Techmeme
October 26, 2019, 1:45 PM

Top News

Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Pentagon awards $10B JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft over Amazon  —  Microsoft has emerged victorious in a dramatic competition for public cloud resources for the U.S. Defense Department, beating out market leader Amazon Web Services, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Greg Bensinger / Washington Post:
In leaked video, Sundar Pichai admits at an all-hands that Google is “genuinely struggling” with employee trust as it defends the hiring of former DHS official  —  At company's weekly town hall with employees, executives assail leaks and defend hiring DHS official
Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE:
Study: researchers say an algorithm widely used in the US healthcare system to assess medical needs for millions of people is biased against black patients  —  A series of studies argue that by focusing on costs as a proxy for health, risk algorithms are ignoring the racial inequalities in healthcare access.
Facebook:
Facebook begins testing Facebook News with a subset of people in the US across four categories of select publishers: general, topical, diverse, and local news  —  Testing a dedicated place for news in the US  —  Journalism plays a critical role in our democracy.
Peter Kafka / Vox:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Sequoia Capital:
Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital, dies at 87  —  Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital and one of the generation of leaders who forged Silicon Valley, died today aged 87 at his home in Woodside, California.  He shaped Sequoia and left his imprint not just on his family and friends …
Meredith Broussard / Slate:
A look at how most database schemas from the 1950s through the 1990s were designed to encode gender as a binary, reinforcing the social norms from that period  —  College student Manahil Bandukwala recently tweeted a complaint about her computer science class.
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Google says it's improving 10% of English searches in the US by using NLP techniques to better understand query context and words' relationship with each other  —  For Google's namesake search engine, delivering the right results is about understanding what people are asking for.
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
Minneapolis-based Total Expert, which makes marketing and customer management SaaS tools for banks, raises $52M Series C, bringing its total raised to $86M  —  It's no secret that the art of customer service in the modern era is something that banks desperately need help with.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
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Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Ask an Expert: How to effectively recover stuck TDS refunds with reduced TDS reconciliation time  —  The 26AS/Form 168 gets updated quarterly and often gets checked only during the time of ITR filing.
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Featured Podcasts

Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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Invest Like the Best:
Andrew Huberman - The Frontier of Neurotechnology
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Big Technology Podcast:
Who Wins The AI Assistant Wars? + Why Didn't Google Build Muse?
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Sources:
Reflection's founders on building a DeepSeek of the West
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.
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Grit:
How Vercel Is Rethinking Go-to-Market With AI | COO Jeanne Grosser
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
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Lenny's Podcast:
OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again) | Tibo Sottiaux
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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More News

Don Clark / New York Times:
Sean O'Kane / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Reuters:
Jay Peters / The Verge: