Trump says that at a recent dinner Tim Cook made a “very compelling argument” that Apple might lose its edge to Samsung due to tariffs on goods from China  —  - Many made-in-China Apple products to be hit soon with tariffs  — Apple CEO made ‘good case’ about tariffs at dinner: Trump

[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/...

Spotify's Premium Family Plan is getting parental controls with an explicit content filter and a Family Mix personalized playlist for the whole family  —  Spotify is rolling out a new Premium Family Plan with a much-awaited setting.  Parents will now have the ability to filter out songs with swearing …

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.

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 …

Binance says it plans to launch Venus, an “independent regional version of Libra”, which will develop “localized” stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies  —  The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance is planning to launch “Venus,” calling it an …

How terrorist organizations, locked out of traditional financing options, have used cryptocurrency for donations in increasingly sophisticated ways  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, has been designated a terrorist organization by Western governments and some others …

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 …

Report: top 5 short-term rental firms like Airbnb, which accounted for only 4% of bookings in 2010, are estimated to account for 73% of gross bookings in 2019  —  The short-term rental ecosystem, from property managers and platforms to business-to-business vendors, is rapidly expanding.

After launching Chats in Facebook Groups in October of last year, Facebook says it is removing the feature and will archive existing chats on August 22  —  Facebook has announced that it's removing the group chat functionality that it launched in October last year, which was designed …

How Facebook, which had around 37,000 employees at the end of last year, thinks about its IT strategy and builds most of its IT tools in-house  —  If you have ever worked at any sizable company, the word “IT” probably doesn't conjure up many warm feelings.  If you're working for an old …