Techmeme
August 14, 2019, 10:20 AM

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
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
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
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Interview with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on how the Tumblr acquisition came about, what's next for Tumblr, adult content in apps, and more  —  Blogging is back, hopefully  —  It's been a long and winding road for Tumblr, the blogging site that launched a thousand writing careers.
Ursula Perano / Axios:
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Nvidia says it has broken records for real-time conversational AI, training the industry-standard BERT model in 53 minutes and then inferring responses in ~2ms  —  Nvidia's GPU-powered platform for developing and running conversational AI that understands and responds to natural language requests …
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 …
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.
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 …
More: CNET and The Verge
Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:
Scoop, which provides a carpooling service for enterprises, raises $60M round led by Activate Capital, bringing its total raised to $106M  —  Enterprise carpooling startup Scoop just closed a $60 million round led by Activate Capital with participation from Goldman Sachs, NGP Capital …
Kaya Yurieff / CNN:
A look at Snapchat's community of about 100 official lens creators, who make custom AR lenses for people and brands, with Snap helping connect them to buyers  —  New York (CNN Business)Eighteen-year-old Ana Casciello couldn't find a filter she wanted for her Snapchat photo that matched her personal style.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Alegion, which provides labeling and annotation services for enterprise data science teams, raises $12M Series A led by RHS Investments  —  Alegion, an Austin, Texas-based provider of labeling and annotation services for enterprise data science teams, today announced that it has secured $12 million …
More: FinSMEs

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
Celebrate and collaborate this holiday season with Zoho Cliq  —  The holiday season is a time for celebration, relaxation, and reflection.  While some people are busy wrapping presents for their loved ones …
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 12/23 - The Revenge Of Google Glass?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:20 AM ET, August 14, 2019.

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

Dara Kerr / CNET:

Earlier Picks

The Information:
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Casey Newton / The Verge: