Techmeme
July 11, 2019, 1:05 PM

Top News

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Apple says it has temporarily disabled the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie app, due to a vulnerability that could allow iPhone eavesdropping, while it works on a fix  —  Apple has disabled the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie app due to an unspecified vulnerability that could allow a person to listen …
Tom Simonite / Wired:
Belgian broadcaster obtains 1,000+ Google Assistant audio clips from a Google contractor, some of which seem to be recorded inadvertently and may violate GDPR  —  GOOGLE, AMAZON, AND Apple say their AI-powered virtual assistants make it easier to get things done on smartphones or at home.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Apple pushes silent Mac update to remove the hidden web server in the Zoom app that could let websites add a user to a video call without their permission  —  Apple has released a silent update for Mac users removing a vulnerable component in Zoom, the popular video conferencing app …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
The Information:
Sources: Bird lost about $100M in the first quarter, with revenue shrinking to about $15M, and the company told people that it has about $100M in cash left  —  The wintertime was bleak for Bird.  In this year's first quarter, the electric scooter operator lost nearly $100 million …
Ana Swanson / New York Times:
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Amazon says it will spend $700M to retrain 100K, or about a third, of its US employees by 2025, acknowledging the impact of technology and automation on jobs  —  Amazon is embarking on a $700 million effort to retrain its U.S. workforce, in a high-profile acknowledgment of the impact …
Ryan Gallagher / The Intercept:
A US nonprofit org founded by Google and IBM is working with a company helping China's government secretly monitor phone and internet activity of 200M people  —  An American organization founded by tech giants Google and IBM is working with a company that is helping China's authoritarian …
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook is starting to show users which marketing and data companies have your data, how an ad was targeted, and how to opt-out  —  The new tool tells you how an ad was targeted and which third-party agency or data broker was used.  It also links to pages to opt out.
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:
Kuo: Apple's 2020 iPhone will include a smaller TrueDepth camera, reducing the size of the notch, and a rear-facing camera with a seven-piece lens system  —  Apple is expected to significantly decrease the size of iPhone's TrueDepth “notch” in 2020, modifying or potentially removing …
Frank Chaparro / The Block:
SEC approves the first-ever regulated token offering, letting blockchain startup Blockstack offer $28M in tokens under Regulation A+, an alternative to IPOs  —  The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gave blockchain startup Blockstack the go-ahead today to conduct a $28 million digital …
E. Tammy Kim / New Yorker:
A look at the practice of personalized learning, an individual-comes-first approach usually aided by tech, and how it is applied in many Rhode Island schools  —  Untangling the mixed record of the latest big-fix educational trend promoted by Silicon Valley.
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Lidar startup Luminar raises $100M, bringing its total raised to $250M+, and launches Iris, a compact lidar unit that costs under $1,000 for production vehicles  —  Luminar is one of the major players in the new crop of lidar companies that have sprung up all over the world, and it's moving fast to outpace its peers.

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Earlier Picks

Alex Heath / The Information:
Amrita Khalid / Engadget:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Scott Stein / CNET: