Techmeme
December 21, 2018, 5:55 PM

Top News

Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:
Sources describe how Amazon's efforts to make Alexa a better communicator through its Alexa Prize competition led to a hack and chats about sex and murder  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Millions of users of Amazon's Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Epic Games is facing lawsuits over Fortnite dance emotes, real-life dance moves used in the game, raising questions about whether dance moves are copyrightable  —  Epic Games' Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now, but one of its biggest sources of revenue — the ubiquitous dance …
Will Oremus / Slate:
Facebook has forfeited our trust to the point that we see nefarious motives in any misstep, as some overblown reactions to Spotify and Netflix integrations show  —  Facebook may or may not have lost its handle on our data.  But it has definitely lost its handle on the public narrative—and the benefit of the doubt.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Blind, an anonymous chat app used by staff at companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Uber, left one database server exposed from Nov. 1 to Dec. 19  —  One of the company's servers was exposed without a password for weeks.  —  Thousands of people trusted Blind, an app-based …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Facebook is developing a stablecoin for money transfers on WhatsApp, focusing first on the remittances market in India  —  - First focus will be on remittance market in India, people say  — Social network is still working out its blockchain strategy
Bloomberg:
Google Payment receives an e-money license in Lithuania, enabling it to process payments, issue e-money, and handle electronic money wallets throughout the EU  —  Google Payment, a company owned by Alphabet Inc., obtained an e-money license in Lithuania, joining a growing number of fintech firms …
More: 9to5Google
Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News:
Indian government downplays its order that seemingly authorizes ten government agencies to monitor, intercept, and decrypt data on all computers in the country  —  India's Ministry of Home Affairs, a federal government authority that controls the country's internal security …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple says AI chief John Giannandrea, who joined from Google in April, has been promoted to its executive team as SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy  —  Apple today announced John Giannandrea, who handles machine learning and AI for the company, has been promoted to the Apple's executive team …

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