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December 21, 2018, 10:25 PM
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| Slack: |
Slack says it inadvertently deactivated some accounts after update to comply with US trade regulations, didn't block any user based on nationality or ethnicity — Two days ago, we updated our system for applying location information to comply with U.S. trade embargoes and economic sanctions regulations.
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TechCrunch, Mashable, SiliconANGLE, cloudpro.co.uk, BBC, Inquirer, VentureBeat, Neowin, Techdirt, The Register, Gamasutra, Silicon Republic, Motherboard, and Business Insider
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| Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters: |
Sources describe how Amazon's efforts to make Alexa a better communicator through its Alexa Prize competition led to a hack and chats about sex and murder — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Millions of users of Amazon's Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa … | Will Oremus / Slate: |
Facebook has forfeited trust to the point that people see nefarious motives in any misstep, as some overblown reactions to Spotify and Netflix integrations show — Facebook may or may not have lost its handle on our data. But it has definitely lost its handle on the public narrative—and the benefit of the doubt.
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| Nick Statt / The Verge: |
Epic Games is facing lawsuits over Fortnite dance emotes, real-life dance moves used in the game, raising questions about whether dance moves are copyrightable — Epic Games' Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now, but one of its biggest sources of revenue — the ubiquitous dance …
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| Randy Nelson / Sensor Tower Blog: |
Sensor Tower: Apple's App Store had 164 publishers earn their first $1M in 2018, up ~15% YoY, nearly double the 88 on Google Play, which was up 24% YoY — Apple has long led its primary rival in the app economy in terms of monetization on its App Store, consistently generating close to twice … | New York Times: |
JD.com founder and CEO Richard Liu will not be charged with sexual assault following rape allegation in August, prosecutors in Minneapolis say — Richard Liu, the Chinese billionaire accused of rape nearly four months ago by a young Chinese student at the University of Minnesota … | Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch: |
Self-driving car startup Zoox granted the first permit by California to transport passengers in driverless vehicles in the state as part of a pilot program — While more than 60 companies have received permits to test their driverless vehicles in California, Zoox has become the first permitted …
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Gizmodo, Reuters, Silicon Valley Business …, and San Francisco Chronicle
| Bloomberg: |
Google Payment receives an e-money license in Lithuania, enabling it to process payments, issue e-money, and handle electronic money wallets throughout the EU — Google Payment, a company owned by Alphabet Inc., obtained an e-money license in Lithuania, joining a growing number of fintech firms …
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9to5Google
| Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal: |
Chat app Discord has raised a $150M round at a $2.05B valuation and says it now has ~200M users, more than four times what it had a year ago — The company plans to spend $150 million to move into new areas, including selling videogames online — Discord Inc., which makes chat software … | Jon Russell / TechCrunch: |
Sources: SoftBank's Vision Fund is planning to invest $1B in Singapore-based ride-hailing service Grab; source: investment could be as much as $1.5B — SoftBank's Vision Fund is set to continue its recent spree of investments in Asian tech unicorns. The mega fund — which is targeted at $100 billion — is planning| Paul Thurrott / Thurrott: |
Sources: Microsoft is planning to release 4K webcams in 2019, including one with Windows Hello-based authentication and one that is enterprise-focused — It's been several years since Microsoft has released a webcam. But two separate sources tell me that the firm is plotting a return to this market in 2019.
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Windows Central, MSPoweruser, and Neowin
| Sasha Lekach / Mashable: |
Massive school district hack exposes 500,000 people—including students — Thousands of San Diego area students and teachers may be on Christmas break, but that didn't stop the school district from announcing a major data hack Friday. — San Diego Unified School District …
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KNSD-TV, Tom's Guide, and DataBreaches.net
| Sarah Krouse / Wall Street Journal: |
Sprint to pay $300M in a settlement with New York AG for failing to collect $100M+ in state and local taxes between 2005 and 2014 on some of its wireless plans — Carrier didn't collect proper taxes on some wireless plans for nearly a decade, New York attorney general says| Josh Smith / Reuters: |
Woowa Bros, South Korea's largest food delivery startup, raises $320M at a valuation of $2.6B for international expansion and to develop autonomous robots — SEOUL (Reuters) - The operator of South Korea's largest food delivery app has secured a $320 million investment from Hillhouse Capital …
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pulsenews.co.kr, The Spoon, THE INVESTOR, and Wall Street Journal
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