Techmeme
November 5, 2019, 12:15 PM

Top News

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.
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.
Jennifer Langston / Microsoft:
Microsoft teams up with Warner Bros to store and retrieve the 1978 movie Superman on a piece of glass as a proof of concept test for Project Silica research  —  Microsoft and Warner Bros. have collaborated to successfully store and retrieve the entire 1978 iconic “Superman” …
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” …
Wall Street Journal:
Companies in Vision Fund's portfolio, like Wag and Fair, are struggling; sources say Oyo founder invested $2B in his company with a loan backed by Masayoshi Son  —  Other companies the huge tech investment fund has backed have struggled lately  —  SoftBank Group Corp. 's longtime strategy …
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.
Washington Post:
Overview of TikTok's evolving censorship approach: ex-US staff say Chinese bosses set rules on videos with heavy kissing, political topics, subversive content  —  Managers insist they are revamping policies to give American staff greater autonomy from Beijing.
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.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Mozilla is working to fix a Firefox bug being actively exploited by scammers, which causes the browser to lock up after displaying a warning message  —  Fraudulent tech-support sites cause Firefox to freeze while displaying scary message.  —  Scammers are actively exploiting a bug in Firefox …
More: BetaNews
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.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Medopad, which is building AI-based measurable indicators of disease progression picked up by apps and wearables, raises $25M Series B led by Bayer  —  Medopad, the UK startup that has been working with Tencent to develop AI-based methods for building and tracking “digital” biomarkers …
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 7%+  —  Revenue of $3.8 billion, with growth accelerating to 30% year-over-year, or 31% on a constant currency basis
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
iOS 13.2 and iPadOS 13.2 seem to terminate apps in the background far more aggressively, hurting the multitasking experience, especially on the iPad  —  A growing number of iPhone and iPad users have complained about poor RAM management on iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, leading to apps like Safari …
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.
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 …

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.
Zoho:
Ask an Expert: How to effectively recover stuck TDS refunds with reduced TDS reconciliation time  —  The 26AS/Form 168 gets updated quarterly and often gets checked only during the time of ITR filing.
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.
Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!

Featured Podcasts

Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
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:
Andrew Huberman - The Frontier of Neurotechnology
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 Assistant Wars? + Why Didn't Google Build Muse?
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.
Sources:
Reflection's founders on building a DeepSeek of the West
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Grit:
How Vercel Is Rethinking Go-to-Market With AI | COO Jeanne Grosser
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again) | Tibo Sottiaux
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:15 PM ET, November 5, 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

Earlier Picks

Adobe Newsroom:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Antonio Lucio / Facebook:
Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Imran Hussain / Wccftech: