Techmeme
September 25, 2019, 8:15 PM

Top News

Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
Amazon announces a new line of Alexa-enabled wearables equipped with mics and speakers, including the $180 Echo Frames eye glasses and $130 Echo Loop ring  —  Amazon is rolling out a new line of wearables that work with Alexa today including the Echo Frames eyeglasses and the Echo Loop smart ring.
Dami Lee / The Verge:
Amazon announces high-end Echo Studio, available for pre-order today for $200, with five speaker drivers and 3D audio support  —  It supports 3D audio from Dolby Atmos  —  Amazon announced its first high-end smart speaker at its annual hardware event today, called the Echo Studio.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Amazon unveils Echo Buds, $129.99 Alexa-enabled wireless earbuds that track steps, with claimed battery life of five hours and 20 hours with the charging case  —  Preorders start today, with shipping in time for the holidays  —  Amazon just announced its first foray into the headphone space …
Molly Price / CNET:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook unveils Horizon, a VR massive multiplayer world coming in 2020, and will shut down existing VR platforms Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms on Oct. 25  —  Facebook today announced a virtual reality sandbox game where you can build your own environments and games, socialize with friends, and more.
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:
Oculus Quest will be updated in Nov. to be able to wire up directly to PCs, like the Rift, and in 2020 will get support for hand tracking, no controllers needed  —  Just before the annual VR/AR conference Oculus Connect 6, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a teaser video hinting …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
FTC sues Match Group, alleging Match.com connected daters with accounts known to be fake to get them to subscribe, leading to 499,691 new subscriptions  —  The FTC says more than 400,000 people subscribed because of these fraud messages  —  Match.com may have connected non-paying daters …
Laura Kayali / Politico:
Google refuses to pay publishers in France, first to apply EU's copyright law, will only show headlines and thumbnails, unless publisher asks to add previews  —  The announcement pours cold water on publishers' hopes of getting more money from Google after an EU reform of online copyright law.
Greg Bensinger / Washington Post:
Interviews with 20 people show Uber's 80-strong Special Investigations Unit, which deals with severe incidents, often puts Uber's interests ahead of riders'  —  Investigators say drivers get three “strikes” for bad behavior — and may just end up driving for Lyft.
Google AI Blog:
Google has released a dataset of ~3,000 deepfake videos to help researchers develop deepfake detection techniques  —  Deep learning has given rise to technologies that would have been thought impossible only a handful of years ago.  Modern generative models are one example of these …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
eBay announces CEO Devin Wenig is leaving the company and appoints CFO Scott Schenkel as interim CEO  —  Online commerce giant eBay has announced that CEO, president, and company director Devin Wenig is leaving the company, with former chief financial officer (CFO) Scott Schenkel stepping in to the hotseat on an interim basis.
Wall Street Journal:
SoftBank-backed real estate tech startup Compass loses its COO, after departures of CFO, CTO, CMO, HR head, general counsel, and head of product over 18 months  —  Startup fueled by $1.5 billion from Japanese tech fund faces scrutiny following wave of executive departures

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Deep analysis for deep questions  —  Introducing Superagent.  A new research product from Airtable: Subagents deeply interrogate your topic and turn it into boardroom-ready reports, slides, docs, or websites.
Clay:
Turn any GTM idea into reality  —  Clay helps GTM teams combine AI agents, enrichment, and intent data to move faster and turn insights into action.
Zoho:
Your next great hire is just a tap away  —  You're traveling for a recruitment conference and forgot your work laptop.  You still have to review a C-suite candidate's salary requirements, filter the best candidates …
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:
OpenAI Closes in on $100 Billion, OpenClaw Acquired, AI's Productivity Question — With Aaron Levie
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.
Hard Fork:
The Pentagon vs. Anthropic + An A.I. Agent Slandered Me + Hot Mess Express
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Loyal's Celine Halioua: From Defying Doubters To Pioneering Dog Longevity
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.
Access:
Notion CEO Ivan Zhao on if AI is really killing software companies
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Lenny's Podcast:
Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
His Excellency Khaldoon Al Mubarak: Investing in an AI-Driven World
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:15 PM ET, September 25, 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

Earlier Picks

Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Anna Wiener / New Yorker:
Alex Hern / The Guardian:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC: