Joshua Wong

Malaysia’s prime minister Najib Razak may have hundreds of thousands of his countrymen calling for his resignation—embroiled as he is in a multi-billion-dollar corruption case—but he has one thing to be grateful for: His onetime golfing partner is the next president of the United States, whose justice department happens to be pursuing that very same corruption case.

Sites that publish fake or hyperpartisan news are almost completely reliant on Facebook for their readership, according to data collected by the marketing analytics firm Jumpshot.

Blockchain technology is about to come full circle. The technical ideas that allow bitcoin, designed as a form of digital gold, to operate will soon be used by the UK’s government-owned Royal Mint in a new gold-trading system.

A new website called Dugout that involves some of the world’s biggest soccer clubs has launched today. It has been likened to a Facebook for soccer, with clubs and star players from various leagues posting goofy videos of their antics off the pitch directly to fans around the world.

AppNexus, a major provider of automated online ads for publishers, recently banned the “alt-right” news website Breitbart from using its ad-serving tool, citing violations of its rules against hate speech. But Google still feeds ads to the controversial outlet, and it appears that automated systems from Amazon, Facebook, and others might also provide ad-related services, though given their complexity it’s sometimes hard to verify.

The bitcoin and blockchain world is in a bit of an investment slump.

Where there’s a market with creaking infrastructure to be disrupted, blockchain technology will disrupt it. At least that’s what some proponents of blockchain tech, which shares many of the same principles underpinning bitcoin, are hoping to do with the energy sector.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

A massive protest is planned in Malaysia’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur, tomorrow, where tens of thousands of people will demand institutional changes over the theft of billions of dollars from a national wealth fund linked to prime minister Najib Razak.

China’s central bank is hiring blockchain experts to help it develop its own digital currency, according to a recruitment ad (in Mandarin) published by the bank on Nov. 9.

The head of the US’s National Security Agency said Nov. 15 that a “nation-state” consciously targeted presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in order to affect the US election.

Facebook is following Google’s lead in trying to cut the profits companies make from publishing fake news. It has just banned fake news publishers from joining its advertising network, according to its policy on publisher conduct.

People who believe fake news on Facebook influenced the US presidential election are showing a “profound lack of empathy” and are believing in a “pretty crazy idea,” says Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook’s Workplace chat platform for businesses just got a huge boost.

Facebook, Twitter, and their Silicon Valley ilk are among the biggest distributors of online news in the US, making them major players in the recently concluded presidential election. Yet their CEOs are either issuing bland statements or staying silent about the outcome.

Hillary Clinton isn’t giving a concession speech tonight, her campaign chairman John Podesta said.

USB ports are ubiquitous on our electronic devices as a way to charge them and transfer data. But they’re also an easy entry point for malware or other nasty viruses.

The European Commission’s grasp of the e-commerce world is so weak, it doesn’t even ”fit with the reality” of how people actually shop online. And by the way, Amazon is where consumers go to compare prices, not Google. That’s the message Google sent to the commission yesterday in a blog post by general counsel Kent Walker.

Alibaba yesterday beat the street’s estimates on both revenue and earnings, yet its stock ended trading down 2.4%. It was down a further 0.6% in trading before the market opened today (it regained most of those losses in early trading) while short interest in the stock continues to climb, as Tim Culpan at Bloomberg Gadfly notes. What gives?

Venezuela’s currency has lost so much of its value that people have given up on counting the notes—they just weigh piles of cash. So far this year, the bolívar has lost nearly half its value compared to the dollar, while inflation has shot up as much as 15 times. That’s according to best estimates, since official data isn’t available.

Bring on the thought leaders.

In a year of monster hackers, the rise of new cryptocurrencies, and its own unresolved ”civil war” over how to enlarge its transaction capacity, bitcoin has not only survived, but thrived.

The emotional roller coaster of scandals in the US presidential race is enough to cause a heartattack. But really.

That the internet is physical can be hard to grasp. Few people have experienced this fact as viscerally as Guillaume Le Saux, captain of a ship named the Pierre de Fermat. It’s a state-of-the-art vessel that’s part of a fleet owned by French telecom company Orange, designed to lay and repair the optical fiber cables that criss-cross the world’s seabeds.