Techmeme
December 5, 2019, 11:45 AM

Top News

Li Tao / South China Morning Post:
Huawei files lawsuit with a federal appeals court against the FCC's decision to bar rural carriers from using federal subsidies to buy Huawei's equipment  —  Huawei says FCC order is unlawful as it does not give Huawei required due process protections in labelling the company …
Bloomberg:
Sources: FTC investigators, who have been looking into Amazon's e-commerce business, have begun asking software companies about Amazon's practices around AWS  —  - FTC said to broaden Amazon inquiry beyond online retail  — Amazon's cloud business leads market over No. 2 Microsoft
Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News:
Kashmiris, who are subject to an ongoing four month internet shutdown, are losing their WhatsApp accounts because of the platform's policy on inactive accounts  —  On Wednesday, Kashmiris began disappearing from WhatsApp — and no one initially knew why.  Citizens of the disputed geographical territory …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC investigation finds Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular exaggerated 4G coverage in official filings to the FCC; Ajit Pai has no plans to punish the carriers  —  FCC buries investigation's finding in 5G press release, won't punish carriers.  —  49 with 42 posters participating
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
Figure, the lending platform led by Mike Cagney, who resigned as CEO of SoFi due to sexual harassment allegations, raises $103M Series C at a $1.2B valuation  —  Figure, a San Francisco-based consumer lending platform, raised $103 million in Series C funding led by Morgan Creek Digital at a $1.2 billion valuation.
More: CoinDesk and FinSMEs
Andrei Frumusanu / AnandTech:
An in-depth look at Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 and 765 chips, and why Snapdragon 865 does not come with an integrated 5G modem  —  We're here in Maui for the second day of Qualcomm's fourth annual Snapdragon summit, for what is probably the most exciting part of the event …
Kieren McCarthy / The Register:
Internet Society says private equity firm Ethos Capital will pay $1.135B for the .org top level domain registry  —  Anger rises over ten-figure sale of registry  —  Analysis The price tag for one of the internet's largest and most important domain-name registries has finally been revealed: $1.135bn.
More: CNET
Munsif Vengattil / Reuters:
Alibaba-backed Chinese startup AutoX applies to test self-driving vehicles without an in-car backup driver in California  —  (Reuters) - Chinese startup AutoX, backed by e-commerce giant Alibaba, has applied to test self-driving vehicles without an in-car backup driver in California …
More: TechNode and CNET
Jason D. Rowley / Crunchbase News:
Analysis: Series A and Series B rounds have annually accounted for between 21% and 37% of total $100M+ VC rounds across the globe since 2010  —  It's become the norm for some private tech companies to raise in a single round what VC firms raise for an entire new fund.
More: AVC
Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Instagram says it will now require birthdates from new users, in order to improve safety features for minors and better target ads for age-restricted products  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's Instagram said it will require birthdates from all new users starting on Wednesday …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Planned India Data Center Maintenance on 14th and 15th November 2026 from 06.00 AM to 07:00 AM IST for Zoho Payments  —  Dear customers,Our bi-annual infrastructure maintenance for our India Data Center is scheduled …
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
The $1.4B Startup Deciding What You See When You Shop Online | Sequen's Zoë Weil
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
Too soon to call it a vibe shift?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
Storm Clouds Ahead For Apple?, Debating Amazon's Bee Frontier, AI as UI
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.
Machine Gods:
Jensen Huang's Nvidiotic Spy Scandal + Can Dems Pass AI Regulation?
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Encore: Chuck Klosterman on Why Football Owns TV (and Why It Won't Forever)
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Zach Reitano - Building Ro and Why Healthcare Should Be 50% of GDP
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:45 AM ET, December 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

Will Oremus / OneZero:
Caroline Haskins / VICE:
Victoria Song / Gizmodo:

Earlier Picks

Jason Schreier / Kotaku:
Nick Brown / Reuters:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
The Keyword: