Techmeme
September 5, 2020, 2:00 AM

Top News

Financial Times:
Sources: unusually large purchases of call options by SoftBank over the past month partly fueled the latest tech stock rally  —  Japanese conglomerate has been snapping up options in huge amounts over past month  —  SoftBank is the “Nasdaq whale” that has bought billions of dollars' worth …
Jeremy B. Merrill / ProPublica:
Facebook's ban on political ads in the week prior to the election applies to election officials, who use Facebook to inform voters about the voting process  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Ashley Gold / Axios:
Steve Kovach / CNBC:
Amazon Web Services:
Amazon responds to JEDI decision, calling it a “politically corrupted contract award” and attacks Trump's role in steering the award away from AWS  —  Earlier today, the DoD announced it had concluded its corrective action and affirmed its prior JEDI contract award to Microsoft.
Aaron Gregg / Washington Post:
Pentagon reaffirms its controversial decision to give JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft; Amazon is likely to continue its legal challenge  —  The Pentagon reaffirmed its controversial decision to give its largest-ever cloud computing contract to Microsoft instead of to market-leader Amazon …
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
Under shareholder pressure, Apple quietly publishes its human rights policy based on UN guiding principles, but will follow national law if the two conflict  —  iPhone maker approves new policy after shareholder pressure  —  Apple has for the first time published a human rights policy …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Facebook is testing displaying Instagram Stories directly in the main Facebook app; the test requires users opt in and link their accounts together  —  Only your Instagram followers can see your stories in Facebook  —  Some Facebook users have recently noticed that they can now watch …
Zeynep Tufekci / The Atlantic:
In an attempt to open during the pandemic, many US universities are forcing students to download location-tracking apps, sometimes as a condition of enrollment  —  Trying to do so is all but useless.  —  In Michigan, a small liberal-arts college is requiring students to install an app called Aura …
David McCabe / New York Times:
As Oracle tries to buy TikTok, a look at how the company started embracing and building ties with Donald Trump and his administration after the 2016 election  —  The tech giant stands out in Silicon Valley for its close ties to the administration, which must bless any deal for the social media app.
More: Engadget and NBC News
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
Amazon deleted 20,000 reviews by 7 of its top 10 UK contributors after an FT analysis found they appeared to profit from posting thousands of five-star ratings  —  FT investigation finds suspicious behaviour by 9 of top 10 UK contributors on feedback  —  Amazon has deleted approximately …
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
ThruWave, which uses millimeter wave-based computer vision tech to create 3D images of items inside packages going through retail warehouses, raises $6.4M seed  —  Seattle startup ThruWave just raised a $6.4 million round for its futuristic technology that uses millimeter waves to see through packaging.

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