Techmeme
August 4, 2020, 12:20 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
With a TikTok sale, China would lose control of its first global internet sensation, hardening suspicions that the US is sabotaging its tech growth  —  Washington's push for Chinese company to sell American operations hardens suspicions in China that the U.S. aims to sabotage its technology
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Trump says he is fine with the idea of Microsoft buying TikTok in US, but the US government should be paid a “substantial amount of money” as part of the deal  —  Today the President appeared to bless the budding Microsoft-TikTok deal, continuing his evolution on a possible transaction.
Dan Primack / Axios:
Wall Street Journal:
The Official Microsoft Blog:
European Commission:
The European Commission opens an in-depth investigation into Google's proposed acquisition of Fitbit over concerns about vast amounts of data Google could use  —  The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation to assess the proposed acquisition of Fitbit by Google under the EU Merger Regulation.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft's xCloud game streaming service will launch on September 15 on Android in 22 countries, bundled with the Xbox Games Pass Ultimate subscription  —  Available in 22 countries, but no iOS support at launch  —  Microsoft will launch its game streaming service, known as Project xCloud …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Apple announces a refresh for its 21.5" and 27" iMacs, including 10th-generation Intel CPUs, a 1080p webcam, and SSDs as standard, shipping from next week  —  But the design remains the same  —  Apple is announcing updates for both the 27-inch and 21.5-inch iMacs.
Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg:
Sony beats estimates with quarterly profit of $2.15B and says its PlayStation Plus subscription service added 3.4M users, for a total of 44.9M  —  - Company had delayed issuing firm full-year forecast on virus  — The Last of Us 2 was a record-breaking PS4 exclusive debut
Caleb Potts / Android Police:
Facebook adds a search tool in WhatsApp to help check viral messages for misinformation, rolling out today in Brazil, Italy, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, UK, and US  —  WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, but that also means a lot of misinformation and rumors are shared on the platform.
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
Fawkes, a tool developed by researchers at the University of Chicago, disguises photos with pixel-level changes that confuse facial recognition systems  —  Researchers at the University of Chicago want you to be able to post selfies without worrying that the next Clearview AI will use them to identify you.
Bloomberg:
As tech giants renew vows to diversify their workforces, a look at why their efforts have fallen short, especially in retaining new Black and Latinx employees  —  Quora Inc., which runs the eponymous questions and answers website, couldn't figure this one out: Why were so many Black …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Twitter says FTC may soon fine it between $150M-$250M for using users' email addresses and phone numbers for ad targeting; practice was disclosed in Oct. 2019  —  Twitter said the identifiers were ‘inadvertently’ used for advertising  —  Twitter said that the Federal Trade Commission …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Take-Two Interactive beat expectations in fiscal Q1 with revenue of $831.3M, up 54% YoY, despite not launching any new games during the quarter  —  Take-Two Interactive reported today that revenue for its first fiscal quarter (the second calendar quarter) ended June 30 rose 54% from a year ago …
Robert Peck / Wired:
An inside look at the rise of r/The_Donald subreddit, which trafficked in violent rhetoric and was nearing 800K subscribers before Reddit banned it in June  —  The notorious subreddit trafficked in violent rhetoric, growing a prodigious following over five years.  Here's how—and why—Reddit finally shut it down.

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Donie O'Sullivan / CNN:
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