Techmeme
October 22, 2020, 8:05 AM

Top News

Benjamin Mullin / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Quibi decided to shut down and return $350M in capital to investors rather than trying to prolong the life of the company via another big investment  —  Quibi Holdings LLC is shutting itself down, according to people familiar with the matter, a crash landing for a once-highflying …
Medium:
Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg confirm Quibi is shutting down: “Our failure was not for lack of trying; we've considered and exhausted every option”  —  We started with the idea to create the next generation of storytelling and because of you, we were able to create and deliver …
Kevin Collier / NBC News:
US intelligence director says Iran was behind threatening emails to FL Democratic voters demanding they vote for Trump; voter info was likely publicly available  —  Iranian intelligence was responsible for a recent campaign of emails sent to intimidate Florida voters, the FBI announced Wednesday night …
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
Activists around the world are building facial recognition tools to identify police officers using off-the-shelf image recognition software  —  “We're now approaching the technological threshold where the little guys can do it to the big guys,” one researcher said.
Nathan Grayson / Kotaku:
Twitch sent DMCA notices to streamers on Tuesday, deleting content without allowing counterclaims; Twitch says “thousands” of music rights holders complained  —  It's finally happening: Twitch is taking action against copyrighted music—long a norm among streamers—in response to music industry pressure.
New York Times:
A look at the well-funded Big Tech opponents, from lawyers to academics, that have helped guide potential government regulation like Google's antitrust suit  —  An unlikely collection of lawyers, activists, economists and academics are fueling the tech backlash, armed with funding from billionaire sponsors.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says Jony Ive will collaborate with Airbnb as a design consultant, as part of a multi-year partnership with Ive's firm LoveFrom  —  Jony Ive retired from Apple about a year ago, following an almost 25 year tenure as head of Apple product design.
Anna Irrera / Reuters:
PayPal will let users buy and sell cryptocurrency using its online wallets in the coming weeks and shop at merchants on its network starting in early 2021  —  LONDON (Reuters) - PayPal Holdings Inc joined the cryptocurrency market on Wednesday, allowing customers to buy …
The Intercept:
Documents show Google Cloud will be used for its AI capabilities by the CBP in conjunction with Anduril Industries' surveillance tech on the US-Mexico border  —  After years of backlash over controversial government work, Google technology will be used to aid the Trump administration's efforts …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC's top lawyer defends its authority to interpret Section 230, saying 1996 legislation that included Section 230 amended a 1934 act that created the FCC  —  FCC lawyer claims authority to interpret any part of the Communications Act.  —  The Federal Communications Commission's top lawyer today explained …
Hugh Son / CNBC:
JPMorgan launches QuickAccept, a smartphone card reader and payments service for SMBs providing instant deposits of POS transactions for free, unlike Square  —  - JPMorgan's new QuickAccept service lets businesses take card payments within minutes, either through a mobile app or a contactless card reader …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Over 430,000 viewers tuned in simultaneously to watch Rep. Ocasio-Cortez play Among Us on Twitch, the third highest ever for an individual Twitch stream  —  More than 430,000 people tuned in simultaneously to Twitch on Tuesday night to watch Rep. Alexia Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) play a hit video game as part of an effort to promote voting.
Reuters:
China-based Yuanfudao, which offers online courses and homework plans to students, has raised $2.2B in two recent rounds, raising its valuation to $15.5B  —  BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing-based education technology startup Yuanfudao said on Thursday that it has secured $2.2 billion from major Chinese …
More: TechNode
Jack Nicas / New York Times:
Report: at least 2,000 US law enforcement agencies, including 49 of the 50 largest police departments, have the tools to access locked, encrypted phones  —  At least 2,000 law enforcement agencies have tools to get into encrypted smartphones, according to new research, and they are using them far more than previously known.

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