Techmeme
January 25, 2019, 1:20 PM

Top News

Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Sources: Zuckerberg plans to add end-to-end encryption to Instagram and Messenger and integrate their messaging infrastructure and WhatsApp's by end of the year  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, plans to integrate the social network's messaging services …
Nathan Halverson / Reveal:
Unsealed documents show Facebook orchestrated a multi-year effort that duped children who played video games into spending their parents' money  —  Facebook orchestrated a multi-year effort that duped children and their parents out of money, in some cases hundreds or even thousands of dollars …
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
YouTube says it will no longer suggest videos with “borderline content” or those that “misinform users in a harmful way” even if they don't violate guidelines  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Whether it is a video claiming the earth is flat or the moon landing was faked …
Tom Krazit / GeekWire:
Microsoft acquires Citus Data, which develops an open-source extension for PostgreSQL that turns it into a distributed database  —  Databases continue to be one of the most competitive areas of cloud computing, and Microsoft strengthened its database story Thursday with the acquisition of Citus Data.
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
HMD says it will soon sell its Nokia smartphones through Verizon and Cricket Wireless in US and Rogers in Canada  —  Nokia's parent company, HMD Global, chose to put its US ambitions in the back burner to focus on markets where the brand has been enjoying a resurgence these past few years.
Ryan Whitwam / ExtremeTech:
DeepMind introduces AlphaStar AI, which won 10-1 in a series of StarCraft II matches against professional players  —  Humans tend to think we're adept at the games we create, but computers have proven time and time again that we're just not fast enough to stay on top.
Science:
Study of registered voters in 2016: ~6% of all news consumed on Twitter was fake news, 1% of users were exposed to 80% of it and 0.1% shared 80% thereof  —  There was a proliferation of fake news during the 2016 election cycle.  Grinberg et al. analyzed Twitter data by matching Twitter accounts …
Natasha Singer / New York Times:
Amazon's Rekognition mistakes women as men 19% of the time, and darker-skinned women as men 31% of the time, more than similar services from IBM and Microsoft  —  In new tests, Amazon's system had more difficulty identifying the gender of female and darker-skinned faces than similar services from IBM and Microsoft.
Dan Seifert / The Verge:
HP Spectre Folio review: the unique hinge design and the leather finish are nice but the 16:9 screen feels cramped and the trackpad is horrible  —  The Folio is one of the most unique laptops in years, but it isn't perfect  —  There's nothing really quite like HP's new Spectre Folio.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Robinhood says it will roll out its cryptocurrency trading product in New York in the coming months after NY regulators grant the firm a BitLicense  —  Stock trading startup Robinhood and bitcoin ATM provider LibertyX have become the latest companies to be granted New York's BitLicense.
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:
How resellers are making money from Amazon returns via liquidation sites, like Liquidity Services, which has 3M+ users and generated $626.4M in sales last year  —  Welcome to the abyss of the “reverse supply chain,” where hope springs eternal.  —  With a couple hundred dollars and a few minutes …

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More News

Jordan Novet / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Richard Nieva / CNET:
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Nate Lanxon / Bloomberg: