Techmeme
May 18, 2018, 8:55 AM

Top News

Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
A bug in the website of LocationSmart, which sells real-time phone location data, let anyone track people's locations across North America without consent  —  The bug allowed one Carnegie Mellon researcher to track anyone's cell phone in real time.  —  A company that collects the real …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
PayPal confirms it is acquiring Swedish payments company iZettle for $2.2B in an all-cash deal, making it PayPal's biggest-ever transaction  —  PayPal is taking its biggest bet yet on point-of-sale transactions, small businesses, and markets outside of the US, as it looks to raise its game against Square …
Wall Street Journal:
Analysis of 1,450 ICOs finds 271 have red flags including plagiarized white papers, fake execs, promised returns; investors poured $1B+ into these 271 offerings  —  A Wall Street Journal analysis of 1,450 cryptocurrency offerings reveals rampant plagiarism, identity theft and promises of improbable returns
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Strategy Analytics: in Q1, Amazon shipped 4M Echos globally, taking 43.6% of the market, as Google shipped 2.4M Home speakers, and Apple shipped 600K HomePods  —  Apple sold an estimated 600,000 HomePod speakers during the first quarter of 2018, according to new estimates shared this morning by Strategy Analytics.
Dan Primack / Axios:
Google declines to provide the names of hair salon and restaurant used in controversial Google Duplex demo, or say whether the calls were edited  —  Google made headlines by demonstrating an AI-powered voice assistant that made haircut and restaurant reservations, without betraying that it isn't human.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Instagram will now let users share posts from their own and public accounts to Stories as a sticker on Android; coming to iOS next week  —  The line between posts and stories is getting even thinner  —  The line between Instagram posts and stories is getting even thinner today.
Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:
Intel's Mobileye has started testing 100 self-driving cars in Jerusalem with plans to deploy the fleet in the US and other regions in coming months  —  Intel and its subsidiary Mobileye have started testing 100 self-driving cars in Jerusalem.  In the “coming months,” the plan is to deploy …
Max Chafkin / Bloomberg:

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Earlier Picks

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Peter Kafka / Recode: