Techmeme
December 20, 2019, 10:20 PM

Top News

Davey Alba / New York Times:
Facebook and Twitter shut down a network of fake accounts using AI-generated faces to “masquerade” as Americans; Facebook links the network to Epoch Media Group  —  Researchers said the profiles, linked to the Epoch Media Group, used photos generated by artificial intelligence in a preview of an …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple has a secret team of ~12 engineers working on satellites and related wireless tech to beam data directly to its devices  —  Apple Inc. has a secret team working on satellites and related wireless technology, striving to find new ways to beam data such as internet connectivity directly …
Fortune:
Ripple raises $200M Series C led by global investment firm Tetragon at a $10B valuation  —  Ripple, a San Francisco-based company that uses cryptocurrency to move money across borders, announced a massive funding round on Thursday that values the company at $10 billion.
New York Times:
Reporters identified a Secret Service agent, his home address, family details, and tracked Trump's movements using the leaked dataset obtained by the NYT  —  IF YOU OWN A MOBILE PHONE, its every move is logged and tracked by dozens of companies.  No one is beyond the reach of this constant digital surveillance.
New York Times:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Sources: NBC's Peacock to integrate NBC News Now, have a free, limited-content tier, a limited-ads tier for $5/month, and an ad-free tier for $10/month  —  - NBCUniversal is looking to differentiate its streaming service Peacock from rivals through its pricing structure and user interface.
The Economic Times:
SoftBank Vision Fund 2 invests $231M in India-based eyewear ecommerce startup Lenskart's Series G, sources say at a valuation of $1.5B  —  The transaction values company at about $1.5 billion post the investment  —  SoftBank has invested about $231 million (Rs 1,645 crore) …
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
France's competition authority fines Google €150M for mistreating advertisers by suspending them on its search engine in a random and unjustified fashion  —  Google has been accused of suspending keyword advertisers on its search engine in a random and unjustified fashion
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Profile of Cliff Stoll, whose memoir The Cuckoo's Egg, which traces the first known case of state-sponsored hacking, inspired a generation of cybersecurity pros  —  Thirty years ago, Cliff Stoll published The Cuckoo's Egg, a book about his cat-and-mouse game with a KGB-sponsored hacker.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Passkeys Week for a passwordless future: Learn how Zoho is embracing passkeys  —  Passkeys are the modern-day alternative authentication method that was introduced to replace traditional passwords for enhanced security and convenience.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 11/18 - More Smartglasses On The Horizon
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:20 PM ET, December 20, 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

Earlier Picks

Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: