Techmeme
May 9, 2017, 3:50 PM

Top News

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amazon unveils Echo Show, an Alexa-powered speaker with a 7" touchscreen and video calling for $229.99; preorders open now, ships June 28  —  Look out, world: Alexa is coming to a screen near you.  Today Amazon unveiled the Echo Show, a WiFi-enabled home device with a seven-inch screen …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amazon will add voice calling and messaging on all Echo devices and the Alexa app; Amazon says the feature, called Alexa Calling, will go live later today  —  Amazon may have flopped with the Fire Phone, but don't count it out of the telephony game just yet.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Snapchat adds snaps with unlimited viewing time and looping videos, which will both self-destruct on being closed, and new creative tools like a “magic eraser”  —  Infinite snaps, loops, and the magic eraser  —  Snapchat added a set of new creative tools to its arsenal today amid …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Several studies show that existing Snapchat users are staying loyal to the social network, despite Instagram stunting its growth  —  U.S. millennials and Gen Zs aren't entirely replacing their Snapchat addiction with Instagram Stories, according to a dozen studies and surveys commissioned or collected by TechCrunch.
More: iMore, TechCrunch, and MashableTweets: @joshconstineThanks:@joshconstine
Dan Primack / Axios:
Sarah Tavel leaves Greylock Partners to become general partner at Benchmark Capital, the first woman in that role at the firm  —  Sarah Tavel has joined venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as its sixth general partner, after having been with rival Greylock since 2015.
Bloomberg:
China's Alipay announces deal with payment processor First Data Corp to let its users shop at 4M stores in US  —  Mobile payments wallet to be accepted at 4 million U.S. stores  —  Alipay says it's part of broader international expansion  —  China's mobile-payments king wants a piece of the world's biggest consumer market.
Matthew Lynley / TechCrunch:
Pinterest adds visual search guides to its Lens and promotes its head of discovery engineering Vanja Josifovski to CTO role  —  Pinterest today is adding a new feature to its Lens — its live camera search — that will help pick apart what's in the image and make it easier to search specific parts of that image.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Samsung opens US preorders for unlocked Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, starting at $724.99 for the 64GB unlocked S8 and $824.99 for the 64GB unlocked S8 Plus  —  Starting at Best Buy and Samsung.com  —  Samsung has opened preorders for the unlocked variety of its new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus smartphones.
Cade Metz / Wired:
Uber hires University of Toronto AI expert Raquel Urtasun to oversee development of new AI research lab in Canada  —  Uber is hiring Raquel Urtasun, a prominent artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Toronto, as the ride-hailing company aims to build a lab for driverless car research …
Matt Humrick / AnandTech:
Qualcomm unveils 14nm Snapdragon 660 and 630 SoCs with faster charging, improved connectivity, and enhanced imaging, expected in devices later this year  —  Qualcomm is bringing some premium experiences to its mid-tier lineup with the addition of the Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 Mobile Platforms.

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho connected apps for Google Gemini  —  Note: Now available to organizations in the Indian data center.  Support for other Zoho data centers will be available soon.AI assistants have gotten remarkably …
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

Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
How AI Should Handle News, Politics, Medicine, and Mental Health — With Campbell Brown
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.
Training Data:
Parallel's Parag Agrawal: Building a New Web for AI Agents
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Neil Movva - Making AI 10x Cheaper
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
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 3:50 PM ET, May 9, 2017.

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

Tomio Geron / Wall Street Journal:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Sam Gustin / Motherboard: