Techmeme
May 17, 2016, 6:50 PM

Top News

Mark Harris / Backchannel:
Otto, founded by ex-Google engineers, exits stealth to sell self-driving kits for retrofitting semi-trailers  —  A group of ex-Google engineers have just launched Otto, an autonomous trucking startup  —  Otto's first vehicle is twice as long and six times as heavy as Google's cute prototype car …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
BitTorrent debuts Live multichannel video streaming app for Apple TV, comes to mobile and OS X in June  —  BitTorrent today launched BitTorrent Live, a multichannel video streaming app for Apple TV.  Think of it as the company's take on live TV, with initial coverage spanning five areas: news, sports, music, tech, and youth culture.
Shaun Walker / Guardian:
Russian FindFace app compares photos to profile pictures on social network Vkontakte and works out identities with 70% reliability  —  FindFace compares photos to profile pictures on social network Vkontakte and works out identities with 70% reliability  —  If the founders of a new face recognition app …
Jose Pagliery / CNNMoney:
Tor developer Isis Agora Lovecruft moves to Germany amid uncertainty about potential FBI subpoena  —  In its mission to hunt criminals, the FBI has been keen to hack Tor, the Internet browser that hides your true location.  —  The FBI's attempts to break into Tor are starting to manifest in strange ways.
David Streitfeld / New York Times:
Sources: Google Home, Google's voice-activated Amazon Echo competitor, will be unveiled at I/O and ship this fall  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Google will introduce its much-anticipated entry into the voice-activated home device market on Wednesday, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
More: The Verge
New York Times:
China is quietly requiring foreign tech companies to submit their products to security reviews  —  HONG KONG — Chinese authorities are quietly scrutinizing technology products sold in China by Apple and other big foreign companies, focusing on whether they pose potential security threats …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
Microsoft and SAP expand partnership: Office 365 integrations, HANA on Azure  —  Microsoft is announcing today that it has deepened its partnership with fellow enterprise software vendor SAP.  The HANA in-memory database from SAP will become available on top of Microsoft's Azure public cloud on top of machines packed densely with RAM.
Lucas Mearian / Computerworld:
HP is now taking orders for its first 3D printer, the Jet Fusion 3D, which starts at $130K and HP says is 10X faster than rivals; orders will ship in late 2016  —  ORLANDO — Hewlett-Packard today began taking orders for its first 3D printer, the HP Jet Fusion printer, which it said will be …
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Blockchain announces Thunder, an alternative network for enabling fast off-blockchain transactions that settle against the bitcoin blockchain at a later date  —  Blockchain, the company behind the world's most popular bitcoin wallet, has been quietly working on an interesting project called Thunder.
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Fire TV gets new Alexa voice features, including app launching and restaurant searches  —  Amazon is giving TV viewers a few more, not-crazy reasons to talk back to their TVs.  After bringing the functionality to various properties, opening it to third-party hardware and letting developers get a crack at it …

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Earlier Picks

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Casey Newton / The Verge: