Techmeme
February 5, 2020, 2:25 PM

Top News

Nicholas Thompson / Wired:
LinkedIn says CEO Jeff Weiner is stepping down in June after 11 years in the role, becoming executive chairman, to be replaced by SVP of Product Ryan Roslansky  —  After 11 steady years as the CEO of the professional networking company, Weiner is yielding the reins to deputy Ryan Roslansky.
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft reorganizes its Windows software and hardware teams into one group, called Devices + Windows and led by Panos Panay, amid other reshuffling  —  It's reorg day in Microsoft's Experiences and Devices unit.  Here's what's happening, including what's happening with Windows client and Surface.
Peter Kafka / Vox:
Spotify will buy The Ringer, the podcast-centric media company run and owned by Bill Simmons, and plans to hire Simmons and his approximately 90 employees  —  The Ringer CEO Bill Simmons in 2015 |  Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Vanity Fair  —  It's the fourth podcast deal Spotify has done in a year.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Spotify reports Q4 revenue of $2B, up 24% YoY; 271M total MAUs, up 31% YoY, as paying users rise 29% YoY to 124M; 16% of its MAUs engage with podcast content  —  Streaming music now accounts for more than 80% of all music consumption in key markets like the US, and one of the big leaders in the field is reaping some of the rewards.
Charlie Warzel / New York Times:
Shadow's Iowa failure was a dangerous combination of techno-utopianism and laziness, which led to slapdash software engineering, procurement, and deployment  —  Democrats desperately need to win the internet to beat Trump.  Their first big test was a massive failure.  —  Mr. Warzel is an opinion writer at large.
@rabble:
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Researchers discover a now patched vulnerability in Philips Hue smart light bulbs that could have let hackers infiltrate users' home or corporate networks  —  Might want to check if you've got firmware 1935144040  —  Four years ago, security researchers showed how a flying drone could hack …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google says Chrome's ad blocker will expand to target disruptive video ads in August, including long pre-roll ads, mid-roll ads, and over-lays ads on video  —  Last year, Google made Chrome's standards-backed ad blocker fully available around the world.  The Better Ads Standards today announced a …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says it resolved an issue that caused Windows 10 Search, which is powered by Bing, to return blank results for several hours  —  Microsoft's Bing search was misbehaving in Windows 10  —  Microsoft's built-in Windows search went down for many users for more than three hours today.
Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:
Flaws in WhatsApp's macOS and Windows apps allowed remote access to files when a malicious link was clicked; the app, which uses Electron, has a patch available  —  Yet another Electron implementation of a “secure” app turns out not to be.  —  Facebook has issued a security advisory …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Amid coronavirus fears, ZTE cancels its MWC 2020 press conference; LG Electronics says it is withdrawing from exhibiting and participating in the Barcelona expo  —  The second big company to cancel its MWC appearance  —  LG Electronics, the division of LG Corporation responsible for mobile phones …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple adds universal purchases for iOS and macOS apps to the Xcode 11.4 beta, letting developers bundle apps  —  The new Xcode 11.4 beta update, released today alongside the iOS 13.4, tvOS 13.4 and macOS Catalina 10.15.4 betas, includes support for universal purchases …
Alfred Ng / CNET:
Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI says YouTube served a cease-and-desist letter over photo scraping, following Twitter's letter in January  —  Google and YouTube have sent a cease-and-desist letter to Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that has been scraping billions …
Emily McCormick / Yahoo Finance:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Researcher details a backdoor in Huawei-owned HiSilicon chips used in millions of smart devices, including security cameras, that has been active since 2013  —  Researcher said he did not notify HiSilicon due to a lack of trust in the hardware vendor to adequately fix the issue.
Liam Tung / ZDNet:
HackerRank's survey of 116K+ developers across 162 countries finds that Go and Python are the top programming languages that developers want to learn next  —  A huge developer survey reveals trends in developer education, job prospects, skills acquisition, and salaries.

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 2:25 PM ET, February 5, 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

Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Twitter:
Sean Hollister / The Verge: