Techmeme
August 8, 2019, 3:35 PM

Top News

Richard Nieva / CNET:
Google Maps expands its beta AR walking navigation feature, called Live View, to all Android and iOS devices that support ARCore and ARKit, starting this week  —  Google wants its Maps app to be about more than just getting directions.  The search giant on Thursday announced a handful …
Craig Lloyd / iFixit:
iPhones now do not display the Battery Health feature when their batteries are replaced by unauthorized service providers  —  By activating a software lock on newer iPhones, Apple is announcing a drastic new policy: only Apple batteries go in iPhones, and only they can install them.
Stephen Hall / 9to5Google:
Source: 5.7" Pixel 4 and 6.3" Pixel 4 XL will have 90Hz OLED displays, rear camera with 12MP sensor with phase-detect auto-focus and 16MP telephoto lens, more  —  The physical appearance and some headlining features of the Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL have already been confirmed by Google itself …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Google will start surfacing individual podcast episodes in search results and will soon let users ask Google Assistant to play podcasts about specific topics  —  Search for what you want to hear  —  Google is taking the next step in making podcasts easier to find.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Twitter says it may have shared users' data with its ad partners without user consent due to two ad targeting-related bugs that it says were fixed on August 5  —  Twitter has disclosed more bugs related to how it uses personal data for ad targeting that means it may have shared users data …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Check Point researchers: Facebook has failed to address a WhatsApp flaw that lets hackers alter messages and sender identities, a year after it was reported  —  Cybersecurity experts who found a way to hack WhatsApp and manipulate chat messages said on Wednesday that Facebook has failed to address the flaws …
Anna Wiener / New Yorker:
How Hacker News moderators Daniel Gackle and Scott Bell practice a personal and slow approach, engaging with users in e-mail chains that can last for years  —  Can a human touch make Silicon Valley's biggest discussion forum a more thoughtful place?  —  Open-plan offices offer few pleasures …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
How user-facing platforms, infrastructure companies, and democratically elected governments can get better at deciding what content should be moderated and when  —  On Sunday night, when Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince announced in a blog post that the company was terminating service for 8chan, the response was nearly universal: Finally.
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Interviews with members of a 900-strong private Facebook group for advertisers on Facebook and Instagram showcase the unreliability of Facebook's Ad Manager  —  - Advertisers say system has crashed regularly since November  — Social-media company says it's ‘committed’ to fixing issues
Lesley Goldberg / Hollywood Reporter:
Netflix signs multi-year film and TV deal with Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss; sources say the deal is worth $200M  —  David Benioff and Dan Weiss have signed a multiple-year film and TV pact with the streamer, which was bidding for the duo's services alongside Disney and Amazon.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Facebook is testing selling video streaming subscriptions in the US, starting with four services including BBC and ITV's BritBox and CollegeHumor's Dropout  —  Facebook is dipping its toes into the subscription VOD waters — as an aggregator and reseller.  —  The social giant is launching …
Kim Zetter / VICE:
ES&S claims that its election systems are never connected to the internet, but researchers find 35 ES&S systems in 10 states have been online over the last year  —  The top voting machine company in the country insists that its election systems are never connected to the internet.
Christine Schmidt / Nieman Lab:
How Piano created a “propensity” paywall that uses machine learning with 76 metrics to predict how likely someone is to subscribe, and adjusts accordingly  —  They went from being the kid nobody wanted to talk with to one of the cool kids on the block.  (Apparently showing the other kids how to make money helps.)

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More News

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Earlier Picks

CNBC:
Rob Price / Business Insider:
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Bloomberg: