Techmeme
January 27, 2020, 9:55 AM

Top News

Joseph Cox / VICE:
Documents reveal that Avast has sold its users internet browsing data, through a subsidiary called Jumpshot, to clients like Pepsi, Google, and Microsoft  —  An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
With the launch of Razr pre-orders, Motorola released a video “Caring for razr”, which says “Screen is made to bend; bumps and lumps are normal”  —  Pre-sale begins today  —  Today's the day that the Motorola Razr is available for pre-sale for $1499, exclusively on Verizon.
Shannon Liao / CNN:
Inside game streaming wars, where Ninja reportedly got paid $20M to $30M to move to Mixer and streamers with 10K concurrent views on Twitch can get $10M+ offers  —  New York (CNN Business)When Jeremy Wang started streaming on Twitch in 2016, he was an unknown twenty-something with a few coding internships under his belt.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Currencycloud raises $80M Series E from Visa, BNP Paribas, and others for cross-border payment APIs that have transferred $50B+ and are used by ~350 companies  —  Sending money from one country to another — either because you are a business paying someone for a service …
Angela Strange / Andreessen Horowitz:
Fintech startups tackling every layer of banking stack, from core tech to KYC/AML, enable startups and companies like Apple to start adding financial services  —  This is an abbreviated version of a presentation I gave live at the a16z Summit in November 2019.  You can watch a video version on YouTube.
Eric Niiler / Wired:
Profile of BlueDot, which uses AI to sift through news reports in 65 languages to detect and warn about infectious disease outbreaks like Wuhan Virus  —  The BlueDot algorithm scours news reports and airline ticketing data to predict the spread of diseases like those linked to the flu outbreak in China.
Gary Marcus / The Gradient:
A critical look at OpenAI's GPT-2 text generation AI and why the knowledge acquired by systems like the GPT-2 has been superficial and unreliable  —  OpenAI's GPT-2 has been discussed everywhere from The New Yorker to The Economist.  What does it really tell us about natural and artificial intelligence?
Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire:
The protest of Amazon's business practices by 340+ staff openly challenges Amazon after two employees say they were threatened with firing over climate activism  —  Amazon employees are responding to threats of termination for their climate advocacy by intentionally violating the company's corporate communications policy.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
US mobile app subscription revenue jumped 21% in 2019 to $4.6B across the top 100 subscription apps in the Google Play and App Store  —  Outside of in-app purchases in mobile games, subscription revenue from non-game apps helped to boost 2019's mobile consumer spend — a figure …
More: Bloomberg

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
5 common AI pitfalls in staffing and how to fix them  —  Staffing teams are turning to AI to keep up with growing hiring demands.  It helps recruiters move faster, handle more applications, and stay on top of their pipelines.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
The art of influence: The single most important skill that AI can't replace | Jessica Fain (Webflow, ex-Slack)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Access:
Live @ Nvidia's nerd Super Bowl, poker takes over tech, and the future of AI banking
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Superapp Ambitions, Jensen on Jobs, Bezos's $100 Billion Automation Fund
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.
Hard Fork:
'A.I.-Washing' Layoffs? + Why L.L.M.s Can't Write Well + Tokenmaxxing
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Social Radars:
Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Everybody Goes Home: How technology is helping prevent wildfires from spreading
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:55 AM ET, January 27, 2020.

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

Times of India:

Earlier Picks

Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: