Techmeme
March 8, 2019, 8:45 AM

Top News

Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News:
Airbnb says it is acquiring discount hotel booking app HotelTonight for an undisclosed sum; HotelTonight was valued at $463M in a March 2017 funding round  —  Airbnb is buying HotelTonight, the San Francisco-based service that lets people book discounted hotel rooms last minute in 40 countries around the world.
Clement Lecigne / Google Online Security Blog:
Google says the Chrome zero-day it patched last week was used with a zero-day impacting Windows 7 32-bit systems and that Microsoft said it's working on a fix  —  On Wednesday, February 27th, we reported two 0-day vulnerabilities — previously publicly-unknown vulnerabilities …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Researchers find unprotected database owned by an email validation company with 150 GB of plaintext marketing data, including 763M unique email addresses  —  Last week, security researchers Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia discovered an unprotected, publicly accessible MongoDB database containing …
Monika Bickert / Facebook:
Facebook will curb vaccine misinformation by reducing the ranking of anti-vaccine Pages and groups, halting recommendations for those pages, rejecting ads, more  —  We are working to tackle vaccine misinformation on Facebook by reducing its distribution and providing people with authoritative information on the topic.
Variety:
Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon have filed to appeal a copyright ruling that increases payouts to songwriters by 44%; sources: Apple not planning to appeal  —  Amazon is filing a separate appeal against the ruling, which would increase writer rates by nearly 50%.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Microsoft rolls out new Skype for Web with HD video calling, built-in call recording, and redesigned notifications  —  Hate installing Skype?  Good news: Microsoft's revamping the messaging app's browser-based client with a slew of new features.  The Seattle company today announced the rollout …
Daniel Cooper / Engadget:
Sony launches PS4 Remote Play app for iOS, four and a half years after it first landed on Android and three years after it arrived on PC and Mac  —  The latest update to the PlayStation 4 operating system has a feature that some users have craved since 2014.
BBC:
Facebook says it has removed 23 Pages, 74 accounts, 5 Groups, and 35 Instagram accounts that were part of a UK-based, domestic-focused misinformation network  —  Facebook has removed more than 130 accounts, pages and groups it says were part of a UK-based misinformation network.
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook:
A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking  —  My focus for the last couple of years has been understanding and addressing the biggest challenges facing Facebook.  This means taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the internet.  In this note, I'll outline our vision …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:

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Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Kimberly Adams / Marketplace:
CNN:
Tom McNamara / CNET: