Techmeme: Snap announces Spectacles 3 with an updated design and a second HD camera to create depth perception, going on sale in November for $380 (Casey Newton/The Verge)

Top News

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:

Sources: Facebook paid hundreds of contractors to transcribe user audio; FB says it's stopped the work, which affected users who wanted voice chats transcribed — - Social network says it paused human review of conversations — Apple, Amazon, Google have been scrutinized for similar work

More: Engadget, TechCrunch, MacRumors, The Next Web, Telegraph, Gizmodo, iMore, The Verge, CNET, Business Insider, 9to5Mac, Lifehacker, Mashable, MSPoweruser, CNBC, iDownloadBlog.com, The Mac Observer, iPhone in Canada Blog, and Seeking Alpha

Tweets: @sarahfrier, @random_walker, @dseetharaman, @thedcd, @heathercampbell, @jason_kint, @mikeisaac, @rmac18, @staska, @can, @lfdodds, @kurtwagner8, @kurtwagner8, and @shiraovide

Nitasha Tiku / Wired:

Interviews with 47 former and current employees about the past three years at Google reveal fear of the far right, activist awakening, weaponized leaks, more — ON A BRIGHT Monday in January 2017, at 2:30 in the afternoon, about a thousand Google employees—horrified, alarmed, and a little giddy …

More: Business Insider, Boing Boing, and MacDailyNews

Tweets: @nitashatiku, @nxthompson, @om, @wired, @reckless, @caitlin__kelly, @hypirlink, @joshsternberg, and @lizthegrey

Casey Newton / The Verge:

Snap announces Spectacles 3 with an updated design and a second HD camera to create depth perception, going on sale in November for $380 — They're $380 and go on sale in November — Snap today announced Spectacles 3, a redesigned version of its augmented reality sunglasses with a sleek …

Ashley Carman / The Verge:

Spotify for Podcasters comes out of beta, giving podcasters valuable listener data like age, gender, location, music taste, and episode listening duration — Spotify for Podcasters comes out of beta today — Spotify is going to give podcasters listener data they can't get anywhere else.

More: Spotify, Candid.Technology, TechCrunch, and iPhone in Canada Blog

Tweets: @ashleyrcarman, @marcoarment, @mims, and @marcoarment

Reuters:

Trump delayed tariffs for some products like laptops and cellphones, sending Apple's stock up, but Airpods, Watches, and more were not included in the reprieve — WASHINGTON and SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) AirPods, Apple Watch and HomePod, which have helped the company …

More: The Verge, CNET, TechSpot, iPhone Hacks, Cult of Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog, Seeking Alpha, and Reuters

The Information:

Sources: Spotify is discussing a plan with Apple to let iPhone users tell Siri to play songs, playlists, albums with voice commands, as anti-trust battle looms — An issue that has long vexed many iPhone users—the inability to play music from Spotify using Siri, Apple's voice assistant—may soon be a thing of the past.

More: Thurrott, iMore, The Verge, MacRumors, Fast Company, 9to5Mac, MSPoweruser, Cult of Mac, iPhone Hacks, iDownloadBlog.com, Appleosophy, iPhone in Canada Blog, Seeking Alpha, and MacDailyNews

Tweets: @ppatel, @bzamayo, and @bzamayo

Taylor Lorenz / The Atlantic:

Behind the rise of “twinfluencers” on social media, as content produced by twins continues to explode in popularity on YouTube and Instagram — You're not imagining it: Influencers really are multiplying. — There are the Dolan Twins, a pair of square-jawed 19-year-olds …

Tweets: @davezatz, @fordm, @venturetwins, @yappelbaum, and @katienotopoulos

Reuters:

23 job search websites in Europe allege anti-competitive behavior from Google in antitrust complaints to the European Union competition commissioner — BRUSSELS/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google's fast-growing tool for searching job listings has been a boon for employers and job boards starving …

More: Engadget, Mercury News, Android Headlines, The Verge, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Telegraph, and Inquirer

Hollywood Reporter:

Netflix is quickly expanding its global property portfolio, which includes 30+ offices and studios, as it ramps up its global content production — From sizable investments in studio facilities to high-end office spaces in some of the world's priciest neighborhoods, the company is quickly building …

Tweets: @thrmattbelloni

Kaya Yurieff / CNN:

A look at Snapchat's community of about 100 official lens creators, who make custom AR lenses for people and brands, with Snap helping connect them to buyers — New York (CNN Business)Eighteen-year-old Ana Casciello couldn't find a filter she wanted for her Snapchat photo that matched her personal style.

Tweets: @andrewmendez19, @cnnbusiness, @basche42, and @kyurieff

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Cray, which is in the process of being bought by HPE, wins contract to make a $600M supercomputer for the US DoE, for 3D simulations, nuclear weapons research — Seattle-based supercomputer maker Cray has been tapped to develop a new $600 million system for the U.S. Department of Energy …

More: SiliconANGLE and TechCrunch. Thanks:@taylor_soper

Janko Roettgers / Variety:

Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell is leaving Facebook, seven years after launching the first Oculus Rift headset via Kickstarter — Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell is leaving Facebook 7 years after launching the first Oculus Rift headset with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.

More: TechCrunch, Business Insider, The Verge, Engadget, and VentureBeat

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Database from hacker community Cracked.to posted at rival site Raidforums, leaking users' IPs, email addresses, and DMs, many of which shared software exploits — Fortnite cracks, software exploits among the topics discussed in almost 357,000 PMs. — Hackers from Raidforums recently breached …

More: Have I Been Pwned …. Tweets: @thirdemily and @campuscodi

Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:

Facebook says it is opening up the closed beta of Spark AR on Instagram, letting any developer build and share AR filters on the platform — Not one to let Face App and Snapchat steal its spotlight, Facebook announced today that it's opening its closed beta of Spark AR on Instagram …

More: The Verge, Telegraph, and iPhone in Canada Blog

Theodore Schleifer / Vox:

A look at Jeff Bezos' radical approach of giving nonprofits millions from his Day One Fund to provide shelter for homeless families without any restrictions — Jeff Bezos is making a name for himself in the world of charity. Nicole Craine/WireImage — Is that good? Is that bad?

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @susanmcp1, @amandamarcotte, @ablimpact, and @teddyschleifer

Liam Tung / ZDNet:

Chrome 77 and Firefox 70, out in the fall, will move extended validation info, which displays the site owner's name, from the address bar to behind the padlock — Extended Validation certificates for websites pronounced ‘really dead’, after policy change by Google and Mozilla.

More: Domain Name Wire and Techdows

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Nvidia says it has broken records for real-time conversational AI, training the industry-standard BERT model in 53 minutes and then inferring responses in ~2ms — Nvidia's GPU-powered platform for developing and running conversational AI that understands and responds to natural language requests …

More: VentureBeat, NVIDIA Developer Blog, SiliconANGLE, NVIDIA ADLR, ZDNet, and MIT Technology Review

Angelica Krystle Donati / Forbes:

OpenSpace, which uses AI to create navigable, 360-degree images of building sites using photos from cameras attached to builders' hats, raises $14M Series A — I write about proptech and innovation in real estate and construction. — “> As a testament to the increasing significance of the subsector …

More: VentureBeat. Thanks:@alexanderhunter

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:

Pavilion Data Systems, a data center storage company, raises $25M Series C led by Taiwania Capital and RPS Ventures — Data center hardware maker Pavilion Data Systems Inc. is gearing up for expansion after closing on a $25 million round of funding that brings its total amount raised to $58 million.

More: FinSMEs, VentureBeat, Blocks and Files, and PE Hub Blog

Emily Birnbaum / The Hill:

Pentagon's internal watchdog says it is investigating misconduct allegations during the $10B JEDI cloud services contract acquisition process — The Pentagon's internal watchdog on Tuesday said that it is investigating potential ethics concerns around the $10 billion “war cloud” …

More: Seeking Alpha

Andrew Liptak / The Verge:

Researchers remotely install malware on a DSLR camera from Canon using the unauthenticated Picture Transfer Protocol, common in the industry; Canon issues patch — Canon has issued a security advisory and firmware patch for the vulnerability — Ransomware has become a major threat …

More: ZDNet, HackRead, Inquirer, Digital Photography Review, SlashGear, PetaPixel, Gizmodo, The Next Web, SecurityWeek, The Hacker News, and TechSpot

Steven Sinofsky / Learning By Shipping:

How Steve Jobs conceived the “bicycle for the mind” metaphor for the personal computer, which largely drove Apple's philosophy for decades — “When we invented the personal computer, we created a new kind of bicycle...a new man-machine partnership...a new generation of entrepreneurs."

Tweets: @stevesi and @waltmossberg

Bloomberg:

Sources: Amazon is in late-stage talks to acquire up to 10% of Future Retail, India's No. 2 retailer by turnover, which is seeking $281M for the stake — - Indian supermarket firm seeks 20 billion rupees for shares — U.S. giant gears up for fight with Walmart, Reliance in India

More: PYMNTS.com, Business Insider, and Inc42 Media

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:

Uniphore Software Systems, which aims to use AI in call centers for faster and more personalized customer support, raises $51M — An Indian startup that aims to use artificial intelligence to deliver faster and more personalized customer support for corporate clients is raising $51 million …

More: VentureBeat, PYMNTS.com, and FinSMEs

Ana Wolsztajn / Tech.eu:

Dostavista, a Russian same-day delivery service operating in 11 countries including Brazil, India, and Mexico, raises $15M Series B led by Vostok New Ventures — Dostavista, a Russian same-day delivery service operating globally, has raised $15 million in a Series B funding round led by Vostok …

More: TechCrunch, PYMNTS.com, and intellinews.com

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

Pro Tips: 4 tips to overcome data problems in your CRM — Most CRM data problems don't look like problems. At a glance, your CRM looks fine: records exist, fields are filled, and reports run.

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

Sources:

Satya Nadella on Microsoft's agent bet and AI's trust problem

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.