Techmeme
May 22, 2019, 1:35 PM

Top News

Dave Lee / BBC:
Leaked memo: ARM has told staff it must suspend business, including all active contracts, support entitlements, and pending engagements, with Huawei  —  UK-based chip designer ARM has told staff it must suspend business with Huawei, according to internal documents obtained by the BBC.
Bloomberg:
Sources: US is considering blacklisting as many as five Chinese video surveillance companies, including Hikvision and Dahua Technology, from buying US tech  —  - Hikvision and Dahua accused of being part of Uighur crackdown  — Rubio and others say they are part of a massive crackdown
Reuters:
Inside the war against Huawei, led by Australia and the US, who fear Beijing's 5G domination could be used for espionage and sabotage of critical infrastructure  —  In early 2018, in a complex of low-rise buildings in the Australian capital, a team of government hackers was engaging in a destructive digital war game.
Natalia Drozdiak / Bloomberg:
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Federal judge rules in favor of FTC in antitrust case against Qualcomm, says its licensing practices for modem chips have strangled competition; stock drops 10%  —  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States has won the first round of litigation against Qualcomm.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Apple unveils Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution, a new web technology aimed at preserving user privacy without reducing effectiveness of ad campaigns  —  For years, the web has been largely free thanks to online ads.  The problem is that nobody likes them.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Google says it stored some G Suite passwords in plaintext due to an error dating back to 2005, found another set of unhashed passwords in 2019, both now fixed  —  Google says a small number of its enterprise customers mistakenly had their passwords stored on its systems in plaintext.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Amazon shareholders reject two non-binding proposals to ban sale of facial recognition tech to government customers, despite pressure from ACLU and others  —  Amazon shareholders have rejected two proposals that would have requested the company not to sell its facial recognition technology to government customers.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
UNESCO says AI assistants are reinforcing gender stereotypes by mostly defaulting to female-sounding voices, urges better safeguards against gendered language  —  Female-sounding default voices perpetuate antiquated, harmful ideas about women  —  Artificial intelligence-powered voice assistants …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Valve launches a dedicated Steam Chat app for iOS and Android, which includes many key features of the desktop chat client such as Invite Links and Group Chats  —  Valve announced that the new Steam Chat mobile app has gone live as a free chat app iOS and Android platforms.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Transport for London says it will roll out default WiFi device tracking on the Underground this summer, after a trial in 2016, to improve analytics and more  —  Transport for London will roll out default wi-fi device tracking on the London Underground this summer, following a trial back in 2016.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
TransferWise discloses a new $292M secondary round led by Lead Edge Capital, Lone Pine Capital, and Vitruvian Partners at a $3.5B valuation  —  TransferWise, the London-headquartered international money transfer service, is disclosing a new $292 million secondary round that sees investors value the company at $3.5 billion.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
After eight months of alpha testing, the first official version of Tor Browser for Android has been released on the Play Store  —  After eight months of alpha testing, Tor Browser for Android is now ready for rollout.  —  Today, the Tor Project released on the Google Play Store the first stable version of the Tor Browser for Android.
Alex Moss / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Federal court ruling affirmed the right to share copyrighted material for criticism and helped EFF protect a Reddit commenter's anonymity  —  A fight over unmasking an anonymous Reddit commenter has turned into a significant win for online speech and fair use.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Box revamps its workplace automation tool Relay, launched with IBM in 2016, and updates Box Tasks and File Request Links  —  Box debuted Relay, a business process automation tool designed to string together recruiting, budgeting, and sales activities across a range of systems, back in September 2016.
More: SiliconANGLE and ZDNet
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Toronto-based online investment management platform Wealthsimple raises $75M round led by Allianz X and says it now has 150,000 clients  —  KEY POINTS  — The round was led by the digital investment arm of Germany's Allianz, with additional backing coming from early investor Power Financial.
More: BetaKit and Reuters
Keith Barry / Consumer Reports:
Testing finds Tesla's updated Autopilot software, designed to make changing lanes “more seamless”, does not work well and could create safety risks for drivers  —  CR finds that latest version of Tesla's automatic lane-changing feature is far less competent than a human driver

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