Techmeme
April 17, 2018, 5:00 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to integrate recently acquired magazine app Texture into Apple News and debut its own premium news subscription service next year  —  Company integrating Texture purchase into Apple News offering  —  About 20 Texture staff were cut soon after Apple acquisition
Sarah Skidmore Sell / Associated Press:
The Internal Revenue Service's payment site has been down for much of the day, preventing many Americans from filing taxes electronically  —  Just in time for tax day: the IRS website to make payments is down.  —  The IRS did not have an immediate explanation for the failure.
New York Times:
Documents and emails show Cambridge Analytica's plans, now on hold, to debut its own token via ICO to help people store and sell their online personal data  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The embattled voter-profiling firm Cambridge Analytica quietly sought to develop its own virtual currency …
Shannon Liao / The Verge:
New York AG Schneiderman launches an inquiry into cryptocurrency exchanges, sending a letter to 13 of them, including Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, and Bitfinex  —  New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation into bitcoin exchanges today, his office announced.
David E. Sanger / New York Times:
Microsoft, Facebook, 30+ firms pledge to not help states mount cyberattacks against “innocent civilians and enterprises”; Google, Apple, Amazon decline to join  —  WASHINGTON — More than 30 high-tech companies, led by Microsoft and Facebook, plan to announce a set of principles …
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Intel unveils two Threat Detection Technology features: letting software scan system memory for malware using integrated GPUs and advanced telemetry tools  —  The company is also using its processors' performance monitoring to detect malicious code.  —  Since the news of the Metldown …
Kim Hart / Axios:
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn says she's leaving after 8+ years at the agency, a day after FTC's Terrell McSweeny, also an Obama nominee, announced retirement  —  Long-time Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn announced Tuesday that she will be leaving after more than eight years at the agency.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Based on ARPU, Facebook might have to charge $11-$14 for monthly subscriptions to offset ad revenue, but it would empower users with choice and a sense of value  —  Would it make us love or hate ads?  —  Would being asked to pay Facebook to remove ads make you appreciate their value or resent them even more?
Davey Alba / BuzzFeed:
Sources describe turmoil at Kickstarter under founder and CEO Perry Chen, who retook the top job in March, as ~50 of 120 staff have left, including 7 top execs  —  Since founder Perry Chen took back the reins at Kickstarter, the company has landed in a period of turmoil set in motion …
Catalin Cimpanu / BleepingComputer.com:
After Telegram moved some of its infrastructure to AWS and Google cloud, Russia banned 1.8M Amazon and Google IP addresses, impacting many other online services  —  Roskomnadzor, Russia's telecommunications watchdog, banned today over 1.8 million IP addresses belonging to Amazon and Google's cloud infrastructure.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google releases updated DIY AI Vision and Voice Kits for $89.99 and $49.99, with a Raspberry Pi Zero and a companion app for Android, available at Target  —  Launched last year, Google's AIY Projects are simple hardware kits for building AI-powered devices like an Assistant speaker and a camera with image recognition capabilities.
Thomas Fox-Brewster / Forbes:
Surveillance firm Terrogence, a US government vendor, has been building a massive facial recognition database from photos on Facebook, YouTube, and other sites  —  When Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica revelations …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Twilio makes its SIM-based Programmable Wireless service for IoT developers generally available  —  For a communications platform like Twilio, getting into wireless always seemed like a logical next move and a year ago, the company did just that with the beta launch of its SIM-based Programmable Wireless service for IoT.
BBC:
FBI, DHS, and UK's National Cyber Security Centre issue joint alert warning of a Russian-led global campaign to attack and infiltrate internet infrastructure  —  State-sponsored Russian hackers are actively seeking to hijack essential internet hardware, US and UK intelligence agencies say.

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More News

New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Nick Statt / The Verge:
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios: