Techmeme
February 12, 2018, 6:20 PM

Top News

Wired:
A behind-the-scenes look at two tumultuous years at Facebook as it battled with fake news, its impact on the election, global affairs, and users' minds  —  ONE DAY IN late February of 2016, Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo to all of Facebook's employees to address some troubling behavior in the ranks.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is changing its iOS development strategy, moving away from an annual schedule crammed with major features and prioritizing reliability  —  The company is shaking up its development program to focus more on key features and push back others to the following year.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Android P to have deeper Google Assistant integration, better battery life, support for iPhone X-like notches, multiple screens, and foldable displays  —  Search giant tries again to win over valuable iPhone users  —  Android P to integrate more tightly with Google's Assistant
Matt Day / The Seattle Times:
Source: in a rare cutback, Amazon is laying off several hundred corporate employees in Seattle and hundreds elsewhere across its global operations  —  Amazon is cutting several hundred jobs in Seattle, and hundreds elsewhere, a rare layoff that appears to fall predominantly on its established consumer retail business.
Nicole Perlroth / New York Times:
Researchers: cyberattack caused disruption to Pyeongchang2018.com and local internet, which grounded drones and more during Winter Olympics' opening ceremony  —  A cyberattack caused the internet disruptions during the Winter Olympics' opening ceremony on Friday night, Olympic officials and security experts said.
Taylor Lorenz / The Daily Beast:
600K+ people sign Change.org petition calling for Snapchat redesign to be reverted as celebs including Chrissy Teigen, Kylie Jenner, MKBHD criticize update  —  Last week Snapchat rolled out its biggest redesign since the app launched in 2011.  —  The company split the app into two sections …
Aaron Tilley / The Information:
Source: Amazon is designing its own AI chip for use in Echo and other Alexa-powered devices, following its 2015 acquisition of chip maker Annapurna Labs  —  Amazon.com is developing a chip designed for artificial intelligence to work on the Echo and other hardware powered by Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant …
Fitz Tepper / TechCrunch:
Instagram tests a feature showing users who has taken screenshots of their stories  —  Instagram is testing a feature that will show users when someone else takes a screenshot of their story.  Users included in the test are getting a warning that the next time they take a screenshot …
Google Cloud Platform Blog:
Google's Cloud TPUs, hardware accelerators custom-built to speed up TensorFlow ML workloads, are now available in beta, starting at $6.50 per Cloud TPU per hour  —  By John Barrus, Product Manager for Cloud TPUs, Google Cloud and Zak Stone, Product Manager for TensorFlow and Cloud TPUs, Google Brain Team
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
eMarketer says Facebook lost ~2.8M US users under 25 in 2017, predicts it will lose ~2.1M in 2018; Instagram's US users will grow 13%, Snapchat's by 9% in 2018  —  That's according to research firm eMarketer.  —  Facebook is losing young users even quicker than expected, according to new estimates by eMarketer.
Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed:
Technologist who predicted “fake news”, Aviv Ovadya, and other experts warn new AI-powered tools to manipulate perception could erode people's trust in reality  —  In mid-2016, Aviv Ovadya realized there was something fundamentally wrong with the internet — so wrong that he abandoned his work and sounded an alarm.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
YapStone has raised $71M in Series C financing, aiming for $100M+, to take on PayPal, Stripe, and more in marketplace payments  —  While a part of the fintech world remains abuzz with crypo-talk, a startup that's built a business around the more traditional world of payments has raised …
More: PR Newswire and PE Hub BlogTweets: @ingridlunden
MIX / The Next Web:
Another cryptocurrency startup, LoopX, pulls exit scam, deleting its site and online accounts after raising $4.5M in a series of ICOs in January  —  Another day, another exit scam: an emerging cryptocurrency startup more commonly known as LoopX has suddenly vanished out of thin air along with millions worth of its investors' savings.

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Chris Williams / The Register: