Techmeme
August 31, 2020, 7:00 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Internal postings show Ankhi Das, a top Facebook exec in India, supported “strongman” Modi's party before he was elected in 2014 and disparaged its main rival  —  Some employees said the sentiments and actions conflicted with the company's longstanding neutrality pledge
Wall Street Journal:
Fred Lambert / Electrek:
Tesla releases new software update to visually detect speed limit signs, and more  —  Tesla has started pushing a new version of its software update to now visually detect speed limit signs, and more.  —  For a while, there has been speculation about to what degree Tesla …
Jack Morse / Mashable:
Slack discloses a now fixed critical RCE flaw in its desktop app; Slack paid $1,750 bug bounty to researcher, which critics say is a paltry sum  —  Slack and its scores of desktop app users just dodged a major bullet.  —  The communications tool relied upon by journalists, tech workers …
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
A look at autonomous boat tech as ocean research nonprofit Promare says it will unveil in September a fully autonomous ship called Mayflower with IBM as partner  —  Driverless ships don't have to worry about crowded roads.  And they don't need bunks—or toilets.  —  TEXT  —  1 RESPONSE
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
Online creators are creating deepfake memes as the technology grows more accessible, and publishing YouTube instructions so others can learn how  —  The rapidly increasing accessibility of the technology raises new concerns about its abuse.  —  Grace Windheim had heard of deepfakes before.
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Report: black market for stolen game logins generates $1B annually, with logins for Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and RuneScape accounting for ~$700M in sales  —  - Roblox, Minecraft and RuneScape accounts are also popular  — 'They can't keep up with demand,' researcher says in a report
Joseph Trevithick / The Drive:
Mexican cartel hitmen seem to have adopted the use of bomb-laden drones in assassinations, following the tactic's proliferation on Iraqi and Syrian battlefields  —  Mexico's drug cartels are notoriously well armed and equipped, with some possessing very heavy weaponry, including armored gun trucks sporting heavy machine guns.
Cory Doctorow / OneZero :
Cory Doctorow highlights the conceptual limitations of Shoshana Zuboff's “surveillance capitalism” and details how to dismantle it  —  The most surprising thing about the rebirth of flat Earthers in the 21st century is just how widespread the evidence against them is.

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More News

Earlier Picks

Dara Kerr / CNET:
Ev Williams / The Official Medium Blog:
Todd Shields / Bloomberg: