Techmeme
December 14, 2019, 12:20 PM

Top News

Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Researchers claim they used 3D masks and photos to deceive facial recognition systems used by Alipay, WeChat Pay, Schiphol Airport, and train stations in China  —  Masks and simple photographs are enough to fool some facial recognition technology, highlighting a major shortcoming in what is billed as a more effective security tool.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft's next-gen “Project Scarlett” Xbox to be called Xbox Series X and available holiday 2020 with support for frame rates of up to 120 fps and ray tracing  —  Xbox now looks like a PC  —  Microsoft's next-generation Xbox is officially called Xbox Series X. Microsoft revealed …
Simone Stolzoff / The Atlantic:
A graduate of Slack's Next Chapter initiative, which helps former prison inmates land tech jobs, recounts how he managed to land a full-time job at the company  —  Jesse Aguirre's workday at Slack starts with a standard engineering meeting—programmers call them “standups”—where he and his co-workers plan the day's agenda.
Will Knight / Wired:
China's AI unicorns like Megvii, which thrived on government contracts for facial recognition, are now facing challenges amid US sanctions and cheaper tech  —  Companies such as Megvii thrived on government contracts for facial recognition, but they face challenges from US sanctions to cheaper tech.
Amanda Mull / The Atlantic:
How the concept of free shipping forces small e-commerce businesses to eat the cost of shipping, as large sellers like Amazon do so at scale  —  How retailers hide the costs of delivery—and why we're such suckers for their ploys  —  It was a pair of feather earrings that helped Ann Miceli get out from underneath strangers' cars.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Apple and Spotify podcasts are available through Alexa-enabled devices in the US, starting today  —  Sad for HomePod  —  Starting today, Apple Podcasts is available through Amazon Alexa-enabled devices like Echo speakers.  People just have to say, “Alexa, play (insert show name here) on Apple Podcasts” to get a program.

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More News

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