Techmeme
January 25, 2019, 2:00 PM

Top News

Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Sources: Zuckerberg plans to add end-to-end encryption to Instagram and Messenger and integrate their messaging infrastructure and WhatsApp's by end of the year  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, plans to integrate the social network's messaging services …
Nathan Halverson / Reveal:
Unsealed documents show Facebook orchestrated a multi-year effort that duped children who played video games into spending their parents' money  —  Facebook orchestrated a multi-year effort that duped children and their parents out of money, in some cases hundreds or even thousands of dollars …
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
YouTube says it will no longer suggest videos with “borderline content” or those that “misinform users in a harmful way” even if they don't violate guidelines  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Whether it is a video claiming the earth is flat or the moon landing was faked …
Tom Krazit / GeekWire:
Microsoft acquires Citus Data, which develops an open-source extension for PostgreSQL that turns it into a distributed database  —  Databases continue to be one of the most competitive areas of cloud computing, and Microsoft strengthened its database story Thursday with the acquisition of Citus Data.
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
HMD says it will soon sell its Nokia smartphones through Verizon and Cricket Wireless in US and Rogers in Canada  —  Nokia's parent company, HMD Global, chose to put its US ambitions in the back burner to focus on markets where the brand has been enjoying a resurgence these past few years.
Science:
Study of registered voters in 2016: ~6% of all news consumed on Twitter was fake news, 1% of users were exposed to 80% of it and 0.1% shared 80% thereof  —  There was a proliferation of fake news during the 2016 election cycle.  Grinberg et al. analyzed Twitter data by matching Twitter accounts …
Ryan Whitwam / ExtremeTech:
DeepMind introduces AlphaStar AI, which won 10-1 in a series of StarCraft II matches against professional players  —  Humans tend to think we're adept at the games we create, but computers have proven time and time again that we're just not fast enough to stay on top.
Natasha Singer / New York Times:
Amazon's Rekognition mistakes women as men 19% of the time, and darker-skinned women as men 31% of the time, more than similar services from IBM and Microsoft  —  In new tests, Amazon's system had more difficulty identifying the gender of female and darker-skinned faces than similar services from IBM and Microsoft.
Dan Seifert / The Verge:
HP Spectre Folio review: the unique hinge design and the leather finish are nice but the 16:9 screen feels cramped and the trackpad is horrible  —  The Folio is one of the most unique laptops in years, but it isn't perfect  —  There's nothing really quite like HP's new Spectre Folio.
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:
How resellers are making money from Amazon returns via liquidation sites, like Liquidity Services, which has 3M+ users and generated $626.4M in sales last year  —  Welcome to the abyss of the “reverse supply chain,” where hope springs eternal.  —  With a couple hundred dollars and a few minutes …

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
See how your customer experience priorities compare  —  TELUS Digital surveyed leaders about the tech they're investing in, the KPIs they're tracking and their plans for outsourcing.  Get the results.  No form fill required!
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
Zoho Sign at Kenya's Digital Trust Forum 2025 organized by Evrotrust and Geda  —  Kenyan businesses and government services are adapting to digital alternatives to explore opportunities in the nation's newly launched ten-year Digital Master Plan.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
How Tariffs Might Impact Tech
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Great Chat:
Battle of the startup cities
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Zach Weinberg (Co-Founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) on The Tariff Trap, Self-Inflicted Recession Risk, and Open AI's Fundraise
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Trump vs The Media, Round 2, with Sara Fischer
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Spotlight On:
Graphite's Merrill Lutsky on Revolutionizing Code Review for the AI Era
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:00 PM ET, January 25, 2019.

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

Aaron Pressman / Fortune:
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Richard Nieva / CNET:
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Casey Newton / The Verge: