Techmeme: US safety investigators report: dilemma for self-driving cars is not saving one innocent victim over other; it's between caution and competitive advantage (Will Oremus/OneZero)

Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:

Apple says it is working on a fix for a macOS bug that stored portions of encrypted emails sent via Mail app in an unencrypted form — Apple may have known for months — Apple stakes a lot of its reputation on how it protects the privacy of its users, as it wants to be the only tech company you trust.

More: ZDNet, Engadget, TechSpot, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Cult of Mac, iDownloadBlog.com, TidBITS, and iPhone in Canada Blog

Oliver Darcy / CNN:

Facebook and YouTube say they are removing content that mentions the possible name of the whistleblower whose complaint prompted Trump impeachment inquiry — New York (CNN)Facebook (FB) and YouTube said Friday that they were removing content that mentioned the potential name …

More: Associated Press, Washington Post, The Verge, and CNBC

Tweets: @oliverdarcy, @brianstelter, @kevinroose, @oliverdarcy, @slpng_giants, @sivavaid, and @pkafka

See also Mediagazer

Tony Romm / Washington Post:

Amid the ongoing probes of tech giants, DOJ's antitrust chief warns that amassing vast quantities of consumers' data could create competition concerns — CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The Justice Department's top antitrust enforcer warned tech giants on Friday that amassing vast quantities …

Tweets: @tonyromm, @alexqgb, and @markseibel

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Blackstone buys majority stake in MagicLab, owner of dating apps Badoo and Bumble, valuing the company at $3B+; Whitney Wolfe Herd to become MagicLab's CEO — Bumble, the popular and profitable dating and networking app built around the ethos of women calling the shots on how connections …

More: Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, PE Hub Blog, Reuters, Thinknum Media, and CNN

Tweets: @fruhlinger, @angelauyeung, @clare_oc, @ingridlunden, and @whitwolfeherd

Will Oremus / OneZero:

US safety investigators report: dilemma for self-driving cars is not saving one innocent victim over other; it's between caution and competitive advantage — It has nothing to do with the ‘trolley problem’ — he advent of self-driving cars revived the decades-old philosophical conundrum known as the “trolley problem.”

More: Android Central, The Verge, Axios, TechSpot, Ars Technica, and 9to5Google

Tweets: @meganmorrone, @alexhern, @willoremus, @mheadd, and @alexhern

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

Andreessen Horowitz is launching a free crypto startup school, with a seven-week program that starts in February 2020 — Last month, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) general partner Chris Dixon announced at TechCrunch Disrupt that the VC firm would run a free crypto startup school.

More: Andreessen Horowitz, SludgeFeed, and Decrypt. Tweets: @a16z. Thanks:@ninasuthers

Alnoor Peermohamed / The Economic Times:

AngelList launches its VC and angel fund product in India, which will allow individuals to raise small blind pools of capital and deploy them within 6-12 months — AngelList will manage the legal and regulatory aspects of raising capital and investing it, while the byte-sized funds will be able …

More: Medium, Crowdfund Insider, Entrackr, and Inc42 Media

Tweets: @samidhas, @somani_utsav, and @svickram

Donie O'Sullivan / CNN:

YouTube has run the misleading Trump ad accusing Biden of corruption, which was seen 10M-30M times, but Google says it strives to ensure ads are “honest” — (CNN Business)You'd be forgiven for thinking that the only tech platform that allows politicians to run false ads is Facebook.

More: Wired, The Hill, and Business Insider

Tweets: @oliverdarcy, @ericboehlert, and @donie

Emily Glazer / Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Google has been holding internal meetings on changing its political ad policy, and plans to share more information with employees soon

More: The Hill, The Guardian, New York Times, Politico, The Independent, Washington Post, Rude Baguette, MIT Technology Review, CNN, and Axios

Tweets: @glynmoody, @whotargetsme, @sivavaid, @emilyglazer, @jason_kint, @jason_kint, @dseetharaman, and @profcarroll

See also Mediagazer

Neil Mawston / Strategy Analytics:

Smartwatch shipments grew 42% YoY to 14.2M units in Q3, as Apple grew market share to 48% from 45% last year and Fitbit's market share dropped from 15% to 11% — According to new research from our Wearable Device Ecosystems (WDE) service, global smartwatch shipments grew an impressive +42% YoY …

More: 9to5Google, MacDailyNews, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, Cult of Mac, TechSpot, MacRumors, iMore, iPhone in Canada Blog, 9to5Mac, iPhone Hacks, and Gizchina

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:

Internal chats from 2012 and 2013 show Facebook staff lamenting its “unethical” practices, as Zuckerberg argued that the company's survival was more important — - New documents show dissent within Facebook's top ranks — Disclosures come as company faces multiple antitrust probes

More: Forbes, The Daily Dot, and Mashable

Tweets: @yoda, @sarahfrier, @campuscodi, @autiomaa, @yoda, @jasoncross00, @fmbutt, and @sarahfrier

Allison Cavin / Seen by Indeed:

Analysis shows job searches on Indeed.com for bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and blockchain roles fell 53% in 2019, while share of crypto job postings grew by 26% — A gold rush mentality surrounds bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain. And despite drastic price fluctuations …

More: The Next Web, CryptoGlobe, CoinDesk, Forbes, Decrypt, VentureBeat, and Cointelegraph

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Snapdocs, a platform that digitizes the mortgage closing process, raises $25M Series B led by F-Prime Capital — Real estate tech company Snapdocs today revealed that it has raised $25 million in series B funding to further develop its products and platform.

More: San Francisco Business Journal, HousingWire, Inman, National Mortgage News, Wall Street Journal, Crunchbase News, and FinSMEs

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:

Source: Tencent acquired a 10% stake in Policybazaar, valuing the Indian online insurance aggregator at $1.5B — - Purchase from Tiger Global values Policybazaar at $1.5 billion — Tencent's India portfolio already includes Ola, Byju's, Swiggy — Tencent Holdings Ltd. has acquired …

Bloomberg:

Sources: Alibaba is planning to launch a Hong Kong IPO next week with plans to raise as much as $15B — - It's said to proceed with listing hearing early next week — Alibaba's share sale comes after a U.S.-China agreement — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is moving ahead with plans …

More: New York Times, Forbes, and New York Times

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Small-satellite startup Kepler achieves the world's first satellite broadband connection to the Arctic at over 100Mbps, used by a German icebreaker sea vessel — Small-satellite startup Kepler has done something never before accomplished with satellite-based broadband connectivity: providing a high-bandwidth to the Arctic.

More: Slashdot

Jane Zhang / South China Morning Post:

Alibaba invests $3.3B in its logistics arm Cainiao, raising its stake to 63% — Cainiao will use the money raised to invest in technologies and logistics infrastructure services Cainiao also offers solutions to Alibaba's international e-commerce business, including Tmall Global …

More: TechCrunch and PYMNTS.com

CNBC:

Bob Iger says Disney+ will be on Amazon's Fire TV when it launches on November 12 — - Analysts will be looking to see if Disney gives any color on expected subscriber numbers for Disney+. — Disney shares were up about 3% after the company reported an earnings beat for its fiscal fourth-quarter on Thursday.

More: Wall Street Journal, CNET, MacRumors, iLounge, CNET, The Mac Observer, BGR, Thurrott, iPhone in Canada Blog, Tor.com, Pocket-lint, GeekWire, AppleInsider, TechCrunch, Business Wire, The Streamable, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Seeking Alpha, Engadget, and Fast Company

Tweets: @discussingfilm, @cnbcnow, and @cnbcnow

Kris Holt / Engadget:

Disney says Disney+ will launch in UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain on March 31

More: TechCrunch, iPhone Hacks, iDownloadBlog.com, MSPoweruser, TalkAndroid.com, The Verge, Yahoo Finance, Tom's Guide, and CNET

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:

What you need to know about fine-tuning LLMs — Success with generative AI hinges on honing a pretrained LLM to be a specialist at your intended domain or application. Learn how to fine-tune for four key characteristics.

Intel:

Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking — With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs. Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.

Zoho:

Planned India Data Center Maintenance on 5th and 6th April 2025 from 09.00 AM to 09:30 AM IST for Zoho Payments — Dear customers,Our bi-annual infrastructure maintenance for our India Data Center is scheduled for April 5 & 6 …

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:

CoreWeave's Weak IPO

The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.

Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.

Sponsor this podcast

Hard Fork:

The Tech Behind Signalgate + Dwarkesh Patel's "Scaling Era" + Is A.I. Making Our Listeners Dumb?

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.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

The Logan Bartlett Show:

Aaron Levie (CEO, Box) on Enterprise AI Trends No One is Talking About Yet

A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.

Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.

Invest Like the Best:

Josh Kushner - Building Thrive Capital

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Great Chat:

Does anyone care about bad behavior anymore?

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Decoder with Nilay Patel:

Capitalism vs. the bird flu

A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.

Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.

Add your postcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:25 PM ET, November 8, 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.