Techmeme
October 22, 2019, 6:55 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Snap reports it added 7M DAUs in Q3 to hit 210M, up 13% YoY, revenue of $446M, up 50% YoY, and a net loss of $227M, down from $325M a year ago  —  The Snap-back continues.  Snapchat blew past earnings expectations for a big beat in Q3, as it added 7 million daily active users this quarter to hit 210 million, up 13% year-over-year.
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
A look at HireVue's controversial AI-driven face and voice scanning “employability” assessment tool, used by 100+ employers including Hilton and Goldman Sachs  —  HireVue claims it uses artificial intelligence to decide who's best for a job.  Outside experts call it ‘profoundly disturbing.’
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Firefox 70 arrives with social tracking blocked by default, a personalized privacy report to show how many trackers have been blocked, and performance gains  —  Mozilla today launched Firefox 70 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.  Firefox 70 includes social tracking protection …
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
New York State's attorney general says 46 attorneys general have joined its antitrust probe into Facebook, separate from DOJ and FTC investigations  —  The expanded roster of 47 states and territories taking part reflects broad concerns among officials that ‘Facebook may have put consumer data at risk’
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Verizon is giving away Disney+ for free for one year to all of its wireless customers on unlimited-data plans and to FiOS and 5G home internet customers  —  New Fios broadband, 5G home wireless internet customers also eligible for 12-month free offer  —  Verizon is giving away Disney Plus …
Conor Dougherty / New York Times:
Facebook announces a pledge of $1B in a package of grants, loans, and land as part of a partnership with California to help build more affordable housing  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said on Tuesday it would give $1 billion in a package of grants, loans and land toward easing California's …
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Medium says it will now pay its Partner Program writers based “primarily” on reading time, not claps; the platform has paid $6M+ to 30,000+ writers since 2017  —  Medium is announcing significant changes to its Partner Program, where subscribers pay for access to exclusive content, and the revenue gets split with writers.
Nathaniel Gleicher / Facebook:
Facebook:
Dami Lee / The Verge:
Browser-based UI design and prototyping tool Figma gives users public profiles to share design files and works in progress, as part of a new Community platform  —  Like GitHub for designers  —  Figma, the browser-based UI design and prototyping tool, is giving users public profiles to share design files and works in progress.
Joe Maring / Android Central:
The Pixel 4 and 4 XL support fast wireless charging on any Qi charger, unlike the Pixel 3, which needed Google's own Pixel Stand for fast charging  —  11W speeds seem to be supported on just about anything.  —  Updated October 22, 2019: So it turns out that the Pixel 4's wireless charging situation …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
In prepared remarks for Congress, Mark Zuckerberg argues Libra “will extend America's financial leadership” and that China is pursuing similar projects  —  - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg intends to tell Congress that Facebook will not launch Libra anywhere in the world unless all U.S. regulators approve it.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget:
Task management app Todoist gets a major update to its mobile, desktop, and web apps, adding sections inside projects for better organization, and more  —  Todoist is one of the best to-do apps out there — in fact, we picked it as our favorite about 18 months ago.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Sources: MPC, pitched as a privacy-focused smartphone vendor, was run by a violent UK gang and shut down after multiple investigations into it developed  —  Crime blogger Martin Kok was assassinated while leaving a sex club.  It turned out MPC, one of his clients, was not an ordinary phone company.
CNBC:
Sources: SoftBank to take control of WeWork, spending $4B-$5B on new funding and existing shares in The We Company, valuing it between $7.5B and $8B  —  KEY POINTS  — Softbank to spend $4 billion to $5 billion on new equity, existing shares, sources say.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
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:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/22 - An LLM Siri But... Only The Year AFTER Next?
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 6:55 PM ET, October 22, 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

Andrew Nusca / Fortune:
Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
Shelby Brown / CNET:
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: