Techmeme
November 7, 2019, 7:55 PM

Top News

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Some users across all major US carriers received text messages overnight that appear to have been sent around Valentine's Day, causing distress in some cases  —  It's happening to people across all major US carriers  —  Something strange is happening with text messages in the US right now.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund invested $400M in Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens in January, valuing the “ghost kitchen” operator at about $5B  —  The sovereign-wealth fund—also an early investor in Uber—poured $400 million into CloudKitchens in January
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
CNBC:
Bob Iger says Disney+ will be on Amazon's Fire TV when it launches on November 12  —  - Analysts will be looking to see if Disney gives any color on expected subscriber numbers for Disney+.  —  Disney shares were up about 3% after the company reported an earnings beat for its fiscal fourth-quarter on Thursday.
James Vincent / The Verge:
OpenAI releases the full version of GPT-2 text generation AI, which it previously said was too dangerous to share, after finding “no strong evidence of misuse”  —  The lab say it's seen ‘no strong evidence of misuse so far’  —  The research lab OpenAI has released the full version …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Microsoft starts shipping its $3,500 HoloLens 2 to preorder customers in the US, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK  —  New gesture controls and a bigger field of view  —  Microsoft's HoloLens 2 mixed reality headset is shipping today after being announced earlier this year.
VICE:
Sources: the CEO and CSO of Alphabet's Chronicle, which is to be merged with Google, have left, with the CTO leaving soon as the cybersecurity startup implodes  —  Chronicle, Google's moonshot cybersecurity startup that was supposed to completely change the industry, is imploding.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple's weather app stopped showing air quality index data for Chinese cities, source says due to Weather Channel changing how it collects that data in China  —  When it comes to many of Apple Inc.'s latest services, iPhone users in China are missing out.  Podcast choices are paltry.
Nico Grant / Bloomberg:
Photoshop for iPad has met with a lackluster reception and a review rating of 2.3 out of 5 stars, prompting Adobe exec to defend its first version  —  Adobe Inc. debuted its most important mobile application ever this week when it finally released Photoshop for Apple Inc.'s iPad.
Roger Cheng / CNET:
If its Sprint merger goes through, T-Mobile says it will offer free 5G to first responders for a decade and free broadband to 10M households with children  —  It's been more than a year and a half since T-Mobile and Sprint announced their $26.5 billion merger in a bid to revamp the US wireless industry.
Bloomberg:
Google contractors recall the often absurd predicament of representing Google, like escorting job candidates around campus, while not working for the company  —  Kevin Kiprovski had a lofty title, “Expeditions Associate,” and a fun job — he got to demo Google virtual reality gear to young students.
Emily Glazer / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Google has been holding internal meetings on changing its political ad policy, and plans to share more information with employees soon  —  Discussions come after Twitter said it would bar most political ads amid spread of misinformation  —  Alphabet Inc. GOOG -.02% 's Google …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Ghost Locomotion emerges from stealth with $63.7M and says its self-driving kit will work with some cars made from 2012 onwards when it launches in 2020  —  Self-driving cars have countless obstacles to contend with on the road, chiefly drivers who don't always act predictably — or responsibly.
Reuters:
Abha Bhattarai / Washington Post:
Postmates workers say they are making 30% less than they did before the company changed its algorithms and eliminated a $4-per-job guarantee in May  —  Drivers for Instacart, Postmates and other platforms say they're being wrung out in ways that result in lower pay and less transparency.
The Correspondent:
Skeptics say the effectiveness of online ads is misleading because the benchmarks marketers use don't distinguish people buying from ads and those buying anyway  —  Mel Karmazin, the president of Viacom, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, walked into the Google offices in Mountain View, California.
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
An investigation into I'm Shmacked, which exploited thousands of students by inducing them to provide viral videos of college parties to earn Instagram fame  —  The chief executive of I'm Shmacked promises students Instagram fame, then silences them with threats.
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News:
Twitter says it will begin a series of experiments within two weeks that tweak functions like the retweet and reply to promote healthier conversations  —  Twitter knows we treat each other terribly on Twitter.  We dunk, ridiculing friends and strangers via quote-tweets.  We ratio, piling on replies to bad tweets.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / ZDNet:
AMD unveils two new Ryzen Threadripper CPUs in 24-core and 32-core versions, built using its 7nm “Zen 2” architecture, available Nov. 19 for $1,399 and $1,999  —  Need CPU power?  AMD has you covered with new 24-core and 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors.

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Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times:
Alex Krivit / The Cloudflare Blog:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Washington Post:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC: