Techmeme
April 29, 2018, 8:15 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
T-Mobile to buy Sprint for ~$26B in stock; John Legere to run combined company that retains T-Mobile name; Deutsche Telekom to get a 42% stake, SoftBank 27%  —  T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp. agreed to combine in a $26.5 billion merger, creating a wireless giant to compete against industry leaders …
David McCabe / Axios:
In a pitch seemingly aligned with Trump admin's rhetoric and aimed at regulators, T-Mobile and Sprint argue merger will help US beat China in 5G, create jobs  —  The CEOs of T-Mobile and Sprint argued on an analyst call that their just-announced merger would create jobs and boost America's position …
Frank X. Shaw / Microsoft on the Issues:
Microsoft explains its role in the conviction of e-waste recycler Eric Lundgren, says he was counterfeiting Windows software in China and importing it to the US  —  In the last few days there have been several stories about the sentencing of Eric Lundgren in a case that began in 2012 …
Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin / Quartz:
A first-person account of a virtual dating assistant, called a “Closer”, who is a professional writer that impersonates clients on apps like Tinder  —  Every morning I wake up to the same routine.  I log into the Tinder account of a 45-year-old man from Texas—a client.
Jessica Nordell / The Atlantic:
How Slack has made its US workforce more diverse than other Silicon Valley companies by forgoing a diversity chief and focusing on hiring efforts from the start  —  Last week, Slack, the company whose popular, plaid-themed messaging app has simplified office communications and introduced custom fox emoji …
Facebook: Cindy Gallop
Mathias Döpfner / Business Insider:
In a Q&A after receiving the Axel Springer award for 2018, Jeff Bezos discusses The Washington Post, Trump admin, privacy concerns, and the early days of Amazon  —  Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, recently sat down with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos …
Will Oremus / Slate:
A history of the Facebook critique “if you're not paying, you're the product” and why it wrongly paints users as powerless pawns incapable of demanding change  —  The history of a dangerous idea.  —  On March 21, at the height of the scandal over Cambridge Analytica's harvesting …
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
German startup Clark, which offers digital insurance brokerage through an app, raises $29M Series B led by Portag3 Ventures and White Star Capital  —  Clark, one of a plethora of so-called ‘insurtech’ startups offering something akin to a digital insurance brokerage all delivered through …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Mark Zuckerberg says almost 100M people now access the internet via Internet.org, up from 40M in November 2016  —  Facebook is getting the developing world online, even as the developed world criticizes its privacy practices.  Mark Zuckerberg said today on Facebook's Q1 2018 earnings call that …
More: Gizmodo
Alex Cranz / Gizmodo:
A look at AMD's 6-year old bet that paid off in the Zen CPU microarchitecture inside the new Ryzen processors, which could pose a real challenge to Intel  —  There are few gambles in the tech world as big as spending billions to build a new computer processor from scratch.

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 Expense MCP: Turn conversations into expense workflows  —  Artificial intelligence (AI) has already changed how we search for information, summarize documents, and analyze data.
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

Acquired:
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Subscribe to Acquired.
Lenny's Podcast:
The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Demis Steps Down, Apple's Memory Problem, Microsoft's Clever Trick
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:
The White House's Secret A.I. Rules + The State of Model Alignment With METR's Chris Painter + The Final Hot Mess Express
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.
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 8:15 PM ET, April 29, 2018.

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.