Techmeme
July 9, 2019, 3:05 PM

Top News

Apple:
Apple updates MacBook Air with True Tone display, lowers price to $1,099, and updates base MacBook Pro with new processors, Touch ID, Touch Bar, and True Tone  —  Students Can Purchase MacBook Air for $999 and the 13-inch MacBook Pro for $1,199  —  Cupertino, California …
Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac:
Apple stops selling 12-inch MacBook and previous generation MacBook Air  —  Along with updating its Retina MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks today, Apple has discontinued its 12-inch MacBook and previous generation MacBook Air.  The refreshed lineup now consists of the Retina 13-inch MacBook Air …
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
YouTube officially returns to Fire TV and Amazon's Prime Video is launching today with support for Chromecast and other Android TV devices  —  Amazon and Google have mostly made up  —  YouTube is officially back on Fire TV devices starting today, almost a year and a half after Google pulled …
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
AT&T's WarnerMedia reveals the name, HBO Max, for its streaming service coming next spring with 10K hours of programming, including exclusive rights to Friends  —  AT&T's WarnerMedia finally has a name for its streaming service — and some unfortunate news for people hoping it would share some classic shows.
Ann E. Marimow / Washington Post:
Federal appeals court rules that President Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking his critics on Twitter  —  President Trump cannot block his critics from the Twitter feed he regularly uses to communicate with the public, a federal appeals court said Tuesday, in a case with implications …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
UK's regulator ICO to fine Marriott ~$123M over GDPR violations related to the Starwood Hotels breach, disclosed in 2018, that affected 380M+ guests  —  The intent to fine Marriott comes a day after the ICO announced a $230 million GDPR fine against British Airways.
Queenie Wong / CNET:
Facebook creates a new subsidiary, NPE Team, to build, design, and launch apps that give users “entirely new experiences for building community”  —  Get ready for a flood of new Facebook apps.  The social media giant said Tuesday it's created a team, known as New Product Experimentation …
Jonathan Leitschuh / Medium:
Researcher discloses zero-day exploit in Zoom's Mac client that lets any malicious site force a user into a Zoom call with video enabled without user permission  —  A vulnerability in the Mac Zoom Client allows any malicious website to enable your camera without your permission.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Google to acquire enterprise cloud storage provider Elastifile, which has raised $74M in venture capital prior to acquisition  —  Google today announced that it's entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Elastifile, a Santa Clara, California-based provider of enterprise cloud file storage solutions, for an undisclosed price.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Uber launches Uber Comfort in 40 US markets and Ottawa, letting riders request better legroom, higher rated drivers, and more for a 20%-40% premium over UberX  —  You can get access to Uber's controversial Quiet Ride button that lets you ask your driver for silence if you'll pay a 20% to 40% premium atop the UberX price.
Twitter:
Twitter updates its rules against hateful conduct, will now remove tweets that dehumanize people on the basis of their religion  —  We create our rules to keep people safe on Twitter, and they continuously evolve to reflect the realities of the world we operate within.
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
IBM closes its $34B acquisition of Red Hat, its largest deal ever, announced in October 2018  —  IBM closed its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, the companies announced Tuesday.  —  Shares of IBM were up slightly during premarket trading, while Red Hat shares were halted.
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Cisco to acquire Acacia Communications, optical interconnect equipment maker, for $70/share or $2.6B, a 46% premium to Acacia's Monday closing price  —  Cisco Systems Inc. agreed to buy Acacia Communications Inc. for about $2.6 billion, the technology giant's latest acquisition …
Neima Jahromi / New Yorker:
An overview of moderation challenges facing YouTube, which raise fundamental questions about what social media platforms have become and what they should be  —  The video giant's recent travails underscore a basic question: How “neutral” should social-media platforms try to be?
Adam Mosseri / Instagram:
Instagram is rolling out warnings to users about to post an offensive comment, starts testing Restrict, an option to block abusive users without notifying them  —  Our mission is to connect you with the people and things you love, which only works if people feel comfortable expressing themselves on Instagram.

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