Welcome to the Tech Mem Ride Home for Wednesday, June 6th, 2018. Today there was a whole

slew of product announcements, new Sonos speakers, a new Motorola smartphone,

a new AMD chip.

Instagram may soon allow you to post hour-long videos.

Plus why Microsoft sunk a data center off the Scottish coast and why

startups keep naming themselves after people's names. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

The New York Times has continued its investigations into the partnerships that Facebook has struck over the last decade or so with phone manufacturers.

Last night, the newspaper reported on the partnerships with major Chinese phone manufacturers.

Quoting from the lead of the story, the agreements, which date to at least 2010, gave private access to some user data to

Yawe, a telecommunications equipment company that has been flagged by American

intelligence officials as a national security threat, as well as to Lenovo, Apo, and TCL, end quote.

At the time of this recording, the full partnerships with Chinese companies mentioned remain in effect but

Facebook does say that the deal with Yahweh will wind down by the end of this week.

Some elements of the US government have been raising concerns recently about the geopolitical implications of Chinese technology companies,

some of whom are believed to have close ties to the Chinese government, producing technologies for the U.S. consumer market.

In a statement, Facebook insisted that all of the personal information collected via these software

integrations with Chinese phones were stored on the devices themselves.

But U.S. Senator Mark Werner of Virginia told the Times, quote,

I look forward to learning more about how Facebook ensured that information about their users

was not sent to Chinese servers.

Senator Warner is particularly concerned about Yawe.

Quote, concerns about Yawe aren't new.

...