Techmeme: Inside the collapse of Quadriga crypto exchange, as law enforcement, accountants, and Reddit sleuths try to figure out if it was a legit operation or a scam (Nathaniel Rich/Vanity Fair)

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November 24, 2019, 6:10 PM

Top News

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian / ICIJ:

Leaked Chinese government documents reveal the mechanics of running mass detention camps in Xinjiang using mass surveillance and predictive policing — A new leak of highly classified Chinese government documents has uncovered the operations manual for running the mass detention camps …

More: BBC and Financial Times

Tweets: @ryanfduffy, @amybwang, @bethanyallenebr, @dannyboycrump, and @icijorg

Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:

White nationalist outlets including VDare and Red Ice TV still operate on Facebook despite its ban on white nationalism; Facebook says it is investigating — Guardian analysis finds VDare and Red Ice TV among several outlets that are still on the platform despite Facebook's promised ban

Tweets: @juliacarriew, @juliacarriew, @loisbeckett, @slpng_giants, @schemaly, @peterme, @lukeobrien, @acvalens, @juliacarriew, @adamserwer, @carolecadwalla, @postwait, @slpng_giants, @juliacarriew, @juliacarriew, @juliacarriew, @juliacarriew, and @juliacarriew

See also Mediagazer

Chris Stokel-Walker / Increment:

A look at the team behind VLC, which started as a student-run project in 1996 that is now part of a nonprofit with a for-profit consultancy managed by ~10 staff — How a group of university students transformed a school project into a media-player mainstay. — Teams

Tweets: @davezatz and @incrementmag

Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:

A former Facebook employee who was embedded with the 2016 Trump campaign details how he leveraged Facebook's ad-targeting tools and products to help them win — James Barnes is now focused on using digital-ad strategies to try to get Trump out of office — After the 2016 presidential election …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @natesilver538, @noahshachtman, @keithboykin, @antoniogm, @adamsinger, @nickgillespie, @blakehounshell, @govhowarddean, @b52malmet, @jessekellydc, @jason_kint, @jonathanalter, @counternotions, @four4thefire, @slpng_giants, and @adamserwer

Ava Kofman / ProPublica:

ProPublica claims to have found 57 unlabeled state-sponsored channels on YouTube; after presented with a list, YouTube labeled only 35 of them as such — ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.

Tweets: @propublica and @moonalice

Nathaniel Rich / Vanity Fair:

Inside the collapse of Quadriga crypto exchange, as law enforcement, accountants, and Reddit sleuths try to figure out if it was a legit operation or a scam — When Canadian blockchain whiz Gerald Cotten died unexpectedly last year, hundreds of millions of dollars in investor funds vanished into the crypto ether.

More: The only cryptocurrency …. Tweets: @reformedbroker, @mpelletiercio, @adamsinger, @andymukherjee70, and @morganhousel

Nick Heath / TechRepublic:

Interview with Stephen Wolfram about the future of Wolfram|Alpha, how programming needs to evolve, Wolfram Language as a “computational language”, and more — The brains behind Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language talks about how programming languages need to develop.

Tweets: @techrepublic and @techrepublic

Joseph Cox / VICE:

Sources: authorities have arrested an alleged member of The Chuckling Squad, the group that hacked Jack Dorsey's Twitter account in August — The alleged member was arrested around two weeks ago, another member of the hacking group told Motherboard. - Authorities have arrested an individual …

More: Engadget, Business Insider, Axios, and DataBreaches.net

Tweets: @josephfcox and @fizzily1

Cory Weinberg / The Information:

Source: Airbnb lost about $100M in Q2 2019, compared to the profit of $10M it made a year ago — Airbnb lost about $100 million before interest and taxes in the second quarter this year, a big swing from the profit of $10 million it made in the year-earlier period, according to financial information viewed by The Information.

Tweets: @coryweinberg, @modestproposal1, @edbott, and @eliotwb

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturns a lower-court order that required the suspect in a child-porn case to turn over the password to his computer — Prosecutors say forced disclosure permitted by “foregone conclusion.” Justices disagree. — The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution bars people …

Samanth Subramanian / The Guardian:

As we shop more online and think less about how our purchases reach our homes, a look at how our home delivery habit is reshaping the physical world — The great trick of online retail has been to get us to shop more and think less about how our purchases reach our homes. By Samanth Subramanian

Tweets: @frankpasquale, @kinsale42, @sajithpai, and @mishdalton

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:

A look at the Legal Aid Society of New York City's efforts to close the tech gap between public defenders and law enforcement with respect to digital forensics — Public defenders lack access to gadgets and software that could keep their clients out of jail. — On April 27, a woman in eastern Brooklyn called the police.

