Techmeme
October 30, 2019, 11:15 AM

Top News

Will Cathcart / Washington Post:
WhatsApp sues NSO Group after investigating an attack from last year that sent malware to 1,400 devices and targeted 100+ human rights defenders and journalists  —  Will Cathcart is head of WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook.  —  In May, WhatsApp announced that we had detected and blocked …
New York Times:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Spotify launches a dedicated Spotify Kids app available in a beta test period in Ireland for its Spotify Premium Family plan subscribers  —  Spotify is trying to sell more multi-account family-plan subscriptions — by setting up a special “playground of sound” just for kids.
Peter Kafka / Vox:
HBO Max to launch in May and cost $15 a month, same as the existing HBO; AT&T plans to bundle free subscriptions for some customers of its other services  —  HBOMax, WarnerMedia's new streaming service, will feature all of HBO's shows, like Game of Thrones, plus new programing.  HBO
BBC:
Facebook agrees to pay a £500K fine to the UK for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal but makes no admission of liability  —  Facebook has agreed to pay a £500,000 fine imposed by the UK's data protection watchdog for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Report: Apple will use Qualcomm's X55 5G modem in all three 2020 iPhones  —  Apple's 2020 iPhones will all use Qualcomm's newest and fastest 5G-capable modem chip, claims a new report out of Asia today.  —  Apple is expected to launch three iPhones next year in 5.4-inch, 6.1-inch, and 6.7-inch sizes.
Stan Schroeder / Mashable:
Xiaomi's first high end smartwatch looks a lot like the Apple Watch, with a button and twisting control knob on the right side  —  Xiaomi's November 5 event is shaping up to be a pretty big one.  —  On Monday we wrote about the company's upcoming 108-megapixel phone, but now the company …
Jason Gurwin / The Streamable:
Sony says it will shut down its PlayStation Vue live TV subscription service on January 30  —  After much reports about trying to find a buyer, it seems that PlayStation Vue has decided to shut down the service instead.  The service, which launched in 2015, was one of the first Live TV Streaming Services …
Chris Krycho:
The current state of Apple's developer documentation, in which many parts of the ecosystem are entirely undocumented, is shocking  —  If you want developers to love your platform, then you need to take this seriously.  If it isn't documented, it isn't done.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
MX Player, a streaming and offline video app popular in India, raises ~$111M Series A led by Tencent; source: MX Player has a post-money valuation of $500M  —  MX Player, a popular video app that offers both local playback and streaming services, said on Wednesday that it has raised $110.8 million …
Alfred Ng / CNET:
Uber refuses to provide LA with real-time location data on its scooters, sues the city, requests restraining order in case LA decides to suspend Uber's license  —  The ride-hailing company doesn't want to share everything with the city's government.  —  Los Angeles wants a peek …

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Stop re-entering Shopify order details in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes AI Inc).Here's a scene that plays out in many growing Shopify stores every day: a customer places an order …
IDrive:
IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI  —  L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
The AI Race Has a Leaderboard | Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why companies are becoming a series of loops | Anish Acharya (a16z)
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
GPT-6 & OpenAI's Comeback, Hugging Face Attack Debate, Ballmer's Scandalous Legacy
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 A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR's Ajeya Cotra
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
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.
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 11:15 AM ET, October 30, 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

Emily Stewart / Vox:
Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:
Donie O'Sullivan / CNN:

Earlier Picks

Brendan Sinclair / GamesIndustry.biz:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Josh Taylor / The Guardian: