Techmeme
September 15, 2020, 12:45 PM

Top News

BuzzFeed News:
Internal memo from a fired Facebook data scientist says large amounts of inauthentic bot activity has boosted many countries' leaders, with Facebook slow to act  —  Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections …
David Gilbert / VICE:
Activists say ethnic violence in Ethiopia in recent months has been supercharged by hate speech on Facebook, which says it has increased monitoring of content  —  Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox?  Sign up here.  —  Throughout his life, Ethiopian singer Hachalu Hundessa sang about love …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Sony has cut PS5 production for this fiscal year by 4M units to ~11M, following production issues with its custom-designed SoC  —  - Low yields of company's custom-designed silicon a bottleneck  — Sony facing aggressive pricing from Microsoft's Xbox team
Bloomberg:
Source: Apple tells staff it's no longer offering credit cards via Barclays, which offers zero interest financing, as it shifts to Apple Card financing plans  —  - Longtime credit-card deal offered Apple customers no interest  — Company to focus on Apple Card installment payments instead
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Seth Schiesel / Protocol:
TechCrunch:
Home buying startup Opendoor announces it's going public by merging with Chamath Palihapitiya's SPAC  —  Today, Social Capital Hedosophia II, the blank-check company associated with investor Chamath Palihapitiya, announced that it will merge with Opendoor, taking the private real estate startup public in the process.
Jay Rosen / The Verge:
Q&A with ex-CSO of Facebook Alex Stamos on why big newsrooms should have threat modeling teams, how media is amplifying disinformation with its coverage, more  —  An interview with Facebook's ex-security chief  —  Editor's note: We're barreling toward the 2020 election with big unresolved problems …
Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire:
After retrieving a submerged shipping-container-size data center from Scotland's Orkney Islands, deployed in 2018, Microsoft says the project was a success  —  Two years after deploying a shipping-container-size data center to the depths off Scotland's Orkney Islands, Microsoft has reeled it back in …
Cyrus Farivar / NBC News:
As Big Fish Games announces $155M class action settlement in WA, 21 users describe how they were hooked on casino-style apps and lost significant sums of money  —  Shellz, 37, a nurse from Houston, spends at least two hours a day with her husband playing a casino-style smartphone game called Jackpot Magic.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Anchor says it is cracking down on copycat podcasters by improving the detection of stolen podcasts, adding new rules around monetizing shows, and more  —  ‘This is definitely a new type of attack for Anchor’  —  Anchor, a Spotify-owned company, is addressing the copycat podcast problem that's roiled the industry for the past month.
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Facebook paid $367.6M to buy a 400K square foot complex from REI in Bellevue, WA, expanding its 3M square feet office space footprint in Seattle  —  Facebook is yet again expanding in the Seattle region, its largest engineering hub outside of Silicon Valley.
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Volansi, maker of long-range delivery drones, raises $50M Series B led by Icon Ventures; its M20 drone has a touted range of 350 miles and top speed of 75 mph  —  Robotics generally have seen an increase in interest during the pandemic, so it makes perfect sense that investors are taking a closer look at autonomous drone delivery.
More: FinSMEs and VentureBeat
Justine Calma / The Verge:
Facebook launches an information center to combat climate change misinformation and pledges to cut greenhouse gases from its global operations this year  —  It's also working to bring more reliable climate information to its users  —  Facebook today pledged to slash greenhouse gases …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources detail Apple's Tuesday event: Apple Watch Series 6 with faster CPU and blood oxygen meter, new mid-tier iPad Air, and no new iPhones  —  - Company to debut new Apple Watches and iPad Air on Tuesday  — Smaller HomePod, headphones in the works; iPhones coming later
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:

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