Tweets: @kashhill, @nytimesbusiness, @byrontau, @amelia_acker, @sushantsin, @geomblog, @nytimes, and @tmluongo

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The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Stephen Battaglio / Los Angeles Times:

60 Minutes' 59th season will debut September 13 with an in-depth look at the LA Rams, the first edition of the remade show under Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton

Mark Sweney / The Guardian:

Sources: Channel 4 is set to cut about 300 jobs, around a quarter of its staff, in its biggest round of layoffs as it seeks to limit cuts to the content budget

Anthony D'Alessandro / Deadline:

Rentrak: US summer 2026 box office revenue hit a record $4.76B, beating 2013's record, with each of the four months topping $1B for the first time

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More News

Michael Kwet / VICE:

Inside Vumacam's plans to build a network of AI-powered CCTV cameras across South Africa in areas where people of color are already disproportionately targeted

Tweets: @veauxdevillian, @tshegofatso_tm, @phat_controller, and @leahk28

Susan D'Agostino / Quanta Magazine:

Barbara Liskov, a Turing Award winner who invented some key principles of object-oriented programming, on what it takes a woman to get to the top of CS field

Tweets: @codeorg, @le_rond, @danlizotte, @quantamagazine, @rsukumar, @quantamagazine, @rubenverborgh, @quantamagazine, and @quantamagazine

Rachel Metz / CNN:

How facial analysis software that classifies gender misidentifies trans and non-binary people, is inaccurate with people of color, and could harm these groups

More: The Machinocene Review

Alexandra Witze / Nature:

Experts say ITU's newly agreed 5G radio-frequency standards will interfere with weather satellite readings of water vapor, impacting weather forecasts worldwide

More: Digital Trends, Washington Post, Science, WebProNews, and The Verge

Tweets: @flor_enthus, @alexwitze, @alexwitze, @mikamckinnon, and @alexwitze

Natalie Jarvey / Hollywood Reporter:

Inside Spotify's plan to dominate audio by spending hundreds of millions on exclusive podcasts and recruiting Jordan Peele, Mark Wahlberg and the Obamas

More: Tubefilter. Tweets: @john, @jimprosser, @thr, and @trengriffin

Tarleton Gillespie / Slate:

Every ad, political or commercial, should reveal its provenance, and all advertisers should stand by their ads and be held accountable for them

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation. Tweets: @bowlinearl and @frankpasquale

Earlier Picks

Ernie Smith / VICE:

As Slack gets criticism from power users for its WYSIWYG editor and plans an option to revert, a look at the history of Markdown, used by Slack's old interface

Tweets: @alexislloyd, @vice, @artemr, @shortformernie, @katienotopoulos, @carnage4life, and @wongmjane

Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire:

Amazon filed its formal protest over JEDI on Friday, citing a Fox News segment and a Trump rally as evidence of improper political pressure from the White House

More: Washington Post, CNET, Mashable, Vox, SiliconANGLE, Axios, and Fortune

Tweets: @paulkrugman, @megawatts55, and @keithboykin. Thanks:@taylor_soper

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:

About 200 Googlers protest placing of two of their colleagues on administrative leave over the actions they took opposing some of Google management's decisions

More: Engadget, CNET, Vox, Fast Company, OneZero, Forbes, Gizmodo, and VentureBeat. Tweets: @josheidelson

Queenie Wong / CNET:

Facebook built a now discontinued internal app, report says between 2015 and 2016, that let employees identify colleagues and friends via facial recognition

Source: Business Insider. More: Engadget, MSPoweruser, VentureBeat, Mashable, and Seeking Alpha

Tweets: @robaeprice, @hodgesmr, @saradannerdukic, @fchollet, @tonyromm, @pauldokas, @xeni, @jkarsh, @dtunkelang, @coreen_anne, @brooklynmarie, @robaeprice, @robaeprice, @clarajeffery, and @oknox

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

FCC bans carriers from using federal subsidies to buy equipment from Huawei and ZTE, considers ordering subsidy recipients to replace current Chinese equipment

More: WebProNews, Federal Communications …, International Business Times, Reuters, MSPoweruser, Ars Technica, Washington Post, Android Authority, TechCrunch, CRN, PCMag, Telecompaper, MacDailyNews, Light Reading, Light Reading, and Seeking Alpha

Tweets: @repjimbanks, @sentedcruz, and @fcc