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Techmeme
January 29, 2018, 3:45 AM

Top News

Alex Hern / The Guardian:
Global heatmap published by fitness tracking app Strava last November can be used to locate military bases around the world, map soldier jogging routes  —  Data about exercise routes shared online by soldiers can be used to pinpoint overseas facilities  —  Sensitive information about the location …
New York Times:
How Devumi uses its 3.5M+ automated Twitter accounts, sometimes based on stolen social identities, to sell followers and retweets to 200K+ customers  —  Everyone wants to be popular online.  —  Some even pay for it.  —  Inside social media's black market.
Axios:
Memo by a NSC official that's circulating in the Trump administration proposes government pay for and build a nationwide 5G network in 3 years to fend off China  —  Trump national security officials are considering an unprecedented federal takeover of a portion of the nation's mobile network …
Bloomberg:
Twitter tells Congress that Russia-linked bots retweeted @realDonaldTrump 469,537 times and @HillaryClinton 47,846 times from September 1 to November 15, 2016  —  Russian-linked accounts spurred 50,000 retweets of Clinton  —  Information comes in response to questions from Congress
Jan Wolfe / Reuters:
New Copyright Royalty Board ruling requires streaming services to give 15.1%, up from 10.5%, of revenue to songwriters and music publishers over next five years  —  (Reuters) - U.S. copyright authorities on Saturday decided to increase over the next five years the royalty payments music streaming companies …
Paris Martineau / The Outline:
Inside the cryptocurrency pump and dump chat groups, where tens of thousands of traders meet to hype coin prices, before dumping them minutes later  —  Inside the group chats where people pump and dump cryptocurrency  —  How self-proclaimed “pump and dump groups” scam thousands of wannabe altcoin investors.
James Vincent / The Verge:
AI advances are now making automated analysis of live surveillance video possible, presaging useful applications while raising serious questions about privacy  —  What happens when digital eyes get the brains to match?  —  We usually think of surveillance cameras as digital eyes …
Robert Draper / National Geographic:
Ryne Hager / Android Police:
Google's AI-powered Clips camera is now available in the US Google Store for $249, with first deliveries expected in March  —  Three months ago Google announced the Google Clips, a tiny clip-on camera powered by some impressive machine learning technology.  The idea behind it was that rather …
Josh Lovejoy / Google Design:
Jordan Kisner / The Guardian:
Profile of VocaliD, which uses a crowdsourced voice library to craft custom voices for speech-impaired users of type-to-talk devices  —  Millions are robbed of the power of speech by illness, injury or lifelong conditions.  Can the creation of bespoke digital voices transform their ability to communicate?
Yuji Nakamura / Bloomberg:
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck says it will repay all 260K users who lost money in Friday's theft of ~$400M in NEM coins  —  Users will receive 88.549 yen for each coin that was stolen  —  Japanese exchange will compensate clients using internal funds

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More News

Ben Casselman / New York Times:
Ben Hubbard / New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Theodore Schleifer / Recode:
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: