Techmeme: AI companies like Unanimous.ai and Expert.ai say they correctly predicted election results in battleground states while traditional polling again fell short (Wall Street Journal)

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November 9, 2020, 9:15 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:

Apple suspends new business with key supplier Pegatron after discovering violations of labor rules related to a student worker program — - Apple says Pegatron violated rules for student worker program — Company says new business paused until corrective action taken

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:

As POTUS, Biden will overturn Trump's immigration EOs, support net neutrality, and may not prioritize Section 230 reform, but his antitrust approach is unclear — Joe Biden's election as the 46th president of the United States gives the tech industry a reason to breathe a brief sigh of relief …

Jessica Guynn / USA Today:

Facebook is showing a notification atop its apps that Joe Biden is the projected winner of the 2020 election; Twitter is showing a banner in its Explore tab

More: The Economic Times, VentureBeat, Reuters, Reuters, Mashable, Axios, and International Business Times

Tweets: @noupside, @byjacobward, @alexstamos, @alexstamos, @mikeisaac, and @mairavz

Nilay Patel / The Verge:

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max review: terrific camera, battery life, and performance, but it's close to being too big and 60Hz display lags behind the competition — Apple's biggest iPhone brings along an impressive camera — The iPhone 12 Pro Max is a big phone. The biggest iPhone ever made, in fact.

More: TechCrunch, Engadget, MacRumors, Wired, and CNBC

Chris Velazco / Engadget:

Apple iPhone 12 mini review: easy to handle, screen and performance are excellent, but battery life is lackluster and charging with MagSafe is slower — The tech industry is obsessed with size, and it's easy to see why. “Bigger” is often used as shorthand for “better,” and if you need proof just look at phones.

More: CNET, TechCrunch, The Verge, and Wired

Fred Imbert / CNBC:

Following positive COVID-19 vaccine news, Zoom's shares fell 15%+ and other “stay-at-home” stocks like Amazon and Netflix dropped 3.4%-5.4% in pre-market trades — Shares of Zoom Video fell sharply on Monday morning as names benefitting from people staying at home due …

More: New York Times, STAT, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, BBC, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, CoinDesk, The Irish Times, Fortune, Politico, Fast Company, Crypto Briefing, Axios, Forbes, and NBC Bay Area

Tweets: @robzepeda, @martinsfp, and @alex

Corbin Davenport / Android Police:

Let's Encrypt warns phones running Android 7.1 or older won't connect to many secure websites starting in 2021 as they will no longer trust its root certificate — It took a long time, but most of the web now uses HTTPS to securely transmit information, partially thanks to a push by Google.

More: Let's Encrypt, Engadget, gHacks Technology News, The Register, TechSpot, Gizmodo, The Next Web, Tom's Guide, Fossbytes, Mashable, Forbes, Engadget, and Neowin

Tweets: @junecastillote, @glenngabe, @glenngabe, @restartproject, @scott_helme, @safaiyeh, @hanno, and @pjvangarderen

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

Windows 10, iOS 14, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox were hacked in Tianfu Cup, China's largest hacking competition; winning team from Qihoo 360 got $744K in prizes — Winning hacker team pockets $744,500 at the Tianfu Cup, China's top hacking contest. — Many of today's top software programs …

More: Forbes, SecurityWeek, TechSpot, The Hacker News, Security Affairs, and Fossbytes

Tweets: @tianfucup, @alexstamos, @alexstamos, and @alexstamos

Jim Salter / Ars Technica:

Raspberry Pi 400 review: functional $100 desktop PC that supports both Raspberry Pi OS and Ubuntu Desktop, but integrated keyboard is narrow and no 3.5mm jack — The Pi 400 isn't a powerful desktop PC—but it is a desktop PC, for $100 or less. — Late Friday afternoon …

More: Tom's Hardware

Pavel Alpeyev / Bloomberg:

SoftBank's Vision Fund posts a $7.6B profit in fiscal Q2 and says original $1.35B investment is now worth $7.9B — - The unit booked a $7.6 billion profit in fiscal second-quarter — Derivative bets totaled $2.7 billion at the end of September — Masayoshi Son is making his case for SoftBank Group Corp.'s turnaround.

More: Bloomberg, Fast Company, Reuters, and Financial Times. Tweets: @pelstrom

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:

Tim Berners Lee's Inrupt startup releases an enterprise version of the Solid privacy platform, which allows organizations to build privacy-focused apps — Inrupt, the startup from World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee, announced an enterprise version of the Solid privacy platform today …

More: 9to5Mac, CNBC, CNET, Inrupt, and Financial Times. Tweets: @timberners_lee

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:

Indian grocery delivery service Bigbasket confirms it suffered a data breach where attackers stole user email IDs, mobile phone numbers, and full addresses — - Attackers offer to sell data on millions of users on dark web — Cybercrimes on the rise as Covid forces people to shop online

More: Cyble, Inc42 Media, Security Affairs, MediaNama, TechRadar, and DataBreaches.net

Emma Colton / Washington Examiner:

Parler becomes top downloaded app in the US as conservatives rally support to leave Twitter and Facebook — Social media platform Parler jumped to the top downloaded app this weekend, as conservatives rally support to leave Facebook and Twitter over censorship.

More: Protocol. Tweets: @mikebutcher, @carnage4life, @willricci, @jstrauss, @goldstatetimes, @rudepundit, @dbongino, @mrolmos, and @dcexaminer

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From Mediagazer

Alex Ritman / Variety:

In Channel 4's 2025 Alternative Christmas Message, Jimmy Kimmel said “tyranny is booming” in the US and, on his ABC suspension, “We won, the president lost”

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:

As the BBC fights Trump's $10B lawsuit and ITV plans to combine its broadcasting business with Sky in 2026, a look at the slow death of the UK's TV channels

Henry Blodget / Regenerator:

Bari Weiss' 60 Minutes decision may have been a way to both signal that she's serious about shifting CBS' sensibility to the right and “improve” a story

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David Pierce / Protocol:

Q&A with iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens about the new Massachusetts car repair ballot measure, parallels with the right to repair battle with Apple, and more

Tweets: @drpippam and @pierce

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

Germany-based challenger bank Vivid Money, which lets customers create sub-accounts called pockets with their own IBAN numbers, raises $17.6M Series A

Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:

Researchers want to infuse common sense into AI by merging language models trained via unsupervised learning, like GPT-3, with labeled computer vision datasets

More: arXiv. Tweets: @matthewseclips, @sustainhistory, and @inukshuk_io

Sahil Patel / Wall Street Journal:

As smart TVs become more popular, advertisers want the advantages of better targeting while avoiding the privacy mistakes made by the online ad industry

Tweets: @davemorgannyc

Waqas / HackRead:

Data breach leaks sensitive, private, and financial data of millions of customers from Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, and others who use Prestige Software

More: infosecurity-magazine.com, Engadget, Tech Observer, and Website Planet

Tweets: @mylaocoon, @hackread, @rprew, and @chrispcritters

Wall Street Journal:

AI companies like Unanimous.ai and Expert.ai say they correctly predicted election results in battleground states while traditional polling again fell short

Tweets: @moonalice, @hypervisible, and @catalinagoanta

Earlier Picks

Doris Yu / Tech in Asia:

China-based e-signature services provider Esign raises $151M Series D, says it now has over 5.02M enterprise users and 270M individual users

More: Caixin Global. Tweets: @techinasia

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

FBI warns that hackers are abusing misconfigured SonarQube applications to steal source code repositories from US government agencies and private businesses

More: Security Affairs, BankInfoSecurity, and BleepingComputer

Tweets: @zcobb, @anonopshispano, @knolesmichael, @kirtaner, @tonymorbin, and @hermcardona

Heather Kelly / Washington Post:

Facebook starts putting some political and social groups on a 60 day probation and will closely monitor them, to slow the spread of disinfo about the election

More: Mashable, CNET, Gizmodo, Reclaim The Net, The Verge, Engadget, and Micky

Tweets: @fadiquran, @fadiquran, @elisethoma5, @milenaac, @rweingarten, @mikebutcher, @wiczipedia, and @heatherkelly

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

In a survey, Spotify hints at plans for a subscription podcast service; the survey describes at least four plans, ranging from $3 to $8 per month

More: Gizmodo, Mashable, SlashGear, TechRadar, Android Central, Pocket-lint, and BGR

Tweets: @awallenstein, @awallenstein, @bradleywithane, @trengriffin, @daveambrose, @elite_gz, and @ashleyrcarman