Techmeme
October 31, 2018, 3:50 PM

Top News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google introduces “Emoji Minis” in Gboard for Android and iOS, which uses machine learning to create customizable emoji-sized stickers based on users' selfies  —  Last summer, Google introduced its own take on Bitmoji with the launch of “Mini” stickers in its keyboard app, Gboard …
Business Insider:
Sources: Apple held multiple acquisition talks with Leap Motion, beginning in 2013 and most recently in spring 2018, when Apple made an offer between $30M-$50M  —  - Apple has offered to buy augmented reality startup Leap Motion multiple times, most recently in the spring of 2018.
James Vincent / The Verge:
iRobot partners with Google and will share spatial data from Roombas to help improve Google's smart home experience by mapping rooms  —  The two companies are working together to leverage spatial data generated by iRobot's robovacs  —  Google and iRobot have announced they're working together …
Peter Cao / 9to5Mac:
Apple has pulled watchOS 5.1 update after reports that it had bricked some Apple Watches  —  [Update: Apple has now pulled watchOS 5.1.  Users who haven't updated should refrain from doing so if it was downloaded, but not yet installed.]  —  While many users are disappointed with the lack …
Virginia Hughes / BuzzFeed News:
Researchers examining 135 popular kids apps on Android and iOS find 88% of paid and 100% of free apps often have manipulative and distracting ads  —  Popular apps for young kids, especially those available in Google's app store, are teeming with advertisements that distract them from play …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Mark Zuckerberg has been summoned to appear before an “international grand committee” of Canadian and UK MPs to discuss fake news on November 27  —  Two separate parliamentary committees, in the UK and Canada, have issued an unprecedented international joint summons for Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before them.
Ina Fried / Axios:
Source: Rich DeVaul, a director at X, Alphabet's moonshot unit, left the company today following reports of sexual harassment, did not receive an exit package  —  Rich DeVaul, a director at X, the moonshot unit of Alphabet, Google's parent company, has left the company following reports of sexual harassment.
Rob Price / Business Insider:
Facebook says it is banning the far-right Proud Boys and co-founder Gavin McInnes from Facebook and Instagram after violent NY attack on protesters in October  —  - Facebook is banning accounts and groups associated with The Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group linked to political violence in the US.
Will Sommer / The Daily Beast:
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
eSIM support for Apple's new iPhones will not be available from AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile until later this year, but it is available in other countries  —  Apple today released iOS 12.1 with support for the digital eSIM that will allow for dual-SIM functionality on the iPhone XS …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
The processor used in the 2018 MacBook Air is an Intel Core i5-8210Y 7W Amber Lake Y processor  —  Apple's newly upgraded MacBook Air is equipped with a 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 Processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz, a chip configuration that does not match any of the 8th-generation chips that Intel has announced to date.
Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire:
Lime pursues car sharing in Seattle, where rentable electric scooters are banned, and says it plans to add electric vehicles as another option to its app “soon”  —  Lime wants to add cars to its Seattle mobility fleet, expanding beyond the bright green, rentable bikes the company currently operates in the city.
More: CNET
Saheli Roy Choudhury / CNBC:
Samsung Electronics posts Q3 operating profit of ~$15.5B, up 21% YoY, driven by strong sales of memory chips and higher demand for high-end OLED display panels  —  - Samsung Electronics on Wednesday said it recorded an operating profit of 17.57 trillion won (about $15.5 billion) for the quarter ending in September.
Melanie Ehrenkranz / Gizmodo:
EU to launch a six-month trial of iBorderCtrl, an AI lie detector that looks for “biomarkers of deceit”, at its external borders in Hungary, Latvia, and Greece  —  A number of border control checkpoints in the European Union are about to get increasingly—and unsettlingly—futuristic.
More: Engadget

Sponsor Posts

Soxton:
Fast, affordable law for startups  —  Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better.  We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts.  Join the waitlist for early access!
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Deep dive into SalesIQ's Summer '26 release: 40+ features for the agentic era  —  We've already introduced you to Zoho SalesIQ's Summer '26 release, our annual release, and the one where SalesIQ enters a new territory: the era of agentic intelligence.
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

The Upstarts Podcast:
Blitzy's Brian Elliott: Cursor And Claude Code Are Looking At Your Enterprise Code 'Through A Straw'
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Re-Release: The Death of Hollywood? W/ Allan Loeb
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Great Chat:
Maybe Twitter isn't real life
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:
OpenAI's Plan To Merge Chat And Agents — With Greg Brockman
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Encore: Inside Joe Weisenthal's brain
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.
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, October 31, 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

Earlier Picks

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Carolyn Said / San Francisco Chronicle:
Chris Welch / The Verge: