Techmeme
August 2, 2020, 2:00 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Microsoft, which was in advanced talks to buy the US operations of TikTok, has paused negotiations after Trump said on Friday that he opposes the deal  —  Talks aren't believed to be dead, but the companies are trying to get clarity on White House's stance
Echo Wang / Reuters:
Sources: ByteDance has agreed to divest US operations of TikTok under a proposed new deal with the White House that would see Microsoft take over TikTok in US  —  NEW YORK (Reuters) - China's ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House …
CNBC:
More: NBC News, Vox, Constine's Moving …, The Verge, CCN.com, Bloomberg, Pocketnow, MacRumors, The Verge, Social Media Today, NBC News, Gizmodo, The Hill, The Daily Dot, Slate, CNN, Techdirt, Reuters, 9to5Google, Digital Trends, Washington Post, AppleInsider, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Times, Variety, BBC, TechRadar, BuzzFeed News, Fossbytes, CNET, Pocket-lint, Associated Press, Axios, Fortune, Business Insider, news.com.au, CBS News, Gizmodo, Bloomberg, Engadget, Ubergizmo, Wired, Newser, TechSpot, PYMNTS.com, dexerto.com, Tubefilter, Neowin, and iPhone in Canada Blog
Elaine Low / Variety:
Profile of Netflix's Bela Bajaria, who is leading the company's content growth outside of the US as its VP of local language originals  —  She relished the development process and reading the latest drafts of scripts, which she calls the most formative part of her early Hollywood education.
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Researchers describe how attackers can sidestep security features of chip-based credit and debit cards from certain banks to create counterfeit cards  —  Chip-based credit and debit cards are designed to make it infeasible for skimming devices or malware to clone your card when you pay …
New York Times:
Ad analytics platform Pathmatics: Facebook's top 100 advertisers spent $221.4M from July 1 through July 29, down 12% YoY from the $251.4M they spent in 2019  —  Major advertisers on Facebook reduced their spending by millions of dollars in July, but not enough to significantly damage the platform's revenue.
Sam Chambers / The Sunday Times:
Sources: Apple told some landlords of UK stores it wants rent reduction of up to 50% and a rent-free period, offering to extend leases by a few years in return  —  Apple is pushing for huge rent reductions across its UK stores despite its sales soaring to new heights during the lockdown.
Renee DiResta / Wired:
AI-generated “textfakes”, masked as regular chatter on Twitter and Facebook, can be potentially far more subtle and sinister than deepfake videos or audiofakes  —  Synthetic video and audio seemed pretty bad.  Synthetic writing—ubiquitous and undetectable—will be far worse.
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
TechHub, a co-working space that was once the heart of London's start-up scene, filed for administration  —  Workspace was the busy centre of the UK's ‘Silicon Roundabout’  —  TechHub, which for a decade was home to hundreds of start-ups at the heart of London's “Silicon Roundabout” tech scene, has filed for administration.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Court documents show how FBI used a leaked copy of the OGUsers forum database, user details from Discord, and data from Coinbase to track down Twitter hackers  —  A timeline of the Twitter hack composed from court documents published today.  —  After earlier today US law enforcement charged …

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