Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, YouTube has removed tens of thousands of videos of an extremist cleric, Uber has agreed another multi-billion dollar investment deal, DC Comics has suspended a top editor after multiple sexual harassment claims and more.
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YouTube has removed tens of thousands of videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, an extremist cleric killed by an American drone strike in 2011 (The new York Times). For years, his propaganda influenced American terrorists, including the Boston Marathon bombers and the Fort Hood gunman. YouTube has come under growing pressure from governments to reduce its archive of extremist content, and by using video fingerprinting technology the video now blocks most of al-Awlaki's videos before anyone has a chance to see them.
Uber has agreed a deal with SoftBank, the Japanese telecoms and investment giant (Bloomberg). The agreement will allow SoftBank and other investment partners to invest up to $1 billion into Uber and also buy up to $9 billion in shares from existing investors, giving SoftBank a major stake in the company. The deal, which could still fall through if not enough other investors are interested, also includes terms to reduce the influence of Travis Kalanick, the former CEO who left Uber after a string of controversies.
DC Comics has suspended Eddie Berganza, a senior editor at the company, while it looks into allegations that he sexually harassed other employees (The Verge). In a BuzzFeed report published late last week, three former employees allege that Berganza groped, kissed other otherwise harassed them over a period of years. DC released a statement saying it was “extremely committed to creating a safe and secure working environment for our employees and everyone involved in the creation of our comic books”.
The Dream Chaser space plane landed safely at an air base in California after being dropped from a helicopter in a test flight on Saturday (Space). The last free-flight test of the spacecraft back in 2013 ended with the plane skidding off the runway after encountering a problem with its landing gear. Sierra Nevada, the company behind the reusable, winged spacecraft, has a contract with Nasa to deliver food, water and research equipment to the International Space Station from 2019.
Mobile apps and crowdsourced data are notifying residents of crimes in Rio de Janeiro's sprawling favelas in real-time (WIRED). Since launching in July 2016, Fogo Cruzado, a mobile application that alerts citizens to incidents of violence as soon as they happen, has registered more than 7,500 incidents of weapons fired – with an average 17 per day this year.
Fasten, a ride-sharing app that operates in Boston and Austin, accidentally left the details of one million of its customers openly available on an unsecured database (The Register). The breach, which was discovered by Kromtech, exposed customer names, e-mails, telephone numbers, trip details and photos. A company spokesperson said the leak only involved "old production data" and that it's reviewing its data storage policies to keep data safer in the future.
The current distribution of crops around the world wastes water and doesn’t maximise production, but by re-jigging what we grow where we could feed nearly a billion more people and cut water use by 13 per cent (Ars Technica). The authors of a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience argue that growing more soybeans, tubers and peanuts would lead to a more efficient agricultural system. But it would mean reducing the amount of sugar, rice and wheat grown elsewhere in the world.
Chinese shoppers splashed out 168.2 billion yuan (£19bn) during Singles Day, an annual shopping event on November 11 heavily promoted by the e-commerce giant Alibaba (The Guardian). The one-day retail event is now almost four times larger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two biggest shopping days in the US. Last year, shoppers spent $1 billion (£750,000) in the first two minutes of Singles Day alone.
A security company claims to have unlocked an iPhone X using a 3D-printed mask (Engadget). The firm, called Bkav, released a video and a blog post detailing how it managed to trick Face ID, which Apple says has only a one-in-a-million chance of failing. The mask was made using hand-crafted 'skin' and 2D images specifically designed to exploit Face ID’s authentication methods.
A broken duplicate of an ancient gene helps elephants kill cancerous cells before they have a chance to develop, researchers have found (WIRED). A new study, published on Biorvix, explains why elephants have unusually low cancer rates for animals of their size. The gene, called LIF6, kills potentially cancerous cells by causing tiny organs within the defective cells to leak.
Russian interference in Brexit through targeted social media propaganda can be revealed for the first time. A cache of posts from 2016, seen by WIRED, shows how a coordinated network of Russian-based Twitter accounts spread racial hatred in an attempt to disrupt politics in the UK and Europe.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
