Techmeme: Report: vulnerability in Marvell's Wi-Fi SoC used in devices like PS4, Xbox One, and Surface laptops lets attackers hijack the device with no user interaction (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)

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Sources: FTC commissioners have met to consider a record fine against Facebook for potentially violating a 2011 consent decree about user privacy — U.S. regulators have met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine against Facebook for violating a legally binding agreement with the government …

Alex Heath / Cheddar:

Sources: Snap fires security chief over secret relationship with a consultant and pushes out his boss, the head of HR, amid multiple departures in recent months — Snap's global security chief has been fired after an internal investigation found that he had an undisclosed relationship …

More: Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, The Hill, and Gizmodo

Tweets: @alexeheath, @alexeheath, @alexeheath, @nycjim, and @alexeheath

Biz Carson / Forbes:

Profile of angel investor and Code.org co-founder Ali Partovi, who now manages Neo, a fund that matches talented young engineers with tech industry veterans — s venture capitalists mingled with members of the Golden State Warriors at a fall 2016 cocktail party, tech investor Ali Partovi scrambled to find something to talk about.

Tweets: @apartovi, @hadip, @forbes, @robot_md, @apartovi, @hkanji, @forbes, and @alexrkonrad. Thanks:@alexrkonrad

David Gelles / New York Times:

Q&A with Hadi Partovi on starting Code.org, working on IE at Microsoft, what he is looking for in startup founders, and teaching computer science in schools — The founder and chief executive of Code.org, who was born in Iran, says computer science is a “foundational skill,” …

Tweets: @dkhos, @hadip, and @levesquepat

Julia Reda:

EU's copyright reform with “link tax” and “upload filters” suffers a setback as 11 member states vote against the proposal, making adoption in May less likely — Today, Council firmly rejected the negotiating mandate that was supposed to set out Member States' position ahead …

More: The Verge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Boing Boing, Techdirt, Search Engine Journal, and TechSpot

Tweets: @eff, @jimmy_wales, and @ambermac

See also Mediagazer

Nicole Perlroth / New York Times:

DNC says in court filing that it was a target of a failed spearphishing campaign after the midterms; researchers: the campaign resembled Russia-linked attacks — SAN FRANCISCO — The Democratic National Committee believes it was targeted in a hacking attempt by a Russian group in the weeks …

More: Axios, Fortune, Engadget, ZDNet, BuzzFeed News, The Register, and Mashable. Tweets: @nicoleperlroth

Paul Hill / Neowin:

Amazon says ~200K SMBs generated $100K+ in sales via Amazon stores in 2018, 50K exceeded $500K, and the number of SMBs that sold $1M+ grew by 20% — Amazon has announced that it has helped more than 50,000 small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) generate more than $500,000 in sales in 2018 …

More: Amazon.com, Inc., ZDNet, PYMNTS.com, and 9to5Toys. Tweets: @shiraovide

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

Report: vulnerability in Marvell's Wi-Fi SoC used in devices like PS4, Xbox One, and Surface laptops lets attackers hijack the device with no user interaction — List of impacted devices includes PS4, Xbox One, Samsung Chromebooks, and Microsoft Surface devices.

More: BleepingComputer

Manish Singh / VentureBeat:

The owner of Reliance Retail, India's biggest retailer, and Jio, a disruptive telecom, announces an online retail platform to compete with Flipkart and Amazon — As Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart scramble for ways to work around the impending new strict ecommerce policy in India …

More: Financial Times, The Financial Express, The Hindu, Livemint, PYMNTS.com, and Bloomberg. Tweets: @rajit_h

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

Max Schrems files GDPR complaints against Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, others for failing to provide required info about data they collect on users — European privacy campaigner Max Schrems has filed a fresh batch of strategic complaints at tech giants, including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Spotify and YouTube.

More: Reuters, 9to5Mac, The Verge, Business Insider, PYMNTS.com, Telegraph, Dark Reading, MacRumors, Cult of Mac, and The Register

Tweets: @noybeu and @baekdal

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

HyperScience, which uses AI to extract structured data from hand-filled and other business forms, raises $30M Series B, bringing its total raised to $50M — HyperScience, the machine learning company that turns human readable data into machine readable data, has today announced the close …

More: FinSMEs

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