Techmeme
August 18, 2019, 11:50 PM

Top News

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
IRS sends out letters warning taxpayers that data it received from crypto exchanges shows they owe taxes related to trades over the past several years  —  The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is sending another round of warning letters to cryptocurrency users, this time to taxpayers …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
23 Texas local governments hit in what appears to be a coordinated ransomware attack  —  Infection blamed on a strain of ransomware known only as the “.JSE ransomware.”  —  Twenty-three local Texas governments have been infected with ransomware last week in what Texas officials have described as a coordinated attack.
@pinboard:
[Thread] Twitter has been running ads from Chinese state news agency Xinhua that aim to discredit protesters in Hong-Kong  —  Every day I go out and see stuff with my own eyes, and then I go to report it on Twitter and see promoted tweets saying the opposite of what I saw. Twitter is taking money from Chinese propaganda outfits and running these promoted tweets against the top Hong Kong protest hashtags https://twitter.com/...
Kevin Kwok / kwokchain:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Apple's WebKit announces strict anti-tracking policy to prevent covert tracking and all cross-site tracking, credits Mozilla's policy for inspiring its approach  —  WebKit, the open source engine that underpins Internet browsers including Apple's Safari browser, has announced …
David Nield / TechRadar.com:
Ming-Chi Kuo expects a new Apple Watch Series 5 this year, as watchOS 6 beta code indicates that ceramic and titanium casings may be coming  —  And maybe the Series 4 too  —  You wait all year for some decent Apple Watch Series 5 rumors and then two come along at once …
Itika Sharma Punit / Quartz:
Q&A with Debjani Ghosh, the first woman president of Indian IT industry body Nasscom, on the gender gap and why India is not worried about changes to H-1B visas  —  Being an engineer at an Indian information technology (IT) company today is far removed from what it used to be only five years ago.
Bryan Menegus / Gizmodo:
California Supreme Court rules that online businesses like Square can be sued for discrimination in their TOS, even if a user never signed up for the service  —  Nearly four years ago, a lone bankruptcy lawyer sued Square, the payment processor run by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey …
Thomas Ricker / The Verge:
Ikea says it is creating a new business unit, Ikea Home smart, with end-to-end responsibility for its portfolio of smart devices  —  ‘We are just getting started’  —  Ikea is formalizing what has recently become all too obvious: the company is making a major bet on smart home tech as a source of new revenue.
Reuters:
Sources: the US Department of Commerce to extend Huawei's license to buy US goods, which expires on August 19, by another 90 days  —  SINGAPORE/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department is expected to extend a reprieve given to Huawei Technologies that permits the Chinese firm …

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