Techmeme: London-based Blink, an app that helps companies and orgs connect with their frontline workers, raises £8.2M Series A led by Partech as it launches publicly (Annie Musgrove/Tech.eu)

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May 23, 2020, 1:40 AM

Top News

Alfred Ng / CNET:

Mozilla, Twitter, and a coalition that includes Facebook, Apple, and Google, call on Congress to protect search and browser data from warrantless access — A recent amendment to require the FBI to get a warrant to view browsing data failed by one vote. — A group of technology companies …

More: Gizmodo, The Mozilla Blog, NBC News, Mozilla, Gizmodo, Neowin, and AppleInsider

Tweets: @schestowitz, @david_ingram, @mozilla, @evan_greer, @abdavidson, @cnet, @mordecaidesign, @stshank, @abdavidson, @plucille54, @david_ingram, @plucille54, @techdaddy, @dellcam, and @notaaroncraig

Steven Levy / Wired:

Interview with Sundar Pichai on working from home, antitrust, collaborating with Apple and others, how Alphabet's holding company model held up, and more — In an interview, the Google and Alphabet CEO discusses working from home, weathering antitrust probes, and how the company needs to do a better job on diversity.

More: Ubergizmo, AppleInsider, CNET, Android Central, and 9to5Google

Tweets: @dtunkelang, @rdrv3, @thekenyeung, @thekenyeung, @oliviasolon, @aprilaser, @wired, @thekenyeung, @sundarpichai, @louisgray, @sorayadarabi, @thekenyeung, @ethan_kraft, and @thekenyeung. Thanks:@thekenyeung

Camilla Tominey / Telegraph:

Boris Johnson instructed officials to draw up plans to reduce Huawei's involvement in UK's 5G networks to zero by 2023, a reversal of a softer policy approach — The Prime Minister has instructed officials to draw up plans that would see China's involvement in the UK's 5G network reduced to zero

More: The Guardian, Reuters, and CNET

Tweets: @brexitalex, @tedcruz, @damiangreen, @nilegardiner, @tomtugendhat, @owenpaterson, @thorstenbenner, @rlheinrichs, @tom_fowdy, and @andrewbgreene

Olivia Carville / Bloomberg:

IBM announces job cuts, will offer subsidized medical coverage to all affected US employees through June 2021; sources say layoffs will be in the thousands — - Thousands of IBM workers in North America likely affected — Newly unemployed staff fear finding another job in a recession

Reuters:

Hewlett Packard Enterprise unveils plans targeting gross savings of at least $1B by 2022, including layoffs and temporary pay cuts of 25% for top executives — (Reuters) - Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE.N) on Thursday unveiled a plan targeting gross savings of at least $1 billion by 2022 …

More: Fortune, Bloomberg, Silicon Valley Business …, and Business Wire

George Avalos / Mercury News:

Facebook revises proposal for Willow Village, its 50+ acre development project in Menlo Park, to reduce square footage by 29%, from 1.75M to 1.25M square feet — Willow Village near Facebook's Menlo Park HQ undergoes sweeping changes for office space — MENLO PARK — Facebook …

More: Palo Alto Daily Post, almanacnews.com, OneZero , and Silicon Valley Business …

Tweets: @rolandlisf, @uiri00, @sarahnemerson, @sarahnemerson, @chrismessina, @b_fung, @coryweinberg, @caseynewton, @sarahnemerson, @jenn_elias, and @svbizjournal

Reuters:

US Commerce Dept. adds 7 Chinese tech companies to economic blacklist for complicity in human rights violations, including Softbank-backed CloudMinds — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday it would add 33 Chinese firms and institutions to an economic blacklist …

Tweets: @hkanji

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:

Sources: a version of iOS 14 dated Dec. 2019, likely obtained via a development iPhone 11, has been circulating among researchers and jailbreakers for months — Security researchers and hackers have had access to a leaked early version of iOS 14, the iPhone's next operating system, since at least February, Motherboard has learned.

More: Engadget, iDownloadBlog.com, The Verge, AppleInsider, and Pocketnow

Tweets: @mahdi, @stroughtonsmith, @jason_koebler, @stroughtonsmith, @stroughtonsmith, @aaschapiro, @motherboard, and @josephfcox

Jael Goldfine / PAPER:

Facebook has had a recent influx of millennial and Gen Z users, some of whom say certain Facebook groups offer unemployment support, job search help, and more — Facebook is for old people. Everybody knows that! Usage plummeted in 2019, most sharply among Gen-Z and millennials.

Tweets: @kantrowitz and @jaelgoldfine

Tom McKay / Gizmodo:

A US Copyright Office report states that the DMCA's safe harbor provision is “askew” and recommends making it easier for rightsholders to issue takedown notices — The U.S. Copyright Office has released a long-awaited, 192-page report that could give the music and movie industry …

More: Bloomberg Law, Techdirt, Axios, Motion Picture Association, and Music Ally

Mark Sullivan / Fast Company:

Telehealth will be more proactive, hyper-personalized, and data-driven thanks to connected devices, remote healthcare kits, mobile apps, and AI-based monitoring — You're sitting at the table eating dinner when you receive a notification. A woman wearing a light blue top fills the screen of your phone with a video message.

Tweets: @svb_financial

Tony Wan / EdSurge:

PresenceLearning, which helps school districts provide speech and mental health therapy to students online, raises $27M Series D, bringing total raised to $70M+ — Speech and other special-education professionals were already in short supply even when classes were in session.

More: PresenceLearning. Tweets: @edsurge and @edsurge

Kai-Fu Lee / Wired:

AI has played a useful but fragmented role in the global fight against COVID-19, from predicting outbreaks to aiding diagnosis and drug discovery efforts — Disease diagnosis, drug discovery, robot delivery—artificial intelligence is already powering change in the pandemic's wake.

Tweets: @kaifulee, @nxthompson, and @wired

Annie Musgrove / Tech.eu:

London-based Blink, an app that helps companies and orgs connect with their frontline workers, raises £8.2M Series A led by Partech as it launches publicly — Blink, a London-based app that connects frontline employees, has announced £8.2 million in funding from Partech Partners and a group of angel investors.

More: Mirror.co.uk, Smart Cities World, Business Matters, Bdaily Business News, med-technews.com, Partech, and EU-Startups

Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:

Report: 60% of insider cybersecurity threats involve employees leaving their jobs, with 44% forwarding content to personal emails, 16% misusing cloud privileges — The majority of staff planning their exit also take sensitive information with them, research suggests.

Shira Ovide / New York Times:

Upgrades of 911 emergency response systems enable paramedics to do video call assessments to prioritize resources and pinpoint callers' locations more precisely — You don't need flying cars to save lives. A little tech can make big improvements. — Overwhelmed government bureaucracy …

More: Digiday. Tweets: @shiraovide

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From Mediagazer

Jake Kanter / Deadline:

UK ministers are advancing a bill requiring YouTube and TikTok to promote BBC and ITV content, as well as forcing streamers to show big sports events for free

Perry Stein / Washington Post:

Source: the US DOJ sought to force WaPo and WSJ reporters to testify before a grand jury but withdrew the subpoenas this month after the outlets challenged them

Ted Johnson / Deadline:

ABC is airing direct appeals to its audience for The View and for stations it owns, asking viewers to comment on FCC actions challenging the show and stations

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More News

Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:

The presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden does not have a top adviser for tech policy and lacks the tech policy infrastructure of his Democratic predecessors

Tweets: @tonyajoriley, @birnbaum_e, and @rdrv3

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:

States Title, a house title insurance and closing startup that claims to use AI to reduce the time of a closing from around 40 days to 20, raises $123M Series C

More: HousingWire, The Title Report, PitchBook, The Real Deal New York, Insurance Insider, GlobeSt, PR Newswire, Inman, and AiThority. Tweets: @bayareawriter

Bloomberg:

A look at China's plan to invest an estimated $1.4T over six years to build out 5G, surveillance infrastructure, and AI, relying heavily on Chinese companies

Tweets: @rajatsethi86, @johnhemmings2, @khoelzle, and @lisaabramowicz1

Karen Weise / New York Times:

Sources: while Amazon has pushed its annual Prime Day to September, the company is preparing for an earlier “Summer Sale” to let brands sell excess inventory

More: Newsweek and New York Post

Tweets: @shiraovide, @yoda, @puiwingtam, and @shiraovide

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:

Sources: Audible is in talks to acquire celebrity podcasts and considers selling original shows individually; Amazon Music is also preparing to add podcasts

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Statespace, whose software recreates the physics of popular FPS games to help players work on their weaknesses, raises $15M Series A led by Khosla Ventures

Tweets: @mattturck and @andreas

Bloomberg:

Interviews shed light on the strained relationship between Masayoshi Son and Vision Fund leader Rajeev Misra, who some say has created a divisive workplace

Tweets: @bradstone, @menakadoshi, @economictimes, @andresbarreto, and @bloombergquint. Thanks:@tsgiles

George Anadiotis / ZDNet:

Comparing Nvidia's new A100 Ampere AI chip with competition from Intel and GraphCore in terms of performance, economics, and software

Earlier Picks

Business Wire:

Alibaba Q4 beats estimates with revenue up 22% YoY to $16.14B and income of $447M, down 88% YoY due to loss in investments, cloud computing revenue up 58% YoY

More: South China Morning Post, Fox Business, ZDNet, and Nikkei Asian Review

Ashley Carman / The Verge:

With Spotify owning shows, a podcast player, tools to make new shows, and selling ads, the podcasting world is now divided into open and closed ecosystems

More: Techdirt, Tubefilter, Apple Must, The Mac Observer, Telecoms.com, and AppleInsider

Tweets: @richlightshed, @yoda, @mattstasoff, @lucas_shaw, @willrinehart, @dp16, @donthatebehated, @lthomasnews, @jamescridland, @sportsrapport, @tarungangwani, @mgsiegler, @mattnavarra, and @markgurman

Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:

Gen Z TikTok stars have embraced the rise of “collab houses” in Los Angeles, where young social media personalities chasing influence live and work together

Tweets: @ianrborthwick, @patrickcoffee, @1followernodad, @tiffanytheprez, @nytimes, @glengilmore, @jessicahische, @jonacuff, @aishamoodmills, @laurenstrapa, @crtejada, @karlusss, @bigtucsondad, and @taylorlorenz

Steven Melendez / Fast Company:

Report: the official COVID-19 contact tracing app for North Dakota is sharing location data with Foursquare and an advertising ID with Google

More: Washington Post, iMore, Jumbo Blog, Input, Lifehacker, infosecurity-magazine.com, The Daily Dot, MacDailyNews, AppleInsider, Bugfender, Observer, Ubergizmo, Digital Trends, The Mac Observer, Gizmodo, al.com, and Mashable

Tweets: @profwoodward, @geoffreyfowler, @iwillleavenow, @allanfriedman, @foxcahn, @jason_kint, @saysdana, @geoffreyfowler, @jenvalentino, @thekenyeung, @granick, @moonalice, @rcalo, @rmack, @cwarzel, and @harrymccracken. Thanks:@technologizer

David Jagneaux / UploadVR:

Facebook says its $1,000 enterprise-edition Oculus Quest, which sells as part of the Oculus for Business platform, is now available for companies to purchase

More: Oculus-blog, VRFocus, The Ghost Howls, TechRadar.com, Road to VR, and About Facebook

Tweets: @boztank, @eric_capuano, @mixedknuts, @schrep, @marifes, @jasonlk, @vr_sam, @marifes, @vrdesktop, and @wongmjane

Dylan Byers / NBC News:

Facebook says it will let many of its 50,000 employees work from home permanently, “aggressively” open up remote hiring, first in the USA, then elsewhere

More: The Guardian, Fast Company, OneZero , Adweek, The Verge, Cracked, GitLab, Road to VR, iPhone in Canada Blog, Business Insider Nederland, Protocol, Politico, coinspeaker.com, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Silicon Republic, Micky, TweakTown News, SlashGear, Input, Gizmodo, Beyond Search, Pocketnow, Axios, Newser, and Washington Post

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Google rolls out new accessibility features for Android, including Assistant-powered, customized buttons called Action Blocks for tasks like playing music

More: Android Police, BGR, The Keyword, ZDNet, Android Headlines, Search Engine Journal, Axios, MacRumors, Zoom Blog, The Keyword, Gizmodo, Neowin, 9to5Google, and SlashGear

Tweets: @backlon, @kent_walker, @google, and @reneritchie

Candy Cheng / Bloomberg:

Shopify says it will allow its 5,000 employees to work from home indefinitely

More: diginomica, New York Times, and MSPoweruser

Tweets: @tobi, @bodil, @shashankmehta05, @seldo, @cultureofdefeat, @jamisonsteeve, @liznlbee, @hdretrovision, @kevgcallahan, @alexlindsay, @dnas, @drakefenton, @jrichlive, @dhh, @gmbutts, @jen_keesmaat, @dhh, @levie, @suhel, @bradmccarty, @alex, and @levie