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December 17, 2019, 8:40 PM
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| Daniel Cooper / Engadget: |
Googler says she was fired for sending pop-ups on labor rights via modified internal browser plugin; Google: she “abused privileged access” in altering the tool — Google stands accused of firing a fifth employee who was suspected of attempting to organize a labor union at the search giant.| Wall Street Journal: |
Sources describe Peter Thiel's expanding influence at Facebook, where he advises Zuckerberg on White House dynamics and holding firm on the political ads policy — Billionaire investor thinks political-ad policy shouldn't change; some directors and executives disagree
More:
Mashable, Business Insider, Mercury News, CNET, and CNBC
| Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News: |
Ex-Facebook staffers on how Facebook's focus on growth metrics in performance reviews prodded staff to game the system and ignore other impacts of their work — Facebook often uses its vast size as an excuse for its failures. Meanwhile, it's ordering employees to make it bigger.
Tweets: @lainnafader, @_andyburrows, @coryweinberg, @lainnafader, @kantrowitz, @joshconstine, @rmac18, and @buzzfeednews
| iFixit News: |
Mac Pro needs little to no tooling for basic fixes and upgrades, scores a 9/10 on repairability; components are modular but some are proprietary, like SSD cards — Teardown of the reinvented 2019 Mac Pro, which returns to a properly repairable design that happens to not grate cheese very well.
More:
The Verge, AppleInsider, MacRumors, Ars Technica, MacDailyNews, iDownloadBlog.com, CNET, SlashGear, iPhone Hacks, The Register, MSPoweruser, AppleInsider, Engadget, Cult of Mac, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, Daring Fireball, and iPhone in Canada Blog
Tweets: @ifixit, @kkiyer90, @johnbbeta, @whatthebit, @mcwm, @fanlesstech, and @ifixit
| Sara Fischer / Axios: |
Facebook pilots a program in the US to use part-time contracted “community reviewers” to expedite the fact-checking process and aid its fact-checking partners — Facebook is creating a new pilot program in the U.S. that will leverage part-time contracted “community reviewers” to expedite its fact-checking process.
More:
About Facebook and CNET
Tweets: @sarafischer, @daveyalba, @kevinroose, @mantzarlis, @sarafischer, @adamberinsky, @shiraovide, @jgreendc, and @edbott
| Josh Constine / TechCrunch: |
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About Facebook, Washington Post, Input, Geek.com, Quartz, Inc42 Media, The Mac Observer, iPhone in Canada Blog, Adweek, Mashable, and 9to5Mac
Tweets: @alexeheath, @b52malmet, @blakersdozen, @joshconstine, @joshconstine, and @jasonabbruzzese
| The Information: |
Sources: early last year, Alphabet and Google's leadership set a timeline for its cloud group to best its rivals by 2023, and considered leaving the market — Google's cloud unit, which sells computing services to big companies, is under pressure from top management to pass Microsoft or Amazon …
More:
SiliconANGLE, CNBC, MSPoweruser, New York Post, and Seeking Alpha
Tweets: @kmclaughlinsf, @traskjd, @nickwingfield, @willhamill, @jny, @mhbergen, @ryan, @amir, @krishnan, @petebray, @jessicalessin, and @migueldeicaza
| Joseph Cox / VICE: |
Ring device testing shows it lacks safeguards that would deter credential stuffing and brute force attacks, making 2FA a key part of securing accounts — It's not so much being watched. It's that I don't really know if I'm being watched or not. — From across the other side of the world …
More:
Vox, NBC News, Fight for the Future, Stacey on IoT, and socalTECH.com
| Bret Kinsella / Voicebot.ai: |
Report: Amazon had revenue of $1.4M from Alexa's in-skill purchases in the first ten months of 2019, which was well short of its target of $5.5M — The Information published (N.B. paywall) an article this morning saying that Amazon earned $1.4 million Alexa skill revenue through the first 10 months …
Source:
The Information. More:
Variety and Daring Fireball
Tweets: @bmetrock, @priyasideas, @nickbastone, @mcwm, @mcclure111, @zerohedge, @nachkari, @mattmday, @mathewi, @nickwingfield, @mathewi, @kantrowitz, and @amir
| Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: |
After a cyber attack, Canadian medical lab LifeLabs paid a ransom to recover the stolen data of 15M+ customers, which included login info and test results — Data breach took place in early November, and hackers also gained access to 85,000 laboratory test results.
More:
LifeLabs, BleepingComputer, Canadian Press, IPC, Toronto Sun, CBC News, globalnews.ca, Tofino-Ucluelet Westerly News, CHCH, NEWS 1130, British Columbia, and Dark Reading
Tweets: @chetwisniewski, @lifelabs, @5thestate, @caseykins421, @michael_kan, and @campuscodi
| Andrew Higgins / New York Times: |
After a massive outcry over the police raid on Nginx Moscow offices, Rambler's board orders company execs to ask law enforcement to terminate the criminal case — A case linked to a $670 million acquisition shows that there may be a limit to the authorities' abuse of law enforcement to advance corrupt business interests.
More:
Ars Technica, Meduza.io, Financial Times, RT, Reuters, and ZDNet
Tweets: @kevinrothrock, @briankrebs, and @steipete
| Danny Palmer / ZDNet: |
WhatsApp fixes bug that allowed a rogue group member to render the app unusable, forcing a reinstall and loss of group chat content — Researchers detail security flaw that allowed hackers to crash WhatsApp and permanently delete contents of group chats - and urge users to update the app to protect against attacks.| Chris Prentice / Reuters: |
SEC charges former Palo Alto Networks IT administrator and four accomplices with insider trading from 2015 to 2018; the traders made over $7M in illegal profits — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities on Tuesday said they have charged a former IT administrator and four friends involved …
| Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: |
Hugging Face, which recently found success with its open-source NLP library after debuting an app that let users chat with an artificial friend, raises $15M — Hugging Face has raised a $15 million funding round led by Lux Capital. The company first built a mobile app that let you chat … | Sara Fischer / Axios: |
Facebook is funding a free 45-minute online Reuters course for journalists on spotting and handling manipulated media, now in English, French, Spanish, Arabic — Facebook is spending six figures to fund a course on manipulated media and deepfakes for newsrooms, executives tell Axios.
More:
Engadget, Input, and Firstpost Tech
Tweets: @drewharwell, @jbenton, @rvawonk, @oneunderscore__, and @mathewi
| Josh Constine / TechCrunch: |
Alchemy, which is building middleware that connects Dapps to underlying blockchains like Ethereum, raises $15M from Pantera, Stanford, Coinbase, and others — Meet the $15M-funded Microsoft of cryptocurrency — The top cryptocurrency companies have quietly begun to outsource their infrastructure problems to a tiny stealth startup.
More:
alchemyapi.io, Bloomberg, Wired, Cointelegraph, SiliconANGLE, and The Block
Tweets: @veradittakit and @joshconstine
| LogMeIn, Inc.: |
LogMeIn to be acquired by affiliates of PE firm Francisco Partners and Elliott Management for $86.05/share in cash, valuing the company at ~$4.3B — All-Cash Transaction Valued at Approximately $4.3 Billion — LogMeIn, Inc. (NASDAQ: LOGM), a leading provider of cloud-based connectivity …
| Luke Jones / WinBuzzer: |
Microsoft opens the Microsoft Edge Addons store for submissions ahead of Chromium-based Edge launch — Developers can now submit to the Microsoft Edge Addons Store, with existing Chromium extensions migrated automatically. — Microsoft has today announced the Microsoft Edge Addons store is now fully open.
More:
TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM, ZDNet, Windows Blog, TechRadar.com, AskWoody, Input, Thurrott, Ausdroid, Redmond, gHacks Technology News, Windows Central, and Neowin
Tweets: @glenngabe, @qmatteoq, and @msedgedev
| Mayank Parmar / Windows Latest: |
More:
Microsoft Docs, Computerworld, Lifehacker, ExtremeTech, OnMSFT.com, BleepingComputer, WinBuzzer, The Next Web, and MSPoweruser. Thanks:@windowslatest
| Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch: |
Skyryse demos its Skyryse Flight Stack, which enables existing helicopters to be flown autonomously, says it has raised a total of $38M in funding to date — Skyryse is a three-year old transportation startup that is approaching the future of aviation from a different angle when compared to most.| Paul Ziobro / Wall Street Journal: |
Amazon blocks marketplace sellers from using FedEx Ground for Prime shipments indefinitely over FedEx's “delivery performance” — Amazon cites a decline in FedEx performance heading into the final holiday push — Amazon.com Inc. AMZN .47% is blocking its third-party sellers …
More:
CNBC, KnowTechie, The Digital Reader, International Business Times, PYMNTS.com, Input, TechCrunch, New York Post, TheStreet, Reuters, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, SlashGear, TechSpot, CNBC, The Verge, CNN, Ars Technica, Associated Press, CNET, PYMNTS.com, Bloomberg, Adweek, GeekWire, Seeking Alpha, and Business Insider
Tweets: @mcwm, @alex, @harrymccracken, @halsinger, @matthewkeyslive, @oliviabvoz, @wsakaren, and @avajoyewjz
| Spencer Soper / Bloomberg: |
More:
CNBC. Tweets: @mattmday, @business, @mcwm, @business, @rrpre, @business, @yadav_supplychn, @ericnewcomer, and @shiraovide
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