Techmeme
February 19, 2020, 2:55 AM

Top News

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Twitter acquires Chroma Labs, which makes tools for video and photo creation, will split team across product, design, and engineering, shut down Chroma Stories  —  - Company builds photo, video-editing features for social media  — Chroma will join Twitter to work on ‘conversations’ products
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
Interviews with current and former employees reveal how OpenAI has become more secretive as it tries to juggle its ideals with the need to finance its research  —  The AI moonshot was founded in the spirit of transparency.  This is the inside story of how competitive pressure eroded that idealism.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Ring makes two-factor authentication mandatory and pauses use of most third-party analytics services as it devises ways to limit data sharing with third parties  —  Ring is continuing its bid to improve privacy and security after facing criticism.  As of today, the Amazon brand will start requiring …
Nicholas Quah / Hot Pod News:
Patreon has launched Patreon Capital, which provides creators with cash advances they pay back with slight interest using income earned on the platform  —  I was tempted to kick this story off with a platitude along the lines of: “Starting something is the hardest part.”
Nilesh Christopher / VICE:
An Indian election candidate created multiple deepfakes of his own video with him speaking different languages to access voters, reaching ~15M WhatsApp users  —  On February 7, a day ahead of the Legislative Assembly elections in Delhi, two videos of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) …
Robert Hof / SiliconANGLE:
Dell announces it is selling its RSA cybersecurity firm to a consortium led by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group for $2.075B  —  Updated:  —  Dell Technologies Inc. announced Tuesday it's selling its venerable RSA Security LLC business to a consortium led by Palo Alto …
Hugh Son / CNBC:
LendingClub is acquiring Boston-based online bank Radius Bancorp in a deal valued at $185M, making it the first US fintech company to acquire a bank  —  - LendingClub, a fintech company that pioneered personal loans made online, is buying a U.S. bank to give it access to a stable and cheaper source of funding, CNBC has learned.
Bloomberg:
Sources: iPhone SE 2 is on track to launch in March despite coronavirus crisis, and updated iPad Pro models with a new camera system are expected in H1 2020  —  - Coronavirus has hurt both supply and demand for iPhone maker  — Low-cost iPhone plans said to remain on track for March launch
Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:
Kickstarter employees vote 46-37 to unionize with the Office and Professional Employees International Union  —  Kickstarter employees voted to form a union with the Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents more than 100,000 white collar workers.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Atomico announces its fifth fund has closed at $820M, bringing their total assets to $2.7B; Atomico will mostly fund European startups at Series A  —  Atomico, the European venture capital firm founded by Skype's Niklas Zennström, has announced that it has closed its fifth fund …
Alfred Ng / CNET:
ElectionGuard, the open-source voting machine software Microsoft announced in May 2019, gets its first real-world test today in a local vote in Fulton, WI  —  ElectionGuard isn't designed to make voting machines safe from hackers.  It's meant to make hacking them pointless.
Doris Yu / Tech in Asia:
Indonesia-based Eureka, which provides consumer intelligence to mobile carriers and enterprises by using AI and mobile data analytics, raises $20M Series B  —  Eureka AI, an AI enterprise software company, announced that it has raised US$20 million in a series B funding round co-led by Apis Partners …

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 2:55 AM ET, February 19, 2020.

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

Steven Overly / Politico:
Eileen Yu / ZDNet:

Earlier Picks

Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Steve Streza:
Andreessen Horowitz:
Amelia Lucas / CNBC:
Jay Peters / The Verge: