Techmeme
May 19, 2018, 11:10 PM

Top News

Rhett Jones / Gizmodo:
Report: Snap CEO was inspired by Chinese apps for Snapchat redesign, wanted to make the app friendlier to older users, launched redesign despite staff concerns  —  Snap's stock price is now hovering around its lowest point ever since the company went public last year.
Ernie Smith / Motherboard:
A history of the music industry's first efforts at creating music streaming services after Napster and why they failed given the importance of streaming now  —  Lessons from the music industry's initial consumer-hostile reaction to the Napster saga.  Going from $16 CDs to unlimited streaming is really hard.
More: Techdirt
Washington Post:
Sources: Trump personally pushed US Postmaster General Megan Brennan to double the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon and other companies, but was rebuffed  —  President Trump has personally pushed U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan to double the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon.com …
Ashlee Vance / Bloomberg:
Interviews with pioneers of AI and PM Justin Trudeau about the history of neural networks and how the Canadian government brought the AI researchers together  —  Over the past five years, artificial intelligence has gone from perennial vaporware to one of the technology industry's brightest hopes.
Patrick Winn / GlobalPost Investigations:
Interviews with experts and defectors detail North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, whose hackers are estimated to have stolen $650M+  —  The Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea's equivalent to the CIA, has trained up the world's greatest bank-robbing crews.
Kate Conger / Gizmodo:
Google removed “Don't be evil” from the top of its code of conduct in late April or early May, Wayback Machine archives show, but kept one mention at the bottom  —  Google's unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don't be evil.”  But that's over, according to the code …
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Source: Google edited some Duplex calls used in demo to protect identity of businesses involved; one restaurant in the demo may have been identified by Mashable  —  - Company is said to tell staff that robo-caller will ID itself  — Duplex demo at company's I/O conference caused a firestorm

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More News

Earlier Picks

Music Business Worldwide:
Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
Nick Statt / The Verge: