Techmeme: San Francisco grants permits to Lime, JUMP, Scoot, and Spin to deploy up to 2,500 electric scooters each, starting from October 15 (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez/The San Francisco …)

Dami Lee / The Verge:

Amazon announces high-end Echo Studio, available for pre-order today for $200, with five speaker drivers and 3D audio support — It supports 3D audio from Dolby Atmos — Amazon announced its first high-end smart speaker at its annual hardware event today, called the Echo Studio.

More: Amazon.com, Inc., The Verge, Android Police, TechHive, VentureBeat, Digital Trends, BetaNews, Ars Technica, Engadget, CNET, Mashable, Axios, CNET, Thurrott, Engadget, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, TechSpot, and The Streamable

Tweets: @caseynewton, @stshank, @benbajarin, @markgurman, and @bretkinsella

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:

Amazon unveils Echo Buds, $129.99 Alexa-enabled wireless earbuds that track steps, with claimed battery life of five hours and 20 hours with the charging case — Preorders start today, with shipping in time for the holidays — Amazon just announced its first foray into the headphone space …

More: GeekWire, VentureBeat, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Digital Trends, Engadget, CNET, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, iPhone Hacks, Bloomberg, and iDownloadBlog.com

Tweets: @johnpaczkowski, @neilcybart, @benedictevans, @benedictevans, and @benedictevans

Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:

Amazon announces a new line of Alexa-enabled wearables equipped with mics and speakers, including the $180 Echo Frames eye glasses and $130 Echo Loop ring — Amazon is rolling out a new line of wearables that work with Alexa today including the Echo Frames eyeglasses and the Echo Loop smart ring.

More: Engadget, The Verge, The Verge, Engadget, MacRumors, Engadget, The Verge, AppleInsider, TechCrunch, Thurrott, TechCrunch, and CNET

Tweets: @neilcybart, @backlon, @neilcybart, @mcwm, and @caseynewton

Molly Price / CNET:

Amazon announces Echo Dot with Clock, available for pre-order today for $60; original Echo Dot will still be available

More: Day One, The Verge, The Verge, The Verge, SiliconANGLE, 9to5Google, Amazon.com, Inc., Thurrott, ZDNet, Engadget, TechCrunch, and 9to5Toys. Tweets: @mattrosoff

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Tom Warren / The Verge:

Amazon unveils the $25 Echo Flex, an Echo smart plug with modular accessories that cost $15, like a motion sensor and night light, available for pre-order today

More: The Verge, The Verge, CNET, Engadget, and TechCrunch. Tweets: @tomwarren

The Verge:

Amazon Echo Buds first impressions: comfortable, sound good, and are great at noise reduction, but their case is significantly larger than AirPods'

More: Digital Trends and Engadget

Tweets: @kantrowitz, @dangraziano, and @backlon

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Amazon announces Echo Show 8, sitting between the standard 10.1-inch and smaller 5.5-inch Echo Show models, available for pre-order today for $130

More: CNET, Thurrott, TechCrunch, Mashable, iDownloadBlog.com, and CNET

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Amazon announces third-generation Echo for the same $100 price, improving its audio quality with stronger bass and adding a “twilight blue” color

More: CNET, Digital Trends, Engadget, Engadget, and Mashable

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook unveils Horizon, a VR massive multiplayer world coming in 2020, and will shut down existing VR experiences Facebook Spaces and Oculus Rooms on Oct. 25 — Facebook today announced a virtual reality sandbox game where you can build your own environments and games, socialize with friends, and more.

More: Oculus Blog, Engadget, Windows Central, VentureBeat, and Engadget

Tweets: @alexeheath, @joshconstine, @mahalis, and @joshconstine. Thanks:@joshconstine

Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:

Oculus Quest will be updated in Nov. to be able to wire up directly to PCs, like the Rift, and in 2020 will get support for hand tracking, no controllers needed — Just before the annual VR/AR conference Oculus Connect 6, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a teaser video hinting …

More: Oculus Blog, Engadget, Ars Technica, SiliconANGLE, Engadget, The Verge, Digital Trends, PCWorld, TechCrunch, Windows Central, Ars Technica, The Verge, CNET, The Verge, Facebook, IGN, CNET, TechCrunch, Variety, GameSpot, PC Gamer, VRFocus, Destructoid, SlashGear, UploadVR, and Road to VR

Tweets: @jason_rubin and @jank0

Scott Stein / CNET:

Interview with Mark Zuckerberg on cracking social in VR, updates to the Quest headset, and how the future of Oculus' AR ambitions are grounded in its VR efforts — I'm led down a staircase by a small team of Facebook communications people, into a high-ceilinged, wide-open office …

More: The Next Web, TechCrunch, ZDNet, Telegraph, Nikkei Asian Review, VentureBeat, Oculus Blog, Windows Central, Gizmodo, IGN, GameSpot, and Kotaku. Thanks:@iansherr

Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:

Oculus says it's surpassed $100M in revenue in the Oculus store, with Zuckerberg noting that 20% of that revenue was for Quest titles sold in past four months

More: PCWorld and Windows Central

Tweets: @urgamingtechie, @bertaroo, and @jordannovet

Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:

Facebook is making a “new social layer”, arriving on Oculus headsets in 2019; one feature, Destinations, lets players broadcast what they're doing inside games

More: CNET, VentureBeat, and Windows Central

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:

Amazon announces a new Eero mesh router with Alexa voice controls, available today in the US for $99 each or $249 for a three pack — Amazon has just announced a brand-new $99 Eero router at its big hardware event, marking the first new product from the mesh networking company since Amazon bought it earlier this year.

More: TechCrunch, Digital Trends, Android Headlines, Engadget, CNBC, CNN, CNET, The Verge, and VentureBeat

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Amazon announces updates to Alexa: a new multilingual mode, celebrity voices for $0.99 each, starting with Samuel L. Jackson, frustration detection, and more

More: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Digital Trends, The Verge, Gizmodo, Engadget, BBC, Engadget, Android Headlines, TechCrunch, and IGN

Tweets: @willoremus, @ow, @max_read, @mcwm, @mcwm, and @benthompson

Russell Brandom / The Verge:

Amazon debuts new privacy settings for Alexa, including the ability to easily delete specific recordings and automatically delete them after three or 18 months

More: Gizmodo, Thurrott, Digital Trends, VentureBeat, Android Headlines, CNET, Engadget, TechRepublic, BuzzFeed News, and The Verge

Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:

GM says it will add Alexa to the infotainment systems on its Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac vehicles from 2018 onwards, rolling out in first half of 2020

More: The Verge, VentureBeat, Engadget, Android Headlines, and Business Insider

Andrew Gebhart / CNET:

Amazon launches the “Certified for Humans” program for simple-to-use devices that are able to be set up and controlled within the Alexa app

More: The Verge and Amazon. Tweets: @johnpaczkowski

Ashley Carman / The Verge:

FTC sues Match Group, alleging Match.com connected daters with accounts known to be fake to get them to subscribe, leading to 499,691 new subscriptions — The FTC says more than 400,000 people subscribed because of these fraud messages — Match.com may have connected non-paying daters …

More: Federal Trade Commission, News Releases, Gizmodo, BuzzFeed News, CNET, Fortune, CNN, Business Insider, and Reuters

Tweets: @tonyromm, @ashleyrcarman, and @tonyromm

Greg Bensinger / Washington Post:

Interviews with 20 people show Uber's 80-strong Special Investigations Unit, which deals with severe incidents, often puts Uber's interests ahead of riders' — Investigators say drivers get three “strikes” for bad behavior — and may just end up driving for Lyft.

More: Digital Trends, The Verge, and Business Insider

Tweets: @drewharwell, @dmac1, @goldfarb, @gregbensinger, @laurastevens, @elizabeth_joh, @johnpaczkowski, @robertfaturechi, and @lam_barrett

Laura Kayali / Politico:

Google refuses to pay publishers in France, first to apply EU's copyright law, will only show headlines and thumbnails, unless publisher asks to add previews — The announcement pours cold water on publishers' hopes of getting more money from Google after an EU reform of online copyright law.

More: The Keyword, Ars Technica, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Next Web, Search Engine Land, and 9to5Google

Tweets: @laukaya, @glynmoody, @robpegoraro, @jasonfalter, @mehreenkhn, @jason_kint, and @mathewi

See also Mediagazer

Matthew Prince / The Cloudflare Blog:

Cloudflare launches Warp VPN for iOS and Android for optimizing and securing traffic, with a faster tier for $5/mo., after its bug-ridden limited debut in April — Today, after a longer than expected wait, we're opening WARP and WARP Plus to the general public.

More: Wired, The Cloudflare Blog, XDA Developers, Android Police, BleepingComputer, 9to5Mac, BetaNews, and The Mac Observer

Jay Peters / The Verge:

Amazon announces a cheaper $100 Stick Up Cam and $60 Indoor Cam, and says Ring Doorbell Elites will get a feature where Alexa “answers” the doorbell next year — It also showed a DIY retrofit alarm kit — At its fall event today, Amazon announced two new versions of its Ring Stick …

More: CNET, Engadget, Gotta Be Mobile, and Pocket-lint

Alfred Ng / CNET:

Amazon announces a new privacy feature for Ring doorbells called Home Mode, preventing the doorbells from recording audio and video when residents are home

More: Gotta Be Mobile and PCMag

Abner Li / 9to5Google:

Google says Android 10 (Go edition), aimed at low-end devices with less than 1.5GB RAM, will launch this fall with speed and security improvements — Last year, Android (Go edition) launched with Pie, and Google today is detailing the latest version of its OS for entry-level smartphones with less than 1.5GB of RAM.

More: The Keyword, XDA Developers, Android Beat, Gizchina, Softpedia News, and Thurrott

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:

eBay announces CEO Devin Wenig is leaving the company and appoints CFO Scott Schenkel as interim CEO — Online commerce giant eBay has announced that CEO, president, and company director Devin Wenig is leaving the company, with former chief financial officer (CFO) Scott Schenkel stepping in to the hotseat on an interim basis.

More: eBay Newsroom, Silicon Valley Business …, SiliconANGLE, Business Insider, Bloomberg, Financial Times, TechCrunch, New York Times, GeekWire, CNET, Telegraph, and TechSpot. Tweets: @caseynewton

Google AI Blog:

Google has released a dataset of ~3,000 deepfake videos to help researchers develop deepfake detection techniques — Deep learning has given rise to technologies that would have been thought impossible only a handful of years ago. Modern generative models are one example of these …

More: MIT Technology Review, The Daily Dot, Fast Company, 9to5Google, Engadget, and The Next Web

Tweets: @googleai, @sundarpichai, @yasmind, @valaafshar, @samgregory, @techreview, @r_d, and @jason_kint

Wall Street Journal:

SoftBank-backed real estate tech startup Compass loses its COO, after departures of CFO, CTO, CMO, HR head, general counsel, and head of product over 18 months — Startup fueled by $1.5 billion from Japanese tech fund faces scrutiny following wave of executive departures

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez / The San Francisco Examiner:

San Francisco grants permits to Lime, JUMP, Scoot, and Spin to deploy up to 2,500 electric scooters each, starting from October 15 — Rev your (electric) engines, San Francisco: E-scooters are going to spread across The City. — Four e-scooter companies just won a coveted permit to rent electric kick scooters in San Francisco.

More: Axios and TechCrunch

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