Techmeme
November 23, 2020, 7:30 PM

Top News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Snap announces Spotlight, a vertically scrollable TikTok-like feed inside Snapchat, and will pay $1M every day to users who create the top Snaps through 2020  —  After taking on TikTok with music-powered features last month, Snapchat this morning is officially launching a dedicated place within …
Sue Dremann / Palo Alto Online:
Apple's head of global security Thomas Moyer indicted for trying to bribe Santa Clara sheriff's office with 200 iPads in return for concealed firearm permits  —  Defendants include Sheriff Laurie Smith's second-in-command  —  Four people, including top brass in the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office …
Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:
Internal reports detail how Amazon tracks labor, environmental movements in EU; Amazon confirms hiring union-busting Pinkerton agency to spy on warehouse staff  —  Dozens of leaked documents from Amazon's Global Security Operations Center reveal the company's reliance on Pinkerton operatives …
Bernard Meyer / CyberNews:
Researchers find actively-exploited backdoors in low-cost Jetstream and Wavlink routers sold at Walmart, Amazon, and eBay  —  In a collaboration between CyberNews Sr. Information Security Researcher , Mantas Sasnauskas and researchers James Clee and Roni Carta, suspicious backdoors …
New York Times:
A look at Sugon, a Chinese company at the heart of the country's surveillance efforts, and how it uses Intel and Nvidia chips to analyze video feeds at scale  —  Intel and Nvidia chips power a supercomputing center that tracks people in a place where government suppresses minorities …
Financial Times:
Sources: Facebook's charm offensive to repair ties with Biden's administration includes News Feed vaccine promotion and relying on Nick Clegg to mend relations  —  Social media giant to roll out vaccine promotion and give higher profile to Nick Clegg  —  Facebook is plotting a charm offensive …
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Last month Intel quietly shut down Intel Studios, its 10,000-square-foot AR/VR volumetric capture stage in LA that opened in 2018  —  Intel has pulled the plug on one of its most ambitious AR/VR projects to date: The company quietly shut down Intel Studios, a 10,000-square-foot volumetric capture stage in Los Angeles, last month.
Tina Bellon / Reuters:
Uber and Lyft awarded a federal contract by the GSA, estimated to be worth up to $810M over five years, to offer ride-sharing services to public agency workers  —  (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc have been awarded a federal contract worth up to $810 million to offer …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google Pay will no longer support send/receive money functionality from web app, starting January 2021, also adds 1.5% fee on instant transfers via debit card  —  The new Google Pay app brings a ton of new functionality and makes some big promises, but it also has a couple of big caveats that weren't widely known on launch day.
New York Times:
As bots plague everything from Tinder to Twitter, a look at how generative adversarial networks create images and videos of fake people, sold on many websites  —  There are now businesses that sell fake people.  On the website Generated.Photos, you can buy a “unique, worry-free” fake person for $2.99, or 1,000 people for $1,000.

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