Techmeme
October 17, 2018, 10:45 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Twitter has published data sets of millions of tweets, images, videos, and thousands of accounts linked to Russia and Iran meddling for analysis by researchers  —  - Data includes images and videos from thousands of accounts  — Tech firms remain under fire from lawmakers in EU, U.S.
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
In EU, Google to start charging OEMs for Play Store and Google apps, offer separate licenses for Search and Chrome, let OEMs make devices with forked Android  —  Android will still be “free and open source”  —  Google is changing the way it licenses its suite of Android apps in Europe …
Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:
Advertisers allege in suit that Facebook didn't disclose key video metric error for over a year and that scale of miscalculation was far worse than understood  —  Facebook knew of problems with how it measured viewership of video ads for more than a year before it revealed them in 2016, according to a complaint filed by advertisers.
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
After saying last week no data collected through Portal would be used to target users with ads, Facebook now says the data can be used to target ads  —  Who you call and what apps you use could determine what ads you see.  —  Facebook announced Portal last week, its take on the in-home …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
YouTube says it has resolved widespread access issues that also affected YouTube TV and YouTube Music  —  Google's services are ubiquitous enough that it's pretty noteworthy when they go down.  Tonight, it seems multiple services are suffering an outage, including YouTube …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Samsung acquires Spanish network analytics company Zhilabs, which uses AI to monitor carriers' network performance and data traffic across myriad services  —  Samsung has announced that it has acquired Zhilabs, a Spanish network analytics company that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google launches Chrome 70 with option to disable linked sign-ins, which are enabled by default, support for PWAs on Windows and an AV1 decoder, and more  —  Google today launched Chrome 70 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  The release includes an option to disable linking Google site and Chrome sign-ins …
Medium:
Anonymous Amazon employee says 450+ employees signed letter to Bezos and other execs asking them to stop selling Rekognition to police and kick Palantir off AWS  —  When a company puts new technologies into the world, it has a responsibility to think about the consequences.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Twitter bans ~1,500 accounts, source says for spreading misleading election-related content; the “NPC” accounts were 4chan and Reddit users posing as activists  —  Twitter has barred hundreds of right-wing users for posing as soulless, “nonplayable” liberal activists.
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla have announced a unified plan to deprecate the use of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in their web browsers in early 2020  —  Almost everyone has now migrated to TLS 1.2, and a few have moved to TLS 1.3.  —  Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla have announced …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
After criticism from FCC's Pai and Florida Gov. Scott, Verizon offers 3-month credit to customers hit hardest by Hurricane Michael; AT&T also giving credits  —  Since the landfall of Hurricane Michael last week, Verizon has been under scrutiny for its seemingly poor efforts to restore service in the Florida Panhandle.
Karl Bode / Techdirt:
Stanford study: of the 800,000+ unique comments submitted to the FCC concerning repeal of net neutrality, 99.7% of them opposed what the FCC did  —  A new study has once again confirmed that the vast, vast majority of the public opposed the FCC's ham-fisted repeal of net neutrality.
Nicholas Confessore / New York Times:
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Israeli startup Cognata, which provides a true-life simulation platform for autonomous vehicles, raises $18.5M led by Scale Venture Partners  —  Cognata has raised $18.5 million in a funding round led by Scale Venture Partners, fresh capital that the Israeli autonomous simulation startup …
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Coinbase now lets users buy and sell ZRX, the token representing the 0x Project, joining BTC, BCH, ETC, ETH, and LTC a week after adding ZRX to Coinbase Pro  —  Coinbase's newest asset is live.  On Tuesday the popular U.S.-based cryptocurrency platform added support for ZRX, the token representing the 0x Project.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google Chromecast 2018 review: still $35, improved design, slightly faster performance, can stream 1080p at 60 fps but not 4K capable, not worth the upgrade  —  Little in the way of new features  —  Google didn't say a word about its newly refreshed Chromecast onstage in New York last week.
More: PCMag
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Fitbit Charge 3 review: great design and battery life with reliable workout tracking, but third-party apps and notifications are limited  —  At a distance, the $149.99 Charge 3 looks similar to the Charge 2; it's not quite the same drastic overhaul between the Charge HR and the Charge 2.
Matthew Iles / Civil:
Journalism blockchain network Civil says the sale of its CVL token fails to hit $8M goal, buyers will be offered full refunds, and another token sale in works  —  A setback, and the path forward.  —  Key takeaways:  — The CVL token sale didn't succeed.

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