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December 21, 2018, 6:25 PM
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| Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters: |
Sources describe how Amazon's efforts to make Alexa a better communicator through its Alexa Prize competition led to a hack and chats about sex and murder — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Millions of users of Amazon's Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa … | Will Oremus / Slate: |
Facebook has forfeited our trust to the point that we see nefarious motives in any misstep, as some overblown reactions to Spotify and Netflix integrations show — Facebook may or may not have lost its handle on our data. But it has definitely lost its handle on the public narrative—and the benefit of the doubt.
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Columbia Journalism Review, Techdirt, Techonomy, Washington Post, Vox, The Parallax, BestVPN.com, Motherboard, The Guardian, Infosecurity.US, NPR, InvestorPlace, Adweek, CNBC, and TidBITS
Tweets: @netflix, @mathewi, @zittrain, @zittrain, @zittrain, @willoremus, @kylepope, @bigalittlea, @benadida, @facebook, @matthewstoller, and @vickerysec
| Nick Statt / The Verge: |
Epic Games is facing lawsuits over Fortnite dance emotes, real-life dance moves used in the game, raising questions about whether dance moves are copyrightable — Epic Games' Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now, but one of its biggest sources of revenue — the ubiquitous dance …
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Tweets: @mathewi, @fortninety, @mattmcgee, @alancayce, @nickstatt, @undoomed, and @eugenewei
| Randy Nelson / Sensor Tower Blog: |
Sensor Tower: Apple's App Store had 164 publishers earn their first $1M in 2018, up ~15% YoY, nearly double the 88 on Google Play, which was up 24% YoY — Apple has long led its primary rival in the app economy in terms of monetization on its App Store, consistently generating close to twice … | Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: |
Blind, an anonymous chat app used by staff at companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Uber, left one database server exposed from Nov. 1 to Dec. 19 — One of the company's servers was exposed without a password for weeks. — Thousands of people trusted Blind, an app-based …
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Engadget, Mashable, AppleInsider, Gizmodo, archive.li, and Notes from Silicon Valley
Tweets: @zackwhittaker, @tayhatmaker, @imeluny, @tayhatmaker, @alevskey, @carnage4life, @martinsfp, @dangillmor, and @caseynewton
| Bloomberg: |
Google Payment receives an e-money license in Lithuania, enabling it to process payments, issue e-money, and handle electronic money wallets throughout the EU — Google Payment, a company owned by Alphabet Inc., obtained an e-money license in Lithuania, joining a growing number of fintech firms …
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| Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal: |
Chat app Discord has raised a $150M round at a $2.05B valuation and says it now has ~200M users, more than four times what it had a year ago — The company plans to spend $150 million to move into new areas, including selling videogames online — Discord Inc., which makes chat software … | Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News: |
Indian government downplays its order that seemingly authorizes 10 government agencies to monitor, intercept, and decrypt data on all computers in the country — India's Ministry of Home Affairs, a federal government authority that controls the country's internal security …
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VentureBeat, The Hindu, Times of India, The Indian Express, NDTV Gadgets 360, Livemint, The Wire, News18, The Hindu, Firstpost, MediaNama, and Firstpost
| New York Times: |
JD.com founder and CEO Richard Liu will not be charged with sexual assault following rape allegation in August, prosecutors in Minneapolis say — Richard Liu, the Chinese billionaire accused of rape nearly four months ago by a young Chinese student at the University of Minnesota … | Bloomberg: |
Sources: Facebook is developing a stablecoin for money transfers on WhatsApp, focusing first on the remittances market in India — - First focus will be on remittance market in India, people say — Social network is still working out its blockchain strategy
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BREAKER, TechCrunch, The Verge, NullTX, ETHNews, Engadget, Fast Company, Thurrott, PaymentsSource, CNBC, The Daily Hodl, TechSpot, Decrypt Media, Neowin, Mashable, The Block, IT PRO, NewsBTC, CoinSpeaker, Telegraph, Bitcoinist.com, MIT Technology Review, PYMNTS.com, SiliconANGLE, CNET, iPhone in Canada Blog, The Next Web, CoinGeek, CryptoGlobe, Gizmodo, CoinDesk, Fossbytes, SludgeFeed, Business Insider, and 9to5Mac
Tweets: @cz_binance, @sirajraval, @mbtcpizpie, @sassal0x, @brianmcc, and @crypto_bobby
| South China Morning Post: |
China is resuming video game approvals after a nine-month freeze; China's gaming industry expected to have its slowest growth this year in at least a decade — - Amid the regulatory hiatus, China's gaming industry suffered its slowest growth in at least a decade
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Reuters, TechCrunch, Engadget, Gamasutra, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, GamesIndustry.biz, and Bloomberg
| Josh Smith / Reuters: |
Woowa Bros, South Korea's largest food delivery startup, raises $320M at a valuation of $2.6B for international expansion and to develop autonomous robots — SEOUL (Reuters) - The operator of South Korea's largest food delivery app has secured a $320 million investment from Hillhouse Capital …
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Wall Street Journal, pulsenews.co.kr, The Spoon, and THE INVESTOR
| Sarah Krouse / Wall Street Journal: |
Sprint to pay $300M in a settlement with New York AG for failing to collect $100M+ in state and local taxes between 2005 and 2014 on some of its wireless plans — Carrier didn't collect proper taxes on some wireless plans for nearly a decade, New York attorney general saysSponsor Posts
Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model — Gemini 2.5 Pro is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy. Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
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UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future — Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future — Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
Pay bosses in units of purpose — On average, it takes just 14 seconds for candidates to decide whether to apply for a job. How can you craft job descriptions that truly connect — from entry-level to C-suite?
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IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.Featured Podcasts
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