Techmeme
January 17, 2019, 6:25 PM

Top News

Paul Lamkin / Wareable:
Google to buy Fossil's smartwatch IP, which Fossil developed following its acquisition of Misfit in 2015, for $40M  —  New smartwatch innovation is promised from the big deal  —  The Fossil Group and Google have exclusively revealed to Wareable that Google will pay Fossil $40 million …
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Facebook says it will ask its employees to take down their reviews of Portal devices on Amazon after three employees were caught leaving 5-star reviews  —  Whoops  —  Facebook's Portal smart displays have had an uphill battle, trying to convince people to willingly give …
Nathaniel Gleicher / Facebook:
Facebook takes down 315 Pages, 152 accounts, 4 Groups, and 41 Instagram accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” originating in Russia  —  Today we removed multiple Pages, groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.
Tim Cook / TIME:
Tim Cook, in an op-ed, asks Congress to pass privacy legislation and the FTC to create a data-broker clearinghouse so users can track and control their data  —  We all deserve control over our digital lives.  That's why we must rein in the data brokers  —  In 2019, it's time to stand …
Sara Salinas / CNBC:
Netflix reports mixed Q4 earnings, with revenue of $4.19B vs. $4.21B est., says it added 8.8M global paid memberships, up from its estimate of 7.6M  —  - The company beat Wall Street estimates for earnings per share, but fell just below projections for revenue.
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Netflix estimates it accounts for 10% of US TV screen time, shares audience numbers for some movies and TV shows, such as Bird Box's audience of 80M households  —  The streaming service says it now accounts for 10 percent of TV viewing time.  —  Netflix has more than 130 million customers watching its TV shows and movies.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter says a bug led to the “Protect your Tweets” setting being disabled for some Android users for almost five years, making their tweets public  —  Twitter accidentally revealed some users' “protected” (aka, private) tweets, the company disclosed this afternoon.
Ashley Feinberg / HuffPost:
A disorienting interview with Jack Dorsey on his Myanmar tweets, right-wing extremism, and what he'd do if Trump called on his followers to murder journalists  —  A Q&A with Twitter's CEO on right-wing extremism, Candace Owens, and what he'd do if the president called on his followers to murder journalists.
Brian Barrett / Wired:
“Collection #1” database, which claims to contain records of ~773M unique email addresses and 21M passwords, some of them hashed, shows up on the web  —  THERE ARE BREACHES, and there are megabreaches, and there's Equifax.  But a newly revealed trove of leaked data tops …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
In an internal post, Sophie Alpert, a Facebook manager who oversaw React, says she quit after being harassed for criticizing Facebook's lack of diversity  —  - A Facebook engineering manager who ran an open-source project left earlier this month after being harassed by her colleagues.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Atlassian beats with Q2 revenue of $299M, up 39% YoY, and subscription revenue of $152.5M vs. $150M estimated by analysts; stock up 9%+ after hours  —  Atlassian shares rose more than 10 percent in extended trading on Thursday after the provider of collaboration software reported better …
More: Atlassian
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Houseparty says the popular mobile game Heads Up will now be available inside its app with “packs” of words costing $0.99 or more  —  Building an ad-free social network through shared experiences  —  Houseparty, the group video chat that has carved out a niche among a segment …
More: Mashable
Christina Farr / CNBC:
Vic Gundotra steps down as CEO of AliveCor but will remain on the board, which is expected to announce a replacement from within the company in the coming weeks  —  - Former Google SVP Vic Gundotra has stepped down from his role as the CEO of AliveCor for personal reasons.

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Earlier Picks

The Seattle Times:
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nick Summers / Engadget:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: