Techmeme
October 5, 2016, 5:45 PM

Top News

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Sources: Twitter board consulting advisers on how to deal with internal disagreement over possible sale, with Ev Williams in favor of and Dorsey against it  —  A few days before Twitter's Sept. 8 board meeting, as the company's finance team readied a presentation, it received conflicting directions on a crucial question.
Reuters:
Sources: Twitter has told potential acquirers it's seeking to conclude negotiations by Oct. 27, the day it reports its Q3 earnings  —  Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) has told potential acquirers it is seeking to conclude negotiations about selling itself by the time it reports third-quarter earnings on Oct. 27 …
Matt Zapotosky / Washington Post:
US Justice Department confirms arrest of NSA contractor accused of stealing classified information  —  A government contractor has been arrested and charged with stealing highly classified information from the U.S. government, authorities announced Wednesday.
New York Times:
Government official: Yahoo got FISA order to scan incoming email for terrorist digital signature, used existing spam filtering, no longer collecting this data  —  Yahoo was ordered last year to search incoming emails for the digital “signature” of a communications method used by a state-sponsored …
Brian Womack / Bloomberg:
Yahoo says the report that it built program to scan customers' incoming mail is “misleading”  —  @brianwomack , More stories by Brian Womack  —  Carefully worded statement calls Reuters article ‘misleading’  —  CEO Mayer is under increasing scrutiny ahead of Verizon deal
New York Times:
Signal received federal subpoena with gag order earlier this year, demanding IP addresses, browsing histories, cookies, and more, but could hand over little  —  SAN FRANCISCO — It has been six months since the Justice Department backed off on demands that Apple help the F.B.I. break the security of a locked iPhone.
Jim Finkle / Reuters:
Johnson & Johnson warns of vulnerability in 114K insulin pumps across USA and Canada that could cause overdose if exploited  —  Johnson & Johnson is telling patients that it has learned of a security vulnerability in one of its insulin pumps that a hacker could exploit to overdose diabetic patients …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Amazon rolls out Prime Reading, giving Prime members free access to more than 1,000 Kindle books and magazines  —  Amazon has unveiled the latest perk for Prime members in the U.S.: access to “over a thousand” Kindle books, comics, magazines, and more.  —  With Prime Reading …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
PlayStation VR review: a decently priced and comfortable headset with some good launch titles, but held back by its motion controllers  —  This was supposed to be the year virtual reality broke out.  The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, the first two high-end consumer devices on the market …
Justin Yu / CNET:
Google confirms delayed Lenovo Phab2 Pro phone with Google Tango AR tech will be available in November for $499 in the US  —  Clay Bavor, head of VR and AR at Google, has confirmed the release date of the first phone with Google's depth-sensing 3D camera system.  —  2016 is set to be a very big year for Google phones.
Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:
A look at MailChimp, the Atlanta-based startup that makes marketing tools for SMBs, which has never taken VC funding and is on track for $400M revenue in 2016  —  No venture capital, no Bay Area presence, no crazy burn rate: MailChimp's founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers' needs and following their instincts.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Scratch testing suggests iPhone camera lens exterior may not be as hard as pure sapphire  —  Apple has been using sapphire on its iPhone camera lenses for a few years now since the launch of the iPhone 5S, but it might not be as scratch resistant as you'd expect.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26  —  Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Zoho:
The best time to become a Zoho Partner  —  The business world is not only changing but it is being rebuilt.  Customers want connected ecosystems that will help them automate, unify their data, and do more with less.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble
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.
Hard Fork:
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Access:
Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Great Chat:
So what happens after AGI?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:45 PM ET, October 5, 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

Earlier Picks

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Michael Crider / Android Police:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge: