Techmeme
January 16, 2020, 7:40 PM

Top News

Brad Smith / The Official Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft pledges to be carbon negative by 2030, remove all carbon it has ever emitted by 2050, and launch a $1B climate innovation fund  —  The scientific consensus is clear.  The world confronts an urgent carbon problem.  The carbon in our atmosphere has created a blanket of gas that traps heat and is changing the world's climate.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Facebook puts off its effort to build ads into WhatsApp as it focuses on B2C communications, but will sell ads in WhatsApp's Status at some point  —  Social-media giant scraps earlier strategy, seeks other ways to monetize messaging service used by 1.5 billion
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
NBC says Peacock will launch on July 15 and have a free tier with limited programming and two premium tiers, at $4.99/month with ads and $9.99/month with no ads  —  Comcast is introducing three different subscription tiers  —  NBCUniversal's streaming service, Peacock …
Joe Tidy / BBC:
Following a BBC investigation, Twitter apologizes for letting ads be micro-targeted using keywords like “transphobic”, “white supremacists”, and “anti-gay”  —  Twitter has apologised for allowing adverts to be micro-targeted at certain users such as neo-Nazis, homophobes and other hate groups.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
New report finds Twitch viewership dropped 9.8% in Q4 compared with Q3 after its top streamers left, YouTube Gaming Live hours watched increased 46% over 2019  —  The loss of several big-name streamers is finally taking its toll on Twitch, according to a new report from StreamLabs and Newzoo out today.
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
New York Times:
Turkey lifted a two-and-a-half year ban on Wikipedia on Wednesday, restoring access after the country's top court ruled that blocking it was unconstitutional  —  The country's top court had ruled that the move was unconstitutional.  —  The Turkish government lifted a two-and-a-half-year ban …
Rachel Metz / CNN:
How the increasing use of AI to vet job applications is forcing career counselors at universities to prepare students on how to impress the AI algorithms  —  San Francisco (CNN)College career centers used to prepare students for job interviews by helping them learn how to dress appropriately or write a standout cover letter.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Bose to close all 119 of its retail stores in N. America, Europe, Japan, and Australia due to the shift to online shopping but will maintain stores elsewhere  —  The move will result in hundreds of employees being laid off  —  Bose plans to close its entire retail store footprint in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Yolanda Redrup / Australian Financial Review:
Australia-based hotel booking tech company SiteMinder raises A$100M at a valuation of A$1.1B, says it now has 35,000 hotels worldwide as clients  —  Hotel booking tech company SiteMinder has become the country's newest $1 billion tech unicorn, banking more than $100 million in capital …
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
How spyware from eSurv, which was helping police hack suspects' phones in Italy, was allegedly used by its employees to hack the phones of innocent Italians  —  After successfully creating a health care app for doctors to view medical records, Diego Fasano, an Italian entrepreneur …
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:
As tech becomes the dominant force in the modern economy, Silicon Valley's culture since 1970s of nimble startups successfully challenging incumbents is fading  —  For decades, whole regions, nations even, have tried to model themselves on a particular ideal of innovation, the lifeblood of the modern economy.

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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.
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The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
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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.
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Great Chat:
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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.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
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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.
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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.
 

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More News

Adam Bluestein / Marker:
Tom Schmidt / Dragonfly Research:
Kim Hart / Axios:

Earlier Picks

Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Alan Boyle / GeekWire:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
James Vincent / The Verge:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: