Techmeme
December 21, 2019, 5:10 PM

Top News

Davey Alba / New York Times:
Facebook and Twitter shut down a network of fake accounts using AI-generated faces to “masquerade” as Americans; Facebook links the network to Epoch Media Group  —  Researchers said the profiles, linked to the Epoch Media Group, used photos generated by artificial intelligence in a preview of an …
Reuters:
US Navy bans TikTok from government-issued mobile devices citing a cybersecurity threat, will block devices with the app from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet  —  (Reuters) - Earlier this week the United States Navy banned the social media app TikTok from government-issued mobile devices …
Sarah Nassauer / Wall Street Journal:
The Verge:
During T-Mobile-Sprint merger trial, the key arguments of both T-Mobile and merger-opposing AGs seemed to rest on whether Dish can create a viable competitor  —  For two weeks now, the future of the American mobile broadband industry has hinged on a small courtroom in lower Manhattan …
New York Times:
Reporters identified a Secret Service agent, his home address, family details, and tracked Trump's movements using the leaked dataset obtained by the NYT  —  IF YOU OWN A MOBILE PHONE, its every move is logged and tracked by dozens of companies.  No one is beyond the reach of this constant digital surveillance.
Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:
Sources detail FBI's IDLE program to help companies fight data theft by deploying decoy data to hide real data from hackers and insider threats  —  Newly surfaced doc outlines FBI's IDLE program—which teases thieves with “decoy data.”  —  The Federal Bureau of Investigations is in many ways …
Madeline Berg / Forbes:
Forbes estimates that the highest paid YouTube star of 2019 is Ryan Kaji, an eight-year-old with 23M subscribers, who has earned $26M this year  —  Anastasia Radzinskaya is an unlikely media star.  Born in southern Russia with cerebral palsy, her doctors feared she would never be able to speak.
Karen Weise / New York Times:
Interviews with current and former staff, sellers, and suppliers on how Amazon dictates and unpredictably changes rules, punishes and threatens businesses  —  Twenty years ago, Amazon opened its storefront to anyone who wanted to sell something.  Then it began demanding more out of them.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Profile of Cliff Stoll, whose memoir The Cuckoo's Egg, which traces the first known case of state-sponsored hacking, inspired a generation of cybersecurity pros  —  Thirty years ago, Cliff Stoll published The Cuckoo's Egg, a book about his cat-and-mouse game with a KGB-sponsored hacker.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Update on Node.js vulnerabilities CVE-2026-111497, CVE-2026-105482, CVE-2026-105483 and CVE-2026-106069  —  Overview On October 21, 2026, Node.js announced security releases for the 26.x, 24.x and 22.x release lines to fix multiple vulnerabilities.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Sources:
Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:10 PM ET, December 21, 2019.

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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Fortune:
Kim Lyons / The Verge: