Axios

Charlie Miller, a hacker who's made headlines for hacking cars like a Jeep, has left Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing after less than five months. Miller worked at the company's new research center in Silicon Valley, which focuses on artificial intelligence, security, and autonomous driving.

Why it matters: Prior to Didi Chuxing, Miller spent a year-and-a-half at Uber. His quick departure from now two ride-hailing companies raises questions about why he's not sticking around longer.

Update: Miller and fellow car hacker Chris Valasek are joining General Motors' self-driving car unit, Cruise, as Recode reported and Valasek confirmed via Twitter. The two joined Uber in mid-2015.

The story has been updated with the name of GM's self-driving car unit.

Uber is hoping that their new chief brand officer, Bozoma Saint John, is the ride-hailing giant's shot at an improved reputation after a series of sexual assault allegations and serious safety failures.

"I'm not afraid," Saint John told CBS's Gayle King. "I'm not afraid. I've never been afraid of anything and I see potential. I see opportunity. There's certainly things that have happened that I don't condone, that I'm not comfortable with and I'm not okay with, but I think representation matters too."

Saint John will focus on strengthening Uber's relationship with riders and drivers. She also says her ability to relate to others helped her become successful in her career as a top marketing executive for some of the world's largest brands, like Apple and Pepsi, and she plans to bring that quality to Uber.

It's been over five months since Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car unit, filed a lawsuit against Uber, alleging theft of its trade secrets, and the case has not gotten any simpler. Unless the two companies somehow settle the case—which seems unlikely given Waymo's commitment to using every legal tool to prevent Uber from allegedly using its technology—it's headed to trial in October.

Given the hundreds of thousands of documents filed the court and dozens of hearings, here's where things stand right now:

A questioner raised an interesting prospect at TechFreedom's Back to the Future of Policy Summit earlier this week: the chance that artificial intelligence could be used to aid lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they make decisions. Automation has already come to the legal field — which overlaps with policymaking — but it is for lower-level tasks and isn't totally phasing out lawyers.

"I'm not saying it's 10 years from now, maybe it's 20 years from now," replied House Oversight Committee Counsel Mike Flynn. "But at some point I would imagine there's going to be a role for that in policy making."

Takeaway: It's a wonky reminder that the conversation about automation and the workforce is a broad one that includes jobs that seem totally safe right now.

A researcher at Carnegie Mellon University has developed an intelligent system that is helping the U.S. Coast Guard to distinguish and weed out prank mayday calls that cost it up to millions of dollars a year when it flies or motors out on pointless rescue missions, per Govtech.com.

The program, created by Carnegie Mellon's Rita Singh, creates a barcode of a person's voice, deciphering whether the caller really is on a boat or actually in a house somewhere. It can unmask repeat pranksters since it can pick up telltale markers and match them up.

Why it matters: The applications of Singh's software — painting a profile of a person's voice through traits barely detectable to humans — are wide, including police situations such as abductions, she told Axios. She tells Govtech, "We have techniques to automatically discover information in the voice signal that humans cannot discover. Our hearing is not that good, but that doesn't mean that the information is not there in the voice."

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, physician Priscilla Chan, are staking out aggressive positions as philanthropists in contentious areas like education, affordable housing and criminal justice, according to an Axios analysis of public disclosures, press reports and statements provided by grantees of their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Why it matters: Zuckerberg got rich creating a product that defined the last decade. But he and Chan are trying to define the next century by giving that money away. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is on track to be this generation's Gates Foundation. With an initial pledge of more than $45 billion in stock that has since grown in value it could be more influential than anything else Zuckerberg has ever done. Yes, including Facebook.

Apple took down the sale pages for its iPod nano and iPod shuffle today, discontinuing both products as it moves toward "simplifying [its] iPod lineup," per The Verge.

• Hadn't seen much love: The iPod nano, last updated in 2012, and iPod shuffle, last updated in 2010, were Apple's last music devices to lack Internet connectivity. They join the beloved iPod classic, which was discontinued in 2014, in the dustbin.
• The future: The memory of the iPod touch was doubled while retaining the same price as it becomes the flagship — and sole surviving member — of Apple's iPod line.

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Amazon has a secret team working on ways to move the e-commerce giant into the health care industry, CNBC reports. Aside from its plan to start distributing prescription drugs, which CNBC previously reported, Amazon also is looking into analyzing electronic health record data and creating a platform for virtual doctor visits.

Why it matters: Established health care companies are nervous about Amazon becoming a bigger player in health care because it likely would siphon away some of their business and, presumably, strip out inefficiencies. But Amazon and other tech companies face a lot of hurdles getting into health care — in this case, regulations around patient data, privacy and handling medications.

Twitter shares took a beating Thursday morning after the company reported it had failed to increase its user growth. The results from its second quarter earnings report:

• Revenue, missed: $574 million in revenue vs. $536.7 Thomas Reuters estimates
• Earnings per share, beat: 12 cents per share, beating 17 cents per share Thomas Reuters estimates.
• Advertising revenue, dropped 8%: $489 million vs. $535 million last year (8% year over year drop
• Monthly Active Users, missed: 328 million vs. 329 million StreetAccount Reuters estimates

Our thought bubble: If you are on the internet and not growing, you are dying.

Why it matters: Twitter has struggled to woo investors since its IPO in 2013. Wall Street have been wary of its ability to monetize its massive direct-to-consume, mobile audience, something most legacy media and tech companies are striving for. The company has been rolling out sophisticated new live video and static ads units (see this one from Adam Schiff), that have been very effective (total ad engagements increased 95% year-over-year this quarter) but investors still aren't confident that their ad business is scalable, especially when the company's user base has basically plateaued.

What analyst are saying: "You have zero user growth versus Facebook reporting 70 million new users [Wednesday]" Aegis Capital internet analyst Victor Anthony told CNBC. "It's not a recipe for a stock you want to buy."

Minutes after Politico reported that new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci stands to profit from his stake in his investment firm while in the West Wing, based on previously undisclosed financial disclosure forms, Scaramucci tweeted:

"In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FB and the @TheJusticeDept #Swamp @Reince45..."