Techmeme
October 20, 2020, 1:25 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
DOJ and 11 state AGs, all Republican, file a suit alleging that Google acted anticompetitively to preserve monopolies in search and search advertising  —  Lawsuit follows lengthy investigation and seeks to break company's grip over search traffic  —  The Justice Department filed …
Kent Walker / The Keyword:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
iPhone 12 review: has an excellent camera, display, and design, promising MagSafe ecosystem, but battery life is inferior to iPhone 11's and it's more expensive  —  It's the one you should get unless you're waiting for the Max or mini  —  More than most years, there are a lot of things that are new in the iPhone 12.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
iPhone 12 Pro review: has an excellent camera and performance, Dolby Vision video is great, 5G can be very fast, but battery life is inferior to iPhone 11 Pro  —  5G, LIDAR, MagSafe — the new iPhone 12 Pro has a lot of things you won't be able to do much with right now
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft partners with SpaceX for satellite-powered internet connectivity on Azure and debuts Azure Space, a set of products for the space-related cloud market  —  Microsoft is using its ‘Amazon is your competitor’ playbook to try to win over more satellite partners and customers.
Bloomberg:
Intel agrees to sell its NAND memory unit to SK Hynix for about $9B; the acquisition includes Intel's solid-state drive, NAND flash, and wafer businesses  —  - U.S. chipmaker has fallen behind in a chip manufacturing race  —  Intel Corp. agreed to sell its Nand memory unit …
James Vincent / The Verge:
Researchers find a Telegram bot that takes a person's photo and turns it into a fake nude; by July, 100K+ images of women had been transformed, shared publicly  —  Bots have been used to create more than 100,000 images  —  Researchers have discovered a “deepfake ecosystem” …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Adobe debuts improvements to Creative Cloud, with Neural Filters in Photoshop, Illustrator coming to iPad, Adobe Fresco coming to iPhone, and more  —  Adobe holds an annual MAX conference each year, and this year's event is free for everyone for the first time because it is being held virtually rather than in person.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Instagram adds a new way for creators to make money by rolling out premium badges for fans on Instagram Live  —  Instagram is today introducing a new way for creators to make money.  The company is now rolling out badges in Instagram Live to an initial group of over 50,000 creators …
Amrith Ramkumar / Wall Street Journal:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Handshake, a diversity-focused LinkedIn for college students, raises $80M Series D led by GGV, source says at a $550M-$600M valuation  —  College graduates this year (and perhaps in the near-term) have been looking for work in what is one of the most challenging job markets in a decade due …
The Guardian:
UK and US say Russian military intelligence services were planning a cyberattack on the Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo, originally scheduled for this summer  —  Patrick Wintour in London, Julian Borger in Washington  —  Russian military intelligence services were planning a cyber-attack …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
New mathematical model-based research suggests that exposing US social media users to viewpoints different than their own furthers political polarization  —  Mathematicians are teaming up with political scientists to create models of how social media divides us, and results suggest at least …
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Google confirms it's discontinuing Nest Secure, a home security system it introduced in 2017, but will continue to support existing users  —  Google released the Nest Guard in 2017 as a simple security system with motion sensors and a keypad, but it never received an upgrade, even as other Nest devices were updated again and again.

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Earlier Picks

Cristiano Lima / Politico:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget: