Techmeme River
Techmeme River
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
9:50 AM
Nvidia researchers show how far AI image generation has advanced in recent years in creating realistic and customizable faces
The Verge
9:15 AM
Hackers steal personal data including credit card information of ~300K people across 46 cities, using a vulnerability in government payment software Click2Gov
Fortune
8:40 AM
In leaked memo, Chinese bike sharing startup Ofo's founder says it is facing immense cash flow pressure and has considered applying for bankruptcy
Financial Times
8:25 AM
Google repeatedly pushes the web in a proprietary direction to improve its services on Chrome making Microsoft's adoption of Chromium a loss for the open web
Ars Technica
7:50 AM
NASA reveals data breach of employee information including Social Security numbers in October; scope of breach and number of impacted employees still unclear
ZDNet
7:15 AM
Zwift, which turns indoor cycling workouts into multiplayer games, raises $120M Series B led by Highland Europe
TechCrunch
5:45 AM
Blockstream expands its satellite service, which lets users transfer bitcoin through leased satellites, to Asia Pacific and adds support for lightning payments
CoinDesk
2:41 AM
Facebook says it shared data with integration partners only when users signed in with their Facebook accounts, to access features on other platforms, devices
Facebook
2:20 AM
Even with location tracking turned off, Facebook uses IP addresses, check-ins, and cities on profiles to approximate user locations for ads and other services
Gizmodo
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
11:05 PM
Microsoft announces Windows Sandbox, a desktop environment for running apps in isolation, for users running Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise build 18301 and later
ZDNet
10:35 PM
Match fires Tinder comms VP Rosette Pambakian, others; emails show Pambakian blames lawsuit, CEO says Pambakian's refusal to talk without lawyer led to firing
The Verge
10:00 PM
Internal docs show Facebook gave ~150 companies access to more user data than disclosed; some could read private DMs; Facebook says it didn't violate FTC decree
New York Times
8:40 PM
Facebook says it has taken down 425 Pages and 150 more Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to the Myanmar military for posting anti-Rohingya messages
Recode
8:10 PM
EU court rejects Yelp and Consumer Watchdog's application to intervene in Google's appeal of its 2017 $2.7B EU antitrust fine; other Google rivals also rejected
Bloomberg
7:35 PM
Blythe Masters, CEO of blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings and a former JPMorgan executive, will step down as CEO but remain on its board
Fortune
7:00 PM
Lighthouse, a startup backed by Andy Rubin that was building AI-enabled security cameras, is shutting down; Lighthouse had raised $20M
The Information
6:50 PM
Truecaller report: worldwide spam calls increased 300% YoY, reaching 17.7B in 2018; Brazil led with more than 37 spam calls per user per month
VentureBeat
6:35 PM
Facebook posts a six-month update on its civil rights audit: 2018 changes included voting encouragement and banning voting disinformation
Engadget
6:20 PM
Amnesty International calls Twitter a “toxic place for women” in a study of 288,000 tweets aimed at 778 female journalists and politicians from the US and UK
Wired
6:10 PM
Inside Audi's autonomous driving unit, which has ~150 employees, is testing 12 autonomous vehicles on public roads, and aims to debut self-driving taxis by 2021
The Verge
5:30 PM
Lip-syncing app TikTok, which is popular with children and teens, struggles to remove blatant, violent white supremacy and Nazism
Motherboard
5:10 PM
Uber says it has been given approval by Pennsylvania officials to restart its self-driving car tests on public roads in Pittsburgh
The Verge
5:05 PM
On January 8, Oath, which was created from Verizon's acquisitions of Yahoo and AOL, will be rebranded as Verizon Media Group
Verizon
4:20 PM
As EU debates Article 13, which would require sites to have an “upload filter”, a look at the failures of YouTube's sophisticated ContentID system
Techdirt
3:35 PM
NPR's podcast measurement technology RAD has sparked debate within the industry, with Overcast's Marco Arment expressing concerns about tracking and privacy
Columbia Journalism Review
3:00 PM
Snap's hardware unit, SnapLab, gets its third new boss in six months as Sahil Sharma, VP of hardware development who joined in July, departs
Recode
2:50 PM
Autonomous vehicles made by Nuro will deliver groceries to customers in Scottsdale, AZ this week without a human inside, but will be shadowed by a company car
New York Times
2:00 PM
Anthony Levandowski launches self-driving truck startup Pronto.ai, which plans to ship level 2 automated driving systems in 2019 starting at $4,999
TechCrunch
1:35 PM
iPhone prices are unpalatable in India, where reports say its marketshare has shrunk to ~1%, and a source says it's taking in <50% of the revenue once hoped for
Wall Street Journal
1:20 PM
Twitter was warned by a researcher two years ago of a flaw, recently reported to FTC and EU's DPC by the company, that leaked users' phone # country codes
TechCrunch
1:00 PM
Leaked bank docs spanning four separate months in 2017 and 2018 show Tether has a large cash stockpile, perhaps allaying fears that the digital coin is a scam
Bloomberg
12:35 PM
HQ Trivia postpones rollout of its premier HQ Words gameshow and Google ad campaign until later this week; sources say the company had ~$10M ad revenue in 2018
Ad Age
12:07 PM
Twitter is relaunching the reverse-chronological feed as an option for all users starting today on iOS and other platforms in the coming weeks
The Verge
12:05 PM
Senate report on Russia's disinformation campaign accuses Google, Facebook, and Twitter of being evasive and withholding data about Russian activity
New York Times
12:00 PM
Arm announces the 7nm Cortex A65AE, its first multi-threaded CPU core, designed for intense computing tasks like autonomous vehicles, arriving in 2020
AnandTech
11:45 AM
As shilling products has become a sign of success for influencers, up-and-comers on Instagram are posting fake sponsored content to boost their credibility
The Atlantic
11:15 AM
Spectrum's parent Charter reaches $174.2M settlement in New York AG's speed fraud lawsuit, which alleged that the ISP's speeds were 80% slower than advertised
The Verge
11:05 AM
Alexa Guard first impressions: hears sounds and alarms well, but can't contact emergency services, isn't supported by previous-gen Echo and Echo Dot speakers
CNET
10:28 AM
Toronto-based Ada, which helps companies develop their own AI-powered customer service chatbots, raises $14M Series A led by FirstMark Capital
VentureBeat
9:45 AM
Ada nets $19 million Series A to grow its customer service chatbot
TechCrunch
9:30 AM
Google says Play Store's machine learning-based system removed millions of fake reviews and ratings and identified thousands of bad apps during a recent week
Android Developers Blog
9:20 AM
AT&T to launch 5G mobile service on December 21 across 12 US cities via a $499 mobile hotspot device and $70/month data plan
Axios
8:55 AM
Seismic, which helps companies create and manage their sales and marketing collateral, raises $100M Series E at a $1B valuation
TechCrunch
8:40 AM
Cisco to buy semiconductor company Luxtera, which develops silicon photonics technology that speeds up data transfer, for $660M
CNBC
7:45 AM
Google introduces a new G Suite feature in beta that will enable non-G Suite users to collaborate on files as visitors, using PINs
G Suite Updates Blog
5:40 AM
Indian ride hailing service Ola invests $100M in scooter rental startup Vogo, which operates in Bangalore and Hyderabad
TechCrunch
4:05 AM
UK-based Graphcore, which makes machine learning chips, raises $200M from investors including Atomico, Sofina, BMW, and Microsoft, valuing the company at $1.5B
Financial Times
12:35 AM
Former far right extremists recall how they were radicalized by YouTube as teenagers because of its algorithm that keeps surfacing extremist content
The Daily Beast
Monday, December 17, 2018
7:50 PM
Oracle reports Q2 revenue of $9.56B, vs. $9.52B est., net profit of $2.3B, up 5% YoY, and cloud services revenue of $6.64B, up 3% YoY
Wall Street Journal
7:40 PM
Coinbase is rolling out Coinbase Convert, which enables crypto-to-crypto trading for its retail customers via its website and mobile apps, in the coming days
CoinDesk
7:00 PM
DoD report finds unpatched flaws and a lack of data encryption, intrusion detection, and multifactor authentication mechanisms in US ballistic missile systems
ZDNet
6:00 PM
Sources: T-Mobile has won approval from CFIUS for its planned takeover of Sprint; deal still needs FCC and DOJ approval
Wall Street Journal
5:05 PM
A source from a Taiwanese PC hardware maker discusses how the industry is adjusting to the escalating US-China trade tensions and tariffs
Wccftech
3:05 PM
Babylon Health has claimed its AI bot is as good at diagnosing as human doctors, but sources say the AI's development was rushed and effectiveness exaggerated
Forbes
2:45 PM
NAACP returns a donation from Facebook and calls for a boycott of it after Senate report detailed how Facebook was used to manipulate black voters
Axios
2:20 PM
Some employees at tech firms like Amazon are beginning to use the stock they're paid with to agitate for change by filing shareholder petitions
New York Times
2:10 PM
Airbnb says it is suspending its new policy of deactivating listings in Israeli settlements in West Bank after negotiations with Israel's tourism minister
Axios
2:00 PM
Twitter fixes flaw in support form that leaked users' phone number country codes and other info, after noticing excessive queries from Chinese and Saudi IPs
TechCrunch
1:45 PM
AR startup Blippar enters administration after an alleged dispute over funding, months after raising $37M
Financial Times
1:30 PM
