Techmeme
October 6, 2017, 7:45 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: hackers stole NSA data on US offensive and defensive cyber capabilities from a contractor's laptop in 2015, likely via Kaspersky software  —  The breach, considered the most serious in years, could enable Russia to evade NSA surveillance and more easily infiltrate U.S. networks
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Analysis: what we know and do not know about Kaspersky Lab's alleged involvement in NSA contractor's laptop hack  —  The Wall Street Journal just published an incendiary article that says hackers working for the Russian government stole confidential material from an NSA contractor's home computer.
Sam Byford / The Verge:
Apple reveals new emoji coming to iPhone and iPad in a future iOS 11.1 update, will be available in the beta release next week  —  Apple has shown off more emoji characters coming to iOS in the future 11.1 update.  The characters are part of Unicode 10, which added 56 new emoji …
Politico:
Sources: White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's personal cellphone was compromised, potentially as long ago as December  —  White House tech support discovered the suspected breach after Kelly turned his phone in to tech support staff this summer.  —  White House officials believe that chief …
Kate Conger / Gizmodo:
Researchers: Apple granted Uber now-removed “entitlement” that let app record iPhone screen, even in background; Uber says it was to improve Watch performance  —  To improve functionality between Uber's app and the Apple Watch, Apple allowed Uber to use a powerful tool that could record …
Natasha Bertrand / Business Insider:
Analysis of six Facebook pages linked to Russian accounts, including Blacktivists and Secured Borders, shows ~19M interactions with posts  —  A Columbia University social media analyst has published his findings about the reach and engagement achieved by Russia-linked Facebook pages during the 2016 election.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple updates High Sierra with fix for APFS Disk Utility flaw that revealed password instead of hint and Keychain vulnerability that let apps dump passwords  —  Apple today released a supplemental update to macOS High Sierra 10.13, the first update to the macOS High Sierra operating system …
Rob Malda:
On Slashdot's 20th anniversary, cofounder Rob Malda reflects on the site's early days  —  I registered the domain name ‘Slashdot.org’ 20 years ago today.  I really had no idea.  —  Jeff chipped in a few bucks for the fees.  Kathleen told me the name was stupid.  I thought “That's kinda the point!”.
Tweets: @freecodecamp
Hayley Tsukayama / Washington Post:
Mattel says it's canceling its AI-powered Aristotle smart hub for kids after privacy and childhood development concerns  —  This post has been updated.  —  Mattel said Wednesday that it will not move forward with plans to sell a kid-focused smart hub, after new executives decided it did not …
Surur / MSPoweruser:
Now-deleted Microsoft Store listing said Harmon Kardon Cortana-powered speaker will cost $200 with six months of free Skype calls, on sale October 22  —  The official store listing for the Harman Kardon Invoke has leaked, and with it comes the final price of the smart speaker.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Bots Break Containment and Hack Hugging Face Autonomously — With Alex Stamos
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Great Chat:
Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:45 AM ET, October 6, 2017.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Jack Nicas / Wall Street Journal:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat: