Techmeme
May 2, 2018, 6:05 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Cambridge Analytica is shutting down, says founder of its British affiliate, following the Facebook data misuse scandal  —  Company had lost multiple clients in recent months  —  Cambridge Analytica , a data firm that worked for President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign …
Spotify Investor Relations:
Spotify reports first ever financial results with Q1 revenue of €1.139B, up 26% YoY, on operating loss of €41M; MAUs up 30% YoY to 170M  —  Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) today reported financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2018 ending March 31, 2018.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Facebook shows how it uses billions of public Instagram photos, annotated by users with hashtags, to help train its AI-based image recognition models  —  In the race to continue building more sophisticated AI deep learning models, Facebook has a secret weapon: billions of images on Instagram .
Jerome Pesenti / Facebook Code:
Summary of Facebook's AI-related announcements at F8: PyTorch 1.0 open source framework unveiled, expansion of Open Neural Network Exchange, updates on research  —  Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform lives, creating new digital experiences while safeguarding our existing online interactions.
Paul Vigna / Wall Street Journal:
Source: Telegram is calling off the public part of the ICO for the Telegram Open Network after raising $1.7B from 175 accredited investors via private deals  —  Telegram plans to put the money it raised into a new digital payment platform, Telegram Open Network, meant for a wide audience
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Facebook to bring outside advisers for a civil rights audit of its impact on minority groups and to investigate claims it's biased against conservative voices  —  To address allegations of bias, Facebook is bringing in two outside advisors — one to conduct a legal audit of its impact …
Joseph Cox / Motherboard:
Facebook confirms it has fired one of its security engineers who allegedly used privileged access to stalk women online  —  After a member of the information security community provided evidence to Facebook's chief information security officer, the company has terminated a security engineer …
Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
Coalition representing Apple, Google, Facebook, and others criticize law enforcement backdoors in devices, after Wired profile of Ray Ozzie's key escrow idea  —  The tech coalition includes Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon and Yahoo's parent company Oath …
Thuy Ong / The Verge:
Google announces investment program for early-stage startups working on Google Assistant hardware or features, similar to Amazon's Alexa Fund  —  Funding the Google Assistant ecosystem  —  Today, Google is launching a new investment program for early-stage startups working to broaden Google Assistant hardware or features.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Amazon is offering to pass along discounts it gets on credit card fees to retailers if they use its payments service Amazon Pay  —  Move shows retailer is willing to sacrifice to grow Amazon Pay  —  It's another challenge to PayPal, big banks and card networks
More: CNBC
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
LG announces G7 ThinQ with 6.1" QHD+ LCD display and notch, dual 16MP rear cameras, 3,000mAh battery, Snapdragon 845, Android Oreo, Assistant button, and more  —  Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge  —  After months of leaks, LG's new G7 ThinQ phone is officially here.
Wall Street Journal:
The Pentagon is moving to halt the sales of Huawei and ZTE phones in retail outlets on US military bases around the world, citing potential security threats  —  Move intensifies a squeeze the Trump administration has put on the two Chinese tech firms  —  The Pentagon is moving to halt …
Jessica Toonkel / Reuters:
Verizon's Oath signs distribution deal to place four of its apps, Newsroom, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, and Go90, on Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ devices in the US  —  (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc's Oath Inc subsidiary has signed a deal to place four of its most popular apps on millions …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Hulu says it has surpassed 20M subscribers in the US, introduces offline mode, and inks animation deal with DreamWorks  —  Hulu now has over 20 million U.S. subscribers - that's up from the 17 million-plus it claimed in January.  The news of its subscriber growth is being delivered alongside …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Nokia to sell its digital health division to Eric Carreel, cofounder of Withings, which Nokia acquired for €170M in 2016; deal expected to close late Q2 2018  —  Nokia's unsuccessful foray into digital health hardware and services looks like it is finally coming to an end.
Giovanni Buttarelli / European Data Protection …:
Ahead of GDPR, EU data watchdog says internet platforms that collect user data are like “sweatshops” exploiting users in exchange for so called “free” services  —  The digital information ecosystem farms people for their attention, ideas and data in exchange for so called ‘free’ services.

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Earlier Picks

Marco Arment / Marco.org: