Techmeme
August 31, 2020, 1:15 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Internal postings show Ankhi Das, a top Facebook exec in India, supported “strongman” Modi's party before he was elected in 2014 and disparaged its main rival  —  Some employees said the sentiments and actions conflicted with the company's longstanding neutrality pledge
Fred Lambert / Electrek:
Tesla releases new software update to visually detect speed limit signs, and more  —  Tesla has started pushing a new version of its software update to now visually detect speed limit signs, and more.  —  For a while, there has been speculation about to what degree Tesla …
Jack Morse / Mashable:
Slack discloses a now fixed critical RCE flaw in its desktop app; Slack paid $1,750 bug bounty to researcher, which critics say is a paltry sum  —  Slack and its scores of desktop app users just dodged a major bullet.  —  The communications tool relied upon by journalists, tech workers …
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
A look at autonomous boat tech as ocean research nonprofit Promare says it will unveil in September a fully autonomous ship called Mayflower with IBM as partner  —  Driverless ships don't have to worry about crowded roads.  And they don't need bunks—or toilets.  —  TEXT  —  1 RESPONSE
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Report: black market for stolen game logins generates $1B annually, with logins for Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and RuneScape accounting for ~$700M in sales  —  - Roblox, Minecraft and RuneScape accounts are also popular  — 'They can't keep up with demand,' researcher says in a report
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
Online creators are creating deepfake memes as the technology grows more accessible, and publishing YouTube instructions so others can learn how  —  The rapidly increasing accessibility of the technology raises new concerns about its abuse.  —  Grace Windheim had heard of deepfakes before.
Cory Doctorow / OneZero :
Cory Doctorow highlights the conceptual limitations of Shoshana Zuboff's “surveillance capitalism” and details how to dismantle it  —  The most surprising thing about the rebirth of flat Earthers in the 21st century is just how widespread the evidence against them is.
Dara Kerr / CNET:
How a law professor became the target of posts on conservative sites, social media harassment, and PR firms hired by gig economy companies, for supporting AB5  —  Labor activists are targeted in a social media campaign as gig economy companies spend millions to prevent workers from becoming employees.
Wall Street Journal:
Coco Liu / Nikkei Asian Review:

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Generate videos with Veo 3 in Google Gemini  —  Create high-quality, 8-second videos with Veo 3, our state-of-the-art AI video generator.  Try it with a Google AI Pro plan or get the highest access with the Ultra plan.
Warp:
The #1 Coding Agent  —  #1 on Terminal-Bench.  71% on SWE-bench Verified.  Trusted by 600K+ devs.  Try the top agentic dev tool for $1 for 1st month with code TECHMEME.
Zoho:
Boost technician productivity on the go with the Zoho FSM mobile app  —  Life on the move: Inside a technician's daily workflowIn field service, unpredictability is part of the job.  One moment, a technician is on schedule.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Tech Brew Ride Home:
AI Business Bigger Than The Smartphone Business?
Tech news headlines every day. 15 minutes and you're up to date. From Tech Brew, Morning Brew's tech hub.
Subscribe to Tech Brew Ride Home.
Hard Fork:
GPT-5 Backlash + Perplexity C.E.O. Aravind Srinivas on the Browser Wars + Hot Mess Express
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.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
The head of ChatGPT on AI attachment, ads, and what's next
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Lenny's Podcast:
The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Great Chat:
Warm intros and hot takes: It's time to get ready for fundraising season
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Is The AI Going To Escape? -- With Anthony Aguirre
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:15 AM ET, August 31, 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

Ev Williams / The Official Medium Blog:

Earlier Picks

Todd Shields / Bloomberg:
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac: