Techmeme
July 8, 2019, 8:45 AM

Top News

Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
FBI and ICE have access to 641M photos including driver's license photos from 21 states for facial recognition searches, internal docs and GAO report show  —  A cache of records shared with The Washington Post reveals that agents are scanning millions of Americans' faces without their knowledge or consent.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple tests Face ID and Touch ID sign-in for iCloud․com on iOS 13 and macOS Catalina betas  —  For iOS 13, iPadOS 13, and macOS Catalina beta testers, Apple is trying out a new sign-in process for iCloud on the web.  When you head to beta.icloud.com on a device running the betas …
BBC:
UK's ICO fines British Airways a record £183M fine for the data breach in 2018 that affected ~500K customers  —  British Airways is facing a record fine of £183m for last year's breach of its security systems.  —  The airline, owned by IAG, says it is “surprised and disappointed” …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Mozilla says it has no plans to enable DNS-over-HTTPS by default in Firefox in the UK, after ISPs and the UK government criticize its support of the protocol  —  But there's nothing stopping users from enabling the DNS-over-HTTPS feature in Firefox on their own, though.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
7-Eleven Japan shut down its 7Pay mobile payment app two days after launch after hackers reset passwords for ~900 accounts and made ~$500K in illegal charges  —  Hackers exploit 7-Eleven's poorly designed password reset function to make unwanted charges on 900 customers' accounts.
Amanda Hess / New York Times:
A look at the rise of the ambivalent conspiracy theorists, popular YouTubers using irony and nonchalance to refurbish old conspiracies for new audiences  —  Conspiracy theories were once deadly serious.  On the internet, skepticism about the moon landing shows how the mood has shifted.
Ruby Prosser Scully / New Scientist:
Researchers say they have been able to store the digital data of thumbnail-sized images on molecules smaller than DNA and retrieve it with ~99% accuracy  —  DNA isn't the only molecule we could use for digital storage.  It turns out that solutions containing sugars, amino acids and other small molecules could replace hard drives too.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Command Line:
GitHub Universe 2026: Highlights from the developer's developer conference  —  Copilot Fusion was the belle of the ball, but the hero at the heart of the two-day event was the developer community.
Zoho:
Introducing the new Zoho Analytics: Agentic analytics for every business  —  We're excited to announce the launch of the new Zoho Analytics!  This release marks a major shift for the product …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Sources:
Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:45 AM ET, July 8, 2019.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Emma Cosgrove / Supply Chain Dive:

Earlier Picks

Nellie Bowles / New York Times: