Techmeme
May 15, 2019, 8:45 AM

Top News

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
A side-channel flaw called ZombieLoad affects nearly all post-2011 Intel chips; Apple, Microsoft, Google release fixes today that, like Spectre, hit performance  —  Security researchers have found a new class of vulnerabilities in Intel chips which, if exploited, can be used to steal sensitive information directly from the processor.,
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
San Francisco passes a ban on the use of facial recognition technology by city agencies, the first ban of its kind for a major American city  —  On Tuesday, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted to approve a ban on the use of facial recognition tech by city agencies.
Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Richard Nieva / CNET:
Heather Kelly / CNN:
Facebook will now ban anyone who violates its “most serious polices” from using Facebook Live for a set period of time, starting with their first offense  —  San Francisco (CNN Business)Two months after the mass shooting at a mosque in New Zealand was live-streamed by the accused gunman …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Uber is rolling out new options for Uber Black, its luxury car service, including a “quiet preferred” mode, help with luggage, and preferred temperature  —  Tired of chatty drivers?  Uber is finally giving users its most requested feature: an in-app way to request minimal conversation during your ride.
Paul Ford / Wired:
Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult Industry  —  We have graduated, along with oil, real estate, insurance, and finance, to the big T. Trillions of dollars.  Trillions!  Get to that number any way you like: Sum up the market cap of the major tech companies, or just take Apple's valuation on a good day.
Peter Kafka / Vox:
Explaining the Hulu/Disney/Comcast breakup: as media companies get bigger to compete with tech, many shows will scatter from Netflix and Hulu to rival services  —  All the big media companies want their own streaming service.  Big question: Do you want to subscribe to lots of streaming services?
CNBC:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft warns of major WannaCry-like Windows security exploit affecting older versions like XP that could spread malware via RDS protocol, releases patches  —  Windows 10 and Windows 8 are safe  —  Microsoft is warning users of older versions of Windows to urgently apply a Windows Update today …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Cybersecurity company Crowdstrike files for IPO, seeking to raise up to $100M, says it had a $140M net loss on $249.8M in revenue for the year ending Jan. 31  —  KEY POINTS  —  Security software company Crowdstrike on Tuesday filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “CRWD.”
Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire:
Amazon breaks ground on its $1.5B Prime Air hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport with enough room for 100 planes, scheduled to open in 2021  —  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hopped into a front-end loader to “move some earth” as the tech giant broke ground Tuesday …
Larry Cermak / The Block:
Bitfinex CTO confirms that the crypto exchange raised nearly $1B in a private token sale  —  The issuance of the exchange tokens, dubbed LEO, was planned to cover the $850 million currently frozen in several accounts controlled by the payment processing company Crypto Capital …
Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed News:
A 14-year-old girl with 800,000 YouTube followers is sharing far-right content, highlighting how the platform can push kids to extremism as they build audiences  —  “Soph” has nearly a million followers on the giant video platform.  The site's executives only have themselves to blame.
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
AT&T has cut 23K jobs since the corporate tax cut passed in 2017, after it lobbied for it by promising an additional $1B in investment in 2018 and 7K new jobs  —  AT&T also cut capital spending despite promising $1 billion capital boost.  —  AT&T has cut more than 23,000 jobs since receiving …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
OnePlus 7 Pro review: a gorgeous screen, great battery life, nice Android tweaks, better value than iPhone flagships, but pop-up selfie camera is just passable  —  Welcome to the big time  —  Lots of companies make big phones, but in the US only two companies have sold the best big phones: Apple and Samsung.

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Earlier Picks

Brendan Farrington / Associated Press:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch: