Techmeme
February 7, 2021, 6:55 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Leaked cellphone data from the siege at the Capitol demonstrates how advertising IDs can be used to identify and track the movement of specific individuals  —  Times Opinion was able to identify individuals from a trove of leaked smartphone location data.  —  Mr. Warzel and Mr. Thompson are writers in Opinion.
Mark Stenberg / Medialyte:
A skeptical look at Clubhouse, where most conversations are boring and whose audio-centric, synchronous content may be far less compelling after the pandemic  —  I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! … Clubhouse in the dog house  —  On Sunday night, Elon Musk did to Clubhouse what Kim Kardashian did to the internet circa 2014.
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
Study of 130+ facial recognition data sets compiled over 43 years: driven by ML's data needs, researchers gradually abandoned asking for people's consent  —  The largest ever study of facial-recognition data shows how much the rise of deep learning has fueled a loss of privacy.  —  hide
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
As protests grow in Myanmar, NetBlocks says the country's internet connectivity fell to 16% of ordinary levels, indicating a near-total internet shutdown  —  Myanmar's military leaders are extending their  —  internet restrictions in a bid to limit protests against their coup.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Julian Chokkattu / Wired:
A look at Metalenz, which aims to replace multiple lens elements in smartphone cameras with a single lens system that utilizes optical metasurfaces technology  —  The optics in your smartphone have been pretty much the same for more than a decade.  That's about to change.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: CEO of Robinhood, which had 20M users in 2020 and recently raised $3.4B, told investors that he still plans to take the company public in H1 2021  —  The firm that set out to bring investing to the masses has run into the reality of Wall Street regulations
Ashley Gold / Axios:
Microsoft suspends contributions for the rest of the 2022 election cycle to all members of Congress who voted to object to the presidential election results  —  Microsoft announced Friday it will suspend contributions for the rest of the 2022 election cycle to all members of Congress who voted …
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
Andy Jassy is said to be “warmer and fuzzier” than Bezos, but as Amazon's next CEO, he faces many hurdles if he wants its tech to manage workers more humanely  —  One secret of Amazon's ability to grow rapidly: software and algorithms that manage its millions of employees and marketplace sellers …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Research finds most Zoom-bombing incidents, especially in high schools and colleges, originate with participants who post the link publicly to invite trolls in  —  Researchers have found that most calls to disrupt videoconferences originate with the participants, especially in high schools and colleges.

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Kaveh Waddell / Consumer Reports:

Earlier Picks

Associated Press:
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