Techmeme
July 11, 2019, 8:25 PM

Top News

Tom Simonite / Wired:
Facebook says its AI bot Pluribus, developed in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon, is the first such bot to beat top pros at six-player No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em  —  The 32-year-old is the only person to have won four World Poker Tour titles and has earned more than $7 million at tournaments.
The Keyword:
Google admits one of its language reviewers leaked confidential Dutch audio data and says it is investigating the issue  —  We're focused on building products that work for everyone, and as part of this, we invest significant resources to ensure that our speech technology works for a wide variety of languages, accents and dialects.
Tom Simonite / Wired:
The Information:
Sources: Bird lost about $100M in the first quarter, with revenue shrinking to about $15M, and the company told people that it has about $100M in cash left  —  The wintertime was bleak for Bird.  In this year's first quarter, the electric scooter operator lost nearly $100 million …
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Twitter was down globally for just over an hour today as the White House “social media summit” kicked off  —  When in doubt, ban yourself  —  Twitter appeared to be down for a large number of users across the United States on Thursday.  The company confirmed the issue to The Verge …
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook is starting to show users which marketing and data companies have your data, how an ad was targeted, and how to opt-out  —  The new tool tells you how an ad was targeted and which third-party agency or data broker was used.  It also links to pages to opt out.
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Apple says it has temporarily disabled the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie app, due to a vulnerability that could allow iPhone eavesdropping, while it works on a fix  —  Apple has disabled the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie app due to an unspecified vulnerability that could allow a person to listen …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Amazon says it will spend $700M to retrain 100K, or about a third, of its US employees by 2025, acknowledging the impact of technology and automation on jobs  —  Amazon is embarking on a $700 million effort to retrain its U.S. workforce, in a high-profile acknowledgment of the impact …
The Daily Beast:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says its Slack competitor, Teams, now has 13M+ daily active users and 19M+ weekly active users; in a filing in April, Slack said it has 10M DAUs  —  Microsoft's first set of user numbers  —  Microsoft is finally revealing exactly how many people are using its Slack competitor Microsoft Teams.
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Twitter says it will test a feature to let users hide replies to their tweets starting next week in Canada  —  Twitter users are getting more control over which comments are visible in the conversations they start.  —  The company has been testing and talking about this feature since earlier this year …
Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:
Sources: Amazon Music Unlimited's subscribers grew ~70% in the past year, compared to ~25% for Spotify; in April Amazon had 32M+ music subscribers in total  —  Amazon is adding subscribers to its music-streaming service at a faster rate than rivals such as Spotify, Apple and Google …
Sam Rutherford / Gizmodo:
Google is testing Shoelace, a hyper-local social networking iOS and Android app, based on shared interests around events and activities, starting in NYC  —  Google has never made a successful social network, but you have to give the company some credit for never giving up.
Ryan Gallagher / The Intercept:
A US nonprofit org founded by Google and IBM is working with a company helping China's government secretly monitor phone and internet activity of 200M people  —  An American organization founded by tech giants Google and IBM is working with a company that is helping China's authoritarian …
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Nielsen says it will start surveying podcast listeners about their consumption habits, including genre preferences and how long they listen to shows  —  More data on listeners  —  Nielsen, a company best known for tracking TV shows' popularity, is getting into the podcast data collection business.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
Building a more inclusive web experience: Our journey toward better accessibility  —  Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)Technology has the power to connect, empower, and transform lives, but only if it's built for all.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

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More News

E. Tammy Kim / New Yorker:

Earlier Picks

Frank Chaparro / The Block:
Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider: