Techmeme
April 18, 2018, 5:50 PM

Top News

Facebook:
Ahead of GDPR, Facebook debuts enhanced privacy controls for all users globally, starting in EU, with more choices about ads, allowing face recognition, more  —  In recent weeks we've announced several steps to give people more control over their privacy and explain how we use data.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
With an interface designed to push users to consent, Facebook's privacy changes comply with the letter of GDPR law but with questionable spirit  —  Facebook is about to start pushing European users to speed through giving consent for its new GDPR privacy law compliance changes.
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Amazon and Best Buy announce multi-year partnership to sell smart TVs made by Toshiba and Best Buy's brand Insignia, with built-in Fire TV  —  In its quest to get more consumers to use its Fire TV products, Amazon announced an unusual partnership Wednesday: The company has teamed up with Best Buy …
M.G. Siegler / 500ish Words:
Silicon Valley's tech industry appears increasingly out of touch with reality, the latest example being Facebook's response to recent scandals, as IQ trumps EQ  —  As we slip out of touch with reality...  There's something that has been in the back of my mind for some time now.
Julia Alexander / Polygon:
YouTube CEO addresses demonetization and Partner Program concerns, says company will pilot a new video upload flow to decrease monetization icon changes  —  “We are working to make this faster,” Susan Wojcicki said  —  YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki today addressed ongoing frustration …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Translator gets full offline support on Android and iOS; third-party Android developers can now pay to use Translator in their own apps  —  Chances are you mostly need a translator app on your phone while you are traveling.  But that's also when you are most likely to not have any connectivity.
Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
Researcher finds a public and unprotected AWS storage bucket, belonging to data firm Localblox, containing 48M individuals' records scraped from public profiles  —  Exclusive: Profile data was scraped without user consent or knowledge to “build a three-dimensional picture” on millions of people.
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Filing with Russia's EEC database shows several unreleased iPhone models; previous filings of suspected Apple products appeared 1-2 months before official debut  —  French website Consomac has discovered a new Russian-language regulatory filing in the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) …
David Gelles / New York Times:
Interview with Marissa Mayer, her first since leaving Yahoo, on her new Lumi Labs project, time at Google, thoughts on #MeToo movement, and more  —  The former Yahoo chief is renting Google's original office, where “there's a lot of good juju,” and planning her next act.  She just won't say what it is.
Kurt Wagner / Recode:
Snap begins rolling out a direct response ad unit in the Snapchat camera screen, encouraging users to perform an action when using a sponsored lens  —  These new Snapchat ads won't blend in as well as the old ones.  —  Snap likes to say that it's a camera company — the camera …
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
Dan Strumpf / Wall Street Journal:
ZTE says it's delaying release of quarterly earnings to undetermined “later date” to assess implications of US Commerce Dept. ban on sales of US products to ZTE  —  Commerce Department found the Chinese company violated terms of a deal settling allegations of sanctions-busting involving North Korea and Iran
More: Axios
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Johana Bhuiyan / Recode:
Interview with Susan Fowler, who exposed Uber's toxic workplace culture, on her new mission: ending forced arbitration for all workers, starting in California  —  The Uber whistleblower is working with the California Labor Federation to help bring awareness to a new bill.
Bloomberg:
Uber confirms that Don Burnette, a co-founder of self-driving trucking startup Otto, has left Uber, making him the fourth and final Otto co-founder to leave  —  With the recent departure of Don Burnette, all four co-founders of driverless trucking company Otto have now left Uber Technologies Inc. …

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Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Washington Post: