Techmeme
December 11, 2019, 11:00 AM

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, will remove some Steven Crowder's videos targeting Vox's Carlos Maza  —  The change comes after controversy around a right-wing comedian's homophobic slurs aimed at a gay Latino journalist.
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.
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 …
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 …
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
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook has fired a contractor who was bribed to reactivate banned ad accounts; messages show he agreed to a $5K upfront payment and a monthly retainer  —  A Facebook contractor was paid thousands of dollars in bribes by a shady affiliate marketer to reactivate ad accounts that had been banned due …
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.
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:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Glassdoor: Google and Facebook drop out of top 10 of US “best places to work” list, Google to 11, Facebook to 23; Microsoft only tech giant to jump in rankings  —  - Facebook fell 16 places, Google drops out of the Top 10  — Microsoft one of the only tech giants to jump in the rankings
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft is bringing its first Office app to Linux with Microsoft Teams, now in public preview  —  Microsoft today launched Microsoft Teams for Linux in public preview.  No, that's not a typo — Microsoft Teams is indeed the first Office app that the company has ported to Linux.
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:
Intel's US pay disclosure report shows 26% of white men are in the top tier, making at least $208K, while less than 10% of black employees are in the top tier  —  New transparency shows familiar old divisions, with white and Asian men earning the most.  The company says disclosure is a crucial step.
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
Passport, a permitting, parking, ticketing management, and mobile payments platform for cities, office parks, and campuses raises $65M Series D  —  The big new round of funding for Passport's ticketing and parking management tech proves that software can even disrupt something as mundane and seemingly low-tech as the parking lot.

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More News

Ari Levy / CNBC:
Isaac Stanley-Becker / Washington Post:
Reuters:
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Earlier Picks

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Kate Clark / TechCrunch:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Shaun Nichols / The Register: