Techmeme
March 5, 2019, 10:55 AM

Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple acquired the patent portfolio of failed smart home security startup Lighthouse AI, including those related to visual authentication, late last year  —  Apple has recently acquired a handful of patents from Lighthouse AI, a defunct home security camera company.
Charlie Savage / New York Times:
Senior GOP congressional aide claims the NSA has shut down a program that collects domestic phone and text records, whose scope was revealed by Snowden in 2013  —  WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has quietly shut down a system that analyzes logs of Americans' domestic calls and texts …
Megan Wollerton / CNET:
August View wireless video doorbell unveiled with 1440p recording, 24/7 live video streaming, and rechargeable battery, available for $230 from March 28  —  August just introduced a new device to its lineup — the $230 August View.  Available in the United States beginning March 28 …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Comedian Miel Bredouw's fight with Barstool Sports after they posted her video without credit shows how Twitter's copyright system can hurt creators  —  “It's insane to me that the platform is allowing them to do this.”  —  Earlier today, Los Angeles-based writer and comedian Miel Bredouw claims …
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Alphabet startup Chronicle launches Backstory, a “Google Photos for network security” that makes network history easy to search and draw insights from  —  It's been a year since Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced a moonshot cybersecurity company called Chronicle.
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Google's 2018 pay equity analysis found that it was underpaying more men than women among software engineers, and it paid $9.7M in adjustments to 10K+ Googlers  —  SAN FRANCISCO — When Google conducted a study recently to determine whether the company was underpaying women and members of minority groups …
Brian Armstrong / The Coinbase Blog:
Following outcry, Coinbase says Neutrino staff members who previously worked at Hacking Team “will transition out of Coinbase”  —  We recently announced the acquisition of Neutrino, a blockchain analytics company.  I'd like to share a bit of the back story on this acquisition, and a decision we've made going forward.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
The servers running social robot Jibo, which had raised ~$76M in total and shipped to the public in 2017 for $899, are being shut down forever  —  RIP, Jibo  —  The servers running Jibo, a connected home robot, are about to be shut down, and the robot has started informing its owners with a bittersweet message.
Ben Collins / NBC News:
On Amazon, a book pushing QAnon conspiracy theories climbs the charts, aided by Amazon's algorithmically generated recommendations  —  The book is currently No. 9 in all books about politics and No. 1 in all books about “Censorship,” one slot ahead of Ray Bradbury's “Farhenheit 451,”
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sources: Microsoft is prioritizing Windows Lite to run on dual-screen devices for new hardware that could launch as early as late 2019  —  Microsoft is making a Chrome OS-like version of Windows  —  Microsoft is preparing a new lightweight version of Windows for dual-screen devices and Chromebook competitors.
Whitson Gordon / iFixit:
Apple's 2018 MacBook Pros Attempt to Solve Flexgate, Without Admitting It Exists  —  In 2018, a number of MacBook Pro users—with models from 2016 onwards—discovered a serious design flaw that causes the screen to fail after repeated opening and closing of the laptop over the course of a few years.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
US mobile bank Chime raises $200M Series D led by DST Global, valuing its business at $1.5B  —  San Francisco-based mobile banking startup Chime announced this morning it has raised an additional $200 million in Series D financing led by DST Global, valuing its business at $1.5 billion.
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Nancy Pelosi says House Democrats plan to unveil legislation to reinstate net neutrality rules that were repealed by the Trump administration in December 2017  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. Congress plan to unveil legislation on Wednesday to reinstate “net neutrality” …
Manish Singh / VentureBeat:
RackTop Systems, which provides network-attached storage products with built-in security and compliance features, raises $15M Series A  —  As companies get more serious about their security and make investments in protecting their networks, wouldn't it make more sense to protect data exactly where it lives and rests: the data centers?
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Roblox tries to make the kid's game safer through a digital civility initiative, moderators, more, after a character was virtually sexually assaulted last year  —  Roblox has more than 80 million monthly players on its Lego-like virtual world platform for teens, and it only takes a few bad apples to ruin the fun.
Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times:
Google and Facebook, a major presence at CPAC last year, were nowhere to be seen this year amid claims of anti-conservative bias on their platforms  —  OXON HILL, Md. — A year ago, attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual jamboree of the political right …
Tweets: @grynbaum
Saqib Shah / Engadget:
Messenger is the first Facebook app to get dark mode, now available on iOS and Android  —  Days after Facebook Messenger's dark mode was outed on Reddit, the social network has made the update official for iOS and Android.  For now, you can only enable it by sending the crescent moon emoji in an existing chat thread or new message.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Facebook has urged users to enable phone number-based 2FA, but the numbers are used in a user lookup feature with no opt out and to target ads, sparking outcry  —  Users are complaining that the phone number Facebook hassled them to use to secure their account with two-factor authentication …

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Earlier Picks

Ryan Gallagher / The Intercept:
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Jon Porter / The Verge:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat: