Techmeme
July 2, 2020, 8:35 AM

Top News

Alex Heath / The Information:
Sources: Zuckerberg told Facebook staff the ad boycott is more of a “reputational and a partner issue” than an economic one, expects advertisers to return soon  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees he was reluctant to bow to the threats of a growing ad boycott …
Reuters:
400+ advertisers suspend Facebook ads for a month, as sources say talks with some advertisers broke down; Zuckerberg has agreed to meet with boycott organizers  —  NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Advertisements for more than 400 brands including Coca-Cola and Starbucks are due to vanish …
CNN:
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:
Rep. David Cicilline says Tim Cook will testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee in late July, alongside Facebook, Amazon, and Google CEOs  —  Apple CEO Tim Cook, the last chief executive of four big tech companies targeted in a U.S. House Judiciary Committee antitrust probe …
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
As part of UK antitrust investigation of Google, the CMA says Safari's use of Google as its default search engine is “a significant barrier to entry” for rivals  —  (Reuters) - The payments by Alphabet Inc's Google to Apple Inc to be the default search engine on Apple's Safari web browser create …
Nick Summers / Engadget:
David Ruddock / Android Police:
Google says it has discontinued the Pixel 3a and 3a XL, with remaining stock only available through 3rd parties; Google has yet to announce a rumored successor  —  In a statement provided to Android Police, Google has confirmed that its Pixel 3a and 3a XL smartphones are now discontinued.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Facebook says it is shutting down Lasso, its TikTok clone launched a year and a half ago, on July 10  —  Facebook is no longer betting on Lasso, an app it launched a year and a half ago, to take on TikTok .  The social juggernaut's TikTok clone is shutting down on July 10, Facebook said.
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Twitter removed a picture from a Trump tweet after receiving a DMCA complaint from the NYT, which owns the rights to the photo taken in 2015  —  Twitter has removed a picture from a tweet by President Trump on Tuesday after it received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) …
Joseph Tsidulko / CRN:
VMware to acquire Datrium, which provides disaster recovery services for hybrid cloud environments, for an undisclosed sum; Datrium had previously raised $170M  —  The deal for the hyper-converged infrastructure startup looks to advance VMware's hybrid cloud standing with a cost-optimized solution for backing up data in the cloud.
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple says it will close 30 more US retail stores as COVID-19 cases spike, bringing the total re-closed stores in the US to 77 in recent weeks  —  - Apple will close 30 additional stores in the United States by Thursday.  — Apple has already reclosed 47 stores in recent weeks …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
WhatsApp announces contact-adding QR codes, animated stickers, dark mode for desktop and web, and a new group calling button  —  Improvements to video calls are also on the way  —  WhatsApp has announced a collection of new features that are coming to the Facebook-owned messaging service in the coming weeks.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Analysis of 1B+ leaked credentials: “123456” accounts for one out of every 142 passwords, making it the most commonly reused password over the last five years  —  The ‘123456’ password was spotted 7 million times across a data trove of one billion leaked credentials …
Tweets: @spencerchen
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Dish has completed its acquisition of Boost Mobile from T-Mobile in a deal worth $1.4B  —  There's a new logo, too  —  Dish now owns Boost Mobile, bringing Dish — after years of speculation — into the consumer wireless market where it can start to compete with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.
Katyanna Quach / The Register:
MIT apologizes and takes down its 80M-strong AI image training dataset, scraped from Google Images, that labeled some images with racist and misogynistic terms  —  Top uni takes action after El Reg highlights concerns by academics  —  Special report MIT has taken offline its highly cited dataset …
Tali Arbel / Associated Press:
California regulators have sued Cisco Systems, saying an engineer faced discrimination because he is a Dalit, the lowest caste in the Indian caste system  —  NEW YORK (AP) — California regulators have sued Cisco Systems, saying an engineer faced discrimination at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters because he is a Dalit Indian.
More: Reuters
Louise Matsakis / Wired:
A look at Prison TikTok, a subgenre where inmates use contraband cellphones to share dance videos, funny skits, and broadcast info about their living conditions  —  The lives of incarcerated people are usually hidden from society.  On prison TikTok, they're going viral.

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Earlier Picks

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