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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 from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2F38F11

Some Tesla employees will ring in the New Year on a sales floor this year as the automaker tries to liquidate its inventory of Model 3 sedans — and even its more expensive Model S and Model X vehicles — before the federal tax credit for EVs is cut in half. In a list of updated hours, 44 of the stores, including locations in California, Minnesota, Nevada, New York and Ohio, are open until midnight Monday. Tesla has more than 100 stores and galleries in the United States. Calls made to several of these stores indicate these locations have a mix of Model 3 sedans available for pickup today. Sales associates didn’t provide specific numbers. After midnight Monday, the $7,500 federal electric vehicle tax credit will drop to $3,750 for anyone buying a Tesla vehicle. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been using Twitter to warn of the expiring tax credit  for months now . Recently, the pace of promotion has escalated as Tesla’s inventory of Model 3 vehicles in the U.S. has pe...

News junkies who want something more in-depth than Alexa’s Flash Briefing now have a new option for listening to the day’s news – as well as features and other reporting – right from their smart speaker. A company called Noa has just launched an  Alexa skill that uses human narrators to read you the news from top publishers like The New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, and others. With the skill, you can catch up on the stories you missed while you’re doing other things – like cooking, cleaning, commuting or exercising, for example. The skill is aimed at those who already enjoy listening to longer-form audio, like podcasts or talk radio, on their Amazon Echo or other Alexa-powered device. The use case here is also similar to that of “read it later” apps like Pocket or Instapaper, both of which have added an audio playback option for listening to your saved articles. However, those apps currently rely on text-to-speech functionality, not on human narration. Noa,...

Earlier this year, Netflix was seen testing a bypass of iTunes billing across dozens of markets worldwide. As 2018 draws to a close, Netflix – the App Store’s top grossing app –  has ditched the ability for new users to sign up and subscribe to the streaming service within its iOS app across all global markets. The change means Apple will miss out on hundreds of millions in App Store revenue per year – money it would have otherwise received by way of its standard cut of in-app transactions. According to new data compiled by Sensor Tower, Netflix grossed $853 million in 2018 on the iOS App Store. Based on that figure, Apple’s take would have been around $256 million, the firm said. To date, the Netflix iOS app has generated over $1.5 billion through its in-app subscriptions, with Apple’s cut coming in around $450 million-plus, Sensor Tower estimated. Before the change, Netflix on iOS was grossing an average of $2.4 million per day in 2018 – meaning Apple was making around $700...

My parents are approaching 60. When they were young, they hung out at diners, or drove around in their cars. My generation hung out in the parking lot after school, or at the mall. My colleague John Biggs often talks of hanging out with his nerd buddies in his basement, playing games and making crank calls. Today, young people are hanging out on a virtual island plagued by an ever-closing fatal storm. It’s called Fortnite . They hang out in Fortnite the way we used to hang out in basements or back yards. We played games or kicked a ball around, but it was all a pretense for the social aspect. — Anoop Ranganath (@anoopr) December 10, 2018 The thread above describes exactly what I’m talking about. Yes, people most certainly log on and play the game. Some play it very seriously. But many, especially young folks, hop on to Fortnite to socialize. The phenomenon of ‘hanging out’ on a game is not new. I was in a 50 person clan in World of Warcraft in 2004 and we all hung out on a...

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 … from Techmeme http://bit.ly/2GLtuAb

The timing is… less than ideal. Just as the industry is recovering from a holiday-induced hangover, we’re thrust into the country’s largest consumer electronics show. The timing, of course, is not coincidental. The show is intended to offer a preview for the tech year to come. Many companies thrive on CES’s pace. It’s a five-day deluge of tech news, and, for many, it’s the largest platform they’ll get all year. The show is fairly unique in its ability to juggle announcements from all sizes of companies, from Samsung to startup, all vying for a little mindshare. In recent years, its focus has shifted. Many larger companies have opted to make announcements on their own stages — and their own terms. CES, meanwhile, has changed accordingly, offering smaller companies a platform through showcases like Eureka Park, while making automotive and transportation a more essential plank of the show. We’re about a week out from CES really kicking off in earnest, so it’s time to take a look at som...