Techmeme
May 2, 2019, 2:23 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
How Satya Nadella led Microsoft to have more subscribers than Netflix, more cloud computing revenue than Google, and a near-trillion-dollar market cap  —  The congratulatory texts and tweets started the last week of November.  Microsoft had overtaken Apple to become the world's most valuable company …
Nancy Scola / Politico:
Source: FTC and Facebook are negotiating a settlement where Facebook must appoint a federally approved privacy official and create a privacy oversight committee  —  Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission are negotiating a possible settlement that would require the company …
Human Rights Watch:
Researchers reverse engineer an app used by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang which connects to a mass surveillance system for tracking Muslim minorities  —  ‘Reverse Engineering’ Police App Reveals Profiling and Monitoring Strategies  —  Languages  —  Chinese authorities are using …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
At F8, Facebook emphasized products and features it aspires to become dominant tomorrow, but despite much talk, didn't actually launch any new privacy features  —  Zuckerberg gets aspirational  —  In Facebook's dreams, it's a clean and private place.  People spend their time having …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Google says it will roll out a new tool that lets users limit how long it keeps location, search, and browsing data to either three or 18 months  —  Last August, the Associated Press reported that various Google apps store the timestamped locations of the devices on which they're installed.
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Sense, a contractor engagement and communication platform, raises $13.5M Series B led by GV with participation from Accel, bringing total raised to $23.5M  —  The rise of the “gig economy” has created a slew of billion-dollar companies eager to capitalize on the growth of smartphones and ubiquitous connectivity.
Axios:
Max Seddon / Financial Times:
Putin signs bill that intends to give Russia a “sovereign internet” the Kremlin could disconnect from the global web; the bill goes into effect on November 1  —  Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law on Wednesday that intends to give the country a “sovereign internet” …
Matt Perez / Forbes:
Behind the fiasco of Star Citizen, a primarily crowdfunded video game that has raised ~$300M and isn't close to full launch after seven years of development  —  It's October 2018 and 2,000 video game fanatics are jammed into Austin's Long Center for the Performing Arts to get a glimpse of Star Citizen …
Tara Seals / Threatpost:
Flashpoint says April Wipro attack was done by hackers who may have been operating under the radar since '15, have the hallmarks of an advanced, organized group  —  New details are emerging in the April attack on systems consulting behemoth Wipro, which saw its network hacked and used for mounting attacks on a dozen of its customers.
OurPact:
OurPact says Apple's MDM comments are misleading, compares Apple's claims in defense of removing apps that use MDM with quotes from Apple's documentation  —  Apple Removed OurPact From the App Store.  Here's What You Need to Know.  —  On Saturday, April 27th, The New York Times exposed …
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Alphabet tells US House panel it spends hundreds of millions annually on content review, has manually reviewed 1M+ suspected terrorist videos on YouTube in Q1  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Google unit told a U.S. House panel it annually spends hundreds of millions of dollars …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer and others on AI techniques and progress in identifying image, video, and multi-lingual text content violating Facebook's rules  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg often asserts that AI will substantially cut down on the amount of abuse perpetrated by millions of ill-meaning Facebook users.

Sponsor Posts

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Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
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Nikkei:
Chris Davies / SlashGear:
Louise Matsakis / Wired:
Dan Primack / Axios:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat: