Techmeme
December 7, 2018, 9:55 AM

Top News

Nitasha Tiku / Wired:
Microsoft steps up calls for regulation of facial recognition tech; research group AI Now stresses urgency for companies to open their AI algorithms to auditing  —  AFTER A HELLISH year of tech scandals, even government-averse executives have started professing their openness to legislation.
Jackson Ryan / CNET:
DeepMind's new AI program, AlphaZero, taught itself to play and beat the world's best AI in three different board games: chess, shogi, and Go  —  Humans have mostly accepted that they will never be as good at chess as the robots, but now even the robots have to accept they will never be as good as other robots.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says it will rebuild Edge to run on Google's open source Chromium project and will make it available on macOS, Windows 7, and Windows 8  —  A Chromium version of Edge will also arrive on Windows 7 and Windows 8  —  Microsoft is announcing some significant changes to its Edge browser today.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau head cannot participate in investigations involving 120 companies like Facebook, Equifax, Uber, due to conflict of interest  —  The list of 120 includes Uber, Twitter, and Equifax  —  The Federal Trade Commission's top consumer protection official is prohibited …
The Keyword:
Google launches a personalized audio news feed on Google Assistant using Google News, rolling out to some users in the US in English  —  For the past century, radio has been a one-size-fits-all medium.  Turn on the radio and you're dropped into a show at a moment in time …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Since implementing its own screen time tracking tools in iOS 12, Apple has removed some 3rd-party trackers and parental control apps from the App Store  —  A number of app developers building third-party screen time trackers and parental control applications are worried that Apple's increased scrutiny …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Vibhuti Sharma / Reuters:
IBM to sell seven of its software products, including Notes, Domino, BigFix, and Unica, to India-based IT services company HCL for $1.8B  —  (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) said on Thursday it will sell some of its software products business to Indian software services …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon 8cx, an “extreme” processor for Windows laptops that it says is the first 7nm chip for a PC platform  —  Could Qualcomm replace Intel in your next Windows PC?  —  The “X” stands for “extreme.”  That's what Qualcomm's marketing department wants you to think about the new Snapdragon 8cx.
The Verge:
Upvoted:
Reddit says it now gets 1.4B native video views per month and serves 13M+ hours of video monthly, up 38% since the beginning of 2018  —  Community highlights, best-of's and the top trends for the year ahead  —  This time of year, there are recaps and best-ofs a-plenty …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Labels that build themselves: Simplified Label Automation in Zoho Writer  —  Anyone who ships every day knows this feeling.  Forty orders, each with a different number of items, and every item needs its own label.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
How Ramp Built A $60B AI Product Factory Off A Corporate Card | Co-CEO Eric Glyman
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.
Great Chat:
Would you let a robot do it?
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.
Training Data:
A Model For Everyone: How Ronak From Trajectory Is Building Products For Continual Learning
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Going After The Democrats' Big Win? — With Teddy Schleifer
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.
Machine Gods:
Crypto's Biggest Heist Ever + The Spy Who Loved Nvidia + Hacktober's Unsolved Mysteries
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Barry Diller on Big Bets, AI, and Knowing When to Walk Away
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:55 AM ET, December 7, 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

Christina Farr / CNBC:
Aparajita Saxena / Reuters:
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Russell Brandom / The Verge: