Techmeme: In the wake of Zite's sale, it's time to take a more skeptical look at news personalization by algorithms (Casey Newton/The Verge)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

March 9, 2014, 1:50 PM

Top News

Casey Newton / The Verge:

In the wake of Zite's sale, it's time to take a more skeptical look at news personalization by algorithms — The smarter news apps are, the dumber they get — A curiously hot category with little to show for it — In August 2011, CNN bought the newsreading app Zite for $20 million.

More: Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com. Tweets: @timobrien and @mathewi

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Three years later, Facebook is bringing back its F8 developer conference to San Francisco on April 30 — At SXSW today, Parse co-founder and CEO Ilya Sukhar announced Facebook's F8 conference will be held this year on April 30 at the San Francisco Design Concourse.

More: PC Magazine, Wall Street Journal, CNET, ReadWrite, Facebook Developers, Mashable, The Technology Chronicles, Los Angeles Times, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and Re/code

Sean Hollister / The Verge:

Future of gaming microconsoles in question as Ouya pivots to become a software platform — The indie game console may already be dead — Last year, I predicted that the rising tide of Android gaming would raise all boats — that indie game consoles like the Ouya, the Shield …

More: Slashdot, Business Wire, Forbes, Eurogamer.net, VentureBeat, Joystiq, Engadget, Polygon, Ars Technica, Re/code, Kotaku and The Next Web

Primavera De Filippi / Wired:

Tomorrow's Apps Will Come From Brilliant (And Risky) Bitcoin Code — For many, bitcoin — the distributed, worldwide, decentralized crypto-currency — is all about money. Or, as recent events show, about who invented it. Yet the actual innovation brought about by bitcoin is not the currency itself …

Tweets: @bitcoinmom

Christopher Mims / Quartz:

Apple's new product process is a giant checklist covering all steps in product's life cycle — Any company can copy the keystone of Apple's design process — It turns out that the key to Apple's creativity, speed, and adaptability is, on its surface, the exact opposite of the kind of free-wheeling creativity one might expect.

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Austin Police Department Warns SXSW Attendees Not To Use Uber — Here's something you might not have noticed if you were partying it up at SXSW and using Uber to get around: Uber is not legal in Austin, and the police department wants you to know that. — In a post on the Austin government page …

More: PC Magazine, AustinTexas.gov, bizjournals, Daily Dot and Gigaom

Tweets: @austin_police, @kashhill and @joshuabaer

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Lyft Funding Official: Documents Filed for New $150 Million Round — Lyft, the ride-sharing app that is locked in an expensive competition with rival Uber, is at least part of the way to its next round of funding. — The company filed a document associated with a Series D round worth $150 million …

More: TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal and VentureBeat

Reuters:

Suspected Russian spyware Turla targets Europe, United States — (Reuters) - A sophisticated piece of spyware has been quietly infecting hundreds of government computers across Europe and the United States in one of the most complex cyber espionage programs uncovered to date.

More: Financial Times, The Register, G Data, Graham Cluley, CIO.com, Tech News Plus, Techworld.com, Tom's Guide, SC Magazine and Slashdot. Tweets: @zandarvts

Wall Street Journal:

SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son Pushes Sprint to Shed ‘Loser’ Mindset in Mobile-Phone Industry — SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son Pushes Sprint to Shed ‘Loser’ Mindset in Mobile-Phone Industry — At a meeting with Sprint Corp. executives in October, the chief executive …

More: DSLreports, Computerworld and BGR

Tweets: @timcohn and @jessicalessin

Ina Fried / Re/code:

AT&T Cuts Cost for Some Single-Line and Two-Line Plans — After cutting the cost of some family plans earlier this year, AT&T is providing lower-price options for customers with just one or two cellphone lines. — AT&T said Saturday it will now offer customers with one or two lines …

More: AT&T, iMore, The Verge, Android Police, PhoneNews.com, ZDNet, MacRumors, CNET and 9to5Mac

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

Aereo's internet TV service in Denver and Salt Lake City shuts down today — Aereo's streams in Denver and Salt Lake City hung on for a while after the US District Court of Utah granted its opponents a preliminary injunction on February 20th, but today they're shutting off.

More: TechHive, PC Magazine, Deadline.com, Softpedia News, Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Salt Lake Tribune

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Zoho:

Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM — This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:

What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Hard Fork:

OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

The Talk Show With John Gruber:

'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson

The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.

Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:50 PM ET, March 9, 2014.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.