Techmeme
December 3, 2019, 11:30 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Chinese officials are gathering blood samples from Uighurs in a mass DNA collection effort for use by scientists researching using DNA to map facial images  —  Beijing's pursuit of control over a Muslim ethnic group pushes the rules of science and raises questions about consent.
Shirin Ghaffary / Vox:
A group of four former Google employees who say they were fired for organizing are filing unfair labor practice charges against the company  —  Three of the four former Google engineers who were recently fired from the company and alleging Google retaliated against them for workplace organizing.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, and Sundar Pichai sign a renewed commitment to the Paris Agreement and urge the US to stay in, joining 70+ CEOs and US labor leaders  —  The U.S. government may be in the process of formally withdrawing from the term of the Paris Agreement, an International accord …
Jeremy Bogaisky / Forbes:
Inside the struggles of Larry Page-backed flying car company Kitty Hawk as sources suggest it may have ceded control of its self-flying taxi program to Boeing  —  Deputy editor for Industry; eyes on the skies  —  In 2017, success seemed to be just around the corner for Kitty Hawk …
Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters:
Twitter updates global privacy policy to comply with CCPA, will move non-EU/US accounts to US to reduce GDPR risks, launches Privacy Center site to inform users  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc is updating its global privacy policy to give users more information …
New York Times:
Facebook created a chatbot called “Liam Bot” that teaches employees official company talking points for responding to friends and family critiquing the company  —  The “Liam Bot” teaches employees what to say if friends or family ask difficult questions about the company over the holidays.
James Politi / Financial Times:
US proposes tariffs on up to $2.4B of French goods after concluding that France's digital services tax unfairly discriminates against US tech companies  —  The Trump administration on Monday proposed the imposition of 100 per cent tariffs on up to $2.4bn of French goods, including champagne …
netzpolitik.org:
Source: through September, TikTok limited the reach of disabled, “fat and self-confident”, and LGBT users, in a misplaced bid to prevent them from being bullied  —  In order to protect people with disabilities, TikTok simply made them less visible.  Gemeinfrei-ähnlich freigegeben durch unsplash.com
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott:
Report: Huawei's latest Mate 30 handsets do not include any American parts; Huawei also says its 5G networking gear is now “America-free”, thanks to the US ban  —  Here's one thing the U.S. government might not have considered when it banned Huawei from doing business in the country …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Amazon previews Braket, a service to let AWS customers use D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti quantum computers, and debuts a Quantum Solutions Lab and research center  —  While Google, Microsoft, IBM and others have made a lot of noise around their quantum computing efforts in recent months, AWS remained quiet.
Alfred Ng / CNET:
For over a year, Ring let police access a heat map of installed Ring video doorbells that let users zoom in very close to street level; it was removed in July  —  The company once offered a map, now withdrawn, that allowed police to zoom in to see the specific location of Ring customers.

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Earlier Picks

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Mark Sullivan / Fast Company:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Charles Riley / CNN:
Steve Satterfield / About Facebook:
Financial Times: