Techmeme
September 26, 2019, 9:20 AM

Top News

Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
Amazon announces a new line of Alexa-enabled wearables equipped with mics and speakers, including the $180 Echo Frames eye glasses and $130 Echo Loop ring  —  Amazon is rolling out a new line of wearables that work with Alexa today including the Echo Frames eyeglasses and the Echo Loop smart ring.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Amazon unveils Echo Buds, $129.99 Alexa-enabled wireless earbuds that track steps, with claimed battery life of five hours and 20 hours with the charging case  —  Preorders start today, with shipping in time for the holidays  —  Amazon just announced its first foray into the headphone space …
Dami Lee / The Verge:
Amazon announces high-end Echo Studio, available for pre-order today for $200, with five speaker drivers and 3D audio support  —  It supports 3D audio from Dolby Atmos  —  Amazon announced its first high-end smart speaker at its annual hardware event today, called the Echo Studio.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:
Oculus Quest will be updated in Nov. to be able to wire up directly to PCs, like the Rift, and in 2020 will get support for hand tracking, no controllers needed  —  Just before the annual VR/AR conference Oculus Connect 6, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a teaser video hinting …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook unveils Horizon, a VR massive multiplayer world coming in 2020, and will shut down existing VR platforms Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms on Oct. 25  —  Facebook today announced a virtual reality sandbox game where you can build your own environments and games, socialize with friends, and more.
Scott Stein / CNET:
Interview with Mark Zuckerberg on cracking social in VR, updates to the Quest headset, and how the future of Oculus' AR ambitions are grounded in its VR efforts  —  I'm led down a staircase by a small team of Facebook communications people, into a high-ceilinged, wide-open office …
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
FTC sues Match Group, alleging Match.com connected daters with accounts known to be fake to get them to subscribe, leading to 499,691 new subscriptions  —  The FTC says more than 400,000 people subscribed because of these fraud messages  —  Match.com may have connected non-paying daters …
New York Times:
Report: Number of countries using political disinformation campaigns more than doubled to 70 since 2017; Facebook remains #1 social network for disinformation  —  In Vietnam, citizens were enlisted to post pro-government messages on their personal Facebook pages.
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Dropbox starts rolling out Dropbox Spaces, shared team workspaces that connect things like files, tasks, and meetings, and other new features in its desktop app  —  Dropbox held its Work in Progress user conference on Wednesday where the company announced a host of new product experiences and features.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Amazon announces updates to Alexa: a new multilingual mode, celebrity voices for $0.99 each, starting with Samuel L. Jackson, frustration detection, and more  —  Alexa's gaining more human-like speech — and learning to understand multiple languages at once.

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More News

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez / The San Francisco Examiner:

Earlier Picks

Greg Bensinger / Washington Post:
Laura Kayali / Politico: