Techmeme
September 4, 2020, 8:20 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
Sources: unusually large purchases of call options by SoftBank over the past month partly fueled the latest tech stock rally  —  Japanese conglomerate has been snapping up options in huge amounts over past month  —  SoftBank is the “Nasdaq whale” that has bought billions of dollars' worth …
Aaron Gregg / Washington Post:
Pentagon reaffirms its controversial decision to give JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft; Amazon is likely to continue its legal challenge  —  The Pentagon reaffirmed its controversial decision to give its largest-ever cloud computing contract to Microsoft instead of to market-leader Amazon …
Amazon Web Services:
Amazon responds to JEDI decision, calling it a “politically corrupted contract award” and attacks Trump's role in steering the award away from AWS  —  Earlier today, the DoD announced it had concluded its corrective action and affirmed its prior JEDI contract award to Microsoft.
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
Under shareholder pressure, Apple quietly publishes its human rights policy based on UN guiding principles, but will follow national law if the two conflict  —  iPhone maker approves new policy after shareholder pressure  —  Apple has for the first time published a human rights policy …
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Facebook says it will stop accepting new political ads a week before the US presidential election, as part of steps to protect against election interference  —  Striking a compromise to prevent election misinformation  —  Facebook will stop taking new political advertising in the United States …
Ashley Gold / Axios:
Steve Kovach / CNBC:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Facebook is testing displaying Instagram Stories directly in the main Facebook app; the test requires users opt in and link their accounts together  —  Only your Instagram followers can see your stories in Facebook  —  Some Facebook users have recently noticed that they can now watch …
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
Amazon deleted 20,000 reviews by 7 of its top 10 UK contributors after an FT analysis found they appeared to profit from posting thousands of five-star ratings  —  FT investigation finds suspicious behaviour by 9 of top 10 UK contributors on feedback  —  Amazon has deleted approximately …
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
FCC report estimates that removing Chinese equipment will cost small carriers as much as $1.8B, with around $1.6B of the cost eligible for federal reimbursement  —  ‘Rip and replace’ won't be cheap  —  Removing Chinese equipment will cost small carriers as much as $1.8 billion …
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Amazon says it will add an additional 10,000 jobs in Bellevue, WA, on top of the 15,000 announced in February  —  The city of Bellevue, Wash., is looking more and more like Amazon's actual second headquarters location.  —  The tech giant announced Friday that it will bring an additional 10,000 jobs …
Alex Weprin / Hollywood Reporter:
Biden campaign partners with video app Cameo in a new fundraising effort that will allow participating celebrities to earmark some payments for the campaign  —  Stars Including Andy Cohen, Mandy Moore, Tituss Burgess, Melissa Etheridge and Dulé Hill will create personalized video messages for users …

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:
Introduction: Zoho Notebook now imports and transcribes your call recordings automatically from Zoho apps  —  Does your team run on Zoho's call and meeting apps?  That's where decisions get made, plans come together, and work actually moves forward.
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:
How The AI Bet Pays Off + AI Lab Strategy Game — With David Cahn
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Oliver Darcy on Status, Bari Weiss, and Why Media Reporters Are Too Soft
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:
Chai Discovery's Bitter Lesson: Drug Design Is Another Scaling Problem
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:
Gavin Baker - AI Market Jitters
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's 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 8:20 PM ET, September 4, 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

Electronic Frontier Foundation:
More: TechdirtTweets: @shailjapatel, @asemota, @eff, @eff, and @eff

Earlier Picks

TechCrunch:
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Alex Heath / The Information:
Johann Lau / The Keyword:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: