Techmeme
October 10, 2018, 4:10 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: after disappointing sales, Andy Rubin's Essential is building a new phone with a small screen that will mostly rely on voice commands  —  - Mobile device would conduct tasks itself or via voice control  — Startup pauses work on home speaker to focus on new gadget
Tom Krazit / GeekWire:
Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network and cross-licenses over 60,000 patents for other members  —  After years of waging patent war on Google's Linux-based Android mobile operating system, Microsoft agreed Wednesday to join the Open Invention Network and cross-license its more than 60,000 patents to participating members.
Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:
Sources detail how Amazon shut down a machine learning tool for rating job applications in 2017 because it was biased against female candidates  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
A look at the battle between Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook for dominance in the home, and their respective strategies, strengths, and weaknesses  —  If the first stage of competition in consumer technology was the race to be the computer users went to (won by Microsoft and the PC) …
Taylor Lorenz / The Atlantic:
How teens are using Instagram to bully each other, including making dedicated hate accounts, sometimes with a mass audience, and how Instagram is addressing it  —  No app is more integral to teens' social lives than Instagram.  While Millennials relied on Facebook to navigate high school and college …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Snapchat launches Snap Originals, 12 daily scripted original shows for its Discover section, with each episode lasting four or five minutes  —  Snapchat needs reasons for teens to come back every day as it struggles to grow amidst competition from Instagram, so it's capitalizing on its Los Angeles roots.
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Magic Leap says it will add multi-user chat rooms with custom avatars in November, support for two controllers by early next year, city-wide AR layers, and more  —  Augmented reality (AR) startup Magic Leap used the opening keynote of its L.E.A.P. developer conference in Los Angeles Wednesday to preview its plans for the future.
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Waymo's driverless cars have now driven 10M miles on public roads, up from 5M miles eight months ago  —  Alphabet's self-driving technology division, Waymo, revealed that its autonomous vehicles have now driven 10 million miles on public roads.  This represents a 100 percent increase …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Waze announces a US-wide rollout of its carpooling service Waze Carpool, first launched in 2016  —  The navigation app first started experimenting with carpooling in 2016  —  For many drivers, Waze is the go-to app for circumnavigating pesky traffic jams.
Lucas Laursen / Fortune:
Report: Apple bought Danish visual effects startup Spektral for $30M+ in December 2017; the company had raised $2.8M last year  —  Even for uber-secretive Apple, the acquisition of Danish visual effects startup Spektral was especially hush-hush.  The tech giant bought the Copenhagen-based firm …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says it has fixed a data deletion bug and is re-releasing the Windows 10 October 2018 Update that it pulled over the weekend  —  Software maker is making changes to Windows 10 testing  —  Microsoft is re-releasing its Windows 10 October 2018 Update today, following the company pulling …
Ana Berman / Cointelegraph:
Diar report: as Bitcoin mining revenues reach ~$5B in 2018, rising costs like electricity are making mining unprofitable for all but the biggest of players  —  Bitcoin (BTC) miner revenues for the first six months of 2018 have already surpassed results in 2017, but the miners themselves see little profit …
Heather Long / Washington Post:
In response to Sen. Bernie Sanders' questions on the removal of stock awards and bonuses, Amazon says “all hourly employees” will see “total compensation” rise  —  As backlash mounted over Amazon's decision to raise its minimum wage to $15 but cut bonuses and stock grants …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Nvidia launches Rapids, an open source platform for data science and machine learning, to help bring GPU acceleration to data analytics, with IBM, HPE, others  —  Nvidia, together with partners like IBM, HPE, Oracle, Databricks and others, is launching a new open-source platform for data science and machine learning today.
Reuters:
Senator John Thune, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, asks Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro for briefings on China's alleged implanted chips  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee has asked Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Super Micro Computer Inc …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
WhatsApp fixes a bug, identified by Google's Project Zero, that let hackers take over its Android or iOS app when a user answered an incoming video call  —  Bug only affects WhatsApp for Android and iOS, but the issue has been fixed this week.  —  WhatsApp developers have fixed a bug …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Zenefits co-founder Parker Conrad's HR startup Rippling launches its new employee management system, after securing $7M in March 2017  —  Parker Conrad likes to save time, even though it's gotten him in trouble.  The former CEO of Zenefits was pushed out of the $4.5 billion human resources startup …
April Glaser / Slate:
Users on Discord are still freely exchanging pro-Nazi/white supremacy speech on the platform, more than year after a number of alt-right accounts were purged  —  Discord is a hub for 150 million gamers—as well as some of the worst people on the web.  — Why LADbible Is More Popular on Facebook Than the New York Times

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