Techmeme
October 17, 2018, 1:40 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Twitter has published data sets of millions of tweets, images, videos, and thousands of accounts linked to Russia and Iran meddling for analysis by researchers  —  - Data includes images and videos from thousands of accounts  — Tech firms remain under fire from lawmakers in EU, U.S.
Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:
Advertisers allege in suit that Facebook didn't disclose key video metric error for over a year and that scale of miscalculation was far worse than understood  —  Facebook knew of problems with how it measured viewership of video ads for more than a year before it revealed them in 2016, according to a complaint filed by advertisers.
Kate Fazzini / CNBC:
Apple rolls out an updated privacy portal website, first trialed in the EU in May, that lets customers search the information Apple has on them  —  - Apple's new privacy website launch fulfills a company promise of making it easier and faster for customers to find what personal information is kept by Apple.
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
YouTube says it has resolved widespread access issues that also affected YouTube TV and YouTube Music  —  Google's services are ubiquitous enough that it's pretty noteworthy when they go down.  Tonight, it seems multiple services are suffering an outage, including YouTube …
Medium:
Anonymous Amazon employee says 450+ employees signed letter to Bezos and other execs asking them to stop selling Rekognition to police and kick Palantir off AWS  —  When a company puts new technologies into the world, it has a responsibility to think about the consequences.
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Samsung acquires Spanish network analytics company Zhilabs, which uses AI to monitor carriers' network performance and data traffic across myriad services  —  Samsung has announced that it has acquired Zhilabs, a Spanish network analytics company that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google launches Chrome 70 with option to disable linked sign-ins, which are enabled by default, support for PWAs on Windows, an AV1 decoder, and more  —  Google today launched Chrome 70 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  The release includes an option to disable linking Google site and Chrome sign-ins …
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla have announced a unified plan to deprecate the use of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in their web browsers in early 2020  —  Almost everyone has now migrated to TLS 1.2, and a few have moved to TLS 1.3.  —  Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla have announced …
Wall Street Journal:
Profile of Kris Goldsmith, an Army veteran who catalogues questionable Facebook Pages, some with millions of followers and links to Russia and Iran  —  Kris Goldsmith has become the cybersleuth for the Vietnam Veterans of America, hunting fake Facebook pages that sow discord and often have roots overseas
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Helm launches a privacy-focused personal server, costing $499 with a $99/year subscription, that lets users host emails, calendars, and contacts  —  Here's the thing: for all the talk about her email server, Hillary Clinton did not get hacked.  “I'll go on record with that,” says Giri Sreenivas, the founder of Helm.
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Web-based visual design platform Lucid Software raises $72M from Meritech Capital and others, bringing total funding to $112M, and says it has 15M users  —  Web-based visual design platform Lucid Software has raised $72 million in a round of fund of funding from Meritech Capital, Iconiq Capital, and Spectrum Equity.
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
In EU, Google to start charging OEMs for Play Store and Google apps, offer separate licenses for Search and Chrome, let OEMs make devices with forked Android  —  Android will still be “free and open source”  —  Google is changing the way it licenses its suite of Android apps in Europe …
Nicholas Thompson / Wired:
Interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on free speech, filter bubbles, the chronological feed, and more  —  ON MONDAY, AT Wired's 25th anniversary summit, I spoke with Jack Dorsey about some of the biggest questions he confronts running Twitter and Square.  How has his position on free speech evolved?
More: The Verge and Wired
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Twitter bans ~1,500 accounts, source says for spreading misleading election-related content; the “NPC” accounts were 4chan and Reddit users posing as activists  —  Twitter has barred hundreds of right-wing users for posing as soulless, “nonplayable” liberal activists.
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:
Unifonic, dubbed the “Twilio of emerging markets”, raises $21M Series A led by Saudi Technology Ventures  —  Those of you familiar with the incredible rise of Twilio, which came along to utterly disrupt the communications world, will be interested to hear that another player plans to do the same …
Dan Thorp-Lancaster / Windows Central:
Microsoft begins testing a major redesign of the iOS and Android Cortana apps, with a focus on conversational experiences and more  —  Microsoft is gearing up to release a major update to Cortana on Android and iOS, and beta testers are getting the first shot at it.
More: The Verge
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Israeli startup Cognata, which provides a true-life simulation platform for autonomous vehicles, raises $18.5M led by Scale Venture Partners  —  Cognata has raised $18.5 million in a funding round led by Scale Venture Partners, fresh capital that the Israeli autonomous simulation startup …
Violet Tang / China Money Network:
Chinese online car retailer platform Chehaoduo adds $162M to its $818M Series C from Tiantu Capital, DST Global, and others, bringing valuation at $6.6B  —  Chehaoduo Group has secured US$162 million series C+ round of financing from Tiantu Capital and existing investors including DST Global, Nuoweiqi VC and CKE.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google Chromecast 2018 review: still $35, improved design, slightly faster performance, can stream 1080p at 60 fps but not 4K capable, not worth the upgrade  —  Little in the way of new features  —  Google didn't say a word about its newly refreshed Chromecast onstage in New York last week.
More: PCMag

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