Techmeme
October 19, 2019, 11:05 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Seven US lawmakers, including Wyden, Cruz, Ocasio-Cortez, and Rubio accuse Apple of “censorship of apps” at the “behest of the Chinese government”, in a letter  —  - Cruz, AOC, others ask Apple to reinstate HK map app it pulled  — Apple CEO discussed consumer rights with Chinese regulator
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
MediaLab, a holding company that owns the Whisper app, buys Kik messenger from Kik Interactive, which now focuses on development of Kin cryptocurrency  —  The Kik messaging platform has been bought by MediaLab, a holding company which operates Whisper and a number of other apps, the company announced Friday.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Mark Hurd, co-CEO of Oracle and former CEO of HP, dies at 62; Hurd took a health-related leave of absence from Oracle in September  —  Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle, in an interview on January 20, 2016.  —  Co-CEO of Oracle Mark Hurd died on Friday, CNBC confirmed.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
A behind-the-scenes account of a cyberattack that disrupted the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics, which was tied to a specific unit of Russia's GRU  —  How digital detectives unraveled the mystery of Olympic Destroyer—and why the next big attack will be even harder to crack.
New York Times:
Zuckerberg gives a full-throated defense of Facebook as a champion of free expression and defends Facebook policy to opt out of fact-checking political ads  —  In an address at Georgetown University, the Facebook chief executive called for more free speech — not less …
More: Columbia Journalism Review, Wired, Axios, The Guardian, Facebook, Washington Post, 9to5Mac, Wall Street Journal, The Verge, TechSpot, CNET, South China Morning Post, MIT Technology Review, Fortune, Slate, Inc42 Media, TechCircle, Fast Company, and Coinspeaker
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Jon Porter / The Verge:
Samsung says fingerprint bug on Galaxy devices is due to the sensor reading 3D patterns in screen protectors as fingerprints, will patch it as soon as next week  —  And advises removing silicone screen protecting cases for now  —  Samsung says that it plans to release a patch for its phones …
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
After buying Poloniex in 2018 for $400M, Circle spins it out into Polo Digital Assets, backed by an unnamed Asian firm, says it won't serve US customers anymore  —  Crypto exchange Poloniex is spinning out from its parent firm Circle, the companies announced Friday.
MIT Technology Review:
A game made with a real world dataset of defendants shows the shortcomings of COMPAS, an AI-powered risk assessment tool used in the US criminal legal system  —  The US criminal legal system uses predictive algorithms to try to make the judicial process less biased.  But there's a deeper problem.
ProPublica:
Inside Intuit's 20-year fight to make it harder to file taxes for free, including a pact with the IRS that kept a US-run service from competing with TurboTax  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up for ProPublica's Big Story newsletter to receive stories …
Mike Ives / New York Times:
A nonprofit is fighting illegal logging via a treetop monitoring unit that uses AI to detect sounds of chainsaws recorded and uploaded by used cellphones  —  PAKAN RABAA, Indonesia — This village in West Sumatra, a lush province of volcanoes and hilly rain forests, had a problem with illegal loggers.

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