Techmeme
July 16, 2019, 11:45 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to fund original, exclusive podcasts and has reached out to media companies, in a bid to compete with Spotify  —  - Tech giant looks to use exclusives to compete with Spotify  — Company has recently added new Podcasts Mac app, web interface
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Highlights from the Senate hearing with Facebook's David Marcus on the proposed Libra cryptocurrency, and what was left unanswered  —  Facebook will only build its own Calibra cryptocurrency wallet into Messenger and Whatsapp, and will refuse to embed competing wallets …
Elizabeth Schulze / CNBC:
Swiss regulator that Facebook's David Marcus said would oversee privacy protections for Libra says it hasn't heard from those behind the proposed cryptocurrency  —  KEY POINTS  — David Marcus, the head of Facebook's digital currency project, said during a hearing in the U.S. Senate …
Bloomberg:
Nitasha Tiku / Wired:
Four of the seven Google employees who organized a 20,000-person walkout in November have resigned from the company  —  FOUR OF THE seven Google employees who organized a 20,000-person walkout in November have resigned from the company, including two women who claimed Google retaliated against them for their internal activism.
Bloomberg:
Meredith Whittaker, who helped lead employee protests at Google over its military and AI work, and sexual harassment policies, is leaving the company  —  Meredith Whittaker, who helped lead employee protests at Google over the search giant's military work, artificial intelligence and policies, is leaving the company.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Apple says it is sending out another silent update for macOS to fix a webcam vulnerability affecting apps using Zoom's tech including RingCentral and Zhumu  —  RingCentral and Zhumu are now patched  —  Apple informed us that it has sent out a silent security update to Macs to remove software …
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Trump threatens to “take a look” at Google for alleged China ties, in a tweet that cited claims Peter Thiel made at a conference and repeated on Fox News  —  President Trump on Tuesday appeared to threaten that his administration would “take a look” at Google …
BBC:
Pearson, the world's largest education publisher, says all future releases of its 1,500 active US titles will be “digital first” and updated on an ongoing basis  —  The world's largest education publisher has taken the first step towards phasing out print books by making all its learning resources “digital first”.
Jeff Kauflin / Forbes:
Finix, a payments infrastructure platform that lets companies own and control their payment processing, raises $17.5M Series A led by Bain Capital  —  In the U.S., electronic payments is a highly regulated business whose esoteric ins and outs can make your eyes glaze over.
VICE:
Inside a lawsuit against Girls Do Porn, one of Pornhub's popular channels, which 22 women allege post videos without proper consent, leading to doxxing and more  —  Pornhub is hosting videos that have been viewed hundreds of millions of times.  The women in them say they thought the videos …
Bloomberg:
Highlights from the House's antitrust hearing, where Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook executives fought criticism that their companies dominate their markets  —  U.S. technology giants are headed for their biggest antitrust showdown with Congress in 20 years as lawmakers and regulators demand …
Aoife White / Bloomberg:
Sources: Amazon faces a full-blown EU antitrust probe within days; Qualcomm could face a second hefty EU penalty as soon as next week for underpricing chips  —  - EU to escalate investigation targeting Marketplace platform  — Qualcomm also set to face further EU fine in coming days
Jeff Stone / CyberScoop:
Ukrainian hacker Mikhail Rytikov, sought by the US since 2013 for running a dark web network used by criminals at scale, arrested in Ukraine with US and UK help  —  Ukrainian police have arrested an accused cybercriminal who allegedly facilitated a web hosting scheme that made it possible …
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Google has banned Chinese app developer CooTek from its ad platforms and Play Store, removing 60+ CooTek Android apps for bombarding users with disruptive ads  —  Google is banning CooTek, a publicly traded Chinese app developer, from its Play store and ad platforms after BuzzFeed News …
More: The Verge

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Press Association:
Robert Lee Hotz / Wall Street Journal:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Dell Cameron / Gizmodo:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: