Techmeme: Inside the collapse of Quadriga crypto exchange, as law enforcement, accountants, and Reddit sleuths try to figure out if it was a legit operation or a scam (Nathaniel Rich/Vanity Fair)

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November 24, 2019, 6:10 PM

Top News

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian / ICIJ:

Leaked Chinese government documents reveal the mechanics of running mass detention camps in Xinjiang using mass surveillance and predictive policing — A new leak of highly classified Chinese government documents has uncovered the operations manual for running the mass detention camps …

More: BBC and Financial Times

Tweets: @ryanfduffy, @amybwang, @bethanyallenebr, @dannyboycrump, and @icijorg

Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:

White nationalist outlets including VDare and Red Ice TV still operate on Facebook despite its ban on white nationalism; Facebook says it is investigating — Guardian analysis finds VDare and Red Ice TV among several outlets that are still on the platform despite Facebook's promised ban

Tweets: @juliacarriew, @juliacarriew, @loisbeckett, @slpng_giants, @schemaly, @peterme, @lukeobrien, @acvalens, @juliacarriew, @adamserwer, @carolecadwalla, @postwait, @slpng_giants, @juliacarriew, @juliacarriew, @juliacarriew, @juliacarriew, and @juliacarriew

See also Mediagazer

Chris Stokel-Walker / Increment:

A look at the team behind VLC, which started as a student-run project in 1996 that is now part of a nonprofit with a for-profit consultancy managed by ~10 staff — How a group of university students transformed a school project into a media-player mainstay. — Teams

Tweets: @davezatz and @incrementmag

Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:

A former Facebook employee who was embedded with the 2016 Trump campaign details how he leveraged Facebook's ad-targeting tools and products to help them win — James Barnes is now focused on using digital-ad strategies to try to get Trump out of office — After the 2016 presidential election …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @natesilver538, @noahshachtman, @keithboykin, @antoniogm, @adamsinger, @nickgillespie, @blakehounshell, @govhowarddean, @b52malmet, @jessekellydc, @jason_kint, @jonathanalter, @counternotions, @four4thefire, @slpng_giants, and @adamserwer

Ava Kofman / ProPublica:

ProPublica claims to have found 57 unlabeled state-sponsored channels on YouTube; after presented with a list, YouTube labeled only 35 of them as such — ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.

Tweets: @propublica and @moonalice

Nathaniel Rich / Vanity Fair:

Inside the collapse of Quadriga crypto exchange, as law enforcement, accountants, and Reddit sleuths try to figure out if it was a legit operation or a scam — When Canadian blockchain whiz Gerald Cotten died unexpectedly last year, hundreds of millions of dollars in investor funds vanished into the crypto ether.

More: The only cryptocurrency …. Tweets: @reformedbroker, @mpelletiercio, @adamsinger, @andymukherjee70, and @morganhousel

Nick Heath / TechRepublic:

Interview with Stephen Wolfram about the future of Wolfram|Alpha, how programming needs to evolve, Wolfram Language as a “computational language”, and more — The brains behind Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language talks about how programming languages need to develop.

Tweets: @techrepublic and @techrepublic

Joseph Cox / VICE:

Sources: authorities have arrested an alleged member of The Chuckling Squad, the group that hacked Jack Dorsey's Twitter account in August — The alleged member was arrested around two weeks ago, another member of the hacking group told Motherboard. - Authorities have arrested an individual …

More: Engadget, Business Insider, Axios, and DataBreaches.net

Tweets: @josephfcox and @fizzily1

Cory Weinberg / The Information:

Source: Airbnb lost about $100M in Q2 2019, compared to the profit of $10M it made a year ago — Airbnb lost about $100 million before interest and taxes in the second quarter this year, a big swing from the profit of $10 million it made in the year-earlier period, according to financial information viewed by The Information.

Tweets: @coryweinberg, @modestproposal1, @edbott, and @eliotwb

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturns a lower-court order that required the suspect in a child-porn case to turn over the password to his computer — Prosecutors say forced disclosure permitted by “foregone conclusion.” Justices disagree. — The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution bars people …

Samanth Subramanian / The Guardian:

As we shop more online and think less about how our purchases reach our homes, a look at how our home delivery habit is reshaping the physical world — The great trick of online retail has been to get us to shop more and think less about how our purchases reach our homes. By Samanth Subramanian

Tweets: @frankpasquale, @kinsale42, @sajithpai, and @mishdalton

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:

A look at the Legal Aid Society of New York City's efforts to close the tech gap between public defenders and law enforcement with respect to digital forensics — Public defenders lack access to gadgets and software that could keep their clients out of jail. — On April 27, a woman in eastern Brooklyn called the police.

Tweets: @kashhill, @nytimesbusiness, @byrontau, @amelia_acker, @sushantsin, @geomblog, @nytimes, and @tmluongo

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From Mediagazer

Sara Fischer / Axios:

Source: Bari Weiss is planning to create a masthead for CBS News as part of a broader overhaul of standards and procedures

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Comcast extends Mike Cavanagh's contract through January 1, 2029, and grants a ~$35M performance-based stock package; he's set to become co-CEO in January 2026

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

WBD's board says it will “carefully review and consider” Paramount's revised offer, which includes a full backstop personally guaranteed by Larry Ellison

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More News

Michael Kwet / VICE:

Inside Vumacam's plans to build a network of AI-powered CCTV cameras across South Africa in areas where people of color are already disproportionately targeted

Tweets: @veauxdevillian, @tshegofatso_tm, @phat_controller, and @leahk28

Susan D'Agostino / Quanta Magazine:

Barbara Liskov, a Turing Award winner who invented some key principles of object-oriented programming, on what it takes a woman to get to the top of CS field

Tweets: @codeorg, @le_rond, @danlizotte, @quantamagazine, @rsukumar, @quantamagazine, @rubenverborgh, @quantamagazine, and @quantamagazine

Rachel Metz / CNN:

How facial analysis software that classifies gender misidentifies trans and non-binary people, is inaccurate with people of color, and could harm these groups

More: The Machinocene Review

Alexandra Witze / Nature:

Experts say ITU's newly agreed 5G radio-frequency standards will interfere with weather satellite readings of water vapor, impacting weather forecasts worldwide

More: Digital Trends, Washington Post, Science, WebProNews, and The Verge

Tweets: @flor_enthus, @alexwitze, @alexwitze, @mikamckinnon, and @alexwitze

Natalie Jarvey / Hollywood Reporter:

Inside Spotify's plan to dominate audio by spending hundreds of millions on exclusive podcasts and recruiting Jordan Peele, Mark Wahlberg and the Obamas

More: Tubefilter. Tweets: @john, @jimprosser, @thr, and @trengriffin

Tarleton Gillespie / Slate:

Every ad, political or commercial, should reveal its provenance, and all advertisers should stand by their ads and be held accountable for them

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation. Tweets: @bowlinearl and @frankpasquale

Earlier Picks

Ernie Smith / VICE:

As Slack gets criticism from power users for its WYSIWYG editor and plans an option to revert, a look at the history of Markdown, used by Slack's old interface

Tweets: @alexislloyd, @vice, @artemr, @shortformernie, @katienotopoulos, @carnage4life, and @wongmjane

Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire:

Amazon filed its formal protest over JEDI on Friday, citing a Fox News segment and a Trump rally as evidence of improper political pressure from the White House

More: Washington Post, CNET, Mashable, Vox, SiliconANGLE, Axios, and Fortune

Tweets: @paulkrugman, @megawatts55, and @keithboykin. Thanks:@taylor_soper

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:

About 200 Googlers protest placing of two of their colleagues on administrative leave over the actions they took opposing some of Google management's decisions

More: Engadget, CNET, Vox, Fast Company, OneZero, Forbes, Gizmodo, and VentureBeat. Tweets: @josheidelson

Queenie Wong / CNET:

Facebook built a now discontinued internal app, report says between 2015 and 2016, that let employees identify colleagues and friends via facial recognition

Source: Business Insider. More: Engadget, MSPoweruser, VentureBeat, Mashable, and Seeking Alpha

Tweets: @robaeprice, @hodgesmr, @saradannerdukic, @fchollet, @tonyromm, @pauldokas, @xeni, @jkarsh, @dtunkelang, @coreen_anne, @brooklynmarie, @robaeprice, @robaeprice, @clarajeffery, and @oknox

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

FCC bans carriers from using federal subsidies to buy equipment from Huawei and ZTE, considers ordering subsidy recipients to replace current Chinese equipment

More: WebProNews, Federal Communications …, International Business Times, Reuters, MSPoweruser, Ars Technica, Washington Post, Android Authority, TechCrunch, CRN, PCMag, Telecompaper, MacDailyNews, Light Reading, Light Reading, and Seeking Alpha

Tweets: @repjimbanks, @sentedcruz, and @fcc