Techmeme
December 4, 2019, 4:00 PM

Top News

Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Instagram says it will now require birthdates from new users, in order to improve safety features for minors and better target ads for age-restricted products  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's Instagram said it will require birthdates from all new users starting on Wednesday …
Jason Schreier / Kotaku:
Sources: Microsoft is planning a cheaper, disc-free Xbox, codenamed Lockhart, to go alongside its high-end Project Scarlett console  —  In June, Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, a new iteration of the Xbox that the company said would “set a new bar for console power, speed and performance.”
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Plex launches a free, ad-supported streaming service featuring thousands of movies and shows from studios like MGM, available in ~220 countries  —  Plex today is launching its own ad-supported streaming service, a rival to The Roku Channel, Tubi, Crackle, Vudu's Movies on Us …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google says Focus mode, a Digital Wellbeing feature for Android that mutes notifications, is rolling out to Android 9 and 10 users  —  At I/O 2019 in May, Google announced the latest Digital Wellbeing features to build on last year's initial launch.  In testing for the past several months …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Reddit publishes its 2019 retrospective: 430M MAUs, up 30% YoY, with 199M posts, 1.7B comments, and 32B upvotes; Bill Gates AMA had the most upvotes with 110K  —  In a year-end retrospective released this morning, Reddit says its user base grew 30% this year to reach 430 million monthly active users, as of the end of October.
Caroline Haskins / VICE:
Internal and public documents portray efforts by Amazon's Ring to entice police with parties and batches of 40+ free Ring doorbells for promoting the service  —  This is the second of a three-part series exploring how Ring transformed from start-up pitch to the technology powering Amazon's …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Amazon launches a battery-powered portable Echo speaker in India with an enclosed 4,800mAh battery, claims up to 10 hours of continuous music playback  —  After launching nearly a dozen Echo speaker models in India in two years, Amazon said on Wednesday it is adding a new variant to the mix …
Newley Purnell / Wall Street Journal:
India, which is increasingly trying to shelter local companies, has erected regulatory hurdles over the past year for how US tech firms operate in the country  —  New barriers make world's biggest untapped digital market a slog for Walmart, Facebook; taking cues from China's protectionism
Li Yuan / New York Times:
Huawei's reputation in China, once unimpeachable, has been dented by a labor dispute over severance pay with an employee, who was recently freed from jail  —  When an executive wrote about her house arrest in Canada, an outcry about a former employee's treatment arose on social media.
Andrei Frumusanu / AnandTech:
An in-depth look at Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 865 SoC, which gets a major speed boost over the 855, big improvements with new camera tech, and 5G for 2020  —  We're here in Maui for the second day of Qualcomm's fourth annual Snapdragon summit, for what is probably the most exciting part of the event …
TechCrunch:
SEC filing: Sequoia Capital has raised nearly $1B for later-stage US investments and ~$2.4B for venture and growth deals in China  —  Noted Silicon Valley venture capital fund Sequoia Capital has raised nearly $1 billion for later-stage U.S. investments and roughly $2.4 billion for venture …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Mozilla removes four Firefox extensions made by Avast and AVG after reports that they were harvesting user data and browsing histories  —  The four extensions, two from Avast and two from AVG, are still available on the Chrome Web Store.  —  Mozilla removed today four Firefox extensions …
Anna Wiener / New Yorker:
A profile of Hipcamp, a platform for campsite booking where listings include off-grid plots, RV hookups, ski huts, farmhouses, tepees, tree houses, and cabins  —  Can a startup save the wilderness by disrupting it?  —  In Northern California, booking a public campsite is a blood sport.
Will Oremus / OneZero:
A study by Avaaz may have overstated the problem of false stories on Facebook, but it also revealed cracks, loopholes, and limitations in Facebook's systems  —  And in 2021.  And 2022.  —  hree and a half years after the pope endorsed President Donald Trump (or didn't), Facebook has put in a lot of work to clean up its News Feed.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Firefox 71 arrives with Picture-in-Picture support on Windows for all video sites, Enhanced Tracking Protection and Lockwise password manager improvements, more  —  Mozilla today launched Firefox 71 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.  Firefox 71 includes Lockwise password manager improvements …
Nick Brown / Reuters:
Interviews show how the Census Bureau's decision to outsource the tech behind the 2020 census has led to costly problems and made it vulnerable to hacking  —  The bureau chose Pegasystems Inc, reasoning that outsourcing would be cheaper and more effective.  —  Three years later …

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:
Tue 11/05 - Apple: Maybe Smartglasses Are The Way To Go
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 4:00 PM ET, December 4, 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

Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
The Keyword:
Tom Krazit / Mostly Cloudy:
Shara Tibken / CNET:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: