Techmeme
May 22, 2019, 2:25 PM

Top News

Dave Lee / BBC:
Leaked memo: ARM has told staff it must suspend business, including all active contracts, support entitlements, and pending engagements, with Huawei  —  UK-based chip designer ARM has told staff it must suspend business with Huawei, according to internal documents obtained by the BBC.
Bloomberg:
Sources: US is considering blacklisting as many as five Chinese video surveillance companies, including Hikvision and Dahua Technology, from buying US tech  —  - Hikvision and Dahua accused of being part of Uighur crackdown  — Rubio and others say they are part of a massive crackdown
Reuters:
Natalia Drozdiak / Bloomberg:
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Federal judge rules in favor of FTC in antitrust case against Qualcomm, says its licensing practices for modem chips have strangled competition; stock drops 10%  —  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States has won the first round of litigation against Qualcomm.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Amazon shareholders reject two non-binding proposals to ban sale of facial recognition tech to government customers, despite pressure from ACLU and others  —  Amazon shareholders have rejected two proposals that would have requested the company not to sell its facial recognition technology to government customers.
Emily Stewart / Vox:
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Apple unveils Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution, a new web technology aimed at preserving user privacy without reducing effectiveness of ad campaigns  —  For years, the web has been largely free thanks to online ads.  The problem is that nobody likes them.
Ginny Marvin / Search Engine Land:
Google begins rolling out an updated mobile search design with a black “ad” label and favicons for all organic results  —  The new look brings some branding to the search results, and preps the mobile search for more types of content and actions for users to take right from the search results.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Researcher: devices can be tracked across apps and sites with info from sensors like gyroscope; patched on iOS; a minor issue on Android, given poor calibration  —  SensorID technique can track users across apps and websites using sensor calibration data.  —  A new device fingerprinting technique …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Transport for London says it will roll out default WiFi device tracking on the Underground this summer, after a trial in 2016, to improve analytics and more  —  Transport for London will roll out default wi-fi device tracking on the London Underground this summer, following a trial back in 2016.
Keith Barry / Consumer Reports:
Testing finds Tesla's updated Autopilot software, designed to make changing lanes “more seamless”, does not work well and could create safety risks for drivers  —  CR finds that latest version of Tesla's automatic lane-changing feature is far less competent than a human driver
Nick Statt / The Verge:
UNESCO says AI assistants are reinforcing gender stereotypes by mostly defaulting to female-sounding voices, urges better safeguards against gendered language  —  Female-sounding default voices perpetuate antiquated, harmful ideas about women  —  Artificial intelligence-powered voice assistants …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Valve launches a dedicated Steam Chat app for iOS and Android, which includes many key features of the desktop chat client such as Invite Links and Group Chats  —  Valve announced that the new Steam Chat mobile app has gone live as a free chat app iOS and Android platforms.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Google says it stored some G Suite passwords in plaintext due to an error dating back to 2005, found another set of unhashed passwords in 2019, both now fixed  —  Google says a small number of its enterprise customers mistakenly had their passwords stored on its systems in plaintext.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
TransferWise discloses a new $292M secondary round led by Lead Edge Capital, Lone Pine Capital, and Vitruvian Partners at a $3.5B valuation  —  TransferWise, the London-headquartered international money transfer service, is disclosing a new $292 million secondary round that sees investors value the company at $3.5 billion.
Alex Moss / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Federal court ruling affirmed the right to share copyrighted material for criticism and helped EFF protect a Reddit commenter's anonymity  —  A fight over unmasking an anonymous Reddit commenter has turned into a significant win for online speech and fair use.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Box revamps its workplace automation tool Relay, launched with IBM in 2016, and updates Box Tasks and File Request Links  —  Box debuted Relay, a business process automation tool designed to string together recruiting, budgeting, and sales activities across a range of systems, back in September 2016.
More: SiliconANGLE and ZDNet
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Ireland's Data Protection Commission, the lead EU supervisory authority for Google, announces investigation into Google's online advertising data collection  —  KEY POINTS  — Ireland's Data Protection Commission says its probe will examine whether Google's processing of data in advertising transactions breaches EU privacy rules.

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Earlier Picks

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: