Techmeme: Survey of 5,844 US college students finds 89% at least got some news from social media weekly, with 71% getting news from Facebook and 55% from Snapchat (Mallory Locklear/Engadget)

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Fred Wilson / AVC:

Recent news serves as a reminder that operators in startups and venture capital should work to ensure their investors are not bad actors — I got an email from the CEO of one of our portfolio companies last week. — It asked a very basic question, but one that I don't recall being asked before:

Tweets: @gaberivera, @anildash, @bznotes, @avyfain, @saraashleyo, @aliasaria, @evanwolf, @semil, @nitashatiku, @bobbierman, @mdudas, @semil, and @austinfish

The Information:

Sources: Facebook is stepping up efforts to buy a major cybersecurity firm and has approached several companies about an acquisition — In an effort to repair its tattered reputation around data protection, Facebook is stepping up efforts to acquire a major cybersecurity firm, according to four people familiar with the matter.

More: Silicon Republic, Fortune, SiliconANGLE, Engadget, CNET, and Firstpost

Tweets: @amir, @joshconstine, @coryweinberg, and @zackwhittaker

Haaretz:

An in-depth look at how Israel became a leading exporter of tools for oppressive regimes to spy on activists' and dissidents' communications — Haaretz investigation spanning 100 sources in 15 countries reveals Israel has become a leading exporter of tools for spying on civilians.

More: Middle East Eye. Tweets: @haaretzcom, @barrettbrown_, @haaretzcom, and @mairavz. Thanks:@cremnob

Mallory Locklear / Engadget:

Survey of 5,844 US college students finds 89% at least got some news from social media weekly, with 71% getting news from Facebook and 55% from Snapchat — A number of studies have shown that people turn to social media for news, and of all of the social networks out there, Facebook consistently leads the pack in this regard.

More: Forbes, Project Information Literacy, Beyond Search, Poynter, Nieman Lab, Inside Higher Ed, and Nieman Reports

Tweets: @wendybrandes, @poynter, @knightfdn, @spj_tweets, @scoberson, @bethfrancesco, and @h0d3r

Edmund Lee / New York Times:

Netflix says it will spend $18.6B on content, and forecasts $3B negative cash flow for 2018 and 2019, judging that aggressive spending leads to more subscribers — The streaming service surprised Wall Street with huge gains in subscribers in the third quarter.

Tweets: @vijayshekhar

Nathaniel Popper / New York Times:

How projects like Ocean Protocol, Oasis, Enigma, and SingularityNET use blockchain for AI research hoping to curb the dominance of big tech in the field — SAN FRANCISCO — Pairing artificial intelligence and the blockchain might be what you would expect from a scammer looking to make a quick buck in 2018.

David Pierini / Cult of Mac:

Profile of YouTuber Scotty Allen, who rose to fame last year after he built an iPhone from scratch by using parts he bought from public markets in Shenzhen — Millions have watched Scotty Allen build an iPhone from parts mined from the electronics markets of Shenzhen, China.

Brian Barrett / Wired:

Google says it will open source the firmware for Titan M, the secure chip in Pixel 3 phones that handles Verified Boot and has its own isolated storage and RAM — THE GOOGLE PIXEL 3 has all the betterments you would expect from a flashy flagship smartphone: great camera, zippy processor, smarter AI.

Tweets: @wired

Rita Katz / Wired:

Research shows ISIS and al-Qaeda have shifted away from YouTube for disseminating propaganda following the platform's 2017 crackdown against extremist content — BEFORE MOST PEOPLE even knew that terrorist outreach was happening online, YouTube was a top recruitment venue for jihadi terrorist groups.

Tweets: @rita_katz and @shereeny

Oliver Staley / Quartz:

Profile of Symphony, a secure messaging app for financial industry that also lets bots at different institutions talk to each other and settle trades — For almost 40 years, Bloomberg has been an unescapable fact of life in the financial world. — Older than the internet …

Robert Hackett / Fortune:

dYdX, a startup that develops decentralized financial derivative products on Ethereum blockchain, raises $10M Series A led by a16z crypto and Polychain Capital — A startup called dYdX has raised $10 million in funding from investors to develop financial software that allows people …

More: CryptoGlobe, dydxprotocol, and SludgeFeed. Tweets: @tochryp

Bloomberg:

Source: Plaid, which makes tools to let clients like Venmo and Coinbase authenticate accounts and check balances, is raising $200M at a valuation of up to $3B — Plaid Technologies Inc. is in talks to raise $200 million and the valuation of the deal is rising as venture investors vie to bankroll the startup.

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