The European Union plans to fund a bug bounty programs for 14 open-source projects, ZDNet reports. As it writes, “The 14 projects are, in alphabetical order, 7-zip, Apache Kafka, Apache Tomcat, Digital Signature Services (DSS), Drupal, Filezilla, FLUX TL, the GNU C Library (glibc), KeePass, midPoint, Notepad++, PuTTY, the Symfony PHP framework, VLC Media Player, and WSO2.”

Facebook has apologized to evangelist Franklin Graham for briefly blocking his account last week. "A member of Facebook's content review team … had mistakenly decided [a post published by Graham’s account in 2016] violated Facebook’s policy that bans 'dehumanizing language' and excluding people based on sexual orientation, race and other factors," the Charlotte Observer writes.

2018 was a big year for facial-recognition technology in both commerce and security, as well as image generation in the art world, Engadget writes. “I’ve been really excited by all of the interactive web demos that people have started to turn these algorithms into,” says research scientist Janelle Shane the tech publisher.

As part of an ambitious effort to expand its two-hour Prime delivery service, Amazon is planning to build many more Whole Foods stores across the country. That’s according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. At the moment, Amazon’s Prime Now delivery service offers speedy delivery in about 60 cities from coast to coast.

The Snapdragon 855 will be the processor powering a majority of flagship Android smartphones next year. That's thanks to 5G support and built-in artificial intelligence. The Snapdragon 855, which is Qualcomm’s first chipset to be built on a 7-nanometer process, features Qualcomm’s new Kryo 485 CPU, which will reportedly deliver a 45% performance boost over previous-generation tech.

Native advertising is still important as a premium ad vehicle that emphasizes quality of consumer engagement over the inconsistency of the open exchanges, which are rife with fraud. There are also additional publisher opportunities beyond straight CPMs. Widgets can provide audience development, yield management, content syndication and internal content amplification (re-circulation) benefits.

To the chagrin of Slack, Microsoft Teams is growing rapidly, The New Web reports, citing a study of 900 IT companies conducted by Spiceworks. “Spiceworks found that the penetration of Microsoft Teams grew from 3 percent in 2016 to 21 percent in 2018,” TNW writes. “This growth can be attributed partially to the fact that Microsoft made Teams available globally in 2017.”

Instagram is rolling out its walkie-talkie feature worldwide. Now, “Users can hold down the microphone button to record a short voice message that appears in the chat as an audio wave form that recipients can then listen to at their leisure,” TechCrunch writes. “Voice messages are up to one-minute long, stay permanently listenable rather than disappearing and work in one-on-one and group chats on iOS and Android.”

An investigation by The New York Times has found that many smartphone apps receive data on a user’s precise location thousands of times per day. “As smartphones have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits has spread and grown more intrusive,” it writes. “At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information.”

At least for the moment, a Chinese court just banned the sale new iPhone models, Axios reports. “The preliminary injunction blocks the sale and import of iPhones into China, but not the manufacture or export of the devices, so the direct impact is limited to the domestic Chinese market,” it writes. “Still, it represents a significant disruption to Apple’s business.”