Techmeme
January 4, 2018, 1:45 PM

Top News

Meltdown and Spectre:
Official webpage for the Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities, which has links to research papers and an FAQ  —  Bugs in modern computers leak passwords and sensitive data.  Meltdown and Spectre exploit critical vulnerabilities in modern processors.  These hardware bugs allow programs …
Google Online Security Blog:
Google's Project Zero says it discovered three variants of CPU attack, affecting AMD, ARM, and Intel; Android devices with latest security update are safe  —  Last year, Google's Project Zero team discovered serious security flaws caused by “speculative execution,” a technique used by most modern processors …
Spectreattack.com:
Researchers wrote a Spectre attack in JavaScript that violates browser sandboxing and reads data from the address space of the browser process running it  —  Modern processors use branch prediction and speculative execution to maximize performance.  For example, if the destination …
Troy Wolverton / Business Insider:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Rebecca Savransky / The Hill:
White House says it has banned guests and employees from using personal cell phones in the West Wing, will only allow use of government-issued devices  —  The White House is going to start barring employees from using their personal cellphones at work, press secretary Sarah Sanders said early Thursday.
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
Samsung unveils Exynos 9 Series 9810 processor, likely to be used in Galaxy S9, and teases iPhone X-like features including face tracking and unlocking  —  Starting off the new year by introducing its latest custom smartphone processor, Samsung has revealed some of what we might expect from its next Galaxy S flagship.
Michelle Castillo / CNBC:
Zuckerberg says his personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing Facebook's “important issues” and the company makes “too many errors” enforcing policies  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's mission in 2018 is to fix Facebook's mounting issues from last year …
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
AT&T announces plans to start rolling out a true 5G network in 12 cities by the end of 2018  —  AT&T has announced plans to roll out a true 5G network in a dozen markets in accordance with the 3GPP's recently released 5G NR (new radio) guidelines by the end of 2018.
Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed:
Reports suggest India's Aadhaar national ID database was breached, exposing information of ~1.2B Indians and allowing creation of admin accounts by other admins  —  In 2010 India started scanning personal details like names, addresses, dates of birth, mobile numbers, and more …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Johnson Controls unveils $319 Cortana-powered thermostat called GLAS, which runs Windows 10 IoT Core; available now for preorder, ships in March  —  Beauty comes at a price  —  Microsoft has partnered with Johnson Controls to build a thermostat.  The software giant first unveiled …
New York Times:
How Nvidia researchers generated pictures of faces that appear to be real but aren't by analyzing photos of celebrities and detecting patterns  —  To create the final image in this set, the system generated 10 million revisions over 18 days.  —  The woman in the photo seems familiar.

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Featured Podcasts

Channels with Peter Kafka:
Who is Josh D'Amaro and Why is He Disney's New CEO?
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
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The Social Radars:
Spenser Skates, Founder & CEO, Amplitude
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
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Invest Like the Best:
Ben Horowitz - Backing America's Future
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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Big Technology Podcast:
The Moltbook Uprising, NVIDIA's OpenAI Pullback, Apple's Conundrum
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Lenny's Podcast:
A child psychologist's guide to working with difficult adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Special Edition: Key findings from the Microsoft AI Diffusion Report
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.
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More News

Angelique Chrisafis / The Guardian:
Steve Dent / Engadget:

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