Techmeme
October 25, 2020, 3:30 PM

Top News

The Markup:
Raymond Zhong / New York Times:
Lee Kun-hee, who was chairman and chief executive of Samsung Electronics from 1998 to 2008 and its chairman since 2010, has died at age 78  —  Mr. Lee was convicted — and pardoned — twice for white-collar crimes, in a sign of the ills in South Korea's relationship with its business dynasties.
Jane Lytvynenko / BuzzFeed News:
Zoom deleted events planned for Oct. 23 on alleged censorship by the company after Zoom canceled an SFSU talk in Sept.; Zoom says the events violated its TOS  —  Zoom shut down a series of events meant to discuss what organizers called “censorship” by the company.
Michael Steinberger / New York Times:
Profile of Palantir CEO Alex Karp and the controversies around Palantir's trustworthiness; Karp claims his progressivism offsets Thiel's relationship with Trump  —  The tech giant helps governments and law enforcement decipher vast amounts of data — to mysterious and, some say, dangerous ends.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
GitHub removes 18 projects related to YouTube download library youtube-dl after RIAA sent a letter saying it enabled infringement  —  Main target of the takedown was the youtube-dl project, a Python library that had amassed more than 72k stars on GitHub and was used in many YouTube video ripping tools and services.
Alex Miller / Wired:
Video games are helping veterans struggling with PTSD, anxiety, and depression and those adjusting to civilian life after deployment in combat zones  —  Veterans with PTSD, anxiety, and other mental health challenges often find solace in gaming.  Research shows it's helpful—and could be used more broadly.
Shen Lu / Rest of World:
Weibo users describe how political discussions on the platform have become even more muted amid pervasive censorship, as some resort to using burner accounts  —  Thousands of Weibo accounts have been deleted as China's government cracks down on free speech.
Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:
Facebook asks NYU Ad Observatory, which analyzes political ad targeting using data collected from a browser extension, to cease the practice for violating TOS  —  In letter this month, Facebook says the project violates provisions in its terms of service that prohibit bulk data collection

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