Techmeme: Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who led a heavily criticized unit focusing on practical AI uses, has been placed on leave for unspecified reasons (Bloomberg)

Top News

Sources: Alibaba has delayed its listing in Hong Kong, which had been slated for late August and aimed to raise $10B-$15B, amid growing political unrest — HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) - China's biggest e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has delayed its up to $15 billion listing …

More: Foreign Policy, Washington Post, The Verge, BBC, New York Times, Financial Times, Pandaily, Market Realist, Fortune, Coinspeaker, Tech in Asia, Seeking Alpha, Nikkei Asian Review, and USA Today

Bloomberg:

Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who led a heavily criticized unit focusing on practical AI uses, has been placed on leave for unspecified reasons — - Mustafa Suleyman is head of applied artifical intelligence — He led heavily critized unit focusing on AI and healthcare

More: Business Insider, Forbes, Seeking Alpha, and Boing Boing

Tweets: @jillianiles, @oliviasolon, @robaeprice, and @bryce

Joseph Cox / VICE:

Microsoft contractors say they listened to recordings, including accidentally invoked ones, of Xbox users, many of them children, to improve voice command tech — Multiple contractors working for Microsoft explain how they listened to audio captured by Xbox consoles.

More: Engadget, Thurrott, The Verge, GamesIndustry.biz, Neowin, Boing Boing, Kotaku, Tom's Guide, and New York Times

Tweets: @josephfcox, @jason_koebler, @chrisbhoffman, @chrisbhoffman, and @jason_koebler

Reuters:

Amazon says it is opening an office in Hyderabad, India, which will house over 15,000 employees, making it the company's biggest campus in the world — HYDERABAD (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday launched its biggest campus in the world in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad …

More: Times of India, Bloomberg, Business Insider, GeekWire, Engadget, PYMNTS.com, and Seeking Alpha

Amrita Khalid / Engadget:

Google and Mozilla say they will block the root certificate issued by the Kazakhstan government, which could be used to monitor users, in Chrome and Firefox — Google and Mozilla are taking action against the government of Kazakhstan's efforts to launch a surveillance operation against its own citizens.

More: The Mozilla Blog, Ars Technica, ZDNet, Google Online Security Blog, TechCrunch, VICE, Reuters, 9to5Mac, Neowin, Boing Boing, IT PRO, BBC, Wired, The Next Web, TidBITS, VentureBeat, The Hacker News, Axios, CNET, and SecurityWeek

Tweets: @josephfcox, @josephfcox, @campuscodi, @askhalid, and @wired

Abner Li / 9to5Google:

Google officially rolls out a redesign for the Play Store, using its Material design language, and creates two distinct destinations for games and apps — After months of waiting and temporary appearances, the Play Store Material Theme redesign is now official on Android.

More: Android Developers Blog, Engadget, Android Authority, TechCrunch, XDA Developers, Thurrott, and Droid Life

Ryan Smith / AnandTech:

Intel unveils 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs with up to 6 cores for thin and light laptops, based on its Skylake CPU architecture and 14nm process — Capping off a busy few weeks for processors for Intel, today the company is announcing the second half of their product stack for their low-power 10th generation Core processors.

More: Ars Technica, Engadget, The Verge, PCWorld, Gizmodo, PC Gamer, VentureBeat, IGN, Engadget, Inquirer, and Windows Central

Tweets: @anandtech and @jrssnet

Washington Post:

Apple is delaying its plans to limit third-party tracking and ads in kids' apps, which it planned to implement in Sept., after some developers raised concerns — Apple plans to change the rules it has for kids apps, raising concerns among some app developers about the way the tech giant wields power unilaterally over its App Store.

More: Gizmodo, iMore, Thurrott, iPhone in Canada Blog, Engadget, AppleInsider, Cult of Mac, iPhone Hacks, 9to5Mac, Gamasutra, and MacRumors

Tweets: @dhh, @reedalbergotti, @carnage4life, and @palan57. Thanks:@cremnob

Abner Li / 9to5Google:

YouTube says it is shutting down its Messages feature for mobile and web, introduced in 2017, to encourage usage of posts, comments, and stories — In August 2017, YouTube introduced a “Messages” feature for its mobile apps and later the web. Two years later, the Google video site announced …

More: Android Police, Phandroid, XDA Developers, Android Central, TechCrunch, Tubefilter, Android Authority, and Engadget. Tweets: @martinsfp

Sara Fischer / Axios:

Facebook debuts first findings from conservative bias audit led by former GOP senator, says it influenced policy changes like creating a content oversight board — Facebook will release the findings of a roughly year-long conservative bias audit Tuesday, along with changes to its advertising policies …

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:

Facebook's conservative bias “audit” draws criticism from both sides after relying on interviews with 130 unnamed conservatives over internal data

More: HuffPost and Gizmodo

Tweets: @libertarianblue, @lam_barrett, @lam_barrett, @dellcam, @danpfeiffer, @melissaryan, and @lam_barrett

See also Mediagazer

John Whitehouse / Media Matters for America:

Contrary to conservatives' claims, data from 2018-19 shows right-leaning Facebook Pages with over 500,000 likes consistently outperform left-leaning rivals

More: The Interface, Gizmodo, and New York Times. Tweets: @mmfa

Whitney Kimball / Gizmodo:

A look at the many failed social networks launched since 2002, including Friendster, Myspace, Bebo, ConnectU, Path, Yik Yak, Orkut, Google+, and Vine — This week, we look at the ways the internet could have been—and could be—different. — Sixteen years ago, the sun set on Web 1.0 …

Tweets: @nicholaspersac

Nat Levy / GeekWire:

LinkedIn says it blocked or removed 21.6M fake accounts in the first half 2019, of which 19.5M were blocked at the registration stage — LinkedIn blocked or removed 21.6 million fake accounts on its platform from January to June of this year, a sign that the Microsoft-owned social network …

More: Official LinkedIn Blog, The Hill, Mercury News, TechSpot, MSPoweruser, Social Media Today, and Adweek

Tweets: @tonyajoriley and @thekenyeung

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Google says it has started rolling out AI-powered real-time spelling and grammar check features on Gmail for all G Suite users — Ever been stumped by spelling or sentence syntax while pecking out an email to colleagues? Fortunately for G Suite users, Google will soon introduce improved spelling …

More: G Suite Updates Blog, Engadget, Fortune, The Next Web, Gizmodo, Android Authority, WinBuzzer, Inquirer, KnowTechie, iPhone in Canada Blog, Android Headlines, PhoneArena, 9to5Google, Android Police, Neowin, and The Verge

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Waymo releases a self-driving open data set with 1,000 segments of 20-second footage in a range of driving conditions, free for non-commercial research — Waymo is opening up its significant stores of autonomous driving data with a new ‘Open Data Set’ it's making available for the purposes of research.

More: Waymo, SiliconANGLE, The Verge, Engadget, VentureBeat, and Mashable

TechCrunch:

A roundup of the 82 companies that launched at Y Combinator's Summer 2019 Demo Day 2, including logistics, e-commerce, real estate, and crypto startups — Team TechCrunch was back for Day 2 of Y Combinator's Summer 2019 Demo Days where we heard from another massive chunk of startups …

More: TechCrunch, Crunchbase News, Howard Lindzon, Silicon Valley Business …, and TechCrunch

Tweets: @rowantrollope, @lucasmtny, and @vboykis

Sean Captain / Fast Company:

WeWork offices use the same WiFi password across many locations and employ the weak WPA2 Personal security protocol, creating potential for abuse — The We Company sees itself as a world-changing tech platform. But it's used the same easy-to-guess password and dated Wi-Fi security for years.

Tweets: @seancaptain. Thanks:@mariedomingo

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

Researcher who was banned from Valve's HackerOne bug bounty program after submitting a Steam 0-day that Valve downplayed reveals details of another Steam 0-day — Valve gets heavily criticized for mishandling a crucial bug report. — A Russian security researcher has published details about a zero-day in the Steam gaming client.

More: BleepingComputer and amonitoring.ru

Tweets: @spencerdailey and @jgamblin

Scott Gilbertson / Wired:

Raspberry Pi 4 review: still very cheap with an improved processor, true Ethernet, and more RAM; the new Desktop Kit add-on makes the device even more useful — You can buy the latest Raspberry Pi as a kit with a mouse and keyboard if you want, making it more useful than ever.

Tweets: @wired

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Baidu, IBM, ARM, Intel, Red Hat, and others form the Confidential Computing Consortium to promote better data security practices — A number of big-name tech companies — including Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Red Hat, IBM, and Intel — are joining forces …

More: The Linux Foundation, VentureBeat, SiliconANGLE, The New Stack, ZDNet, Open Source Blog, and Dark Reading

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