Techmeme
October 15, 2019, 7:15 AM

Top News

Mohit Kumar / The Hacker News:
A flaw in Sudo, which is installed on almost every Linux OS, could let users run commands as “root” even when they are restricted; patched version now available  —  Attention Linux Users!  —  A vulnerability has been discovered in Sudo—one of the most important, powerful …
Reuters:
Libra loses Booking Holdings' support, but continues with association draft laws at Geneva meeting, appoints members from a16z, Xapo, PayU, more to its board  —  LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Backers of Facebook Inc's (FB.O) Libra cryptocurrency project pledged to forge ahead after selecting …
Daniel Lippman / Politico:
Sources: Zuckerberg recently hosted off-the-record dinners with conservative figures like Tucker Carlson and Lindsey Graham to discuss free speech, partnerships  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hosting informal talks and small, off-the-record dinners with conservative journalists …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Microsoft Defender's Tamper Protection antivirus feature hits general availability and will be enabled by default for all users in the coming weeks  —  Tamper Protection prevents malware from disabling Windows Defender features.  —  Today, Microsoft announced the general availability …
Rene Ritchie / iMore:
Apple says its Tencent partnership to flag malicious sites for Safari users only applies to mainland China; hashes of URL prefixes and IP addresses are shared  —  Apple and China have a complicated relationship and situation that's exploded in the news over the last week.  (Much more on that in a future column.)
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft is testing content filters for messages on Xbox Live to block toxicity, initially with four levels of text-based filtering; voice filters are planned  —  Microsoft is starting to test new content filters for its Xbox Live messaging system today in an effort to thwart toxicity on its platform.
Washington Post:
Docs and interviews show that ~44 US universities work with outside companies to data mine and rank prospective students, including tracking their web activity  —  Before many schools even look at an application, they comb through prospective students' personal data, such as web-browsing habits and financial history
VICE:
Pornhub removes Girls Do Porn, months after a lawsuit by 22 women and days after the channel's owners and staff were charged with federal sex trafficking counts  —  After months of knowingly working with porn production company that was accused of lying to women, Pornhub finally removes its official page from its platform.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook should ban political ads and let candidates communicate via their pages since it doesn't need the money and doesn't want to police political speech  —  Permitting falsehood in political advertising would work if we had a model democracy, but we don't.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
From MCP to billing: Updates that accelerate hiring  —  TL;DRConnect your favorite AI tools to Zoho Recruit with Zoho Recruit MCP.Catch up on conversations faster with Zia email summaries.Review candidate context instantly …
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

Training Data:
Inside Zipline's Autonomous System: 140M Miles, Zero Incidents
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Jeremy Giffon - The Billion Dollar PDF
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Big Technology Podcast:
Who Wins The AI Superapp Battle?, Apple's Consumer AI Victory, World Cup Automation Mistake
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:
Fable Ban Reversed + Dr. Dana Suskind on Parenting With A.I. + Prediction Market Drama
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:
Blitzy's Brian Elliott: Cursor And Claude Code Are Looking At Your Enterprise Code 'Through A Straw'
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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 7:15 AM ET, October 15, 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

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Will Oremus / OneZero:

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
MacRumors:
Sheraz Sadiq / KQED: