Techmeme
May 24, 2018, 12:30 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: DOJ and CFTC have opened a criminal probe into alleged market manipulation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies  —  - Justice Department opens investigation into illicit trading  — Agency is working with CFTC, which oversees crypto futures  —  The Justice Department …
Jack Nicas / New York Times:
Sources: Apple signed deal with Volkswagen to use vans as autonomous staff shuttles, wanted to partner with BMW and Mercedes-Benz on all-electric autonomous car  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Apple had already curtailed its grand vision for disrupting the automotive industry by building its own self-driving car.
Michelle Castillo / CNBC:
Facebook users worldwide are being asked to review their privacy settings, including political and religious affiliations, as GDPR goes into effect in Europe  —  - Facebook is telling all users to review their privacy settings, including information they share on their profiles and facial recognition preferences.
David Shepardson / Reuters:
US NTSB report on Uber's self-driving car that killed a pedestrian in March in AZ says the car failed to identify the pedestrian or break until it was too late  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] self-driving vehicle that struck and killed a woman in Tempe …
CBS Pittsburgh:
Kevin Poulsen / The Daily Beast:
The FBI used a court order to seize a key server in the Russia-linked VPN Filter botnet, stopping its ability to reactivate when an infected router is rebooted  —  FBI agents armed with a court order have seized control of a key server in the Kremlin's global botnet of 500,000 hacked routers, The Daily Beast has learned.
Jim Finkle / Reuters:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Instapaper, owned by Pinterest, says it will be temporarily unavailable to all European users on May 24 as it works to ensure GDPR compliance by May 25  —  The read-it-later app needs time to make changes ahead of GDPR going into effect on Friday  —  Popular read-it-later app Instapaper informed …
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Vevo is shuttering its Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile apps and website to refocus on YouTube following resignation of several execs and significant layoffs  —  Major-label owned Vevo is giving up on plans to build its own music video platform outside of YouTube's control …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Uber says it will open an Advanced Technologies Center in Paris focused on its Uber Elevate flying taxis project, will spend €20 million over five years  —  S'envoler  —  Uber's plan to fill the skies above cities with swarms of electric-powered flying taxis is getting its own dedicated laboratory.
Garrett Camp:
Sixteen years after it started, StumbleUpon to shut down and transition its accounts to content discovery platform Mix.com over the next couple of months  —  Sixteen years ago, we started StumbleUpon to help people discover new webpages.  The idea was simple: click a button to find a cool webpage.
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
Qualcomm unveils 10nm Snapdragon 710 SoC with 4K HDR playback support, promises twice the AI performance compared to Snapdragon 660, expected in devices in Q2  —  The focus for the next generation of chips is artificial intelligence, neural networking, and support for high-quality photos and video.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Airbnb quietly launches Travel Stories in beta, letting users share ephemeral pictures and videos that can be viewed in-app or online  —  The stories format has been one of the most sticky features of social apps like Snapchat and Instagram, letting users stitch together video …
More: VatorNews and The VergeTweets: @ingridlunden
Axios:
Sources: SoftBank is investing in peer-to-peer car rental service Getaround as part of a ~$100M fundraising round  —  SoftBank is investing in Getaround, a peer-to-peer car rental service that is raising around $100 million in new funding, Axios has learned from multiple sources.
More: GeekWireTweets: @afrovii
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Pet-sitting startup Rover raises $155M round led by T. Rowe Price, bringing its total funding to $310M  —  When Rover started seven years ago, many in the startup community snickered.  There was no real business model, they said.  A marketplace that matched dog owners with caretakers wouldn't work, they said.
More: VentureBeat and BloombergThanks:@johnhcook

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho AgentInbox: Email infrastructure built for AI agents  —  Most AI agents doing real work eventually need to send or receive email.  The default move is to hand them access to someone's existing inbox …
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:
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
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.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan: Why We're Betting On AI And Not Afraid Of It
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.
Sources:
Marc Benioff on the AI boom, SaaSpocalypse, and future of Slack
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Invest Like the Best:
Gabe Stengel - Building Investing Superintelligence
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:
Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:30 PM ET, May 24, 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.

More News

Bloomberg:
Mat Honan / BuzzFeed:

Earlier Picks

Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Kate Conger / Gizmodo: