Techmeme
August 28, 2019, 11:05 AM

Top News

Nathaniel Popper / New York Times:
Sources: when Telegram raised $1.7B in 2018, it told investors it will deliver Gram by Oct. 31, 2019, or give back the money, and now says it is still on track  —  While Facebook's big cryptocurrency plans have hit a wall with regulators, another big social network, Telegram, is charging ahead with its own digital currency.
Alexandra Ma / Business Insider:
Report: US officials are trying to block an undersea cable backed by Google and Facebook connecting Los Angeles to Hong Kong over national security concerns  —  - An 8,000-mile undersea cable connecting Los Angeles to Hong Kong is at risk of being abandoned over national-security threats, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Facebook tightens rules on political advertisers, requiring further identity proof such as tax-identification number or Federal Election Commission registration  —  Facebook on Wednesday announced it would tighten some of its rules around political advertising ahead of the 2020 presidential election …
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Peloton's public S-1 shows revenue of $915M in fiscal 2019, up 110% YoY, and an annualized subscriber growth of ~144% over the past 3 years, to 511K this June  —  Today, Peloton, the maker of pricey in-home bicycles and treadmills paired with on-demand fitness classes, filed its S-1 …
Colin Campbell / Polygon:
LCG Entertainment, a new company formed by game industry veterans, to buy defunct studio Telltale Games, sell some of their back catalog, and work on new games  —  A new attempt to relaunch the episodic adventure company  —  Telltale Games, which shut down last year, is coming back after its assets …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Dutch data protection agency says it found that Windows 10 may still be unlawfully collecting user data, refers Microsoft to its EU privacy regulator in Ireland  —  The Dutch data protection agency has asked Microsoft's lead privacy regulator in Europe to investigate ongoing concerns it has attached to how Windows 10 gathers user data.
Damien Wilde / 9to5Google:
Report: Google plans to move some production of Pixel 3A from China to Vietnam later this year and aims to have shipped 8M-10M smartphones by the end of 2019  —  According to a report from Japanese news outlet Nikkei, Google is set to move production of the Pixel from China to Vietnam amid the growing US-China trade war.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google says its Nest Hello video doorbell can now detect package deliveries and notify US users who are subscribed to its $5/month Nest Aware service  —  So you can stop checking every time the camera detects passersby  —  Google says that, starting today, its Nest Hello video doorbell …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
CBP searched 30,000 devices last year without a warrant, up ~4x from three years prior, and increasingly denies entry to people over content sent by others  —  Travelers are increasingly being denied entry to the United States as border officials hold them accountable for messages …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
US government charges Anthony Levandowski, a former star engineer at Google and Uber, with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of Google trade secrets  —  SAN JOSE, Calif. — Anthony Levandowski, one of Silicon Valley's foremost technologists on self-driving cars, was charged …
Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
Google to shut down Google Hire, a job application tracking system for small to medium sized businesses it launched two years ago, in September 2020  —  Add another one to the Google Cemetery.  —  Google has disclosed that it will shut down Google Hire, the job application tracking system it launched just two years ago.
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Amazon's Ring has partnerships with over 400 US police forces, granting them access to footage by request, higher than previously believed  —  The doorbell-camera company Ring has quietly forged video-sharing partnerships with more than 400 police forces across the United States …
The Social Science Research Council:
Unless Facebook delivers promised data to researchers by Sept. 30, consortium of funders will recommend Social Science Research Council wind down the project  —  Statement from Social Science Research Council President Alondra Nelson on the Social Media and Democracy Research Grants Program
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Google Maps is rolling out the ability for users to combine different transit modes, like biking, public transit, and ride-sharing, in their directions  —  Google Maps is going multimodal  —  Google Maps is going multimodal.  The navigation app announced the launch of a new feature today …

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.
Zoho:
Labels that build themselves: Simplified Label Automation in Zoho Writer  —  Anyone who ships every day knows this feeling.  Forty orders, each with a different number of items, and every item needs its own label.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
How Ramp Built A $60B AI Product Factory Off A Corporate Card | Co-CEO Eric Glyman
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.
Great Chat:
Would you let a robot do it?
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.
Training Data:
A Model For Everyone: How Ronak From Trajectory Is Building Products For Continual Learning
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Going After The Democrats' Big Win? — With Teddy Schleifer
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:
Crypto's Biggest Heist Ever + The Spy Who Loved Nvidia + Hacktober's Unsolved Mysteries
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Barry Diller on Big Bets, AI, and Knowing When to Walk Away
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:05 AM ET, August 28, 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

Ben Thompson / Stratechery:

Earlier Picks

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Jon Porter / The Verge: