Techmeme
July 18, 2020, 5:00 PM

Top News

Twitter:
Twitter provides an overview of what it knows about Wednesday's hack so far: how it happened, what the attackers accessed, how it reacted, and the next steps  —  As we've been informing via the @TwitterSupport account, on Wednesday, July 15, 2020, we detected a security incident at Twitter and took immediate action.
New York Times:
A person involved in Twitter hack may have gained access to Twitter's internal dashboard using credentials pinned in one of the company's Slack channels  —  Several people involved in the events that took down Twitter this week spoke with The Times.  What might have been a pursuit of Bitcoin spun out of control.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Twitter says hackers downloaded account info, which may include DMs, of up to 8 accounts via its “Your Twitter Data” tool, but none of the 8 were verified users  —  But it sounds like the attackers didn't get Biden's data cache  —  On Friday evening, Twitter issued …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Twitter says around 130 accounts were affected in Wednesday's hack, and the attackers gained control of and sent tweets from a subset of those accounts  —  - “We believe approximately 130 accounts were targeted by the attackers in some way as part of the incident," Twitter said Thursday.
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Shaun Nichols / The Register:
Researchers say seven Hong Kong-based “no log” VPNs have left 1TB+ of user logs and personally identifiable info exposed on the internet  —  Maybe it was the old Lionel Hutz play: 'No-logging VPN?  I meant, no!  Logging VPN!'  —  BIO EMAIL TWITTER
Delian Asparouhov / Operators & Delian's Ramblings:
Despite its limitations, GPT-3, OpenAI's text-generating AI, excels at producing follow-on thoughts to input text, and could thus succeed as a “writing buddy”  —  OpenAI, an AI research foundation started by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and a few other leaders in ML …
Erin Griffith / New York Times:
Current and former employees provide an inside look at Airbnb amid layoffs, as its warm and fuzzy office culture met with the business realities of a pandemic  —  What happens when a kumbaya office culture meets the business realities of a pandemic?  —  SAN FRANCISCO — On May 5 …
Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology:
How tech companies place favorable newspaper op-eds, purportedly from small business owners, think tanks, and academics, without disclosing their involvement  —  Why you should probably read opinion pieces supporting the tech giants with skepticism.  —  7 hr

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:
Labels that build themselves: Simplified Label Automation in Zoho Writer  —  Anyone who ships every day knows this feeling.  Forty orders, each with a different number of items, and every item needs its own label.
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:
How Ramp Built A $60B AI Product Factory Off A Corporate Card | Co-CEO Eric Glyman
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:
Would you let a robot do it?
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.
Training Data:
A Model For Everyone: How Ronak From Trajectory Is Building Products For Continual Learning
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Going After The Democrats' Big Win? — With Teddy Schleifer
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:
Crypto's Biggest Heist Ever + The Spy Who Loved Nvidia + Hacktober's Unsolved Mysteries
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:
Barry Diller on Big Bets, AI, and Knowing When to Walk Away
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:00 PM ET, July 18, 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

Megan Morrone / OneZero :
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Will Rinehart / Wired:
Colin Lecher / The Markup:

Earlier Picks

Sarah Emerson / OneZero :
New York Times:
Bloomberg: