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Sarah Kessler / OneZero  : Companies are increasingly using employee survey data, from services like Perceptyx that offer a “union vulnerability index”, to predict and squash organizing   —  Employee survey platforms allow employers to sort groups of employees by the departments, locations, and demographics most likely to unionize from Techmeme https://ift.tt/30g4oBe

Kevin Collier / NBC News : A look at Election Cyber Surge, which aims to bolster US election cybersecurity by matching local election officials with cybersecurity experts who want to help   —  As election officials across the country prepare for November without knowing if they'll receive additional federal funds … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2XdlOMT

Mike Schulman / The Keyword : Google updates its “Why this ad” feature, now “About this ad”, to show verified names of advertisers and is testing “trust tokens” to replace 3rd-party cookies   —  Vice President, Ads Privacy and Safety  —  Privacy is core to our work at Google … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3febwSV

President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he will act as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok from the US, CNBC reported . The story is updating. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3fkXlvv

Cade Metz / New York Times : William English, who alongside Douglas Engelbart built the first computer with a mouse and showed it at “The Mother of All Demos”, dies at 91   —  He was one of the computing pioneers who “showed what a computer interface could — and should — look like,” a colleague said. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3gpeJAM

CNBC : President Trump says he will act as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok from the United States   —  - President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters he will act as soon as Saturday to ban Chinese-owned video app TikTok from the United States.  —  President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2BQYe1e

Kislay Verma : When companies have too many smaller teams, slicing problems too thinly, they face high coordination costs as teams become too dependent on each other   —  “The two pizza team” paradigm has become really popular in the context of organizing software teams.  The idea is to have small … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/30fMBKs

Christine Hall / Crunchbase News : Lemonaid Health, which offers an on-demand service for accessing health care online, raises $33M Series B, bringing its total raised to $55M   —  Interest in telemedicine continues to increase, and Lemonaid Health raised an oversubscribed $33 million Series B round of funding to develop … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/3giM7ZN

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg : Apple acquires Mobeewave, whose app lets shoppers tap their credit card or phone on a smartphone to make a payment; one source says the deal is worth ~$100M   —  - Apple acquires Canada's Mobeewave for about $100 million  —  Apple Inc. has acquired Mobeewave Inc., a startup with technology … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2Dawipz

Even the hard-charging world of early-stage startups has its share of procrastinators, lollygaggers, slow-pokes, wafflers and last-minute decision makers. If that’s your demographic, today is your lucky day. You now have an extra week (courtesy of Saint Expeditus , the patron saint of procrastinators), to score early-bird savings to Disrupt 2020 , which takes place September 14-18. Buy your pass before the new and final deadline — August 7 at 11:59 p.m. (PT) — and save up to $300 . Who says prayers (or secular entreaties) go unanswered? Your pass opens the door to five days of Disrupt — the biggest, longest TechCrunch conference ever. Drawing thousands of attendees and hundreds of innovative early-stage startups from around the world, you won’t find a better time, place or opportunity to accelerate the speed of your business. Here are four world-class reasons to attend Disrupt 2020 . World-class speakers. Hear and engage with leading voices in tech, business and investment ac...

Daniel Grant / Wall Street Journal : COVID-19 has pushed museums to improve their online offerings, including virtual tours, as they explore potential business models based on digital content   —  When Covid-19 forced museums to shut their buildings spring, many created new virtual offerings for visitors.  That digital content is likely here to stay. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/33eLz3x

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8290670 https://ift.tt/3k0g6rs

Amazon has received approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch and operate a planned constellation of 3,236 internet satellites. That’s the backbone of Amazon’s Project Kuiper, an initiative to create a satellite-based broadband internet service designed to provide high-speed, low latency connections to U.S.-based households that currently don’t have great access to a high-speed connection. Alongside the key regulatory approval, Amazon also announced that it would be committing over $10 billion in Kuiper, money that it says will generate U.S. jobs and involve not only building and testing satellites for the constellation, but also building out key ground network infrastructure that’s required in order to actually make the connectivity available to consumers. Amazon’s Kuiper includes plans to provide backhaul service to carriers in addition to direct consumer service. Essentially, that means it’ll offer a way for carriers to offer high-speed LTE and 5G ...

Twitter has confirmed it has permanently banned the account of David Duke, former leader of white supremacist hate group the Ku Klux Klan. Duke had operated freely on its platform for years — amassing a following of around 53k and recently tweeting his support for president Trump to be re-elected. Now his @DrDavidDuke account page leads to an ‘account suspension’ notification (screengrabbed below). A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the ban on Duke is permanent, emailing us this brief statement: The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of the Twitter Rules on hateful conduct . This enforcement action is in line with our recently-updated guidance on harmful links. While the move has been welcomed by anti-nazis everywhere, no one is rejoicing at how long it took Twitter to kick the KKK figurehead. The company has long claimed a policy prohibiting hateful conduct on its platform, while simultaneously carrying on a multi...

Bloomberg : The French startup scene also suffers from a lack of diversity, but it cannot be measured because it is mostly illegal in France to track people's ethnicity   —  - Bloomberg polled top venture capital firms on diversity policy  — 'Absence of ethnic diversity doesn't seem to bother investors' from Techmeme https://ift.tt/33etbI2

In March of 2015, protests broke out at the University of Cape Town in South Africa over the campus statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes, a mining magnate who had gifted the land on which the university was built, had committed genocide against Africans and laid the foundations for apartheid. Under the rallying banner of “Rhodes Must Fall,” students demanded that the statue be removed. Their protests sparked a global movement to eradicate the colonial legacies that endure in education. The events also provoked Shakir Mohamed, a South African AI researcher at DeepMind, to reflect on what colonial legacies might exist in his research as well. In 2018, just as the AI field was beginning to reckon with problems like algorithmic discrimination, Mohamed penned a blog post with his initial thoughts. In it he called on researchers to “decolonise artificial intelligence”—to reorient the field’s work away from Western hubs like Silicon Valley and engage new voices, cultures, and ...

The luxury British retailer and China's tech giant have joined forces amid growing national tensions. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8290670 https://ift.tt/3gfPZe3

Enlarge (credit: Tom Raftery ) The hackers behind this month’s epic Twitter breach targeted a small number of employees through a “phone spear phishing attack,” the social media site said on Thursday night. When the pilfered employee credentials failed to give access to account support tools, the hackers targeted additional workers who had the permissions needed to access the tools. “This attack relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to our internal systems,” Twitter officials wrote in a post . “This was a striking reminder of how important each person on our team is in protecting our service. We take that responsibility seriously and everyone at Twitter is committed to keeping your information safe. Thursday's update also disclosed that the hackers downloaded personal data from seven of the accounts, but didn't say which ones. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments from RSSMix.co...