Techmeme
December 16, 2019, 1:15 PM

Top News

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Some contractors at Google's Austin content moderation facility say they are overworked and begin seeing severe mental health consequences after just six months  —  These moderators help keep Google and YouTube free of violent extremism — and now some of them have PTSD
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Google halts Chrome 79 rollout on Android, which was ~50% complete, after the misconfigured update wipes user data from many apps using Android's native WebView  —  Chrome 79 started rolling out on desktop and mobile platforms a few days ago.  Unfortunately, a bug has cropped up that wipes data …
Jia Tolentino / New Yorker:
How social media and apps like FaceTune led to a widespread pursuit of a generic “Instagram Face” look, enabled by non-invasive cosmetic medical procedures  —  How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look.  —  This past summer …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Source: Uber is in advanced talks to sell Uber Eats India to local rival Zomato in a deal that values Uber Eats India at ~$400M  —  Uber is in advanced stages of talks to sell its food delivery service (Uber Eats India) to local rival Zomato as the American ride-hailing giant looks to cut …
Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:
Palantir wins a one year $111M contract to connect US Army's operations systems into a single dashboard; Palantir reportedly took over Project Maven  —  - Company beats Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Accenture, Deloitte  — Peter Thiel-backed company is also working on Project Maven
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
CallMiner, which provides call centers with AI-powered speech and text analytics software, raises $75M from Goldman Sachs, bringing its total raised to ~$160M  —  Despite people of a certain generation's preference for texting, phone calls haven't gone the way of the dodo.
Tom Simonite / Wired:
Q&A with Google's head of AI Jeff Dean on using ML for better chip design, ML energy use and climate change, and acting on Google's AI ethics principles  —  Jeff Dean says the company is trying to build systems that have general smarts, rather than highly specialized intelligence.

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Featured Podcasts

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Ben Thompson on Big Tech, China, and the AI Boom Running Out of Money
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