Techmeme
September 18, 2019, 11:05 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook debuts Portal TV, a TV accessory for video calling, streaming, AR gaming, and co-viewing Facebook Watch shows, shipping November 5 for $149  —  Facebook wants to take over your television with a clip-on camera for video calling, AR gaming, and content co-watching.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
GitHub buys code analysis tool Semmle, which helps identify security vulnerabilities and has Microsoft, Google among clients; Semmle raised $31M in VC funding  —  Microsoft's GitHub today announced that it has acquired Semmle, a code analysis tool that helps developers and security researchers …
Kara Swisher / Vox:
Apple's VP of communications Steve Dowling is leaving the company after five years in the role; Dowling joined the company 16 years ago  —  Steve Dowling, who has headed Apple's communications for the last five years, is leaving after 16 years at the company.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Apple Watch Series 5 review: it's a minor update and battery life hasn't improved, but an always-on, beautiful screen and new apps make it the best smartwatch  —  There's basically no competition  —  The highest praise I can give the new Apple Watch Series 5 is simply this: it's an Apple Watch.
Gabriel Debenedetti / New York Magazine:
Inside the growing split between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party, once allies, as leading presidential candidates express extreme worries about Big Tech  —  Three summers ago, a worker stood up at “Q&A,” Facebook's weekly all-hands, town-hall-style meeting, which is usually held …
Jason D. Rowley / Crunchbase News:
DCVC, which focuses on early-stage “deep” technology startups, closes a $725M fifth fund; the fourth DCVC fund, raised in 2016, topped out at $212M  —  Back in April, Crunchbase News spotted a filing by DCVC (formerly known as Data Collective) indicating that the Palo Alto-based …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: AT&T is considering parting ways with its DirecTV unit, including spinning it off into a separate public company or combining assets with Dish  —  Telecom giant considers fate of DirecTV satellite unit  —  AT&T Inc. is exploring parting with its DirecTV satellite unit …
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:
Researchers: many smart TVs and streaming dongles from Roku, Samsung, Amazon and others are sending user data to companies like Netflix, Microsoft, and Facebook  —  The smart TVs in our homes are leaking sensitive user data to companies including Netflix, Google and Facebook even when some devices are idle …
Eliot Brown / Wall Street Journal:
Profile of WeWork CEO Adam Neumann and his sometimes chaotic lifestyle, as sources detail worrying stories, like his wife firing multiple employees she just met  —  The skills that helped fuel We Co.'s breakneck growth are piling up as potential liabilities as the company prepares to go public
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Documents found on an unprotected backup drive of a Nokia Networks employee shed light on Russia's secret network surveillance system, known as SORM  —  A data leak exposes SORM surveillance at Russia's top telco  —  In cities across Russia, large boxes in locked rooms are directly connected …
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Repo men are scanning and uploading locations of cars they drive past into DRN, a surveillance database of 9B license plates accessible by private investigators  —  Repo men are passively scanning and uploading the locations of every car they drive by into DRN, a surveillance database …
Lauren Smiley / Wired:
How data from the victim's Fitbit and a neighbor's Ring surveillance camera played a crucial role in the arrest of a 90-year-old suspect in a murder trial in CA  —  Karen Navarra was a quiet woman in her sixties who lived alone.  She was found beaten to death.  The neighbors didn't see anything.
FinSMEs:
Dental Intelligence, a Utah-based analytics and workflow automation platform for dental practices, raises $34M Series A  —  Dental Intelligence, Inc., a Pleasant Grove, UT-based analytics and workflow automation platform for dental practices, raised a $34m Series A growth round of funding.
More: PRWeb
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
IBM unveils a 53-qubit quantum computer, scheduled to arrive next month, making it the largest universal quantum computer available for external use  —  IBM continues to push its quantum computing efforts forward and today announced that it will soon make a 53-qubit quantum computer available to clients of its IBM Q Network.
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
Instagram's Close Friends feature proves controversial as both an influencer revenue stream and superficial gateway to intimacy  —  Gabi Abrao, better known as @sighswoon on Instagram, is “developing a language with the invisible.”  Her page is half memes, half photos of her—eating fresh fruit …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Amazon will begin rolling out Alexa Political Contributions, which lets users donate $5-$200 to participating US presidential candidates, starting next month  —  The 2020 U.S. presidential election is just over a year away, and ahead of it, Amazon's rolling out a new feature …

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.
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.
Zoho:
Knowledge management vs. document management  —  Document management is the process of storing and tracking documented information within the organization, while knowledge management is a more broader approach …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Tue. 11/26 - Apple Going Too Thin Again?
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 11:05 PM ET, September 18, 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

Earlier Picks

Will Oremus / OneZero:
Nilay Patel / The Verge: