Techmeme
December 3, 2020, 3:05 PM

Top News

Casey Newton / Platformer:
Timnit Gebru says she was fired as co-lead of Ethical AI at Google due to an email to colleagues; leaked email details her struggles as a Black leader at Google  —  “Stop writing your documents because it doesn't make a difference”: Timnit Gebru's final message to her peers
Brian Barrett / Wired:
A sophisticated global phishing campaign is targeting the companies involved in the cold chain necessary to the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine  —  As vaccines await US approval, a sophisticated global phishing campaign has tried to harvest credentials from companies involved in their distribution.
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
Warner Bros. says it will release every single movie in 2021 simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max in the US and stream them for one month  —  For a period of one month in the United States  —  WarnerMedia is pushing even more aggressively into streaming by releasing every single movie in 2021 simultaneously on HBO Max.
Peter Rudegeair / Wall Street Journal:
Stripe launches Treasury to let its customers offer checking accounts and other business-banking services; Shopify will offer the services from early next year  —  Shopify, a Stripe customer, will begin offering the service to its merchants early next year  —  Stripe Inc. is teaming …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Google will let users with ARCore-compatible Android phones submit Street View imagery, starting in Toronto, NY, Austin, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Costa Rica  —  No special equipment required  —  Google Maps is getting a new update that lets you create Street View photos using just a phone.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Slack's struggles to succeed as a standalone company mirror the fortunes of other one-time innovators in enterprise productivity who struggled with distribution  —  And why the era of worker-centered work tools may be over  —  Slack's life as an underdog darling of Silicon Valley ended on November 2, 2016.
Washington Post:
Leaked docs: Facebook to start policing anti-Black hate speech more aggressively than anti-White comments, reversing years of “race-blind” practices  —  The company is overhauling its algorithms that detect hate speech and deprioritizing hateful comments against Whites, men and Americans.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Three Democratic lawmakers introduce a bill that would require stablecoin issuers to obtain a banking charter, approval from the Federal Reserve and FDIC, more  —  A new U.S. Congressional bill would require stablecoin issuers to secure bank charters and secure regulatory approval prior to circulating any stablecoins.
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Thoma Bravo buys Flexera, a Chicago-based IT asset management company, sources say for $2.85B; Thoma Bravo previously bought Flexera in 2008 and sold it in 2011  —  Thoma Bravo must really like Flexera, an IT asset management company out of Chicago.  The private equity firm bought the company for the second time today.
Tweets: @quinnypig
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
PhonePe is partially spinning off, reducing Flipkart's stake from 100% to 87%, and raises $700M led by Walmart at a post-money valuation of $5.5B  —  PhonePe, the crown jewel in Flipkart's acquisition by Walmart, is “partially” spinning off, the financial services firm said on Thursday.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Amazon introduces a feature that lets users text Alexa on iOS to ask for things instead of only using their voice, now available in public preview  —  Type with Alexa is available now as a ‘public preview’  —  Amazon is testing a new feature for its iOS Alexa app: the ability to type out Alexa commands …
Meagan Simpson / BetaKit:
Affirm to acquire Canada-based PayBright, which offers a buy-now, pay-later service for both e-commerce and in-store transactions, for around $340M CAD  —  PayBright, one of Canada's leading buy-now-pay-later providers, is set to be acquired by San Francisco-based Affirm.
More: FinSMEsThanks:@tron
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Alphabet transitions its navigation system for its fleet of Loon high-altitude balloons to one controlled by AI, a first for commercial aerospace systems  —  The company's new AI flight control system outperforms its human-made one  —  Alphabet's Loon, the team responsible for beaming internet …
Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
GitHub: JavaScript, Python, and Java remain most popular languages on GitHub in 2020, followed by TypeScript; open source project creation jumped up to 40% YoY  —  GitHub released its annual Octoverse report today to reveal trends found in one of the largest developer communities on the planet …
More: Slashdot
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Facebook says it will start removing false claims about coronavirus vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts  —  - Facebook's policy has been to remove false claims about Covid-19 that it says could lead to “imminent physical harm.”  — Now, Facebook said it will …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Report: data of 243M Brazilians exposed after the password for a database was left inside the source code of a health ministry website for at least six months  —  The password to access a highly sensitive Ministry of Health database was stored inside a government site's source code.

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