| Ashley Carman / The Verge: |
For Spotify to succeed as a podcast app, it needs to clearly separate podcasts from music, help users discover podcasts better, and allow creators to monetize — Some suggestions for improvement — Spotify announced today that the company plans to spend up to $500 million on podcast-related acquisitions.| Peter Kafka / Recode: |
Spotify buys podcast producer Gimlet Media, sources say for ~$230M, and Anchor, a startup which makes it easier for users to record and distribute podcasts — Daniel Ek says he wants to spend up to $500 million on acquisitions this year. — Spotify is a streaming music company that wants to become a podcast company, too.| Stuart Dredge / Music Ally: |
| Joseph Cox / Motherboard: |
Leaked documents show around 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customer location data for at least five years — In January, Motherboard revealed that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint were selling their customers' real-time location data … | Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch: |
Following a lawsuit, Instacart CEO apologizes for changes that meant some tips were used to boost base pay, says affected workers will get retroactive pay — On the heels of a recently-filed class action lawsuit over wages and tips, as well as drivers and shoppers speaking … | Victoria Song / Gizmodo: |
Microsoft introduces background blur feature to Skype, which uses AI to detect the user's hair, hands, and arms, and blur distracting objects in the background — Slobs of the world, don't work too hard KonMari-ing your apartment or office ahead of your next important Skype call.| Kara Swisher / Recode: |
Facebook's top global communications executive, Caryn Marooney, is leaving after eight years; Debbie Frost, Facebook's longest-serving PR exec, is also leaving — After a bruising year for the social media giant, longtime communications head Caryn Marooney is helping search for her replacement.| Josh Constine / TechCrunch: |
Starting Feb. 28, Facebook's “Why am I seeing this?” button on ads will show when a user's info was uploaded for ad targeting and if it was by a brand or agency — Facebook's crack down on non-consensual ad targeting last year will finally produce results.| Austin Carr / Bloomberg: |
Interviews with 49 people illuminate Wisconsin's disastrous deal with Foxconn, championed by Trump, that saw $4.5B in promised incentives with little return — “This is the Eighth Wonder of the World.” — So declared President Donald Trump onstage last June at a press event at Foxconn's … | Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: |
Microsoft joins Google, Facebook, and Arm as a member of the OpenChain Project, which aims to standardize open-source software licensing — Microsoft Corp. wants to support more standardization of open-source software licensing, so today it's putting its weight behind the OpenChain Project as its latest platinum member.| James Vincent / The Verge: |
Google says Gmail is now blocking an extra 100M spam messages each day by using TensorFlow-trained machine learning models — Google is using its machine learning platform, TensorFlow, to eke out additional gains — Google has recruited its in-house machine learning framework, TensorFlow … | Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: |
On-demand e-scooter startup Lime raises $310M Series D, led by a16z, Bain Capital, Fidelity, GV, and IVP, at a $2.4B valuation — Confirming rumors that have been swirling for some time, on-demand electric scooter startup Lime today announced that it has closed a $310 million series D financing round led … | Rani Molla / Recode: |
Research: US riders who used both Uber and Lyft in Q4 2018 accounted for ~1/3 of the companies' ride-sharing revenue; 15% of revenue was from Lyft-only riders — Customers are shopping between the two ride-hail leaders and taking the car with the better price. — Ride-sharing customers are becoming less loyal.| Kevin Kelleher / Fortune: |
Sonos' stock falls as much as 15% after announcing its CFO Mike Giannetto will retire later this year; it has hired an executive search firm to find a new CFO — Sonos' stock fell as much as 15% late Wednesday after the company said that its chief financial officer, Mike Giannetto, will leave the company later this year.| Olivia Carville / Bloomberg: |
A look at Pigeonly, InmateAid, and Flikshop, built by ex-convicts, and how they act as social networks to connect those in prison with friends and family — Laura Whitten, 35, woke up, rolled over and grabbed her phone, snapping a selfie in bed beside her dog.| Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac: |
A security researcher who has shared iOS flaws before demos a macOS Keychain exploit, won't share details with Apple because of the lack of a macOS bug bounty — Security researcher Linuz Henze has shared a video demonstration of what is claimed to be a macOS Mojave exploit to access passwords stored in the Keychain.| Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: |
Report: some iPhone apps use Glassbox's analytics SDK to record in-app user interactions without permission, and recordings sometimes don't mask sensitive data — And there's no way a user would know — Many major companies, like Air Canada, Hollister and Expedia, are recording every tap and swipe you make on their iPhone apps.| Nico Grant / Bloomberg: |
Inside Oracle's ad software arm Data Cloud, built with ~$3B of acquisitions since 2014, that has reported disappointing financials and seen layoffs — Oracle Corp. has spent five years and billions of dollars getting really good at following people around the internet.| Ryan Felton / Consumer Reports: |
Survey of 110 hospitals and five agencies from 47 US cities: 1,500+ e-scooter-related injuries since late 2017; quick spread of e-scooters surprised some cities — A Consumer Reports investigation finds 1,500 e-scooter injuries across the country, and many hospitals still don't track them| Motherboard: |
Inside the illicit world of “iCloud unlocking”, where cybercriminals trick iPhone owners or Apple staff into removing iCloud accounts to resell iPhones — In a novel melding of physical and cybercrime, hackers, thieves, and even independent repair companies are finding ways to “unlock iCloud” from iPhones.| Patrick Howell O'Neill / Gizmodo: |
If Reddit lands a $150M Tencent investment, they'd make strange bedfellows: Tencent helps build the Great Firewall; Reddit's product, banned in China, is speech — Who really thinks about where the money is coming from as long as you get the money? — Reddit is about to get a huge new round …
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.
Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards. Build once, iterate for years.
The Zoho Sign app for Microsoft Windows — Zoho Sign is a trusted platform for digital signatures, helping businesses of every size send, sign, and manage documents with speed, security, and legal confidence.
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.
This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:15 AM ET, February 7, 2019.
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.
| Angelica LaVito / CNBC: |
| Manish Singh / VentureBeat: |
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