Techmeme
November 12, 2019, 3:45 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram debuts Reels, a TikTok-style video remix feature, which lets you make 15-second video clips set to music and share them as Stories, in Brazil  —  Instagram is launching a video-music remix feature to  —  finally fight back against Chinese social rival TikTok.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Facebook unveils Facebook Pay, which will work on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to let users shop, donate to causes, send money to friends, more  —  Facebook Pay arrives just weeks after payment companies dropped out of Libra  —  Facebook is launching a new payments system today, appropriately named Facebook Pay.
Alfred Ng / CNET:
Facebook's iOS app accesses the camera as users scroll their feeds; a workaround is to revoke the app's camera permissions; Facebook says it's fixing the bug  —  Some people have complained that their cameras got turned on while they were looking through Facebook's app.
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
Snap Spectacles 3 review: stylish design, sturdy build, comfortable fit, clever and fun 3D filters, convenient video capture, but expensive, not water resistant  —  In case you've forgotten, Snap makes video-recording sunglasses called Spectacles.  The first two iterations didn't do very well …
Frank Pallotta / CNN:
Disney+ spokesperson acknowledges service issues on launch day, saying consumer demand exceeded “high expectations”, as users complain that they can't connect  —  New York (CNN Business)Disney+ launched to much fanfare on Tuesday, and then immediately hit some bumps.
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
A look at @BallerBusters, an Instagram account that calls out people who pretend to be wealthier than they are to hawk dubious mentorship or online classes  —  It's easy to look successful on Instagram.  Now, getting caught out is easy too.  —  In February, an Instagram account called …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Automattic partners with Stripe to debut Recurring Payments for WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered sites, to let content creators collect repeat contributions  —  The subscription model is today sustaining a number of businesses, including artists, creators, news publishers, game developers, entertainment providers and more.
Reuters:
Microsoft says it will honor California's digital privacy law throughout the US; source: CCPA offers special treatment to “service providers” like Microsoft  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said in a blog post on Monday that it would honor California's privacy law …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Whoop, which makes fitness trackers and provides performance metrics for athletes, raises $55M Series D, bringing its total raised to $100M+  —  On the heels of Google buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion, another player in wearables and health technology has picked up a big round of growth funding to continue expanding its business.
Michael Hayes / OneZero:
How some police departments in the US conduct facial recognition searches on behalf of other jurisdictions, boosting access to the tech and evading local laws  —  “Do not mention FITlist.”  —  ver the last decade, large police forces in Washington state like the Seattle Police Department …
Bijan Stephen / The Verge:
Twitch Studio, the company's live streaming software, is now in open beta for PC users  —  The streaming site's first software product is now available to everyone  —  Twitch Studio — the broadcasting software the live-streaming site debuted back in August to a select group of users — is now open to the public.
Farah Elbahrawy / Bloomberg:
TruKKer, a UAE-based on-demand trucking platform, has raised $23M Series A led by Saudi Technology Ventures  —  - The $23 million Series A one of the largest on record for MENA  — Trukker founded in Abu Dhabi in 2016 cross-border cargo  —  Trukker, a digital marketplace …
More: wamda
Thomas Ohr / EU-Startups:
CoachHub, the Berlin-based digital coaching platform, raises €10M from existing investors HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Partech, and others  —  The digital coaching platform CoachHub has raised a €10 million funding round, from existing investors HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Partech and Speedinvest and new investor RTP Global.
More: Tech.eu and FinSMEs
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Blaize, which custom-designs AI chips with a new graph streaming architecture, emerges from stealth with $87M raised over several rounds  —  There's booming demand for silicon custom-designed to accelerate AI workloads, as the gobs of cash raised by startups like Hailo Technologies, Graphcore, and Untether AI demonstrates.

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 3:45 PM ET, November 12, 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

Adam Satariano / New York Times:
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Rob Copeland / Wall Street Journal:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Frank Chaparro / The Block:
Axios: