Techmeme
November 5, 2019, 8:05 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Dozens of companies in Vision Fund's portfolio have struggled lately; sources: Oyo founder invested $2B into his company by using a loan backed by Masayoshi Son  —  Other companies the huge tech investment fund has backed have struggled lately  —  SoftBank Group Corp. 's longtime strategy …
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
Data brokers like Sift and Kustomer, which share consumers' est. lifetime value with companies, now share it with customers on request due to new privacy laws  —  Little-known companies are amassing your data — like food orders and Airbnb messages — and selling the analysis to clients.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Researchers show that they can use lasers to send commands to smart speakers, tablets, and phones via Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant from far away  —  By pointing lasers tuned to a precise frequency at a smart assistant, researchers could force it to unlock cars, open garage doors, and more.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google Play Points, which rewards Android users with store credit or discounts for purchases like apps and movies, expands to the US from Japan and South Korea  —  Google Play is launching a new rewards program, Googe Play Points, that will allow you to earn points for everything …
Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:
1,100+ Googlers sign a letter asking Google to commit to eliminating its carbon footprint by 2030 and stop working with orgs harming climate change refugees  —  Google employees announced a campaign today to push the company to eliminate its massive carbon footprint by 2030.
Antonio Lucio / Facebook:
Facebook debuts logo with text that has context-dependent coloring, says it's to further distinguish the company from the Facebook app, which keeps its branding  —  Facebook started as a single app.  Now, 15 years later, we offer a suite of products that help people connect to their friends and family …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Microsoft Surface Pro X review: beautiful design and good screen but expensive, slow for the price, and has an unimpressive battery and app compatibility issues  —  Better than expected isn't enough  —  The Surface Pro X is the computer Microsoft has tried to make for at least seven years.
Frank Pallotta / CNN:
Netflix added a “skip politics” button to a segment of Seth Meyers' new comedy special “Lobby Baby”, following a request from the comedian  —  New York (CNN Business)Seth Meyers thinks some comedy fans may be burned out by DC politics, so he asked Netflix (NFLX) to help him do something about it.
Uber:
Uber reports Q3 revenue of $3.8B, up 30% YoY, gross bookings of $16.5B, up 29%, net loss of $1.2B; Uber Eats revenue up 64% to $645M; stock down 5%+ after hours  —  Revenue of $3.8 billion, with growth accelerating to 30% year-over-year, or 31% on a constant currency basis
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft launches Office app on iOS and Android, combining Word, Excel, PowerPoint functionality into one app, expanding from initial debut with Galaxy Note10  —  Microsoft is looking for new ways to encourage people to use Office apps on their mobile phones by combining lightweight versions of the core apps into a single app.
Yaël Eisenstat / Washington Post:
A former head of election integrity operations at Facebook says the company's business model and ad targeting tools make it hard for it to not harm democracy  —  The company can't avoid damaging democracy.  —  I joined Facebook in June 2018 as its “head of Global Elections Integrity Ops” …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google News for Android and iOS adds an option to show stories for up to two languages and regions  —  In recent years, Google has strived to make its products work better internationally.  Google News for Android and iOS now supports bilingual feeds to show stories for up to two “languages & regions of interest.”
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Cloud HR software company Workday to acquire Scout RFP, which makes cloud-based e-sourcing and procurement software, for $540M  —  Based in San Francisco, Scout RFP makes cloud-based e-sourcing and procurement software.  —  Workday announced Monday that it plans to acquire Scout RFP …
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
Study of ~10K startups: women represent 13% of founders but own 7% of founder equity; 31% of all equity owners are women, but hold 6% of total startup equity  —  Female entrepreneurs have less equity in their own companies than do male entrepreneurs, according to a new report from Carta.
Imran Hussain / Wccftech:
Photoshop for iPad is now available in the App Store, with full PSD editing, layers, context-aware tools, and more, for $9.99 per month and a 30-day free trial  —  Adobe has finally released the first version of Photoshop for iPad.  The update is available as a 30-day trial …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft debuts Project Cortex, a new Office 365 service for knowledge management that uses machine learning to classify documents into topics and collections  —  At its annual Ignite IT conference in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft today announced Project Cortex, its first new commercial product since the launch of Teams.

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