The Mom Project, a job site for moms returning to work, raises $8M Series A to expand to more cities, says it has 75,000 registered moms and 1,000 companies
TechCrunch
12:46 PM
Sources: Google's plan for a censored search engine for China “effectively ended” after infighting, with a data analysis operation key to Dragonfly shuttering
The Intercept
12:25 PM
Facebook says its Clear History feature, which was announced at F8 2018, is taking longer than expected and should be ready for testing by spring 2019
Recode
12:00 PM
Senate report: Instagram dwarfs all social networks in Russia's IRA posts and engagements, yet Facebook execs have not been upfront about this
Bloomberg
11:20 AM
North, an Ontario-based company that makes the $999 Focals AR glasses, acquires the IP and tech behind Intel's canceled Vaunt AR glasses
The Verge
11:05 AM
RightHand Robotics raises $23M Series B for its warehouse automation tech that uses a combination of AI, cameras, and a robotic arm to pick up objects
Wall Street Journal
10:30 AM
Apple hires another Tesla employee, Andrew Kim, the designer famous for re-imagining Microsoft's brand and who worked on Hololens and Windows 10 UI
The Verge
10:12 AM
French economy minister says the country will introduce its own digital tax, dubbed the “GAFA tax”, on large internet and technology companies on January 1
DW.COM
9:50 AM
Datacamp, which offers customizable online data science courses to 3.3M+ users in 190+ countries and business customers like Uber and HSBC, raises $25M Series B
VentureBeat
9:35 AM
Facebook Messenger adds native support for looping Boomerang videos, a Selfie mode with automatic background blur, and AR stickers for photos and videos
The Verge
9:25 AM
Profile of Stanford computer scientist Donald Knuth, author of The Art of Computer Programming, a bible of its field with more than one million copies in print
New York Times
8:50 AM
How Calm has overtaken Headspace, which dominated the meditation app category, after winning the App Store's 2017 iPhone App of the Year award
Wall Street Journal
8:25 AM
Inside Grab's efforts to map roads in 100 cities across Southeast Asia by next year; Grab's mapping team has grown to 250, of which 100 are based in India
Quartz
5:55 AM
In a major real-estate expansion in New York City, Google says it will invest $1B+ in a new 1.7M square foot campus in Hudson Square in Manhattan
Wall Street Journal
2:20 AM
Survey about audience use of devices finds 45% of people watched TV while simultaneously using digital devices “very often” or “always”
Nielsen
Sunday, December 16, 2018
11:15 PM
AI Index Report for 2018 shows global growth of the field, a sharp rise in papers published from China, and an increase in VC funding of AI startups
VentureBeat
10:20 PM
Researchers detail a phishing campaign by Iran-linked hackers targeting US government officials that bypassed SMS-based 2FA protections in Gmail and Yahoo Mail
Ars Technica
9:25 PM
S. Korea's finance watchdog FSS: damages from voice phishing grew ~73% YoY to $159M, and it will partner with SK Telecom to develop AI to prevent such attacks
ZDNet
8:30 PM
Sensor Tower: five out of ten top grossing Apple App Store apps in 2018 are from China, but Netflix holds the top spot with $790M in revenues as of November 30
Business Insider
7:35 PM
Test shows that Android phones like LG G7 ThinQ, OnePlus 6, and Samsung Galaxy S9 and Note 8 can be unlocked via facial recognition using 3D-printed head models
Forbes
6:00 PM
To increase profits in its retail business, Amazon is asking brands with cheap but heavy or bulky items to change packaging and ship from their own warehouses
Wall Street Journal
4:55 PM
Report prepared for the Senate analyzes Russian disinformation that supported Trump across millions of posts on YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more
Washington Post
4:05 PM
With EU governments increasingly concerned about Huawei, telecoms including UK's BT, France's Orange, and Deutsche Telekom are reconsidering the use of its gear
Bloomberg
2:50 PM
Study: crypto asset service providers have 139M total users and at least 35M identity-verified users whose growth nearly doubled in first three quarters of 2018
Cambridge Judge Business School
1:25 PM
A secured lender is selling off assets, including AR/VR patent portfolio, of Osterhout Design Group, the maker of R-9 and other smartglasses
UploadVR
12:25 PM
Tencent's Blade security team finds SQLite vulnerability that affects thousands of apps, including Google Home and Chromium open-source browser engine
ZDNet
11:12 AM
Colin Kroll, a co-founder of Vine and the CEO and co-founder of HQ Trivia, has died at 34; police source says a drug overdose is suspected
TMZ
8:05 AM
PlanetScale, a database-as-a-service startup based on tech that helped scale YouTube, exits stealth, has raised $3M seed from prominent tech executives in April
TechCrunch
5:00 AM
Latticework, which is working on a consumer focused $550 NAS device called Amber and a cloud backup platform, has raised a $13M seed round
VentureBeat
1:55 AM
A year after FCC's vote to repeal net neutrality rules, there have been no big changes in how ISPs and mobile carriers provide their services
Wired
1:20 AM
Hulu is launching a new private programmatic marketplace for advertisers to buy its on-demand and TV inventory; the marketplace won't replace upfront deals
Ad Age
12:15 AM
Intel extends partnership with esports company ESL in $100M deal to provide tech, including high-powered CPUs and 5G, for esports events worldwide through 2021
CNBC
Saturday, December 15, 2018
11:10 PM
Synthace, the developer of Antha OS for automating laboratory processes for biological experiments, raises $25.6M Series B led by Horizons Ventures
VentureBeat
9:25 PM
China-based online consumer lending platform 360 Finance closes flat on its first day of trading in US after raising $51M in its IPO
CapitalWatch
7:40 PM
Lucy Peng, an original Alibaba co-founder, steps down as CEO of Lazada after 9 months, will be replaced by Lazada's Executive President Pierre Poignant
TechCrunch
5:55 PM
The recklessness of Uber and Tesla in their development of autonomous cars risks alienating a public already wary of self-driving vehicles
Gizmodo
4:10 PM
Data shows GraphQL, a Facebook-developed open source data query language, has seen a sharp rise in adoption among JavaScript developers over the past two years
Wired
1:45 PM
How Jolla's Sailfish has survived as an independent mobile OS by targeting government and enterprise sectors in Russia and China which are wary of Google
Motherboard
11:15 AM
Robinhood deletes tweets about launching checking and savings accounts, scrubs the page from its website, and now calls the offering a “cash management” program
Bloomberg
7:05 AM
How MindGeek, a company that dominates online porn with sites like Pornhub Network and Brazzers, uses big data to track what users watch and produce its videos
Quartz
2:00 AM
How WhatsApp fuels fake news and violence in India, where a police officer says people can live without oxygen, “but without WhatsApp they will die”
Wired
12:50 AM
Amazon's Echo Wall Clock, which connects to nearby Echo devices over Bluetooth to track and display timers via LEDs around its rim, is now available for $29.99
Digital Trends
12:15 AM
The Cydia Store, an app store for jailbroken iOS devices, is shutting down its payments backend
9to5Mac
Friday, December 14, 2018
11:00 PM
Propel raises $12.8M Series A from a16z, Kleiner Perkins, Omidyar, others for its Fresh EBT app to check food stamp/SNAP balances and find stores to use them
TechCrunch
9:10 PM
Report: Cloudflare has foreign terrorist organizations as customers, possibly violating US laws; Cloudflare says it works with US to meet legal obligations
Gizmodo
8:25 PM
How LA-based Brud is working to turn CGI-based characters into social media celebrities, like its Miquela, which has 1.5M Instagram followers
Wall Street Journal
7:15 PM
Report: Facebook renamed Building 8, its hardware skunkworks lab, to Portal after the device launched, moved more experimental projects to Facebook Reality Labs
The Verge
5:55 PM
How Huawei is pushing China's grand tech ambitions forward with a secretive enterprise unit that is estimated to net $10B+ in revenue this year
Bloomberg
4:50 PM
GE to spin out its industrial IoT software business into a separate company with $1.2B in revenue, sell 90% of ServiceMax to Silver Lake for an undisclosed sum
Forbes
3:45 PM
Sources: private equity firm Thoma Bravo is in early talks to acquire McAfee from TPG and Intel for a “significant premium” on McAfee's 2016 valuation of $4.2B
CNBC
3:10 PM
Sources: T-Mobile and Sprint expect prompt merger approval from CFIUS after SoftBank, Deutsche Telekom agree to consider curbing the use of Huawei's equipment
Reuters
2:45 PM
Revolut gets a European banking license via the Bank of Lithuania, which allows it to offer services like current accounts and non-prepaid debit cards across EU
TechCrunch
1:45 PM
Udacity, which has 10M+ registered users from 160+ countries, says 50,000 students have graduated from its nanodegree programs that cost between $1K and $2.4K
Xconomy
1:05 PM
Faire, an online wholesale marketplace for local retailers, raises $40M Series B and $60M Series C at a valuation of $535M, bringing the total raised to $116M
Crunchbase News
12:33 PM
Irish Data Protection Commission says that this week it has opened a broad investigation into Facebook's GDPR compliance in light of numerous data breaches
Financial Times
11:51 AM
SIPC, which insures funds in brokerage accounts, disputes Robinhood's claims that money in newly launched checking and savings accounts is protected by the SIPC
Bloomberg
11:15 AM
Discord says its PC game store will offer a 90/10 revenue split when it opens for all game developers in 2019
VentureBeat
10:27 AM
Facebook says that between Sept. 13 and Sept. 25 a photo API bug gave user-approved apps access to photos that were uploaded but never shared by ~6.8M users
TechCrunch