Techmeme
December 24, 2019, 7:30 PM

Top News

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Uber says Travis Kalanick, its former CEO, will step down from the company's board of directors effective Dec. 31; Kalanick has sold all of his stock in Uber  —  - Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick is leaving the board effective Dec. 31.  — Kalanick was ousted as CEO in 2017 but remained a director.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Researcher says he was able to match 17M phone numbers to Twitter user accounts by exploiting a flaw in Twitter's Android app, before Twitter blocked his effort  —  A security researcher said he has matched 17 million phone numbers to Twitter user accounts by exploiting a flaw in Twitter's Android app.
Natalie Wexler / MIT Technology Review:
Educators and school administrators love digital devices that studies show mostly have a negative impact on learning, harming lower performing students the most  —  Educators love digital devices, but there's little evidence they help children—especially those who most need help.
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
Twitter blocks animated PNGs, saying a bug had allowed them, and that they did not respect autoplay settings so could be used to harm people sensitive to motion  —  Twitter will no longer animate PNG files after trolls hijacked the Epilepsy Foundation's handle and hashtags last month …
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Many schools in the US, including Syracuse U., track students' phones to monitor class attendance, as some worry it desensitizes students to 24/7 surveillance  —  When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin's Introduction to Information Technologies class …
ProPublica:
Sources show how Amazon repeatedly delayed or scrapped investments in common industry practices like onroad safety training, as it built out its driver network  —  As they prepared for last year's holiday rush, managers at Amazon unveiled a plan to make the company's sprawling delivery network the safest in the world.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Report: APT20, a Chinese government-linked hacking group, has bypassed key fob-enabled 2FA in recent attacks on government orgs and managed service providers  —  Chinese state-sponsored group APT20 has been busy hacking government entities and managed service providers.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Researchers: unpatched flaws in Citrix products leave 80,000+ businesses potentially vulnerable to unauthorized network access; Cisco shares steps to mitigate  —  A newly discovered vulnerability impacting the Citrix Application Delivery Controller (NetScaler ADC) and the Citrix Gateway …
Bloomberg:
Sources: earlier this year, YouTube considered screening all videos for kids under 8 in YouTube Kids but dropped the idea to avoid looking like a media company  —  YouTube spent 2019 answering critics with some of the most drastic changes in its 15-year history.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Bytedance is considering setting up a global headquarters for TikTok outside of China, as part of its effort to shake off its Chinese image  —  Singapore, London and Dublin are among cities being considered; no U.S. city made shortlist  —  Bytedance Inc. is considering setting …
Paddy Baker / CoinDesk:
Hedera Hashgraph, which has raised $100M+ in 2018 ICO, asks investors to wait longer for purchased tokens, to help stabilize their cratering price  —  Hedera Hashgraph, the company behind the blockchain-like Hedera network, is asking investors to wait longer for tokens they paid for, in order to stabilize their cratering price.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Zoho:
Introducing Campus: The digital home for educational institutions  —  Every educational institution needs a place where students, teachers, and administrators can find one another, communicate …
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.
Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Anthropic's IPO Leak, OpenAI's Dots vs. Meta's Muse, Visual Turing Test
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.
Sources:
OpenAI's Dots lead on the future of ChatGPT
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.
Great Chat:
What does the tech industry owe San Francisco?
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.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
David George from a16z
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:30 PM ET, December 24, 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

Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
New York Times:
CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Amy Booth / OneZero:
Dan Primack / Axios: