Techmeme
May 12, 2019, 7:40 PM

Top News

Campbell Robertson / New York Times:
Non-profit Mined Minds came into West Virginia promising to teach miners and others coding skills and get them well paid jobs, but left many of them worse off  —  Mined Minds came into West Virginia espousing a certain dogma, fostered in the world of start-ups and TED Talks.  Students found an erratic operation.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
As it ponders Facebook fines, FTC must seek regulation forcing Facebook to make its social graph truly portable, letting users export friend lists to other apps  —  FTC must pave the path to competition  —  Choice for consumers compels fair treatment by corporations.
Andreessen Horowitz:
Enterprise startups should not rely on data network effects as a defensive moat and should focus on and invest in long-term defensibility from other areas  —  Data has long been lauded as a competitive moat for companies, and that narrative's been further hyped with the recent wave of AI startups.
New York Times:
Researchers link a network of far right, far left sites and social media accounts trying to manipulate EU elections to the infrastructure Russia used in 2016  —  LONDON — Less than two weeks before pivotal elections for the European Parliament, a constellation of websites and social media accounts linked …
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
At I/O, Google killed the Nest platform and shattered the Google/Nest privacy firewall, saddling many existing users with a dead-end ecosystem of products  —  The Nest ecosystem is dead.  Nest accounts are dead.  Nest's privacy firewall is dead.  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Life360, an SF-based developer of a family tracking app, went public in Australia on Friday because, CEO says, late-stage US investors don't offer “clean terms”  —  KEY POINTS  — Life360, a San Francisco social company backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists …
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Amazon's recent pledge of $800M to make next-day delivery the new standard is pressuring rivals to increase their investments in logistics startups to compete  —  - Flexe and Dolly are lining up backing for national expansions  — Several of the upstarts are led by former Amazon executives
Nick Clegg / New York Times:
Facebook responds to Chris Hughes, says it is not a monopoly and has robust competition in all areas it operates, reiterates its call for more regulation  —  Dismantling our company won't fix what's wrong with social media.  —  Mr. Clegg is Facebook's vice president for global affairs and communications.
Kevin McLaughlin / The Information:
AI startup Clarifai laid off around 20% of its staff of around 100 employees, including the product manager who led its work on DoD's Project Maven contract  —  Clarifai, a six-year old artificial intelligence software startup, laid off around 20% of its staff of around 100 employees on Tuesday …
Tiffany Hsu / New York Times:
Loyalty programs, which are collecting vast amounts of personal data, are easy to join and often have flimsy passwords, making them very attractive to hackers  —  The punch cards stuffed in your wallet know next to nothing about you, except maybe how many frozen yogurts you still need to buy to get a free one.
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Earlier Picks

Dan Primack / Axios:
Heather Somerville / Reuters:
Simina Pasat / The GitHub Blog: