Techmeme
September 18, 2019, 10:20 AM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook debuts Portal TV, a TV accessory for video calling, streaming, AR gaming, and co-viewing Facebook Watch shows, shipping November 5 for $149  —  Facebook wants to take over your television with a clip-on camera for video calling, AR gaming, and content co-watching.
Bloomberg:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Apple Watch Series 5 review: the best smartwatch with an always-on screen, a beautiful display, and new apps, but its battery life hasn't improved  —  There's basically no competition  —  The highest praise I can give the new Apple Watch Series 5 is simply this: it's an Apple Watch.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max review: its camera system outperforms the Pixel 3 and Note10 in bright light and, with Night mode, usually beats Pixel 3 in low light  —  And the best camera you can get on a phone  —  The iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max did not arrive at the splashiest Apple event ever.
Brian X. Chen / New York Times:
Chris Velazco / Engadget:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google will start surfacing key moments from videos in search results, highlighting them with direct links to timestamps provided by creators  —  Google today announced an update to how it handles videos in search results.  Instead of just listing relevant videos on the search results page …
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Facebook shares more on its upcoming Oversight Board for content decisions and how members are picked, says decisions will be binding even if Facebook disagrees  —  'The board's decision will be binding, even if I or anyone at Facebook disagrees with it,' says Zuckerberg
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Sources: after setbacks, Facebook partners with Luxottica to help make “Orion” AR smart glasses designed to replace smartphones, with 2023-2025 launch timeframe  —  KEY POINTS  — Facebook has partnered with Luxottica to develop augmented-reality Ray-Ban glasses, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Ryan Tracy / Wall Street Journal:
Report: ~75 countries are using AI for surveillance and Huawei is providing surveillance tech in 50 countries, far more than its nearest competitor Hikvision  —  China leads world in facial-recognition and other new surveillance technologies, report says  —  WASHINGTON—China leads the world …
Tavi Gevinson / The Cut:
Founder of the Rookie mag reflects on being an early influencer and the effect that Instagram had on her life and career as Instagram's aesthetic keeps evolving  —  My senior year of high school, I had three Instagram accounts: a public one, a private one for friends and internet friends, and a private one that was just for me.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google Fi debuts a more traditional unlimited plan for $70/mo. for a single line, but “may optimize” video to 480p and will throttle data past 22GB per month  —  Including some limits on video streaming and 100GB of cloud storage  —  Google is announcing a new plan for its MVNO Fi cell service: Unlimited.
Will Oremus / OneZero:
Studies that try to place a monetary value on consumer privacy have such varying results that researchers are beginning to conclude that it's the wrong approach  —  No one knows.  And it might be time to stop asking.  —  For big tech platforms, this was the year when violating users' privacy got expensive.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Descript, which offers tools for creating podcasts, raises $15M Series A from a16z and Redpoint, and acquires Lyrebird, which built audio transcription tools  —  The boom in popularity for podcasting has given a new voice to the world of spoken word content that had been largely left for dead with the decline of broadcast radio.
More: Fast Company and VoicebotThanks:@ingridlunden
Mark Sullivan / Fast Company:
A look at how Facebook's AI researchers are trying to build smart chatbots using unsupervised training of neural networks for natural language processing  —  Bots still can't converse like humans.  But Facebook's AI researchers are making major inroads—with implications for the company's messaging apps and beyond.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Facebook says it has updated its definition of “terrorist organizations” and changed its counterterrorism team's structure to curb white supremacist violence  —  In a blog post this afternoon, Facebook detailed the progress it's made in combatting terrorists, violent extremist groups …
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
Instagram's Close Friends feature proves controversial as both an influencer revenue stream and superficial gateway to intimacy  —  Influencer culture has normalized charging money for all kinds of intimacy.  —  Gabi Abrao, better known as @sighswoon on Instagram, is “developing a language with the invisible.”
Steve Dent / Engadget:
HTC names former Orange exec Yves Maitre as its new CEO; HTC had $770M in revenue in 2018, the first time its annual revenue fell below $1B as a public company  —  HTC announced that it has appointed a former executive from telecom giant Orange, Yves Maitre, as its new CEO.

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Meet Airtable ProductCentral  —  The unified solution for managing your entire product development process in the AI era.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Zoho Forms for successful Black Friday sales  —  Black Friday is a retail frenzy that can significantly impact your bottom line.  To make the most of this shopping bonanza, you need a strategy that not only attracts customers …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 11/04 - Apple Buying And Investing In Things
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:20 AM ET, September 18, 2019.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
U.S. Department of Justice:
Lesley Goldberg / Hollywood Reporter:
Joshua Franklin / Reuters: