Techmeme
August 29, 2018, 11:00 PM

Top News

Will Oremus / Slate:
Twitter confirms that it ran a limited test for a feature that recommended accounts to unfollow that users rarely engage with  —  A well-established feature of Twitter is “Who to Follow.”  Drawing on data about what accounts you follow and interact with, Twitter's software automatically recommends …
Robert Mitchell / Variety:
Facebook announces the international rollout of Facebook Watch, which first launched in the US a year ago this month, starting on Thursday  —  Facebook has announced the international rollout of Facebook Watch, its video destination for episodic content, which first launched in the U.S. a year ago this month.
BuzzFeed News:
Trump tweets video claiming Google didn't promote his State of the Union address on its homepage; Google says it did, confirmed by screenshot posted on Reddit  —  “Google promoted president Obama's State of the Union on its homepage.  When President Trump took office, Google stopped," a video shared by Trump falsely claimed.
William Denniss / Google Cloud Blog:
Google to hand over operational control of the Kubernetes project to its community and donates $9M in Google Cloud credits to Cloud Native Computing Foundation  —  Kubernetes, the container orchestrator created and open-sourced here at Google, has experienced incredible development and adoption since it was introduced in 2014.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google redesigns Wear OS with a Google Assistant feed, one-swipe access to Fit, and revamped notifications  —  And adding a Google Assistant feed  —  If you have a newer Wear OS watch, sometime in the coming month, you'll get a software update that will change what happens when you swipe on your watchface.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Sonos says it will open its developer program to all partners on September 6, opening the door to audio notifications and more  —  The company is opening its developer program to all in September  —  Alongside the announcement of its brand new Sonos Amp today, Sonos has also revealed an expansion of its developer program.
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
DFINITY, a blockchain-based cloud computing project that aims to rival services like AWS, raises another $102M in a token presale from a16z, Polychain, others  —  An ambitious blockchain project called Dfinity wants to reinvent computing by replacing large platforms like Amazon Web Services …
Jason Del Rey / Recode:
A look at the recent $100M+ acquisitions of direct-to-consumer startups, including MVMT and Native, that raised little to no venture capital  —  A new breed of entrepreneurs is creating huge consumer brands — like MVMT and Tuft & Needle — without venture capital, and laughing all the way to the bank.
Catalin Cimpanu / BleepingComputer:
Reports: data of 130M guests at Chinese company Huazhu Hotels, including booking and personal info like phone numbers and email addresses, sold on the dark web  —  A hacker is selling the personal details of over 130 million hotel guests for 8 Bitcoin ($56,000) on a Chinese Dark Web forum.
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Skagen unveils a minimalist Wear OS-based Falster 2 smartwatch with a heart-rate sensor, GPS, and NFC, available September 12 and priced from $275  —  Skagen's Falster has been one of the darlings among Wear OS smartwatches thanks to its posh yet minimalist look, but it was hard to recommend …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Senate Intelligence Committee confirms Jack Dorsey and Sheryl Sandberg will testify in a Sept. 5 open hearing; Larry Page was also invited but hasn't responded  —  Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief operations officer Sheryl Sandberg will testify in an open hearing …
John Follain / Bloomberg:
How China is seeking to create a “Greater Bay Area” to compete with Silicon Valley by building a $15B bridge linking Hong Kong, Macau, and Southern China  —  The completion of one of the world's longest bridges stands as the biggest monument to China's success in reuniting its colonial-era concessions.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Dell unveils its fall line-up of Alexa-ready Inspiron, XPS, and Vostro laptops and 2-in-1s, updated with 8th Gen Intel Core processors  —  Dell revealed its new line-up of laptops, 2-in-1 laptop-tablet hybrids, and monitors with the latest components from Intel.

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Ars Technica:
Sarah Jeong / The Verge: