Techmeme
February 12, 2020, 5:00 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
GSMA says it has canceled Mobile World Congress after the coronavirus made it “impossible” to hold the event  —  MWC 2020 is no more  —  The world's biggest phone show, Mobile World Congress, is no longer taking place this year.  After coronavirus threatened to throw MWC into chaos …
New York Times:
Andy Rubin's Essential Products, which raised $330M to build smartphones and was valued at $1B, says it is ceasing operations  —  The smartphone company founded by Mr. Rubin, a former Google executive, struggled to win over customers.  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Essential Products …
Financial Times:
Facebook says it has banned a network of two dozen fake pages and accounts linked to two Southeast Asian telecoms for using disinformation against rivals  —  South-east Asian providers said to have used fake accounts to discredit rivals  —  Facebook has alleged that one of south-east Asia's …
Steven Levy / Wired:
Book excerpt from Steven Levy's Facebook: The Inside Story, with a look at Zuckerberg's lost handwritten journal, in which he noted plans for world domination  —  In the early days of Facebook, Zuck kept his plans for world domination in handwritten journals.  He destroyed them.
John Detrixhe / Quartz:
Research: Apple Pay makes up about 5% of global card transactions and is on pace to double that share by 2025  —  Future of Finance  —  New technology is upending everything in finance.  —  Apple's mobile wallet is gobbling up a growing chunk of card payments around the world.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp says it now has 2B users worldwide, up from the 1.5B it announced two years ago  —  WhatsApp, the most popular messaging service, revealed today just how big it has become.  The Facebook-owned app said it has amassed two billion users, up from 1.5 billion it revealed two years ago.
Data Protection Commission:
Ireland's Data Protection Commission: Facebook has postponed launching Dating on Valentine's Day in Europe after DPC resorted to an inspection to procure docs  —  Facebook Ireland first contacted the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) in relation to its intention to roll-out a new Dating feature in the EU on Monday 3 February.
Alex Hern / The Guardian:
UK proposes plans to put media regulator Ofcom in charge of regulating social media, with a focus on removing illegal content and minimizing “harmful” content  —  Ministers unveil plans to block harmful content, while guaranteeing free speech  —  Ofcom will be put in charge …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Google rolls out Emoji Kitchen, which mashes up two emojis into a sticker, for Gboard on Android  —  Compatible with WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, and more  —  There are already hundreds of emoji available to cover every emotion from yawning to being a straight-up drunk weirdo.
Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE:
Consumer advocacy group DoNotPay launches Robo Revenge, an app that fights robocallers by giving them burner credit card info and then helping users sue them  —  DoNotPay, the family of consumer advocacy services meant to protect people from corporate exploitation, is launching a new app aimed …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Reuters launches a new Reuters Fact Check business unit and blog and partners with Facebook to review news headlines, deepfakes, and user generated content  —  Eye-witness photos and videos distributed by news wire Reuters already go through an exhaustive media verification process.
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Habu, which offers analysis and management tools for marketing data, emerges from stealth with $15M Series A  —  Marketing startup Habu is emerging from stealth today and announcing that it has already raised $15 million in Series A funding.  —  The company comes out of super{set} …
The Verge:
A look at online coding program Lambda School, which lets students defer tuition payments until they have jobs, but that many say is costly and under-delivers  —  Students at Lambda School say the program hasn't delivered on its promise  —  Bethany Surber was sleeping on friends' couches …
Tweets: @ossia, @dhh, @dhh, @_danilo, and @knguyen
Hired:
State of Software Engineers 2019: global demand for AR/VR engineers up by 1,400%, gaming developers up 146%, security engineers up 49% but slower than in 2018  —  Overview  —  The worldwide process of digital transformation, while something of a buzzword, reflects a critical truth: every company is now a technology company.
More: Datanami
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Nominet survey of CISOs at large US and UK companies finds 88% are “moderately or tremendously stressed”, resulting in an average tenure of 26 months  —  Report: The vast majority of interviewed CISO executives (88%) report high levels of stress, a third report stress-caused …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Q&A with McAfee CTO Steve Grobman on unusual types of ransomware, the state of AI in orchestrating and defending against cyberattacks, and deepfake detection  —  Artificial intelligence is sweeping through almost every industry, layering a new level of intelligence on the software used …

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
Environmental impact of remote support: Reducing carbon footprints in IT  —  Information technology is essential for powering core business processes and facilitating communication.
Mastodon:
Donate to Mastodon  —  Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you.  Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.
The Kevin Rose Show:
Magatte Wade, Unlocking Prosperity in Africa (#53)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 04/18 - Game Emulators On iOS And The Atlas Robot Lives!
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:00 PM ET, February 12, 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

Nilay Patel / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Andrew Morse / CNET: