Techmeme
July 31, 2020, 11:55 PM

Top News

CNBC:
President Trump says he will act as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok from the United States  —  - President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters he will act as soon as Saturday to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States.  —  President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters …
New York Times:
Sources: Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok  —  The talks come as TikTok's ownership by a Chinese company is under scrutiny by the White House and lawmakers.  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, according to a person with knowledge …
Ryan Hughes / WFLA-TV:
A Florida state attorney files 30 felony charges against a 17-year old arrested in Tampa, in connection with the July 15 Twitter hack  —  TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) - A Tampa teenager is in jail, accused of being the “mastermind” behind a hack on the social media website Twitter that caused limited access …
Joseph Cox / VICE:
DOJ announces charges against two other suspects in the Twitter hack, including a 19-year-old in UK and a 22-year-old in Orlando, Florida  —  The arrest comes after hackers hijacked some of the most high profile accounts on the social network by leveraging an internal Twitter tool.  —  Joseph Cox
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft to end support for all third-party Cortana skills on September 7 and drop support for the dedicated Cortana apps on iOS and Android in early 2021  —  Microsoft is continuing to focus its Cortana digital assistant on productivity scenarios by phasing out Cortana Skills starting …
Financial Times:
Sources: Nvidia in talks to buy Arm in a cash-and-stock deal that would value it at more than the $32B SoftBank paid to buy the UK chip designer in 2016  —  US chipmaker seeks cash-and-stock purchase of UK chip designer from its Japanese owner  —  US chip company Nvidia is in talks to buy …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple acquires Mobeewave, whose app lets shoppers tap their credit card or phone on a smartphone to make a payment; one source says the deal is worth ~$100M  —  - Apple acquires Canada's Mobeewave for about $100 million  —  Apple Inc. has acquired Mobeewave Inc., a startup with technology …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Cyrus Mistry, group product manager for Chrome OS, talks about how and why Windows apps are arriving on Chrome OS via a partnership with Parallels  —  Google revealed earlier this year that it's planning to support Windows applications on Chromebooks thanks to a partnership with Parallels.
Dave Burke / The Keyword:
Google updates its Exposure Notification API with interoperability between countries, ability for apps to work without turning on location in Android 11, more  —  In May, we partnered with Apple to launch the Exposure Notifications System (ENS) and made it available to public health authorities around …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Facebook confirms it will begin rolling out official music videos across its platform in the US, and introduce a new Music destination within Facebook Watch  —  Facebook today confirmed it will begin rolling out official music videos across its platform in the U.S., as TechCrunch first reported …
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
Netflix is rolling out playback speed controls of up to 0.5x slower or 1.5x faster on Android devices and is set to begin testing the option for iOS  —  Stream up to 0.5 times slower or 1.5 times faster  —  Netflix is letting people choose the speed at which they want to watch something …
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
YouTube plans to discontinue its community captions feature on September 28 due to lack of use and spam abuse; critics contend it will stifle accessibility  —  The feature, which YouTube says was underutilized, will be discontinued in September  —  YouTube plans to discontinue …
Cade Metz / New York Times:
William English, who alongside Douglas Engelbart built the first computer with a mouse and showed it at “The Mother of All Demos”, dies at 91  —  He was one of the computing pioneers who “showed what a computer interface could — and should — look like,” a colleague said.
Christine Hall / Crunchbase News:
Lemonaid Health, which offers an on-demand service for accessing health care online, raises $33M Series B, bringing its total raised to $55M  —  Interest in telemedicine continues to increase, and Lemonaid Health raised an oversubscribed $33 million Series B round of funding to develop …
Kislay Verma:
When companies have too many smaller teams, slicing problems too thinly, they face high coordination costs as teams become too dependent on each other  —  “The two pizza team” paradigm has become really popular in the context of organizing software teams.  The idea is to have small …

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Caitlin Dewey / OneZero :