Techmeme
August 19, 2016, 10:30 AM

Top News

Max Chafkin / Bloomberg:
Uber's first self-driving fleet, supervised by humans in the driver's seat, arrives in Pittsburgh this month with free trips for the time being  —  Near the end of 2014, Uber co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick flew to Pittsburgh on a mission: to hire dozens of the world's experts in autonomous vehicles.
Cromwell Schubarth / Silicon Valley Business Journal:
Uber acquires self-driving truck startup Otto; report says if targets are met, the deal would be worth around $680M  —  Uber is reportedly paying more than $680 million to buy a self-driving truck startup launched earlier this year by a team of ex-Googlers in San Francisco.
Biz Carson / Business Insider:
Kalanick on self-driving cars as an existential threat, Uber's response to that threat, and how the number of human drivers will go up in the foreseeable future  —  Travis Kalanick has to get Uber's bet on self-driving cars right.  —  “It starts with understanding that the world …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple planned to add cellular data to Watch this year but is delaying the feature due to battery life concerns; new models launching this year have GPS  —  Battery concerns delay versions with integrated cellular data  —  Models coming this fall improve health tracking with GPS chip
Thomas Fox-Brewster / Forbes:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft open sources PowerShell, brings it to Linux and OS X  —  Microsoft today announced that it is open sourcing PowerShell and bringing it to Linux and OS X.  —  PowerShell is Microsoft's command line shell for Windows power users, as well as an extensible scripting language for automating system tasks.
Katie Benner / New York Times:
Twitter says it has suspended 235K accounts since February for promoting terrorism, bringing total to 360K since mid-2015  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter suspended 235,000 accounts that promoted terrorism over the last six months, as part of a continuing effort to keep people from using …
J.K. Trotter / Gawker:
Gawker.com announces it will shut down next week, after nearly 14 years of operation  —  After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week.  The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media's six other websites …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
T-Mobile launches $70 plan with “unlimited” high-speed data on September 6; HD video access costs $25 extra  —  T-Mobile will shift to a single wireless plan offering unlimited data — a surprise move that the company's CEO, John Legere, says he doesn't believe rivals Verizon and AT&T will be able to match.
Sydney Ember / New York Times:
The New York Times will retire its NYT Now app starting the week of August 29; at its peak in May 2015, the app had 334K total unique users  —  In early 2014, The New York Times introduced an app called NYT Now that would provide a curated list of stories — for a lower price …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook is building its own Steam-style desktop gaming platform with Unity  —  Facebook may try to compete with Steam, or at least win back revenue lost when casual gaming shifted to mobile.  Today Facebook formally announced it's working with game engine Unity to build a dedicated …
Matt Weinberger / Business Insider:
Atlassian's HipChat desktop apps get group video chat and screen sharing  —  Atlassian's popular workplace chat app HipChat, used by companies like Uber and Expedia, is getting team video chatting and screen sharing, starting today.  —  It might seem small, but it speaks to a big trend in tech.

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