Techmeme
February 7, 2020, 7:45 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the Trump admin has bought access to a database tracking locations of millions of phones in the US and is using it for immigration and border control  —  Commercial database that maps movements of millions of cellphones is deployed by immigration and border authorities
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 may end up raising less than half of the planned $108B, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself  —  The new pool could end up being less than half its planned size, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram has internally prototyped an Instagram Partner Program that will let IGTV creators earn money by inserting ads in their videos  —  Instagram may finally let IGTV video makers earn money 18 months after launching the longer-form content hub.  Instagram confirms to TechCrunch …
New York Times:
The number of reported videos related to online child sex abuse reached 41M in 2019, surpassing the number of reported photos; Facebook found 85% of the total  —  In a first, videos outnumbered photos in reports to the authorities last year.  Facebook found the most imagery, the bulk of it on its Messenger app.
Reuters:
Coronavirus exposes China's surveillance state as apps show locations of the infected, cameras detect people with fevers and identify them even with masks, more  —  BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) - When the man from Hangzhou returned home from a business trip, the local police got in touch.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Paystand, which is building a blockchain-based platform to make B2B transactions as easy as Venmo payments are for consumers, raises $20M Series B  —  Paystand has raised $20 million to modernize commercial payments using its blockchain-based platform so that paying a corporate bill is as easy …
AnandTech:
64-core AMD Threadripper 3990X CPU review: great for rendering and scientific computing but has the same performance as AMD's 32-core CPU for other applications  —  The recent renaissance of AMD as the performance choice in the high-end x86 market has been great for consumers, enabling a second offering at the top-end of the market.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
A group calling itself OurMine briefly compromised Facebook's Twitter and Instagram accounts, seemingly via a third-party service called Khoros  —  OurMine is taking credit for the hacks  —  Several of Facebook's Twitter and Instagram accounts were hijacked this evening …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Facebook says it has received 15K bug reports in 2019, awarded about $2.2M in bounties for 1,300 of them, up from ~$1.1M for 700 bugs in 2018  —  A few months ago, Facebook disclosed that apps were siphoning data from up to 9.5 million of its users.  They only found out thanks to a bug bounty submission.
CNBC:
Uber's stock is up ~10% after the company announced a Q4 loss that was narrower than expected and moved its profitability forecast forward  —  - Uber's revenue growth picked up in the quarter.  — During the fourth quarter, Uber faced tighter regulations impacting its business in London and California and continued to slash costs.
Uber:

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:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
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 7:45 PM ET, February 7, 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

Theodore Schleifer / Vox:
Mark Harris / TechCrunch:
Joe DeBlasio / Google Online Security Blog:

Earlier Picks

Reuters:
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
David Kirton / Reuters:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: