Techmeme
September 15, 2020, 2:55 AM

Top News

BuzzFeed News:
Internal memo from a fired Facebook data scientist shows how large amounts of inauthentic bot activity has boosted many countries' leaders and FB is slow to act  —  Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Oracle confirms it is part of a proposal submitted by ByteDance to the US Treasury to become TikTok's “trusted technology provider”  —  - Oracle and TikTok share an interest in marketing, but while Oracle pursues business from big companies, TikTok aims for a wide scale among consumers.
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
In an open letter to CFIUS, Senator Josh Hawley says US should reject Oracle-ByteDance collaboration citing national security grounds, calls for a full sale  —  The deal is ‘completely unacceptable,’ Hawley says  —  Sen. Josh Hawley is publicly calling on the Treasury Department …
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Sony has cut PS5 production for this fiscal year by 4M units to ~11M, following production issues with its custom-designed SOC for the new console  —  - Low yields of company's custom-designed silicon a bottleneck  — Sony facing aggressive pricing from Microsoft's Xbox team
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 …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Kuo: the 5.4" iPhone 12 will feature a narrower notch but none of the iPhone 12 models will have a 120hz display; iPad Air will feature Touch ID in side button  —  Ahead of tomorrow's Apple event, reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is out with a new investor note highlighting his expectations for the remainder of 2020.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
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.
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.
Chris Jaffe / YouTube Blog:
YouTube says it is launching an early beta of YouTube Shorts, a 15-second video feature, in India  —  - By Chris Jaffe VP of Product Management Sep.14.2020 … YouTube has always been a place to be entertained — from your favorite dance trends, like Evolution of Dance, Roller Skate Dances …
BBC:
Google says its carbon footprint is now zero, after becoming carbon neutral in 2007, and aims to run all data centers and offices on carbon-free energy by 2030  —  Google says it has wiped out its entire carbon footprint by investing in “high-quality carbon offsets”.
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
In an updated S-1 filing, Snowflake raises its expected IPO price by around 30% which would value the company between $27.7B-$30.5B compared to $20.9B-$23.7B  —  - Snowflake raised its estimated IPO price by around 30% in a new S-1 filing Monday.  — Snowflake now expects to IPO …
Rick Smith / WRAL TechWire:
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finds that IBM discriminated against older workers when making thousands of layoffs between 2013 and 2018  —  RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK - Tech giant IBM discriminated against older workers when making thousands of layoffs between 2013 and 2018 …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Low-code database service Airtable raises $185M Series D at $2.58B post-money valuation and launches Airtable Apps, a JavaScript-based no-code development tool  —  The spreadsheet-centric database and no-code platform Airtable today announced that it has raised a $185 million Series D funding round …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Google announces it will unveil the Pixel 5 as well as a new smart speaker and Chromecast on September 30  —  5G versions of the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4A are on the way  —  Google is planning to launch its Pixel 5 smartphone, a new Chromecast, and a new smart speaker later this month.

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More News

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Earlier Picks

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Chris Welch / The Verge: