Techmeme
February 12, 2020, 12:30 PM

Top News

John Detrixhe / Quartz:
Research: Apple Pay makes up about 5% of global card transactions and is on pace to double that share by 2025  —  Future of Finance  —  New technology is upending everything in finance.  —  Apple's mobile wallet is gobbling up a growing chunk of card payments around the world.
Financial Times:
Facebook says it has banned a network of two dozen fake pages and accounts linked to two Southeast Asian telecoms for using disinformation against rivals  —  South-east Asian providers said to have used fake accounts to discredit rivals  —  Facebook has alleged that one of south-east Asia's …
Alex Hern / The Guardian:
UK proposes plans to put media regulator Ofcom in charge of regulating social media, with a focus on removing illegal content and minimizing “harmful” content  —  Ministers unveil plans to block harmful content, while guaranteeing free speech  —  Ofcom will be put in charge …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp says it now has 2B users worldwide, up from the 1.5B it announced two years ago  —  WhatsApp, the most popular messaging service, revealed today just how big it has become.  The Facebook-owned app said it has amassed two billion users, up from 1.5 billion it revealed two years ago.
Bojan Pancevski / Wall Street Journal:
US officials claim Huawei has, for over a decade, been able to covertly access mobile-phone networks globally through back doors designed for law enforcement  —  Trump administration ramps up push for allies to block Chinese company  —  U.S. officials say Huawei Technologies Co …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Google rolls out Emoji Kitchen, which mashes up two emojis into a sticker, for Gboard on Android  —  Compatible with WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, and more  —  There are already hundreds of emoji available to cover every emotion from yawning to being a straight-up drunk weirdo.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Reuters launches a new Reuters Fact Check business unit and blog and partners with Facebook to review news headlines, deepfakes, and user generated content  —  Eye-witness photos and videos distributed by news wire Reuters already go through an exhaustive media verification process.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Judge in the Sprint merger trial decided T-Mobile would stay aggressive due to its public image, despite execs speaking of the merger in terms of raising prices  —  Judge Victor Marrero thinks John Legere is just the coolest  —  After a lengthy trial, a federal court ruled in favor …
The Verge:
A look at online coding program Lambda School, which lets students defer tuition payments until they have jobs, but that many say is costly and under-delivers  —  Students at Lambda School say the program hasn't delivered on its promise  —  Bethany Surber was sleeping on friends' couches …
Tweets: @dhh, @dhh, @_danilo, @knguyen, @dhh, @dhh, and @dhh
Chris Velazco / Engadget:
Hands-on with Samsung's new S20 lineup: 120Hz refresh rate makes the screens stand out, the Ultra is significantly bigger, and the cameras are ambitious  —  If you were planning to buy a premium Android smartphone this year, you can rest easy knowing they'll all come with more or less the same things.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Hired:
State of Software Engineers 2019: global demand for AR/VR engineers up by 1,400%, gaming developers up 146%, security engineers up 49% but slower than in 2018  —  Overview  —  The worldwide process of digital transformation, while something of a buzzword, reflects a critical truth: every company is now a technology company.
More: ZDNet
Data Protection Commission:
Ireland's Data Protection Commission: Facebook has postponed launching Dating on Valentine's Day in Europe after DPC resorted to an inspection to procure docs  —  Facebook Ireland first contacted the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) in relation to its intention to roll-out a new Dating feature in the EU on Monday 3 February.
Jem Aswad / Variety:
Research: over the past year, 95M people in the US used a major streaming service, 25M had a family plan, 13M had a free trial, and 10M+ were sharing a login  —  Over the past year, 95 million people in the U.S. used a major streaming service, 68 million were self-paying …
Kadhim Shubber / Financial Times:
The FTC is asking Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft about acquisitions from the past decade that were small enough to not be reported to the gov't  —  FTC to review acquisitions made by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft  —  The Federal Trade Commission …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Radar, a location data startup that positions itself as privacy-focused, raises $20M Series B led by Accel to build out its platform  —  Pick any app on your phone, and there's a greater than average chance that it's tracking your location right now.  —  Sometimes, they don't even tell you.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Malwarebytes detected 11 threats per endpoint for its Mac users in 2019, up from 4.8 threats per endpoint in 2018, while PCs saw 5.8 threats per endpoint  —  Antivirus software developer Malwarebytes today shared its State of Malware Report for 2020 [PDF], which suggests that Mac malware is growing much more common.

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Earlier Picks

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Andrew Morse / CNET:
Bloomberg:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet: