Techmeme
December 6, 2017, 12:20 AM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils ARM LTE-enabled Windows 10 PCs with “all-day” battery life, including $599 Asus NovaGo with 4GB RAM, HP Envy x2; HP coming in spring, Asus TBD  —  A fresh challenge to Intel's PC dominance  —  Microsoft and Qualcomm are officially unveiling the first ARM-powered Windows 10 laptops today.
Ben Popper / The Verge:
YouTube says it's pulling support for Amazon Echo Show today, will cut access to YouTube on Amazon FireTV starting Jan. 1; Amazon stops selling new Nest devices  —  New Nest devices have mysteriously disappeared from Amazon  —  Three months ago, YouTube pulled its programming …
Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
Unsecured database of keyboard app AI.type leaks 577GB of data from 31M users and all of their contacts, includes 374M+ phone numbers, 10M+ email accounts, more  —  The app maker's database wasn't protected with a password, leaving exposed its users' most private information.
Jeremy Burge / Emojipedia:
Patrick Howell O'Neill / Cyberscoop:
Belarusian police arrest man suspected of operating a sprawling botnet network called Andromeda, which had been around since 2011 before its takedown  —  The prolific hacker behind the Andromeda botnet was brought down by open source intelligence, according to the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
Catherine Clifford / CNBC:
Twitter releases 2017 annual data through Nov. 20: Trump most-tweeted-about global leader in the world, Obama had two of the three most-liked tweets of the year  —  Twitter, founded in 2006, has gotten a lot of attention in 2017, thanks largely to President Donald Trump.
Jon Christian / The Outline:
Contributing writers to publications including Mashable, Inc, Business Insider, and Fast Company say they accepted payments in exchange for promoting companies  —  An Outline investigation found that contributors to prominent publications have taken payments in exchange for positive coverage.
Instagram Blog:
Instagram debuts Stories Highlights, a new profile section featuring select Stories, and Stories Archive, where stories are saved automatically when they expire  —  Today we're introducing two new tools that let you hold on to your favorite moments from Instagram Stories and share them in ways that help you express yourself.
Nicholas Quah / Nieman Lab:
Sources: Apple has acquired Oakland-based Pop Up Archive, an online platform that builds tools to transcribe, organize, and search audio files  —  Plus: Public radio deals with a new wave of harassment allegations, Reddit and WBUR team up, et l'industrie du podcast au Québec.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
With Messenger Kids' launch, Facebook doesn't share how it will monetize the service or if parents will have access to all data collected about their families  —  It's all about the data  —  In 1998, as the internet began to spread across the country, Congress passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.
Steve Dent / Engadget:
Fitbit updates Ionic smartwatch with 60 new apps including Yelp, Deezer, Flipboard, and Uber, and launches Fitbit Labs to create apps for fitness motivation  —  Fitbit's Ionic smartwatch suffers from a dearth of apps, we noted in our Engadget review, but the wearable firm is trying to flip that equation with an update to its Fitbit OS.
Mitchel Broussard / MacRumors:
AT&T says its OTT streaming service DirecTV Now has surpassed 1M subscribers, just over a year after its launch  —  AT&T this morning announced that its over-the-top streaming service DirecTV Now has surpassed the one million subscriber mark, with the milestone coming in just a little bit …
Alexandra Bruell / Wall Street Journal:
Publicis, Omnicom, and WPP to boost ad spending with Amazon by 40% to 100% in 2018 as they search for an alternate to the Facebook/Google duopoly  —  In search of a challenger to the Google and Facebook ‘duopoly,’ Publicis, Omnicom and WPP plan to boost their ad spending with Amazon between 40% and 100% in 2018
Brian Barrett / Wired:
Cliqz's privacy-enhancing browser extension Ghostery introduces heuristic, AI-driven script blocking to complement the traditional blacklist blocking  —  Most ad blockers—and there are so, so many of them now—operate roughly the same way, comparing the scripts they encounter on a given site …

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More News

Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:

Earlier Picks

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica: