Techmeme
October 15, 2019, 3:50 AM

Top News

Daniel Lippman / Politico:
Sources: Zuckerberg recently hosted off-the-record dinners with conservative figures like Tucker Carlson and Lindsey Graham to discuss free speech, partnerships  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hosting informal talks and small, off-the-record dinners with conservative journalists …
Mohit Kumar / The Hacker News:
A flaw in Sudo, which is installed on almost every Linux OS, could let users run commands as “root” even when they are restricted; patched version now available  —  Attention Linux Users!  —  A vulnerability has been discovered in Sudo—one of the most important, powerful …
Reuters:
Libra loses Booking Holdings' support, but continues with association draft laws at Geneva meeting, appoints members from a16z, Xapo, PayU, more to its board  —  LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Backers of Facebook Inc's (FB.O) Libra cryptocurrency project pledged to forge ahead after selecting …
Rene Ritchie / iMore:
Apple says its Tencent partnership to flag malicious sites for Safari users only applies to mainland China; hashes of URL prefixes and IP addresses are shared  —  Apple and China have a complicated relationship and situation that's exploded in the news over the last week.  (Much more on that in a future column.)
VICE:
Pornhub removes Girls Do Porn, months after a lawsuit by 22 women and days after the channel's owners and staff were charged with federal sex trafficking counts  —  After months of knowingly working with porn production company that was accused of lying to women, Pornhub finally removes its official page from its platform.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft is testing content filters for messages on Xbox Live to block toxicity, initially with four levels of text-based filtering; voice filters are planned  —  Microsoft is starting to test new content filters for its Xbox Live messaging system today in an effort to thwart toxicity on its platform.
Washington Post:
Docs and interviews show that ~44 US universities work with outside companies to data mine and rank prospective students, including tracking their web activity  —  Before many schools even look at an application, they comb through prospective students' personal data, such as web-browsing habits and financial history
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook should ban political ads and let candidates communicate via their pages since it doesn't need the money and doesn't want to police political speech  —  Permitting falsehood in political advertising would work if we had a model democracy, but we don't.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Microsoft Defender's Tamper Protection antivirus feature hits general availability and will be enabled by default for all users in the coming weeks  —  Tamper Protection prevents malware from disabling Windows Defender features.  —  Today, Microsoft announced the general availability …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft debuts the preview of its Project xCloud game streaming service for Xbox users in the US, UK, and Korea, initially with four games for Android devices  —  Available in the US, UK, and Korea initially  —  Microsoft is officially launching its Project xCloud preview today for Xbox users in the US, UK, and Korea.
Riley MacLeod / Kotaku:
Fortnite has been down for over a day, as players speculate about what's next after having their maps sucked into a black hole, following the Season 10 event  —  After weeks of anticipation, Fortnite's big Season 10 event happened.  Was the wait worth it?  Yes.

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