Techmeme
December 19, 2017, 9:40 AM

Top News

Thomas P. Bossert / Wall Street Journal:
In op-ed, Trump's homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert says North Korea was behind the WannaCry ransomware cyberattack in May  —  The massive cyberattack cost billions and put lives at risk.  Pyongyang will be held accountable.  —  Cybersecurity isn't easy, but simple principles still apply.
Reuters:
WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French data protection authority; WhatsApp has one month to comply or potentially face sanctions  —  BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France's data privacy watchdog may fine messaging app WhatsApp if it does not comply with an order to bring …
Elan Feingold / Plex Labs:
Plex launches Plexamp, a Winamp-inspired standalone music player for macOS and Windows that can play “just about any music format” and includes visualizers  —  As we mentioned on the blog post introducing Plex Labs, one of the things we're using Medium for is a venue for talking …
Chris Sonderby / Facebook:
Facebook transparency report for H1 2017: account data requests up 21% globally YoY to ~79K; 57% of US requests included order banning FB from notifying users  —  Today we are releasing our Transparency Report, previously called the Government Requests Report, for the first half of 2017.
Dustin Volz / Reuters:
Kaspersky Lab sues the Trump administration in US court, arguing it was deprived of due process rights when DHS banned its software from US government agencies  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Moscow-based anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab sued the Trump administration in U.S. federal court on Monday …
John Poole / Geekbench:
Geekbench data shows correlation between old iPhone batteries and reduced performance, suggesting iOS slows down iPhones with old batteries to avoid shutdowns  —  A Reddit post from last week has sparked a discussion regarding iPhone performance as a function of battery age.
Joe McDonald / Associated Press:
Huawei says some of its phones to be sold by US carriers in 2018, starting with Mate 10; Consumer Business Group CEO says phones will be “competitively priced”  —  An executive of Huawei says the Chinese smartphone brand plans to start sales in the U.S. market through carriers next year …
The Economic Times:
India's ride-hailing service Ola acquires FoodPanda India from Germany's Delivery Hero, and will invest $200M to take on rival UberEats, Zomato, and Swiggy  —  Saurabh Kochhar, former CEO of Foodpanda India has left the company and Pranay Jivrajka, founding partner at Ola has been appointed as the interim CEO of Foodpanda
Thuy Ong / The Verge:
Twitter starts enforcing new policies on violence and hateful conduct both on platform and off it, but changes don't apply to military or government entities  —  Policies now extend to hateful imagery and to conduct both on platform and off  —  Twitter says it will now begin enforcing …
Shona Ghosh / Business Insider:
Nicole Lee / Engadget:
Amazon Echo Spot review: appealing design, great for video calls, touchscreen enhances Alexa experience, but mediocre audio, screen is bad for video playback  —  When Amazon unveiled the Echo Show earlier this year, we questioned if we really needed an Echo with a touchscreen.

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Earlier Picks

Jeremy Herron / Bloomberg:
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Kurt Wagner / Recode: