Techmeme
October 23, 2019, 4:50 PM

Top News

Cade Metz / New York Times:
Google claims “quantum supremacy” breakthrough: its quantum computer performed a mathematical calculation at a speed inconceivable with today's technology  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Google said on Wednesday that it had achieved a long-sought breakthrough called “quantum supremacy,” …
IBM Research Blog:
IBM says Google's experiment is an excellent demo of quantum computing progress, but not proof that quantum computers are “supreme” over classical computers  —  Quantum computers are starting to approach the limit of classical simulation and it is important that we continue …
Microsoft:
Microsoft reports Q1 revenue of $33.1B, up 14% YoY, as net income rises 21% YoY to $10.7B; Intelligent Cloud revenue rose 27% YoY to $10.8B, driven by Azure  —  REDMOND, Wash. — October 23, 2019 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended September 30 …
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
At a hearing on Libra, Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by House lawmakers from both parties on the proposed cryptocurrency, privacy, diversity, and misinformation  —  The social media giant's chief executive took an early lashing Wednesday over the company's policies to spot and prevent the spread disinformation.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Leaked presentation shows Comcast is lobbying US lawmakers against Google and Mozilla's plan to encrypt DNS data, making it harder for ISPs to track users  —  Motherboard has obtained a leaked presentation internet service providers are using to try and lobby lawmakers against a form of encrypted browsing data.
eMarketer:
Apple Pay overtook Starbucks as the top mobile payment app in US in 2018 with 27.7M users, will grow to 30.3M users in 2019 representing a 47.3% market share  —  Nearly 30% of US smartphone users will use a mobile payment app … For the first time, a generic mobile payment app is more popular …
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends:
Huawei says the Mate X foldable phone will launch in China next month for ~$2,400, and has shipped 200M smartphones so far in 2019, 64 days faster than 2018  —  Though times are turbulent for Huawei, it has still managed to ship 200 million smartphones already this year, beating a previous record …
CNBC:
WeWork says SoftBank will provide $5B in new financing and buy up to $3B in shares from existing shareholders, which would give SoftBank an 80% stake in WeWork  —  - CNBC's David Faber previously reported that SoftBank was seeking to take control of WeWork through a financing package.
Wall Street Journal:
Investigation: Amazon sells cheap clothes made in dozens of Bangladeshi factories, most of which are deemed too dangerous for workers by other big retailers  —  After a deadly 2013 factory collapse, most big U.S. apparel companies agreed to steer clear of dangerous plants in Bangladesh.  Not Amazon.
Sarah Emerson / VICE:
Documents show how Facebook uses Menlo Park's police department, which includes a Facebook-funded unit for campus patrol duties, amid racial profiling concerns  —  Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by Motherboard show how Facebook is using the Menlo Park Police Department to reshape the city.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Republicans made a spectacle of storming into the secure room where a closed-door impeachment hearing was taking place, known as the SCIF, some with cell phones  —  Lawmakers flout strict rules designed to prevent eavesdropping by adversaries.  —  On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers committed …
Ferris Jabr / New York Times:
A deep dive into the debate surrounding video game addiction, as the scientific understanding of what it means to be addicted continues to evolve  —  The latest research suggests it's not far-fetched at all — especially when you consider all the societal and cultural factors that make today's games so attractive.
Financial Times:
Interviews with 30+ former employees of UK cloud computing company UKFast surface allegations claiming its founder, Lawrence Jones, sexually assaulted employees  —  There are two sides to Lawrence Jones, MBE, one of Britain's wealthiest technology entrepreneurs with an estimated £700m fortune.
New York Times:
Researchers: China's state sponsored hackers have switched tactics over the last few years, focusing increasingly sophisticated attacks on its ethnic minorities  —  SAN FRANCISCO — China's state-sponsored hackers have drastically changed how they operate over the last three years …

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
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 WorkDrive named a Leader in the Nucleus Research CSC Technology Value Matrix 2026  —  Enterprise content management is evolving rapidly with about 80% of the data unstructured.  The growing challenge is not about storing information anymore.
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

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Bots Break Containment and Hack Hugging Face Autonomously — With Alex Stamos
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:
Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Substack Wants To Become A Social Network; Beehiiv Wants To Stay Invisible
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.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Training Data:
Factory's Matan Grinberg: The Coming 'Dark Factory' Where Software Builds Itself
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
Matthew Smith — Natural Gas: The Next Bottleneck
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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 4:50 PM ET, October 23, 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

Earlier Picks

Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Conor Dougherty / New York Times: