Techmeme
December 27, 2017, 12:00 PM

Top News

Amazon.com:
During record-breaking holiday, Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa remote were #1 and #2 top sellers with “tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices” sold  —  Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote were the #1 and #2 top-selling products across all categories on Amazon
Samuel Axon / Ars Technica:
iPhone X's Face ID inexplicably can't approve family purchases as Touch ID could, requiring users to enter their passwords  —  Touch ID could be used before, but iPhone X owners must enter their passwords.  —  iPhone X owners have found that Face ID isn't available as an authentication method for the …
Rick Webb / NewCo Shift:
The vision of internet pioneers that a globally connected, transparent world with free access to information is inevitably good turned out to be wrong  —  I'm sorry I was wrong.  We all were.  Last night, as I was falling asleep after a lovely Christmas, a thought popped into my head.
Lizzie Plaugic / The Verge:
US Library of Congress will no longer archive the text of every tweet, will instead archive tweets on a “very selective basis”; the archive has yet to go online  —  The Library of Congress just announced some changes to its long-running plan to archive all of Twitter.
Chris Hamby / BuzzFeed:
Sources: Safran, which sells fingerprint-analysis software used by FBI, 18K+ US law enforcement agencies, didn't disclose some code was from Kremlin-linked firm  —  In a secret deal, a French company purchased code from a Kremlin-connected firm, incorporated it into its own software …
Washington Post:
Dave Smith / Business Insider:
HQ Trivia arrives on Android in limited beta and says its goal is full availability by January 1  —  - The app's makers say they are working to get HQ Trivia in the hands of all Android users on January 1, 2018.  —  HQ Trivia, the hottest iPhone game of 2017, previously said it would release an Android version in time for Christmas.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
WhatsApp will drop BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone support on December 31  —  WhatsApp has detailed its plans for older mobile operating systems, with less than a week before the end of the year.  The Facebook-owned app will end support for BlackBerry OS (including BlackBerry 10) and Windows Phone 8.0 (and older) on December 31, 2017.
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget:
San Jose-based Energous, which is developing wireless charging tech that works from three feet away, says the FCC has approved its product, set for debut at CES  —  Charging your mobile device wirelessly is certainly less of a hassle than plugging it in, but still requires the device …
Greg Bensinger / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Uber to sell US subprime auto-leasing business, Xchange Leasing, to car marketplace Fair.com; net book value of Xchange's 30K+ vehicles was ~$400M  —  Ride-hailing firm had planned to wind down the business after losses  —  Uber Technologies Inc. has agreed to sell …

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Meet Airtable ProductCentral  —  The unified solution for managing your entire product development process in the AI era.
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:
Zoho Forms for successful Black Friday sales  —  Black Friday is a retail frenzy that can significantly impact your bottom line.  To make the most of this shopping bonanza, you need a strategy that not only attracts customers …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 11/04 - Apple Buying And Investing In Things
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 12:00 PM ET, December 27, 2017.

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