Techmeme
October 24, 2019, 7:50 AM

Top News

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 …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
BBC:
BBC News launches dark web mirror of its international site, accessible via Tor, as it seeks to thwart censorship from states such as China, Iran, and Vietnam  —  The BBC has made its international news website available via Tor, in a bid to thwart censorship attempts.
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
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.”
Reuters:
Samsung rolls out a patch for Galaxy S10 and Note10 to fix the fingerprint sensor flaw that caused 3D patterns in screen protectors to be read as fingerprints  —  SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) has updated software to fix problems with fingerprint recognition features …
Jim Baker / Lawfare:
Former FBI general counsel explains why US law enforcement needs to embrace encryption to protect the country against existential cybersecurity threats  —  I. Embrace Reality and Deal With It  —  From 2012 to 2014, I worked for Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund located in Connecticut.
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
Samsung unveils Exynos 990, its new flagship SoC that's 20% faster overall and 2x faster on AI-specific tasks, and a new 5G modem, both made with a 7nm process  —  If you buy next year's flagship Samsung Galaxy phone, it might come with a performance boost from a new processor the Korean electronics giant announced Wednesday.
iFixit News:
Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (15") teardown: seems pretty repairable with an easily accessible SSD, but there's one big drawback: its battery is firmly glued down  —  Teardown of the Surface Laptop 3 reveals a shocking turnaround in repairability on what used to be our least-favorite laptop design.
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,” …
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.
Paris Martineau / Wired:
New report says the proliferation of right-wing content on YouTube is driven by both supply and demand rather than the platform's recommendation algorithm  —  In a new report, Penn State political scientists say that it's not the recommendation engine, but the communities that form around right-wing content.

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Earlier Picks

Kerry Flynn / CNN:
Wall Street Journal:
Joseph Cox / VICE:
CNBC:
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times: