Techmeme
December 11, 2019, 12:35 PM

Top News

@jack:
Twitter will fund bluesky, an independent effort to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media, with the goal of Twitter using it as a client  —  Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. 🧵
Mark Di Stefano / BuzzFeed:
YouTube bans videos that “maliciously insult” people based on their race, gender, or sex, and will remove some of Steven Crowder's videos targeting Carlos Maza  —  The change comes after controversy around a right-wing comedian's homophobic slurs aimed at a gay Latino journalist.
Hadas Gold / CNN:
Facebook confirms that a bug caused tens of thousands of now restored ads to disappear from its political ad library, days before UK's general election  —  London (CNN Business)Tens of thousands of political ads went missing from Facebook's archive this week, according to researchers …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Google rolls out Chrome 79 adding security features like notifications for data breaches affecting users' passwords, new phishing prevention tools, tab freezing  —  Chrome 79 also ships with support for predictive phishing, for real-time Safe Browsing detections, and a built-in Password Checkup tool.
Kollen Post / Cointelegraph:
DOJ arrests 3 men behind the BitClub Network cryptocurrency mining pool, says it was a Ponzi scheme which defrauded investors of $722M since 2014  —  United States authorities in New Jersey have announced the arrest of three men who are accused of defrauding investors of over $722 million …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple's support document says the Pro Display XDR with the optional nano-texture glass can only be cleaned with a special Apple-provided cloth  —  Apple's new Pro Display XDR comes with an optional nano-texture glass, which is etched at the nanometer level to cut down on reflectivity and glare for a matte look.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Bloomberg:
ByteDance has been testing Resso, a new music app, in India and Indonesia, but is yet to seal rights deals with the world's three largest music companies  —  - India and Indonesia are first to sample ByteDance's latest  — Company looking to become less dependent on advertising income
Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Intel's partner shares chip giant's manufacturing process technology roadmap: 7nm EUV in 2021, then 5nm in 2023, 3nm in 2025, 2nm in 2027, and 1.4 nm in 2029  —  One of the interesting disclosures here at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) has been around new and upcoming process node technologies.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Ordr, a network-level cybersecurity platform that flags suspicious events in real time, raises $27.5M Series B, after emerging from stealth in Feb. with $16.5M  —  Woe be the enterprise that pinches pennies and opts for a lax cybersecurity policy.  Kaspersky Lab reported a threefold year …
More: FinSMEs
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Berlin-based insurance tech startup Wefox Group adds $110M to the $125M Series B it raised in March; sources say its pre-money valuation is now $1.65B  —  Wefox Group, the Berlin-based insurtech startup behind the consumer-facing insurance app and carrier One and the insurance platform Wefox …
More: TelegraphThanks:@sohear
Bloomberg:
Investigation finds how Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook handle voice assistant transcriptions relies heavily on contractors and downplays user privacy  —  Ruthy Hope Slatis couldn't believe what she was hearing.  She'd been hired by a temp agency outside Boston for a vague job …
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook says it will not weaken end-to-end encryption, build backdoors into its messaging apps, in response to a letter from US AG and UK, Australian officials  —  Facebook said it would not weaken end-to-end encryption across its messaging apps, despite pressure from world governments …

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Earlier Picks

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Reuters:
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