-year effort that duped children who played video games into spending their parents' money — Facebook orchestrated a multi-year effort that duped children and their parents out of money, in some cases hundreds or even thousands of dollars …

More: Engadget, The Guardian, Inquirer, BBC, 9to5Mac, Softpedia News, Silicon Republic, GamesIndustry.biz, Telegraph, and Business Insider

Tweets: @josephfcox, @ewords, @peterjhasson, @marieagar, @mattnavarra, @calbucci, @lfasoccerschool, and @matthewkeyslive

Mike Isaac / New York Times:

Sources: Zuckerberg plans to add end-to-end encryption to Instagram and Messenger and integrate their messaging infrastructure and WhatsApp's by end of the year — SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, plans to integrate the social network's messaging services …

More: BBC, VentureBeat, 9to5Mac, The Verge, CNBC, iPhone Hacks, and iDownloadBlog.com

Tweets: @mikeisaac, @clarajeffery, @anandwrites, @zeynep, @marypcbuk, and @caseynewton

Tom Krazit / GeekWire:

Microsoft acquires Citus Data, which develops an open-source extension for PostgreSQL that turns it into a distributed database — Databases continue to be one of the most competitive areas of cloud computing, and Microsoft strengthened its database story Thursday with the acquisition of Citus Data.

More: The Official Microsoft Blog, SiliconANGLE, Citus Data Blog, TechCrunch, DEVCLASS, Redmond, Business Insider, CNBC, Light Reading, The New Stack, WinBuzzer, Neowin, VentureBeat, MSPoweruser, ZDNet, Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check, and GeekWire

Tweets: @satyanadella and @mjasay

Ryan Whitwam / ExtremeTech:

DeepMind introduces AlphaStar AI, which won 10-1 in a series of StarCraft II matches against professional players — Humans tend to think we're adept at the games we create, but computers have proven time and time again that we're just not fast enough to stay on top.

Natasha Singer / New York Times:

Amazon's Rekognition mistakes women as men 19% of the time, and darker-skinned women as men 31% of the time, more than similar services from IBM and Microsoft — In new tests, Amazon's system had more difficulty identifying the gender of female and darker-skinned faces than similar services from IBM and Microsoft.

More: The Verge, Bloomberg, aies-conference.com, VentureBeat, and CNBC

Tweets: @jovialjoy, @carnage4life, @mza, and @nytimesbusiness

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:

Robinhood says it will roll out its cryptocurrency trading product in New York in the coming months after NY regulators grant the firm a BitLicense — Stock trading startup Robinhood and bitcoin ATM provider LibertyX have become the latest companies to be granted New York's BitLicense.

More: Under the Hood, Department of Financial …, SiliconANGLE, The Block, Ethereum World News, NewsBTC, ETHNews, Cointelegraph.com News, and Anycoin.news. Tweets: @coindesk

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Strategy Analytics: Apple shipped an estimated 34.2M iPhones in China in 2018, down from 36.7M in 2017, and was the number five smartphone vendor in the country — Apple shipped an estimated 34.2 million iPhones in China in 2018, down from 36.7 million in 2017, according to new data shared today by Strategy Analytics.

More: Strategy Analytics … and Philip Elmer-DeWitt

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft makes the Office suite available via the Mac App Store, with users needing an Office 365 subscription — An Office 365 subscription is required for most apps — Microsoft is making its Office suite available on Apple's Mac App Store today. The software giant originally promised …

Natasha Singer / New York Times:

As the number of US students studying computer science doubled to over 106,000 from 2013 to 2017, the supply of professors is struggling to keep up — Lured by the prospect of high-salary, high-status jobs, college students are rushing in record numbers to study computer science.

More: TechSpot. Tweets: @mark_riedl and @puiwingtam

Stu Woo / Wall Street Journal:

Vodafone, the world's biggest mobile carrier outside China, says it is temporarily halting purchases of Huawei equipment for the core of its new 5G networks — Vodafone said it would pause the purchase of Huawei gear for use in the core of new 5G networks — LONDON—The world's biggest …

More: CNN, Bloomberg, Fortune, The Guardian, Financial Times, and Bloomberg. Tweets: @jamesliamcook

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:

Coinbase partners with TurboTax, will allow its customers to upload their transactions, gains, and losses in 2018 to TurboTax Premier to help file crypto taxes — Coinbase customers who need to file taxes in the U.S. this year can get a boost from TurboTax, the tax-filing software offered by Intuit Consumer Tax Group.

More: The Coinbase Blog, CoinGeek, CryptoGlobe, Cointelegraph.com News, and Crypto Briefing

Tweets: @bitjob_team and @coindesk

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Jack Dorsey's recent media tour is largely performative, substituting talking for doing, masking Twitter's slow response to many of its issues — Jack Dorsey has a lot to say — but he has more to do — Jack Dorsey is talking. — He is talking to the Huffington Post's Ashley Feinberg.

More: Rolling Stone, On my Om, Fortune, CSO, BBC, TIME, The Guardian, Howard Lindzon, San Francisco Chronicle, CNET, and Decipher

Tweets: @biz, @jbillinson, @adrs, @mitchwagner, @ysamjo, and @nitashatiku

Corbin Davenport / Android Police:

Google Express quietly removes Walmart as a retail partner, leaving Target as the only major partner for the beleaguered delivery service — When Google Express re-launched in 2017 as a free service, it had two major retail partners — Walmart and Target. Both companies have a massive amount …

More: Bloomberg, PYMNTS.com, Engadget, 9to5Google, and Fortune

Tweets: @shiraovide, @technology, and @rdrv3

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