Techmeme
June 6, 2019, 5:50 PM

Top News

Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Google to buy data analytics startup Looker for $2.6B in cash, Google Cloud's first major acquisition under new CEO Thomas Kurian  —  KEY POINTS  — The acquisition of Looker is the first major acquisition under former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian  —  Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Google Stadia details: pre-order now, coming in Nov. with $130 Founder's Edition, subscription costs $10/month not including extra games, and free tier in 2020  —  Today, Google has revealed the key details that were conspicuously missing from its March announcement of the new Stadia game streaming service.
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:
Microsoft has pulled its facial recognition database, MS Celeb, which contained 10M+ images of ~100K individuals scraped under the Creative Commons license  —  Microsoft has quietly pulled from the internet its database of 10m faces, which has been used to train facial recognition systems around the world …
Steven Zheng / The Block:
Shivani Vora / New York Times:
Uber debuts Uber Copter, a helicopter service starting July 9 in New York, to ferry customers between Lower Manhattan and JFK for $200-$225 per person  —  For an 8-minute, one-way flight, the average ride will cost between $200 and $225 per person and include private ground transportation on both ends of the trip.
New York Times:
US election laws, which prohibit companies from providing candidates services at a discount, are hampering cybersecurity work, a weakness for 2020 campaigns  —  One year out from the 2020 elections, presidential candidates face legal roadblocks to acquiring the tools and assistance necessary …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: WarnerMedia abandons plan for a three-tiered streaming service, will likely package HBO, Cinemax, and the Warner Bros. library together for $16-$17/mo  —  New package is expected to include HBO, Cinemax and Warner Bros. content for barely more than HBO's current streaming service
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Barack and Michelle Obama's company, Higher Ground Productions, strikes a multiyear deal with Spotify to produce exclusive podcasts for the platform  —  NY Digital Editor @https://twitter.com/xpangler FOLLOW  — YouTube Says It's Reviewing Harassment Policies, After It Condoned Sustained Attacks on Gay Latino Journalist
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
FCC votes unanimously to let carriers block robocalls by default and advances proposed rule for carriers to adopt SHAKEN/STIR caller ID system  —  The FCC voted to give cell providers explicit permission to do stop the madness  —  The FCC voted unanimously today to allow carriers …
Taylor Lorenz / The Atlantic:
How groups of teens use AirDrop to share memes, and bombard unsuspecting adults who have AirDrop on, in an attempt to crash their phones  —  Veronica Belmont, a product manager at Adobe Spark, was riding the train down to Silicon Valley, doing some work on her phone, when dozens of teenagers plopped down into the seats around her.
Del Harvey / Twitter:
Twitter simplifies the language for its rules and reorganizes them into three high-level categories: safety, privacy, and authenticity  —  Our rules exist to help keep everyone using Twitter safe and ensure they can participate freely in the public conversation.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
YouTube updates guidelines to ban videos that promote the superiority of any group to justify discrimination, resulting in the removal of thousands of channels  —  YouTube is trying to reduce the prevalence of extremist content on the platform  —  YouTube is changing its community guidelines …
YouTube Blog:
Kelly Weill / The Daily Beast:

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