Techmeme
November 5, 2019, 3:55 PM

Top News

Makena Kelly / The Verge:
FTC says AT&T has agreed to pay $60M to settle the agency's 2014 lawsuit that alleged it lied to customers about “unlimited” data plans that it throttled  —  Unlimited should mean unlimited!  —  On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission announced that AT&T will pay $60 million to settle a case with the agency.
Washington Post:
Overview of TikTok's evolving censorship approach: ex-US staff say Chinese bosses set rules on videos with heavy kissing, political topics, subversive content  —  Managers insist they are revamping policies to give American staff greater autonomy from Beijing.
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
Data brokers like Sift and Kustomer, which share consumers' est. lifetime value with companies, now share it with customers on request due to new privacy laws  —  Little-known companies are amassing your data — like food orders and Airbnb messages — and selling the analysis to clients.
Jennifer Langston / Microsoft:
Microsoft teams up with Warner Bros to store and retrieve the 1978 movie Superman on a piece of glass as a proof of concept test for Project Silica research  —  Microsoft and Warner Bros. have collaborated to successfully store and retrieve the entire 1978 iconic “Superman” …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Microsoft Surface Pro X review: beautiful design and good screen but expensive, slow for the price, and has an unimpressive battery and app compatibility issues  —  Better than expected isn't enough  —  The Surface Pro X is the computer Microsoft has tried to make for at least seven years.
Yaël Eisenstat / Washington Post:
A former head of election integrity operations at Facebook says the company's business model and ad targeting tools make it hard for it to not harm democracy  —  The company can't avoid damaging democracy.  —  I joined Facebook in June 2018 as its “head of Global Elections Integrity Ops” …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google promises one more update coming in December for the original Google Pixel, which will then be past its three-year security update support window  —  Pour one out for Pixel  —  The Google Pixel and Pixel XL will get “one final software update” in December, the company confirms to The Verge.
Wall Street Journal:
Companies in Vision Fund's portfolio, like Wag and Fair, are struggling; sources say Oyo founder invested $2B in his company with a loan backed by Masayoshi Son  —  Other companies the huge tech investment fund has backed have struggled lately  —  SoftBank Group Corp. 's longtime strategy …
Patrick Howell O'Neill / MIT Technology Review:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
iOS 13.2 and iPadOS 13.2 seem to terminate apps in the background far more aggressively, hurting the multitasking experience, especially on the iPad  —  A growing number of iPhone and iPad users have complained about poor RAM management on iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, leading to apps like Safari …
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
Study of ~10K startups: women represent 13% of founders but own 7% of founder equity; 31% of all equity owners are women, but hold 6% of total startup equity  —  Female entrepreneurs have less equity in their own companies than do male entrepreneurs, according to a new report from Carta.
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Quebec-based RenoRun, which runs a platform for acquiring and delivering building materials, raises $17.1M Series A led by Inovia Capital and Obvious Ventures  —  RenoRun, a construction material delivery service, has raised US$17.1 million (CA$22.5 million) in Series A funding co-led by Inovia Capital and Obvious Ventures.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Toronto-based Untether AI raises $20M Series A from Intel Capital, Radical Ventures, and others to develop machine learning inferencing hardware  —  Untether AI, a Toronto-based startup that's developing high-efficiency, high-performance chips for AI inferencing workloads …
More: FinSMEs
Frank Pallotta / CNN:
Netflix added a “skip politics” button to a segment of Seth Meyers' new comedy special “Lobby Baby”, following a request from the comedian  —  New York (CNN Business)Seth Meyers thinks some comedy fans may be burned out by DC politics, so he asked Netflix (NFLX) to help him do something about it.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Medopad, which is building AI-based measurable indicators of disease progression picked up by apps and wearables, raises $25M Series B led by Bayer  —  Medopad, the UK startup that has been working with Tencent to develop AI-based methods for building and tracking “digital” biomarkers …
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Brazilian mobility startup Kovi, which rents vehicles to on-demand drivers, raises $30M Series A led by Global Founders Capital  —  Kovi, a fast-growing 17-month-old Brazilian mobility startup, has raised a $30 million Series A led by Global Founders Capital.

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