Techmeme
January 27, 2020, 9:50 PM

Top News

Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google says it will shut down App Maker, G Suite's low-code environment for building custom business apps, on January 19, 2021  —  Google today announced it is killing off yet another service: App Maker, G Suite's low-code environment for building custom business apps.
Raymond Zhong / New York Times:
As China tries to contain the coronavirus, the sheer volume of criticism of the government overwhelms censors and tests China's ability to control the narrative  —  The sheer volume of criticism of the government, and the sometimes clever ways that critics dodge censors, are testing Beijing's ability to control the narrative.
Azeem Azhar / Exponential View:
As Alphabet and Microsoft clamor for regulation of tech like facial recognition, potential new rules and their obstacles pose existential threats to startups  —  You couldn't have missed it.  The world's largest tech companies have started to clamour for regulation in this hugely under-regulated sector.
Reuters:
Sources: Turkey-backed hackers have used DNS hijacking to obtain login credentials, targeting ~30 EU and Middle East governments and organizations since 2018  —  LONDON (Reuters) - Sweeping cyberattacks targeting governments and other organizations in Europe and the Middle East are believed …
Danny Palmer / ZDNet:
UK government proposes new IoT rules: firms must tell consumers how long security updates will be provided, ship individual devices with unique passwords, more  —  Proposed laws from the UK for Internet of Things security and suggests vendors will need to follow new rules to be considered secure.
Tara Duggan / San Francisco Chronicle:
Grubhub admits to adding restaurants without their permission, after restaurateur found her Thai restaurant had a page on Grubhub and its subsidiary Seamless  —  Pim Techamuanvivit was managing her Michelin-starred Thai restaurant in San Francisco, Kin Khao, around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday when she got an unexpected call.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Documents reveal that Avast has sold its users' internet browsing data, through a subsidiary called Jumpshot, to clients like Pepsi, Google, and Microsoft  —  An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data …
Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note:
Consumer IoT is in trouble because normal people can't be expected to manage a house full of smart things or keep track of their bugs and looming obsolescence  —  The everything-computerized-and-always- connected smarthome is a work in progress.  This slow pace is a good thing because it gives us …
Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:
Experts say tech has made US labor laws obsolete and in need of a massive overhaul to benefit organizing workers, such as requiring safe digital meeting spaces  —  In the 1930s, at the time of the writing of the Wagner Act—the law which grants workers the right to form unions and collectively bargain …
Gary Marcus / The Gradient:
A critical look at OpenAI's GPT-2 text generation AI and why the knowledge acquired by systems like the GPT-2 has been superficial and unreliable  —  OpenAI's GPT-2 has been discussed everywhere from The New Yorker to The Economist.  What does it really tell us about natural and artificial intelligence?

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.
Zoho:
Do you need a Zoho Partner?  Here's why working with one can benefit you.  —  Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case.  From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …
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:
Leopold Blows Up, OpenAI Drastically Cuts Prices, Microsoft's Best Day
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.
Hard Fork:
Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Tech's short-term era
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.
Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
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 9:50 PM ET, January 27, 2020.

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

Angela Strange / Andreessen Horowitz:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: