Techmeme
March 4, 2019, 6:00 PM

Top News

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Facebook has urged users to enable phone number-based 2FA, but the numbers are used in a user lookup feature with no opt out and to target ads, sparking outcry  —  Users are complaining that the phone number Facebook hassled them to use to secure their account with two-factor authentication …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
USB Implementers Forum announces USB 4, which offers a maximum speed of 40 Gbps, double that of USB 3.2, and support for Thunderbolt 3  —  Double the speed of USB 3.2 up to 40 Gbps  —  Hot on the heels of USB 3.2 receiving a confusing Gen 2x2 suffix, the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) …
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Google's 2018 pay equity analysis found that it was underpaying more men than women among software engineers, and it paid $9.7M in adjustments to 10K+ Googlers  —  SAN FRANCISCO — When Google conducted a study recently to determine whether the company was underpaying women and members of minority groups …
New York Times:
Sources: Huawei is preparing to sue the US government for banning federal agencies from using the company's products  —  SHANGHAI — The Chinese electronics giant Huawei is preparing to sue the United States government for banning federal agencies from using the company's products, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
Luminary, a subscription-based podcasting app, has just emerged from stealth with $100M in funding and shows from Conan O'Brien, Lena Dunham, and more  —  LOS ANGELES — Patti LuPone as a bebop-singing junkie nun in John Cameron Mitchell's musical follow-up to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”
New York Post:
Agents and producers working on streaming projects for Apple complain about how involved and “intrusive” execs, including Tim Cook, have been, leading to delays  —  Apple's push into Hollywood is off to a rough start — thanks in part to “intrusive” tech executives, including Tim Cook, The Post has learned.
Ryan Gallagher / The Intercept:
Google employees believe the company is still working on Dragonfly, after finding recent code changes associated with the censored search engine and more  —  Google employees have carried out their own investigation into the company's plan to launch a censored search engine for China …
Saqib Shah / Engadget:
Messenger is the first Facebook app to get dark mode, now available on iOS and Android  —  Days after Facebook Messenger's dark mode was outed on Reddit, the social network has made the update official for iOS and Android.  For now, you can only enable it by sending the crescent moon emoji in an existing chat thread or new message.
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Alphabet startup Chronicle launches Backstory, a “Google Photos for network security” that makes network history easy to search and draw insights from  —  It's been a year since Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced a moonshot cybersecurity company called Chronicle.
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
IBM's cybersecurity team X-Force Red investigated five popular visitor management systems and found 19 zero-day vulnerabilities across the vendors' products  —  Automation is big business, but smart visitor systems can be as vulnerable to attacks as any other connected device.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sources: Microsoft is prioritizing Windows Lite to run on dual-screen devices for new hardware that could launch as early as late 2019  —  Microsoft is making a Chrome OS-like version of Windows  —  Microsoft is preparing a new lightweight version of Windows for dual-screen devices and Chromebook competitors.
Usama Jawad / Neowin:
Google discloses a “high severity” security flaw in macOS kernel after privately reporting the flaw to Apple in November 2018; no patch available yet  —  Google's Project Zero team is well-known for its knack of finding security flaws in the company's own products as well as those manufactured by other firms.
Rita Liao / TechCrunch:
Moka raises $27M Series B for its data-driven talent acquisition platform for China-based companies, says it has over 500 enterprise customers including Xiaomi  —  Moka, a startup that wants to make talent acquisition a little more data-driven for China-based companies that range …
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Tether partners with the Tron Foundation on a dollar-pegged USDT stablecoin on the Tron blockchain, expected to launch in the next quarter  —  Tether is gearing up to launch its controversial stablecoin as a native token on the Tron blockchain.  —  For the effort, Tether is partnering …

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Shwanika Narayan / San Francisco Chronicle:
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