Techmeme
August 27, 2015, 9:40 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Amazon lays off dozens of Fire engineers, scales back and reorganizes its hardware-development center Lab126  —  Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices  —  Amazon is scaling back its efforts to develop consumer devices, laying off dozens of engineers …
Jessi Hempel / Wired:
Facebook testing M, an AI-based, human supervised virtual assistant inside Messenger that can complete tasks such as purchasing on your behalf  —  Facebook Launches M, Its Bold Answer to Siri and Cortana  —  Today, a few hundred Bay Area Facebook users will open their Messenger apps to discover M, a new virtual assistant.
Roberto Baldwin / Engadget:
Ex-Apple CEO John Sculley unveils two sub-$200 Android Obi smartphones for Asia, Africa, and Middle East markets, will be available October  —  Former Apple CEO John Sculley launches a line of stylish smartphones  —  Like most consumer items, the lower the price point of a phone, the less exciting the design.
Annalee Newitz / Gizmodo:
Ashley Madison had approximately 31M male members, 5.5M female members, but likely only 12K women actively used the site  —  Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Database Ever Used the Site  —  When hacker group Impact Team released the Ashley Madison data, they asserted that “thousands” of the women's profiles were fake.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Leaked images reveal Microsoft's 5.2-inch Lumia 950 and 5.7-inch 950XL, to launch in October  —  Leaked images reveal Microsoft's new flagship Lumia phones  —  Microsoft is preparing to launch two new Lumia flagship devices at an event in October.  While we've seen some images emerge along …
ZEIT ONLINE:
Germany's domestic intelligence agency BfV got XKeyscore software from NSA in exchange for German surveillance data  —  A Dubious Deal with the NSA  —  Internal documents show that Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, received the coveted software program XKeyscore from the NSA - and promised data from Germany in return.
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Announces New Tumblr Sharing Tools And Native Video Ads For Developers  —  Simon Khalaf, Yahoo's senior vice president of publisher products, today outlined some big shifts in the mobile ecosystem and unveiled some new tools for mobile developers.  He made the announcements on-stage …

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Is AI just hype?  —  Find out how top enterprises use Tribe to get real business results.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Zoho:
How to create an omnichannel customer engagement strategy  —  Let's talk customer engagement—the holy grail of any business.  If you look at any real-world examples, Sephora is what most consider the 'Sensei …
Comprehensive.io:
Browse salary data from 3,000 startups for free  —  Click for FREE, immediate access to real-time compensation benchmarking data.  Paid version helps HR automate comp reviews and communicate total compensation to employees.
The Kevin Rose Show:
Henry Shukman, Lessons from an Authentic Zen Master
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 03/28 - Claude 3 Opus Surpasses GPT-4 For The First Time
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:40 AM ET, August 27, 2015.

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.

More News

Jessica Toonkel / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Micah Singleton / The Verge:
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: