Techmeme
January 22, 2020, 6:25 PM

Top News

Stephanie Kirchgaessner / The Guardian:
UN special rapporteurs say they are “gravely concerned” about the alleged hacking of Jeff Bezos' phone by Saudi's MbS, calling for further investigations  —  ‘Grave concern’ expressed at evidence of possible ‘effort to silence Washington Post’  —  UN experts are demanding …
VICE:
Leaked FTI Consulting report: investigators found a suspicious encrypted file on Jeff Bezos' iPhone, causing data transfers to jump by ~29,000%, but no malware  —  A report investigating the potential hack of Jeff Bezos' iPhone indicates that forensic investigators found a suspicious file but no evidence of any malware on the phone.
Stephanie Kirchgaessner / The Guardian:
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:
Google says it found five separate flaws in Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention tool for Safari that lets users' browsing behavior be tracked  —  Google researchers have exposed details of multiple security flaws in its rival Apple's Safari web browser that allowed users' browsing behaviour …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Microsoft to forcibly install the Bing extension in Chrome for Office 365 ProPlus enterprise customers from mid-February, to change the default search to Bing  —  Microsoft will change the default search engine in Chrome from Google to Bing for its Office 365 ProPlus customers starting mid-February.
Miles Parks / NPR:
In a first for the US, a district encompassing Greater Seattle will let ~1.2M voters cast ballots via smartphones for an upcoming board of supervisors election  —  Toggle more options  —  A district encompassing Greater Seattle is set to become the first in which every voter can cast …
Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:
Amazon says Amazon Music has 55M users across six different price tiers, including a free tier, “nearly all” of which are paying subscribers  —  Amazon's music streaming service has eclipsed 55m users, making the ecommerce group a serious contender in the market that has been historically dominated by Spotify and Apple.
Bloomberg:
Sources: ByteDance is seeking a US-based CEO for TikTok and has interviewed candidates; current head Alex Zhu may still manage product and engineering in China  —  - Video app has come under fire in U.S. as security threat  —  Chinese internet giant ByteDance Inc. is seeking …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
GM's Cruise unveils Origin, its first driverless vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, says it will share more info about its production plans in the future  —  The Origin is the GM subsidiary's first attempt to build an fully autonomous car from the ground up
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Email collaboration startup Front raises $59M Series C led by a group of CEOs from Atlassian, Okta, Qualtrics, and Zoom, following its $66M Series B in 2018  —  Front, an email collaboration startup, announced this morning it has closed on a $59 million Series C that quadruples its valuation.
Natasha Singer / New York Times:
UK government proposes sweeping changes to privacy protections for those under 18, requiring platforms turn on heightened privacy settings by default and more  —  New rules will require online services to overhaul how they treat the personal details of children in the country.
William D. Cohan / Fast Company:
Interview with Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., on his $10M smartphone forensics lab and balancing public safety while working under Apple and Google's rules  —  The Trump administration wants Apple to create a backdoor into the iPhone.  District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. has spent millions trying to find other ways in.

Sponsor Posts

UiPath:
Introducing the UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation  —  UiPath's new platform empowers enterprises to experience the full power of AI to transform industries
SignalFire:
SignalFire raises another $1 billion to back applied AI startups  —  We build AI too.  It tracks 650M tech employees so we can help companies with recruiting and GTM across enterprise, infra, healthcare, security, and consumer.
Zoho:
In-depth bounce reports now in ZeptoMail  —  The ultimate aim of any email sender is to deliver emails to the right recipient's inbox—but even when taking measures to ensure successful delivery, bounces still occur.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
ChatGPT Just Wants To Please
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View:
The difference between early and late AI adopters
Azeem Azhar explores how AI and exponential technologies are shaping our future.
Subscribe to Azeem Azhar's Exponential View.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Tariffs, Trump, TikTok: What's going to happen to ads in 2025?
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Spotlight On:
*S3 Feature* Transcend's Kate Parker on putting data back into the hands of users in an AI-driven world
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
Invest Like the Best:
Cliff Sosin - Investing in Carvana
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:25 PM ET, January 22, 2020.

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

Yuan Yang / Financial Times:
The Information:
Bloomberg:
Joshua Fruhlinger / Thinknum:
Joseph Menn / Reuters: