Techmeme
August 13, 2020, 3:15 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple will launch “Apple One” tiered subscription bundles, with Music, TV+, News+, and a new virtual fitness service, as early as October  —  Apple Inc. is readying a series of bundles that will let customers subscribe to several of the company's digital services …
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Epic enables a direct payment option in Fortnite on iOS and Android alongside the existing method, to get around app store fees; buying direct is up to 20% off  —  Plus, V-bucks get permanently discounted  —  Today, Epic announced the Fortnite “mega drop,” a permanent discount on V-bucks …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Apple has removed Epic Games' Fortnite from the App Store after the developer implemented its own in-app payment system, bypassing Apple's standard 30% fee  —  Apple says Epic is violating its App Store guidelines by using its own payment system  —  Apple has removed Epic Games' battle royale Fortnite …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple, Disney, and others participated in a White House call over the potential WeChat ban, arguing it could undermine their competitiveness in China  —  Companies including Apple, Disney and Walmart participate in call with White House over action against China's most important app
Bloomberg:
A Weibo survey asking users to choose between WeChat and iPhones drew 1.2M responses, with ~95% saying they would rather give up their devices  —  - Ban on Chinese apps may render iPhone “electronic trash”  — WeChat is instrumental to most China residents' everyday lives
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
Researchers say a now-patched Alexa vulnerability could have been exploited to hand over users' personal data, voice recordings, banking data history, and more  —  Subdomains belonging to the service were found to be harboring CORS errors and vulnerable to XSS attacks.
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Facebook officially launches a Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram, with state-by-state information on how to register and vote  —  Eager to avoid a repeat of its disastrous role as a super-spreader of misinformation during the 2016 election cycle, Facebook is getting its ducks in a row.
Nancy Scola / Politico:
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Lyft joins Uber in saying it will pull out of California if forced to re-classify drivers as employees  —  The companies say they can't afford to classify drivers as employees  —  Lyft said it would shut down operations in California if forced to classify drivers as employees …
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Intel offers a first look at its next-gen Tiger Lake processors and Xe graphics, both of which promise higher performance and lower power consumption  —  Architecture Day 2020 offers a preview of Intel's future  —  Intel's Architecture Day 2020 brought a first look at the company's upcoming …
Chris Strohm / Bloomberg:
US says it has seized more than 300 cryptocurrency accounts and millions of dollars used by al-Qaeda, Hamas' military wing, and ISIS  —  The Trump administration dismantled digital campaigns by al-Qaeda and other other terrorist groups that used social media to obtain cryptocurrency for carrying …
Shannon Vavra / CyberScoop:
NSA and FBI say Russian state sponsored hacker group Fancy Bear is using a previously undisclosed Linux malware called Drovorub for cyber espionage operations  —  The National Security Agency and the FBI are jointly exposing malware that they say Russian military hackers use in cyber-espionage operations.
Brian J Barth / OneZero :
A look at how Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs' bet on making Toronto a smart city failed, driven by intense resistance from residents and civic leaders  —  Alphabet bet big in Toronto.  Toronto didn't play along.  —  October 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke …
Fanny Potkin / Reuters:
Sources: ByteDance's Indonesian news aggregator app BaBe censored content perceived as critical of the Chinese government between 2018 and mid-2020  —  SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Chinese tech giant ByteDance censored content it perceived as critical of the Chinese government on its news aggregator app …
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
Stream, whose APIs enable product teams to build chat and activity feeds for their applications, raises $15M Series A led by GGV Capital  —  Earlier this year, the founders of Stream, a five-year-old, 60-person startup with offices in Boulder and Amsterdam, weren't feeling so great about their prospects.
Nathan DiCamillo / CoinDesk:
Coinbase says it will offer fiat loans to US retail customers, backed by as much as 30% of a customer's bitcoin holdings, in 17 states this fall  —  Coinbase will allow U.S. retail customers to borrow fiat loans against as much as 30% of their bitcoin holdings in the fall, the San Francisco-based exchange announced Wednesday.

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