Techmeme
May 18, 2019, 7:05 PM

Top News

Brian Merchant / Gizmodo:
Profile of ObEN, which creates “personal artificial intelligences”, life-size holographic AI avatars, by modeling people's appearance and adapting their voice  —  In January 2019, when China Central Television, the largest broadcast network in the most populous nation in the world …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Snapchat's popular new gender-changing filter provokes mixed reactions in the LGBTQ community, with some lauding the ability to safely explore themselves  —  A Snapchat photo filter that lets people see themselves in highly feminized or masculine form has proven wildly popular.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Physical storage startup Clutter, valued at $600M in its last raise, acquired the storage business of rival Omni, which is pivoting to rentals of personal items  —  On the heels of Clutter announcing a large growth round of $200 million earlier this year, the storage startup is cleaning up the competitive field.
More: Omni
Esha Vaish / Reuters:
Swedish startup Einride's driverless truck T-pod gets a permit to make short trips on a public road in an industrial area in central Sweden at up to 5 km/hr  —  JONKOPING, Sweden (Reuters) - Resembling the helmet of a Star Wars stormtrooper, a driverless electric truck began daily freight deliveries …
CNBC:
Google has a “Purchases” page that shows your purchases based on receipts you have in your Gmail inbox; Google says only you can view your purchases  —  KEY POINTS  — Google saves years of information on purchases you've made, even outside Google, and pulls this information from Gmail.
Shirin Ghaffary / Vox:
A look at various tools such as drones, sensors, and AI being deployed at the US-Mexico border, as a proposed “smart wall” garners bipartisan political support  —  Here's what a so-called “smart wall” of technology at the US-Mexico border looks like.  —  Graphics by Javier Zarracina/Vox
Lizzie O'Shea / Longreads:
All harmful technologies are a product of unethical design, yet, like car companies in the '70s, today's tech companies would rather blame the user  —  an excerpt adapted from Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Teach Us about Digital Technology |
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Salesforce says faulty script deployment gave users access to all of their company's Salesforce data, forcing it to shut down much of its infrastructure Friday  —  Faulty production script gave users access to all their company's Salesforce data.  —  Salesforce is going through …

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