Techmeme
August 29, 2018, 12:10 PM

Top News

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Dell unveils its fall line-up of Alexa-ready Inspiron, XPS, and Vostro laptops and 2-in-1s, updated with 8th Gen Intel Core processors  —  Dell revealed its new line-up of laptops, 2-in-1 laptop-tablet hybrids, and monitors with the latest components from Intel.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google redesigns Wear OS with a Google Assistant feed, one-swipe access to Fit, and revamped notifications  —  And adding a Google Assistant feed  —  If you have a newer Wear OS watch, sometime in the coming month, you'll get a software update that will change what happens when you swipe on your watchface.
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Skagen unveils a minimalist Wear OS-based Falster 2 smartwatch with a heart-rate sensor, GPS, and NFC, available September 12 and priced from $275  —  Skagen's Falster has been one of the darlings among Wear OS smartwatches thanks to its posh yet minimalist look, but it was hard to recommend …
New York Times:
Leigh Cuen / CoinDesk:
Coinbase survey of 675 US students shows 18% own cryptocurrency, and 21 of the top 50 US universities offer a class on blockchain technology or cryptocurrency  —  University students are clamoring for more courses about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft to add AI-powered audio and video transcription, file recommendations, and content-sharing tools to OneDrive for Business and SharePoint later in 2018  —  Microsoft is adding automated audio and video transcription, file recommendations and new content-sharing options to its OneDrive …
Sarah Jeong / The Verge:
An excerpt from Sarah Jeong's book “The Internet of Garbage”, which discusses online harassment as a threat to the useful functions of the internet  —  Today, The Verge is publishing an interim edition of Sarah Jeong's The Internet of Garbage, a book she first published in 2015 but has since gone out of print.
The Information:
Sources: Amazon is planning to launch a free, ad-supported video service for its ~48M Fire TV streaming video device users that is being developed by IMDb  —  Amazon.com is planning to launch a free, advertising-supported video service for the estimated 48 million people who use …
Ryan Felton / Jalopnik:
Report: Waymo's autonomous vans struggle to smoothly perform rather mundane driving tasks, often slowing or stopping at odd times, risking fender benders  —  If the autonomous revolution ever arrives, it's almost certain that self-driving cars will drive with an over-abundance of caution …
Ellen Pao / Wired:
CEOs of social media companies should not hide behind “naiveté” and “free speech” as an excuse for letting fake news and harassment flourish on their platforms  —  IT'S NOT OFTEN you hear some of the richest, most powerful men in the world described as naive, but it's becoming pretty commonplace.
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
New zero-day flaw found in Microsoft Windows task scheduler that can allow a local user to gain system privileges in Windows 10  —  Updated: There is no known workaround for the security flaw.  —  Microsoft has quickly reacted to the disclosure of a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability in the Windows operating system.
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Intel debuts Core U and Y series chips, which were codenamed Whiskey and Amber Lake, saying they improve battery life and connectivity with integrated Wi-Fi  —  Intel is rolling out six new processors in the new Whiskey Lake U-series and Amber Lake Y-series.
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Google says it's rebranding Tez, its payments app for India, as Google Pay, will expand it to cover micro-loans and add Tez features to Google Pay worldwide  —  Google launched its Tez paymen app in India a year ago, and now the company is giving the service major push into retail as it prepares …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Facebook says cross-posted tweets disappeared from users' profiles because Twitter deleted the Twitter app for Facebook; the deleted posts are now restored  —  A number of Facebook users were surprised Tuesday when some of their old posts disappeared — specifically, all the updates that had been cross-posted from Twitter.
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
Publishers are losing a key ally at Facebook as its Head of News Products, Alex Hardiman, is leaving to join The Atlantic as chief business and product officer  —  One of Facebook's big hires to improve its relations with publishers is leaving for The Atlantic.

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