Techmeme
August 14, 2019, 12:20 PM

Top News

Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Fingerprints of 1M+ people and biometric info from a system used by banks, London police, and defense contractors, discovered on a publicly accessible database  —  Fingerprints, facial recognition and other personal information from Biostar 2 discovered on publicly accessible database
Dan Primack / Axios:
WeWork files to raise $1B in an IPO, reports a $904M net loss on around $1.5B in revenue for first half of 2019  —  WeWork on Wednesday filed to raise $1 billion in an initial public offering, although the ultimate offering amount is expected to be at least three times larger.
Bloomberg:
FAA sent airlines a reminder to follow 2016 safety instructions that ban goods with recalled batteries, like recently recalled MacBook Pros, from the planes  —  - FAA says some MacBook Pros shouldn't be taken on airplanes  — Apple recently recalled select laptops over battery fire risk
Ursula Perano / Axios:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Twitter to soon let users follow interests, starting with sports, and create separate timelines for different topics; topics will be curated by Twitter using AI  —  A new way to explore interests on Twitter  —  Twitter will begin letting users follow interests, the company said today …
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Sources: Facebook paid hundreds of contractors to transcribe user audio; FB says it's stopped the work, which affected users who wanted voice chats transcribed  —  - Social network says it paused human review of conversations  — Apple, Amazon, Google have been scrutinized for similar work
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Microsoft patches four wormable BlueKeep-like bugs in Remote Desktop Service, two of which can be exploited remotely without authentication or user interaction  —  Most Microsoft Windows (ab)users probably welcome the monthly ritual of applying security updates about as much as they look forward …
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
AT&T and T-Mobile have started rolling out cross-network call authentication services to protect against spam and spoofed robocalls  —  AT&T and T-Mobile have started rolling out cross-network call authentication services for their subscribers.  That means the companies will now be able notify …
Ed Targett / Computer Business Review:
Amazon says it has added “fear” to the range of emotions that its Rekognition facial recognition software can now detect  —  Release follows amid immigration protests  —  AWS has added “fear” to the range of emotions identified by its Amazon Rekognition facial analysis service …
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Boatsetter, a peer-to-peer boat rental marketplace, raises $10M Series A extension round led by WestCap Group and Valor Equity, bringing total raised to $31M  —  Obviously, not everyone owns their boat, and boat ownership is far more unique than car ownership - which makes it maybe …
More: PYMNTS.com
Ian Allison / CoinDesk:
Sources: Coinbase and Barclays end UK partnership, started in early 2018; Coinbase partners with ClearBank, which may have asked the exchange to drop Zcash  —  The most prestigious banking relationship in crypto has ended.  —  Barclays, the London-based global bank, is no longer working …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
How a scammer ran a decade-long crowdfunding operation that raised ~$6M on Indiegogo and from other investors to build an ambitious phone/tablet/laptop device  —  The crowdfunded phone of the future was a multimillion-dollar scam  —  In 2014, Jeffrey Tschiltsch opened an email from Indiegogo and saw the future of computing.
Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
Shopify launches a web chat feature called Shopify Chat to let customers talk to merchants, says it plans to expand it to SMS and Android in the future  —  Shopify's cohort of more than 800,000 merchants and small businesses have a new way to speak to customers today with the introduction of Shopify Chat.

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Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
Inside Devin: The world's first autonomous AI engineer that's set to write 50% of its company's code by end of year | Scott Wu (CEO and co-founder of Cognition)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Techmeme Ride Home:
Omnibus Week Of 04/28
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
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Hard Fork:
The Dangers of A.I. Flattery + Kevin Meets the Orb + Group Chat Chat
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.
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The Logan Bartlett Show:
Ben Lamm (Founder & CEO, Colossal Biosciences) On The Breakthroughs Making De-Extinction Actually Possible
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
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Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Josh Kopelman from First Round Capital
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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Earlier Picks

Dara Kerr / CNET:
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Kaya Yurieff / CNN:
Casey Newton / The Verge: