Techmeme
July 16, 2019, 2:30 PM

Top News

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 …
Bloomberg:
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he has serious concerns about Facebook's Libra, joining Trump and other officials including the Federal Reserve chairman  —  - Treasury Secretary says he has serious concerns about coin  — Facebook executive says crypto won't launch without approvals
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 …
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.
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 …
Press Association:
Facebook introduces a scam ads reporting tool in the UK and donates £3M to Citizens Advice for Scams Action, a dedicated online anti-scam service  —  Social media firm to investigate users' complaints and take down violating posts  —  Fresh efforts to tackle scam adverts across Facebook …
Robert Lee Hotz / Wall Street Journal:
A look at the Apollo 11's guidance computer, the first digital general-purpose, multitasking, interactive portable computer, with about 145K lines of code  —  The moon landing was one of the most important moments in the history of computing, laying the foundations of much of our digital world
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Facebook makes its first changes to Workplace pricing, raising the premium tier by $1/person/month and introducing a new $8 Workplace Enterprise tier  —  Three years into its life with 2 million paying users signed up, Workplace — Facebook's platform for businesses and and other organizations …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Sprint says hackers had access to customers' names, billing, device details, and more via Samsung's website, fails to disclose the number affected  —  Hackers had access to customer info such as names, billing, device details, and more.  —  US mobile network operator Sprint said hackers broke …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Uber open sources Plato, a tool for developing and testing conversational AI across many deep learning frameworks including TensorFlow and PyTorch  —  Designing conversational AI isn't as Sysiphean as it sounds.  Tools like Google's Dialogflow, Microsoft's Bot Framework …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
In the next Windows 10 update, expected to arrive in September, Microsoft will allow voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa to activate on the lock screen  —  New changes coming later this year  —  Microsoft is opening up Windows 10 even further to third-party digital assistants.
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News:
Feeling unwelcome to share opinions within Google, its conservative staffers have leaked internal info to generate pressure on Google from Republican lawmakers  —  On Jan. 16, Republican lawmakers turned on one of the world's biggest tech companies.  —  A month earlier, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told …
Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News:
Researcher: software from RingCentral and Zhumu, which license Zoom's tech, is affected by the same flaw in Zoom that could give attackers access to Mac cameras  —  The fallout from Zoom's massive webcam vulnerability continues.  In a report published today, security researcher Karan Lyons shows …

Sponsor Posts

Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Zoho Mail MCP: Make your inbox work for you  —  Maya is the head of operations at a 500-person B2B software company.  She's sharp, she's busy, and she starts every morning the same way-with her coffee, laptop, inbox.Not to work.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
'The Daily' and 'The Opinions': How A.I. Is Changing Loneliness and Taste
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Writer's May Habib: Building AI Tools For Corporate 'Normal People' The Labs Leave Behind
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
A Nick, Dick, and Paul Buffet!
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Big Technology Podcast:
Anthropic's Labs Lead On Fable's Capabilities + Building AI-Native Products — With Mike Krieger
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Great Chat:
How much data do we actually want about our bodies?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
AI's Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:30 PM ET, July 16, 2019.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

CNN:

Earlier Picks

Dell Cameron / Gizmodo:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Thomas Franck / CNBC:
Jon Fingas / Engadget: