Techmeme
May 2, 2019, 10:20 PM

Top News

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Facebook bans Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan, and others from Facebook and Instagram, citing dangerous individuals and orgs policy  —  Milo Yiannopoulos and Louis Farrakhan have been banned as well  —  Facebook today removed Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Verizon is seeking a buyer for Tumblr as it tries to steady Verizon Media Group, which has struggled to meet revenue targets  —  Wireless giant seeks buyer for social-media service that has lost ground to Facebook  —  Verizon Communications Inc. is seeking a buyer for blogging website Tumblr …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft announces Azure SQL Database Edge, which will run on compute-constrained devices, and new AI, mixed reality, and IoT capabilities powered by Azure  —  A couple days ahead of Build 2019, Microsoft is showcasing some new AI, MR, IoT and blockchain capabilities powered by Azure …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft launches Azure Blockchain Service, a fully managed service meant to help businesses build applications on top of blockchain technology  —  Microsoft didn't rush to bring blockchain technology to its Azure cloud computing platform, but over the course of the last year …
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 …
Satyajit Sinha / Counterpoint Research:
Global smartwatch shipments up 48% YoY in Q1 2019: Apple Watch grew 49% YoY for a 35.8% market share, followed by Samsung's 127% YoY growth for an 11% share  —  Top nine brands contribute to 75% of the market shipment.  Samsung, Fitbit, and Huawei grew exponentially in Q1 2019
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
The Strong National Museum of Play announces Microsoft's Solitaire, first introduced with Windows 3.0 in 1990, will be inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame  —  The games in the 2019 class of The Strong's World Video Game Hall of Fame span the spectrum of gaming, with the brutality …
Mijente:
Document from May 2017 shows ICE used Palantir's software to target and arrest parents and other relatives of unaccompanied minors crossing the US-Mexico border  —  The data-mining firm Palantir played a key role in federal immigration efforts to target and arrest family members of children crossing …
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.
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 …
Paris Martineau / Wired:
Online extremism researchers face a similar toll on their mental health as content moderators, but, without anonymity, their work leaves them open to harassment  —  A COUPLE OF hours after the Christchurch massacre, I was on the phone with Whitney Phillips, a Syracuse professor whose research focuses …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify launches voice-enabled ads, which encourage the listener to say a command to take action on the ad's content, in a limited test in the US  —  Spotify is increasing its investment in voice technology, as hinted at earlier this week on the company's earnings call with investors.
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 …
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 …

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