Techmeme
February 18, 2016, 7:00 PM

Top News

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Apple apologizes for Error 53, says it was designed to be a factory test, releases iOS update that restores bricked phones but doesn't re-enable Touch ID  —  Apple Apologizes And Updates iOS To Restore iPhones Disabled By Error 53  —  Earlier this month, a Guardian report flagged …
Bloomberg Business:
Profile of Johny Srouji, Apple's SVP for hardware technologies, who is leading the development of company's chips  —  The Most Important Apple Executive You've Never Heard Of  —  A visit with Cupertino's chief chipmaker, Johny Srouji.  —  A little over a year ago, Apple had a problem: The iPad Pro was behind schedule.
TechCrunch:
Leaked document: Facebook will launch ads on Messenger in Q2, enabling brands to send message ads to customers who have previously initiated chats  —  Facebook Plans To Put Ads In Messenger  —  A leaked document Facebook sent to some of its biggest advertisers reveals that Facebook will launch ads within Messenger in Q2 2016.
Shara Tibken / CNET:
Apple's Trade Up With Installments program lets you trade in your old phone and pay a reduced monthly fee for a newer model  —  Apple wants you to ditch your old iPhone with this new payment plan  —  The Trade Up With Installments program lets you unload an old phone and get a new model for an outlay of less than about $35 a month.
Skype Blogs:
Skype starts rolling out group video calling for iOS and Android, beginning with North America and Western Europe today, with worldwide availability in March  —  Announcing group video calling for mobile phones and tablets  —  Just a few weeks ago, we announced the next evolution of Skype …
James Vincent / The Verge:
GSMA announces new eSIM specification for smartwatches, fitness trackers, and tablets; Samsung's Gear S2 Classic 3G will be first device to use the new standard  —  Samsung's Gear S2 has the first certified eSIM that lets you choose carriers  —  The day the physical SIM card disappears is slowly getting closer.
Colin Lecher / The Verge:
FCC votes 3-2 to proceed with plan to give customers more choice over cable TV set-top boxes; proposal now moves into comment period  —  The FCC just took the first big step toward changing the cable box business  —  In a three-to-two vote, the FCC has decided to move ahead with a proposal …
Ian Cairns / The Twitter Blog:
In customer service push, Twitter now lets businesses add a “send a private message” button to tweets, attach feedback forms to direct messages  —  Making customer service even better on Twitter  —  Today, we're excited to announce two new tools to help businesses provide even better customer service on Twitter.
New York Times:
Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon declined to comment when asked about Apple's opposition to iPhone court order, showing muted tech industry response  —  Apple Letter on iPhone Security Draws Muted Tech Industry Response  —  After a federal court ordered Apple to help unlock an iPhone used …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
IBM Acquiring Truven Health Analytics For $2.6 Billion And Adding It To Watson Health  —  IBM announced its intent to buy Truven Health Analytics today for a whopping $2.6 billion.  It is the fourth major purchase for Watson Health since the unit was established in 2014.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
PayPal launches overhauled iOS and Android apps with cleaner design, quicker access to sending and receiving money, more  —  PayPal Overhauls Its Mobile App  —  PayPal's mobile app is getting a massive overhaul today, representing the first time in the history that the company has rebuilt its app from scratch.
Lance Whitney / CNET:
Microsoft Translator adds OCR capabilities to its iOS app, offline translations on Android  —  Microsoft's Translator app plays catch-up with Google  —  The version for iPhones now lets you use the device's camera to translate signs, menus and the like, while the version for Android devices can work offline.

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.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Turn every support session into a data point that works for you  —  Most support teams close a session and move on.  The issue gets resolved, the ticket gets marked done, and whatever insight that session generated quietly disappears.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Access:
This AI will push back if you're rude to it
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber: AI Already Feels Pain, Loves, and Is Self-Aware
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Inside Podcasting's Fight Over Netflix, YouTube, and Creator Control
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Sam Blond from Monaco
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Training Data:
Anthropic's Katelyn Lesse & Angela Jiang: Building an Ecosystem, not a Walled Garden
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:00 PM ET, February 18, 2016.

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

Ram Ramanathan / Google Cloud Platform Blog:

Earlier Picks