Techmeme
October 24, 2019, 12:20 AM

Top News

Cade Metz / New York Times:
Google claims “quantum supremacy” after its Sycamore processor completed a calculation in 3 min 20 sec that would take 10K+ years on today's supercomputers  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Google said on Wednesday that it had achieved a long-sought breakthrough called “quantum supremacy,” …
IBM Research Blog:
IBM says Google's experiment is an excellent demo of quantum computing progress, but not proof that quantum computers are “supreme” over classical computers  —  Quantum computers are starting to approach the limit of classical simulation and it is important that we continue …
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
At a hearing on Libra, Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by House lawmakers from both parties on the proposed cryptocurrency, privacy, diversity, and misinformation  —  The social media giant's chief executive took an early lashing Wednesday over the company's policies to spot and prevent the spread disinformation.
Microsoft:
Microsoft reports Q1 revenue of $33.1B, up 14% YoY, as net income rises 21% YoY to $10.7B; Intelligent Cloud revenue rose 27% YoY to $10.8B, driven by Azure  —  REDMOND, Wash. — October 23, 2019 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended September 30 …
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Microsoft Azure Q1 revenue growth has slowed down to 59%, compared to 64% in Q4, and 73% in Q3  —  - Demand for cloud services remains strong, but is decelerating  — Office 365 revenue jumped 25% in fiscal first quarter  —  Microsoft Corp. posted sales and profit that topped analysts' projections …
More: Windows Central and MSPoweruser.  Tweets: @whatthebit
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Alexi McCammond / Axios:
Memo from a departing chief of White House security lays out how an ongoing reorg under the Trump administration has left its networks more vulnerable to attack  —  An internal memo on cybersecurity, obtained by Axios, warns that “the White House is posturing itself to be electronically compromised once again.”
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
Google employees accuse the company of making an internal tool to monitor attempts to organize meetings; Google says it's only to prevent calendar spam  —  - Company says it's an effort to curb calendar, meeting spam  — Allegation underscores tensions between employees, leadership
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Leaked presentation shows Comcast is lobbying US lawmakers against Google and Mozilla's plan to encrypt DNS data, making it harder for ISPs to track users  —  Motherboard has obtained a leaked presentation internet service providers are using to try and lobby lawmakers against a form of encrypted browsing data.
Sarah Lacy / Pando:
Sarah Lacy and Paul Carr sell Pando, seven years after launching it, to ad-tech company BuySellAds, which bought Digg in 2018  —  If there is a single moment when it seemed like my journalism career suddenly caught fire, it was the 2006 Business Week cover story I wrote about the rise of Web 2.0 companies.
CNBC:
WeWork says SoftBank will provide $5B in new financing and buy up to $3B in shares from existing shareholders, which would give SoftBank an 80% stake in WeWork  —  - CNBC's David Faber previously reported that SoftBank was seeking to take control of WeWork through a financing package.
Sarah Emerson / VICE:
Documents show how Facebook uses Menlo Park's police department, which includes a Facebook-funded unit for campus patrol duties, amid racial profiling concerns  —  Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by Motherboard show how Facebook is using the Menlo Park Police Department to reshape the city.
Wall Street Journal:
Investigation: Amazon sells cheap clothes made in dozens of Bangladeshi factories, most of which are deemed too dangerous for workers by other big retailers  —  After a deadly 2013 factory collapse, most big U.S. apparel companies agreed to steer clear of dangerous plants in Bangladesh.  Not Amazon.

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Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Ferris Jabr / New York Times: