Facebook is starting to allow some English-language news Pages to register to join a new internal Facebook index that the tech giant will refer to when deciding which Pages to roll out global news products to.
Why it matters: Facebook says the process for building such an index is long overdue. A renewed urgency has been placed on rollout to ensure that sponsored posts from indexed news publishers are placed in a political ads archive created specifically for news organizations, and not general political advertisers.
While mortality has dropped from tuberculosis infections, nations must still accelerate their response to what remains "the world's deadliest disease," according to medical leaders speaking at the launch of an annual World Health Organization report today.
Threat level: Among the concerns is the estimated 558,000 people with TB who developed drug resistance in 2017 to at least one of the key antibiotics, with the vast majority showing multi-drug resistance — which is a "public health crisis," says Tereza Kasaeva, director of WHO's global TB program.
The first iPhone Xs and Xs Max reviews are in —and while there's a consensus that the Max's big is truly beautiful, there's also a raft of critics saying you might want to wait for the more humanly priced iPhone Xr next month.
Why it matters: The iPhone is Apple's most important product and the iPhone X has been its best seller. The new phones are modest updates, with the big-screen Max option being the most visible difference, along with a faster processor and new camera tricks.
Ola, Uber's biggest rival in India, has raised $50 million in new funding from China's Sailing Capital and the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund at a $4.3 billion valuation, according to documents obtained by Indian media outlets.
Big picture: This comes just as Ola announced it's expanding to New Zealand, its third country outside India, and continues to grow its food delivery business.
"At the end of the day, politics comes for you." That's a hard reality startups must face and embrace, according to Bradley Tusk, an ex-Mike Bloomberg campaign manager turned tech investor.
Why it matters: Tusk has parlayed his career’s lessons into a new book, “The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics,” which he hopes can help startups operating in highly regulated industries like transportation, sports betting, and cannabis.
Netflix tied HBO in Emmy wins for the first time ever Monday night, putting an end to HBO's 17 year-long winning streak.
Why it matters: It marks the first time in Emmy history that a streaming company has joined a traditional broadcaster in taking home the most awards. And it's the first time any tech company has done so at a major U.S. awards show.
Twitter is making it easier for users to see a full time-ordered list of messages from users they follow — the way the service worked at the start for everyone.
The big picture: Several years ago, Twitter — seeking to make its service easier for new users and those accustomed to Facebook's heavily filtered Newsfeed — moved away from a simple timeline, adding "In case you missed it" and suggested tweets from accounts a user didn't already follow.
It's about to get a lot easier to shop on Instagram, with new features that'll allow you to succumb to your impulses with just a few clicks.
Why it matters: The updates could help Instagram gather insights and data to help launch a standalone shopping app, something it's reportedly working on.
Early shudders of AI-driven automation are already palpable in the job market, with work that requires a human touch flourishing and routine jobs slipping away, according to data from LinkedIn.
Why it matters: With significant upheaval still years down the road, as we reported earlier this month, this is the time to prepare for the AI revolution, through retraining and perhaps more radical approaches to ensuring a livable income for the unemployed.
Dismantle an Amazon Echo and you’ll find little more than speakers, microphones, several circuit boards and some fiddly plastic bits. But zoom out — all the way out — and you’ll find something that separates this technology from almost any other.
Why it matters: There’s an odd two-way relationship between Echo owner and Amazon, in which each effectively works for the other — but in the long run, the company comes out ahead.
Amazon is set to release at least eight Alexa-powered devices before the end of the year, including a microwave oven, an amplifier and a receiver, CNBC reports.
Why it matters: Scale matters in the world of voice assistants, writes Axios' Ina Fried. So it pays for Amazon to get Alexa built into as many types of devices as possible as it looks to fend off Google and others. This is also Amazon's first move into the home appliances space, opening it up to competition with companies like Sonos and GE.
Earlier this month the State Department’s unclassified email system was breached exposing some employees' personal identifying information, Politico reports and Axios can confirm. State is now offering free credit monitoring services for three years, a department spokesperson emails.
Why it matters: The agency has recently been under fire for its lax cybersecurity controls. Earlier this month, lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo grilling him on why the agency hadn’t adopted multi-factor authentication.
Researchers at Tenable announced Monday a security flaw in the firmware of network video recorders made by NUUO that could allow hackers to delete or modify surveillance videos or turn off surveillance entirely. It is not yet patched, although Tenable claims a patch might be available tomorrow.
Why it matters: NUUO makes hardware that records and manages security camera footage. The company's product integrates with more than 100 different camera brands.
Locked in a bitter legal dispute, Apple and Qualcomm are due to meet in multiple courts around the world this week. First up is a hearing Monday before the U.S. International Trade Commission, which has the power to ban products from being imported into the U.S.
Why it matters: These two giant tech companies are both used to getting their way. Apple is trying its best to get by without Qualcomm's chips, but may not be able to avoid its patents. Meanwhile, Qualcomm has lost a good chunk of business, with Apple going to Intel for modem chips.
In these early stages of development, autonomous vehicles raise pressing questions whenever they crash, especially if the accident involves injury or death. But when the drivers may be either computers or humans, it becomes much harder to determine fault. Accordingly, it's not unusual to see manufacturer’s statements or police reports with conflicting explanations of the cause, even before professional investigators have started their work.
The big picture: Unlike accidents in aviation, rail travel and shipping, AV crashes require investigators to rely on the carmaker and technology provider (usually not the same) for all data from the vehicle’s recording systems and for help interpreting it. Yet in most cases there are no mandates in place that require the AV to record sufficient crash data or compel the manufacturer to turn over any such data.
Base 10 Partners, a new venture capital firm focused on what it calls “automation for the real world,” has raised $137 million for its inaugural fund.
The bottom line: Base 10 co-founder Ade Ajao tells Axios that his firm is focused on companies applying basic automation tech to analog industries like construction, waste management, and logistics.
