Techmeme
October 16, 2019, 4:45 PM

Top News

Makena Kelly / The Verge:
FCC has formally approved the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint on a party-line vote, with Democrats dissenting  —  But the deal won't close just yet  —  On Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission formally approved the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, an FCC official told The Verge.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
US, UK, and South Korea dismantle one of the largest child exploitation dark web sites, with 200K unique videos; over three dozen people have been arrested  —  The Justice Department says it's dismantled one of the largest child exploitation sites on the dark web.
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Investigation: US ad agency Ads Inc. ran a subscription-based Facebook scam whereby users rented their account to Ads Inc., which ran $50M in ads since 2016  —  Asher Burke built his company, Ads Inc, on the back of one of the internet's most persistent, lucrative, and sophisticated scams — the subscription trap.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Netflix reports Q3 revenue of $5.25B, up 31% YoY, as it adds 6.8M paid subscribers globally, up 21% YoY from 6.1M but below 7M company forecast  —  Netflix CEO Reed Hastings split the company in two in 2011, thinking that the growing ubiquity of high-speed Internet access would soon mean …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Interview with Google execs about Project Soli, the tech behind Pixel 4's Motion Sense radar, and why they think gesture-sensing is not just a gimmick  —  Why does a phone need radar?  —  By now, you've heard: the new Google Pixel 4 has a tiny radar chip inside it, which allows you to swipe or wave your hand to do a few things.
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
Dami Lee / The Verge:
Instagram is rolling out new features over six months that help users manage third-party app permissions, including removing them and seeing requested data  —  See who has your data at a glance  —  Instagram has added a new feature for users to control the data they're sharing with third-party apps.
Hollywood Reporter:
Inside's Apple steep learning curve with TV+ and Hollywood, as sources say the company already well outspent its projected $1B annual content budget  —  After a few false starts and a little offscreen drama, AppleTV+ finally makes its big debut with a slate of shows, Jennifer Aniston …
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Amazon says its consumer business has decommissioned its final Oracle database and migrated 75 petabytes in ~7,500 Oracle DBs to multiple AWS database services  —  AWS said that Amazon's consumer business has decommissioned its final Oracle database and migrated 75 petabytes of data …
Rob Merrick / The Independent:
After delays, the UK government quietly drops its controversial plan to implement an age verification requirement for porn websites  —  The long-delayed measure - one of the first of its kind in any democratic country - had been plagued by legal and technical difficulties
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google pulls Google Clips, its AI-powered automatic camera from 2017, from its store  —  Google makes a lot of bets on AI, but one of its most strange was that of Google Clips.  Launched in 2017, the camera was designed to take pictures completely on its own to capture moments that it otherwise wouldn't.
Raymond Zhong / New York Times:
Huawei says sales were $86B, up ~25% YoY with 185M+ smartphone shipments, up 26% YoY, between January and September 2019  —  A recovery in quarterly revenue suggests that the Chinese tech giant is weathering the Trump administration's efforts to hobble it.  —  BEIJING — Huawei said on Wednesday …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn launches Events, a new free tool to plan, announce, and invite people to meetups in the physical world, starting Oct. 17 in English-speaking countries  —  LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned social network for the working world with around 650 million users, is known best as a place …
Theodore Schleifer / Vox:
At the fourth Democratic debate, candidates quarreled over the power of Big Tech and remedies, with O'Rourke, Yang, and others critiquing Warren's plan  —  Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images  —  And it was all over the place.  —  Democrats running for president had their most vigorous debate yet …

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Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge: