Techmeme
November 7, 2019, 7:35 PM

Top News

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Some users across all major US carriers received text messages overnight that appear to have been sent around Valentine's Day, causing distress in some cases  —  It's happening to people across all major US carriers  —  Something strange is happening with text messages in the US right now.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund invested $400M in Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens in January, valuing the “ghost kitchen” operator at about $5B  —  The sovereign-wealth fund—also an early investor in Uber—poured $400 million into CloudKitchens in January
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
CNBC:
Bob Iger says Disney+ will be on Amazon's Fire TV when it launches on November 12  —  - Analysts will be looking to see if Disney gives any color on expected subscriber numbers for Disney+.  —  Disney shares were up about 3% after the company reported an earnings beat for its fiscal fourth-quarter on Thursday.
Roger Cheng / CNET:
If its Sprint merger goes through, T-Mobile says it will offer free 5G to first responders for a decade and free broadband to 10M households with children  —  It's been more than a year and a half since T-Mobile and Sprint announced their $26.5 billion merger in a bid to revamp the US wireless industry.
James Vincent / The Verge:
OpenAI releases the full version of GPT-2 text generation AI, which it previously said was too dangerous to share, after finding “no strong evidence of misuse”  —  The lab say it's seen ‘no strong evidence of misuse so far’  —  The research lab OpenAI has released the full version …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Microsoft starts shipping its $3,500 HoloLens 2 to preorder customers in the US, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK  —  New gesture controls and a bigger field of view  —  Microsoft's HoloLens 2 mixed reality headset is shipping today after being announced earlier this year.
VICE:
Sources: the CEO and CSO of Alphabet's Chronicle, which is to be merged with Google, have left, with the CTO leaving soon as the cybersecurity startup implodes  —  Chronicle, Google's moonshot cybersecurity startup that was supposed to completely change the industry, is imploding.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple's weather app stopped showing air quality index data for Chinese cities, source says due to Weather Channel changing how it collects that data in China  —  When it comes to many of Apple Inc.'s latest services, iPhone users in China are missing out.  Podcast choices are paltry.
Nico Grant / Bloomberg:
Photoshop for iPad has met with a lackluster reception and a review rating of 2.3 out of 5 stars, prompting Adobe exec to defend its first version  —  Adobe Inc. debuted its most important mobile application ever this week when it finally released Photoshop for Apple Inc.'s iPad.
Emily Glazer / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Google has been holding internal meetings on changing its political ad policy, and plans to share more information with employees soon  —  Discussions come after Twitter said it would bar most political ads amid spread of misinformation  —  Alphabet Inc. GOOG -.02% 's Google …
Bloomberg:
Google contractors recall the often absurd predicament of representing Google, like escorting job candidates around campus, while not working for the company  —  Kevin Kiprovski had a lofty title, “Expeditions Associate,” and a fun job — he got to demo Google virtual reality gear to young students.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Ghost Locomotion emerges from stealth with $63.7M and says its self-driving kit will work with some cars made from 2012 onwards when it launches in 2020  —  Self-driving cars have countless obstacles to contend with on the road, chiefly drivers who don't always act predictably — or responsibly.
Reuters:
The Correspondent:
Skeptics say the effectiveness of online ads is misleading because the benchmarks marketers use don't distinguish people buying from ads and those buying anyway  —  Mel Karmazin, the president of Viacom, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, walked into the Google offices in Mountain View, California.
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
An investigation into I'm Shmacked, which exploited thousands of students by inducing them to provide viral videos of college parties to earn Instagram fame  —  The chief executive of I'm Shmacked promises students Instagram fame, then silences them with threats.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / ZDNet:
AMD unveils two new Ryzen Threadripper CPUs in 24-core and 32-core versions, built using its 7nm “Zen 2” architecture, available Nov. 19 for $1,399 and $1,999  —  Need CPU power?  AMD has you covered with new 24-core and 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors.
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News:
Twitter says it will begin a series of experiments within two weeks that tweak functions like the retweet and reply to promote healthier conversations  —  Twitter knows we treat each other terribly on Twitter.  We dunk, ridiculing friends and strangers via quote-tweets.  We ratio, piling on replies to bad tweets.

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.
Zoho:
Introducing AI Forms: Create optimized forms with AI in Zoho Forms  —  The future of form creation isn't coming, it's here.  Forget everything you thought you knew about building online forms.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 12/23 - The Revenge Of Google Glass?
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 7:35 PM ET, November 7, 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

Abha Bhattarai / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times:
Alex Krivit / The Cloudflare Blog:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Washington Post:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC: