Techmeme
June 23, 2015, 11:05 AM

Top News

Aviva Rutkin / New Scientist:
Experimental Facebook face-recogniton software can discern identity with 83% accuracy even when faces are hidden  —  Facebook can recognise you in photos even if you're not looking  —  Thanks to the latest advances in computer vision, we now have machines that can pick you out of a line-up.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Verizon Completes Its Acquisition of AOL For $4.4B  —  Well, that was fast: Verizon has just announced that it has completed its acquisition of AOL, owner of TechCrunch, purchasing all outstanding shares for $50 per share in cash for a total price of $4.4 billion.  The sale was originally announced just over a month ago.
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Amazon Echo is now open for pre-orders to anyone in the U.S. for $180, ships July 14  —  Got email marketing?  We've got best practices from LivingSocial and estate sale guru Everything But The House in our next Insight webinar.  —  Amazon has announced that its voice-activated “Echo” …
Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:
Big Data Startup Snowflake Raises $45 Million, Launches First Product  —  Snowflake, a big data startup led by longtime Microsoft executive Bob Muglia, has landed a $45 million funding round led by Altimeter Capital, and also announced the general availability of its product for analyzing business data in the cloud.
Matthew Lynley / TechCrunch:
Sources: Grand Rounds Is Raising At Around A $750M Valuation  —  Sources are telling TechCrunch that Grand Rounds, which sells companies a service that gives employees access to healthcare advice and treatment from experienced professionals around the United States regardless of where they live …
SuperSite for Windows:
Windows 10 Upgrade and Installation Frequently Asked Questions  —  We have had plenty of time to pick apart and interpret Microsoft's recent blog post about the Windows Insider Program as well as the free upgrade offer to Windows 10 for Windows 7 and 8.1 users.
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Alexander Martin / Wall Street Journal:
SoftBank sells entire stock of 1,000 humanoid Pepper robots within a minute of it going on sale, company expects to produce 1,000/month  —  SoftBank Robot Pepper Sells Out in a Minute  —  There was no problem finding a home for the first batch of humanoid robots known as Pepper.
Karen Zraick / New York Times:
Computer hardware failure linked to biometric data leaves US unable to process visas for over two weeks, unlikely to be resoved for at least another week  —  Computer Failure Leaves State Dept. Unable to Issue Visas  —  The United States has been unable to issue visas to travelers around …
The Intercept:
NSA and GCHQ have tried since at least 2008 to reverse-engineer antivirus software like Kaspersky, monitored company emails for new malware they could use  —  Popular Security Software Came Under Relentless NSA and GCHQ Attacks  —  The National Security Agency and its British counterpart …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Hillhouse, an investor in China's taxi hailing firm Didi Kuaidi, leads $1B investment in Uber  —  China's Hillhouse Leads $1 Billion Uber Investment Deal  —  Hillhouse Capital is an investor in Didi Kuaidi Joint Co.  —  Chinese fund manager Hillhouse Capital Group is leading …
Sean Michael Kerner / eWeek:
Docker, CoreOS unite with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, VMware, others to define container standards under new Open Container Project, backed by Linux Foundation  —  Docker Rivals Join Together in Open Container Effort  —  The open-source container community is uniting today …

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More News

Vikram Dodd / Guardian:
Ryan Whitwam / ExtremeTech:

Earlier Picks

Nate Swanner / The Next Web:
New York Times: