Techmeme
January 25, 2019, 2:30 PM

Top News

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 …
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 …
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
YouTube says it will no longer suggest videos with “borderline content” or those that “misinform users in a harmful way” even if they don't violate guidelines  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Whether it is a video claiming the earth is flat or the moon landing was faked …
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.
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.
Science:
Study of registered US voters in 2016: ~6% of all news consumed on Twitter was fake news, 1% of users were exposed to 80% of it and 0.1% shared 80% thereof  —  There was a proliferation of fake news during the 2016 election cycle.  Grinberg et al. analyzed Twitter data by matching Twitter accounts …
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
HMD says it will soon sell its Nokia smartphones through Verizon and Cricket Wireless in US and Rogers in Canada  —  Nokia's parent company, HMD Global, chose to put its US ambitions in the back burner to focus on markets where the brand has been enjoying a resurgence these past few years.
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.
Dan Seifert / The Verge:
HP Spectre Folio review: the unique hinge design and the leather finish are nice but the 16:9 screen feels cramped and the trackpad is horrible  —  The Folio is one of the most unique laptops in years, but it isn't perfect  —  There's nothing really quite like HP's new Spectre Folio.
Aaron Pressman / Fortune:
Swarm raises $25M Series A for a constellation of sandwich-sized satellites to provide slow, low-cost connectivity suitable for emergency messaging services  —  As a child, Sara Spangelo dreamed of being an astronaut, attended space camp, and even made it to the final 32 candidates …
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:
How resellers are making money from Amazon returns via liquidation sites, like Liquidity Services, which has 3M+ users and generated $626.4M in sales last year  —  Welcome to the abyss of the “reverse supply chain,” where hope springs eternal.  —  With a couple hundred dollars and a few minutes …
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Sources: BuzzFeed and Group Nine have discussed merger; companies have ties via BuzzFeed's chairman Ken Lerer and his son Ben Lerer, CEO at Group Nine  —  BuzzFeed is cutting costs and getting leaner, but it still wants to get bigger — by exploring a deal with Group Nine.
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More News

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