Techmeme
February 8, 2020, 11:30 AM

Top News

Natt Garun / The Verge:
A roundup of the coronavirus outbreak's impact on the tech sector, from closures of offices, stores, and factories in China to affecting MWC attendance  —  The outbreak shows that what impacts China impacts everything  —  The tech sector is currently feeling the impact of the coronavirus …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
A group calling itself OurMine briefly compromised Facebook's Twitter and Instagram accounts, seemingly via a third-party service called Khoros  —  OurMine is taking credit for the hacks  —  Several of Facebook's Twitter and Instagram accounts were hijacked this evening …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 may end up raising less than half of the planned $108B, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself  —  The new pool could end up being less than half its planned size, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself
Reuters:
Coronavirus exposes China's surveillance state as apps show locations of the infected, cameras detect people with fevers and identify them even with masks, more  —  BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) - When the man from Hangzhou returned home from a business trip, the local police got in touch.
Nirave Gondhia / Android Central:
Motorola Razr review: front quick view display is useful but bumps can be felt while using the foldable screen, poor battery life, and the camera is lackluster  —  Too many compromises, for too much money.  —  Motorola RAZR: The review  — Stunning design  — Folding display  — Average Battery
New York Times:
How predictive algorithms are increasingly being used to set police patrols, prison sentences, and probation rules in the US and Europe  —  Across the United States and Europe, software is making probation decisions and predicting whether teens will commit crime.  Opponents want more human oversight.
Pam Kostka / All Raise:
In 2019, 52 women became new VC or general partners in the US, up 37% from last year's record of 38; 65% of VC firms still don't have a woman partner  —  Correction: In a previous version of this blog post we published that there were 50 new female VC partners in 2019 but the number was actually 52.
New York Times:
The number of reported videos related to online child sex abuse reached 41M in 2019, surpassing the number of reported photos; Facebook found 85% of the total  —  In a first, videos outnumbered photos in reports to the authorities last year.  Facebook found the most imagery, the bulk of it on its Messenger app.
Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:
Some ransomware rings have started stealing data before they encrypt to use stolen data as leverage, ensuring that even victims with backups make the payment  —  Ransomware operators stealing data before they encrypt means backups are not enough.  —  Not every ransomware attack is an unmitigated disaster.

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Do you need a Zoho Partner?  Here's why working with one can benefit you.  —  Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case.  From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …
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.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight
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.
Great Chat:
Tech's short-term era
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.
Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback
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 11:30 AM ET, February 8, 2020.

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

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
AnandTech:

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Joe DeBlasio / Google Online Security Blog:
Uber: