Techmeme
December 5, 2020, 1:30 PM

Top News

Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:
1,200+ Google employees and 1,500+ academic, industry, and civil supporters have signed a petition condemning the termination of AI scientist Timnit Gebru  —  More than 1,500 researchers also sign letter after Black expert on ethics says Google tried to suppress her research on bias
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
A summary of the draft paper co-authored by Timnit Gebru, which outlined the main risks of large language AI models and provided suggestions for future research  —  The company's star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models, which are key to Google's business.  —  hide
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple launches a display module replacement program for iPhone 11 devices manufactured between November 2019 and May 2020 experiencing touch issues  —  Apple today launched a new display replacement program for iPhone 11 devices to address a problem that cases a “small percentage” of iPhone 11 displays to stop responding to touch.
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Inside WarnerMedia's transition to streaming: current and former execs say it was marred by rushed decision making, culture clashes, HBO brand confusion, more  —  - CNBC spoke with more than a dozen former and current WarnerMedia executives to gauge how John Stankey and Jason Kilar are progressing with HBO Max.
Jessica Toonkel / The Information:
Bloomberg:
Sources: the US will not extend the December 4 deadline for TikTok's forced sale but will not enforce the order either, allowing the negotiations to continue  —  - No new deadline is expected while deal discussions progress  — Administration wants to finalize deal before Trump's term ends
Mary Ann Azevedo / FinLedger:
Moov Financial, which developed an open source platform for adding banking and payment functionality into apps, raises $27M Series A led by a16z  —  Startup's goal is to empower developers with developer-first code that's “modular, portable, and bank agnostic”
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
OnlyFans says it will generate $2B+ in sales in 2020, now has 85M users, is adding around 500K users a day, and is paying out $200M+ a month to its 1M+ creators  —  As Cardi B prepared the release for her new song “WAP,” she checked off all the usual components of her promotional plan …
Alan Ohnsman / Forbes:
Profile of Luminar's Austin Russell, one of the first billionaires to emerge from the autonomous vehicle world after Luminar went public via a SPAC on Thursday  —  I follow technology-driven changes reshaping transportation.  —  I cover young people doing big things.
Eileen Yu / ZDNet:
Singapore issues digital bank licenses to Ant Group, Sea, and joint bidders Singtel and Grab, with operations likely to start in early 2022  —  Alibaba's Ant Group and joint bidders Grab and Singtel are amongst bidders that have snagged licences to offer digital banking services in the country …
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Amazon adds live and on-demand US local news to its news app on Fire TVs, starting with 12 major markets and expanding into 90 more during 2021  —  At the end of a record-setting year of news consumption, Amazon Fire TV said local TV stations in 12 U.S. cities will be added to Amazon's news app, with another 90 on deck for 2021.

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More News

Emily Bell / Columbia Journalism Review:

Earlier Picks

Nicholas Kristof / New York Times:
Tom Simonite / Wired:
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Jay Peters / The Verge: