Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
All photos uploaded to Twinning, Popsugar's tool to match a user's photo with a celebrity's, were accessible from a public AWS storage bucket that is now locked  —  I thought the worst thing about Popsugar's Twinning tool was that it matched me with James Corden.

Meng Jing / South China Morning Post:
Beijing plans to adopt facial recognition-enabled smart locks in its public housing projects involving 120K tenants in 2019 to crack down on illegal subletting  —  - The smart lock is one of the latest hi-tech tools authorities are using to keep an eye on its citizens

Echo Huang / Quartz:
China-owned spacecraft maker CASIC launches first of 156 satellites intended to provide internet service by 2022 to rural China and then to developing countries  —  Over the weekend, China launched a satellite into low-earth orbit, the first step of a plan to provide global satellite internet …

NASDAQ.com:
Chinese online brokerage Futu Securities files for a US IPO, seeking to raise up to $300M, and says it had $92M in revenue for the year ending September 2018  —  Futu Holdings, the largest China-based online broker age, filed on Friday with the SEC to raise up to $300 million in an initial public offering.

Globes Online:
Der Spiegel: Volkswagen is planning to write off over $300M it invested in Gett, as the Israeli startup struggles to compete with Uber, Lyft, Didi, and others  —  “Der Spiegel” reported that Volkswagen would write off its over $300 million investment in the Israeli taxi hailing company.

Rita Liao / TechCrunch:
Didi faces new challenges in 2019 as stricter regulations take effect in China that require drivers have a local residency permit and commercial car license  —  Over the last few years, millions of Chinese workers managed to earn extra money by being ride-hailing drivers.

Natasha Singer / New York Times:
Experts say Facebook's opaque approach towards flagging possible suicide threats to police around the world may not be accurate, effective, or safe  —  A police officer on the late shift in an Ohio town recently received an unusual call from Facebook.  —  Earlier that day …

Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
How deepfakes, AI-generated videos that graft a person's face onto another's body, have been weaponized to harass and humiliate their subjects, mostly women  —  “Deepfake” creators are making disturbingly realistic, computer-generated videos with photos taken from the Web, and ordinary women are suffering the damage.

Frank Chaparro / The Block:
Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary Bakkt raises $182.5M to build its cryptocurrency exchange; sources: regulatory hurdles delay its plans for bitcoin futures  —  Bakkt, the cryptocurrency venture by Intercontinental Exchange, has scored $182.5 million to build out its platform aimed …

Selim Chtayti / Agence France-Presse:
Parents are often shocked by inappropriate videos on TikTok, a major hit with teens that Sensor Tower says was the most downloaded app on iOS in H1 2018  —  TikTok's video-sharing app was the most downloaded on Apple's App Store in the first half of 2018, beating out Facebook, Instgram and Snapchat

Jennifer Ouellette / Ars Technica:
Researchers used a series of auctions to find that it would take on average $1,000+ to entice users to deactivate their Facebook accounts for a year  —  Some users required more than $1,000 to deactivate their account for one year. … A series of auctions revealed that Facebook users value …

Scott Scrivens / Android Police:
Screenshots suggest Google is testing group calling and a low light mode in its Duo video chat app for Android  —  Group calling and a low light mode in Google Duo have been rumored for some time, but we now have our first glimpse of the features in action.

Simon Romero / New York Times:
Since Waymo started testing driverless vans in Chandler, AZ in 2017, nearly two dozen attacks have been made on them including slashed tires and thrown rocks  —  CHANDLER, Ariz. — The assailant slipped out of a park around noon one day in October, zeroing in on his target …

Kenneth Li / Reuters:
Source: Netflix to hire Activision Blizzard's Spencer Neumann as its new CFO starting in early 2019; Activision said it intended to fire Neumann in a filing  —  (Reuters) - Netflix Inc is expected to announce in the next few days that it has poached media finance veteran Spencer Neumann …

Wall Street Journal:
Tech trends for 2019: foldable phones, 5G, cashierless retail, privacy legislation, autonomous delivery wagons, IoT edge computing, and more  —  From delivery wagons and foldable phones to privacy crackdowns and corporate health tracking, the coming year will make good on some of the tech industry's biggest promises