Techmeme
December 30, 2019, 10:10 PM

Top News

Yahoo News:
Overview of the ongoing efforts by the US to modernize its spy operations, to contain the damage from the 2014 OPM breach, be more resilient to tracking, more  —  When hackers began slipping into computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management in the spring of 2014 …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Microsoft wins court order to seize 50 domains run by North Korean cyber-espionage group Thallium, the fourth APT Microsoft has combated with this tactic  —  Microsoft takes control of 50 domains operated by Thallium (APT37), a North Korean cyber-espionage group.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Sonos should rethink its Trade Up program's “Recycle Mode”, which bricks old Sonos devices for a discount on newer ones, and consider a policy of reuse  —  An irreversible kill switch for a discount is a bad deal for the environment  —  Late last week, Sonos was called …
Kate Eichhorn / MIT Technology Review:
Obsessive documentation of one's life online has made it hard for young people to shed their past identities and might have bad effects for society at large  —  As past identities become stickier for those entering adulthood, it's not just individuals who will suffer.  Society will too.
Alistair Gray / Financial Times:
US shoppers are expected to return $100B worth of unwanted goods bought this holiday season; online purchases 3x more likely to be returned than those in stores  —  US consumers are expected to send back a record $100bn worth of unwanted goods bought between Thanksgiving and Christmas as the rise of ecommerce causes a returns epidemic.
Peerzada Abrar / Business Standard:
Report: Indian startups raised a record $14.5B in 2019, up from $10.5B in 2018 and $550M in 2010; Sequoia, Accel, and Tiger Global were the most active VCs  —  As the decade is coming to an end, it has seen an impressive 25x growth from a tiny $550 million in 2010 to $14.5 billion in 2019 …
Hannah Frishberg / New York Post:
Report: in January, YouTube will expand limitations on the data that videos aimed at kids can collect and stop showing personalized ads to underage viewers  —  Children are worth their weight in data to YouTube creators, who're scrambling to stop the Federal Trade Commission from taking that income away.
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Facebook has quietly started removing some misleading ads about HIV prevention drugs, weeks after activists said they could cause a public-health crisis  —  The ads, first reported by The Washington Post, threatened to create a public health crisis, LGBT groups had said.
David Streitfeld / New York Times:
How Amazon has shaped the economy of Campbellsville, KY, where it opened one of its first fulfillment centers and is now the town's largest private employer  —  In Campbellsville, Ky., the tech giant's influences abound.  The profits, not so much.  —  CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. — In the late 1990s …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
VMware completes its $2.7B acquisition of Pivotal, originally announced in August  —  VMware is closing the year with a significant new component in its arsenal.  Today it announced it has closed the $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition it originally announced in August.

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Earlier Picks

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: