Techmeme
December 22, 2018, 7:00 PM

Top News

Slack:
Slack apologizes, says it has restored access to most of the accounts it has mistakenly blocked while trying to comply with US trade sanctions  —  Two days ago, we updated our system for applying location information to comply with U.S. trade embargoes and economic sanctions regulations.
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
A timeline of Facebook's scandals in 2018 lists 31 entries, showing the company faced a major problem, on average, every 12 days this year  —  Mark Zuckerberg began the year promising that he would fix Facebook.  He didn't, and 2018 has only presented more problems.
Will Oremus / Slate:
Facebook has forfeited trust to the point that people 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.
Owen Williams / Charged:
As social media becomes ever more toxic, Fortnite has become the new social network and a place to hangout where you go to talk to friends  —  I've played a lot of Fortnite this year, and I was struggling to understand why I liked the game so much.  It's fun to play, but usually I get bored …
KNSD-TV:
The San Diego Unified School District says a phishing attack exposed personal info of 500K+ students and staff, including full names, addresses, SSNs, and more  —  Student records from 2008 up to the present are impacted, district officials told NBC 7  —  500K Student Records Compromised in SDUSD Data Breach
Washington Post:
Facebook suspends five accounts, including one belonging to the head of research firm New Knowledge, for spreading disinformation during Alabama Senate race  —  Facebook has suspended Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of a top social-media research firm, after reports that he and others engaged …
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 …
MIT Technology Review:
How Shenzhen-based companies are branching out from making just hardware to making sophisticated products that combine hardware with software and AI  —  Shenzhen flooded the world with cheap gadgets.  Can it now become what Silicon Valley never did—a global hub of innovation, entrepreneurship, and manufacturing?

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Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder & CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js)
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Why COULDN'T Apple Make An iPhone In The US?
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Derek Thompson (Writer, The Atlantic) and Zach Weinberg (Co-founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) Discuss the Tariff Withdrawal and America's Future
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
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Why DOGE is killing the agency that keeps banks from ripping you off
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
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Nick Statt / The Verge: