Techmeme
February 13, 2020, 11:55 AM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
GSMA says it has canceled Mobile World Congress after the coronavirus made it “impossible” to hold the event  —  MWC 2020 is no more  —  The world's biggest phone show, Mobile World Congress, is no longer taking place this year.  After coronavirus threatened to throw MWC into chaos …
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Senator Gillibrand proposes creating a government agency to protect internet privacy, similar to a bill proposed by a pair of California House Democrats  —  - New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand just became the latest lawmaker to propose digital privacy legislation.
Theodore Schleifer / Vox:
Larry Ellison is hosting a fundraiser for Donald Trump next week; while Ellison has consistently backed Republicans, he wasn't a major Trump donor until now  —  Larry Ellison risks blowback from his employees at Oracle.  Phillip Faraone/Getty Images  —  It's the most significant endorsement …
New York Times:
Andy Rubin's Essential Products, which raised $330M to build smartphones and was valued at $1B, says it is ceasing operations  —  The smartphone company founded by Mr. Rubin, a former Google executive, struggled to win over customers.  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Essential Products …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google's Area 120 launches GameSnacks, which offers casual games for low memory devices on 2G and 3G, launching initially in Indonesia on Gojek's GoGames  —  A new project called GameSnacks is launching today from Google's in-house incubator, Area 120, with the goal of bringing fast-loading …
Christina Farr / CNBC:
Sources: Google's scattered health care projects unify under Google Health, which now has over 500 employees and is led by former Geisinger CEO David Feinberg  —  - More than 500 people now work at Google Health, mostly out of the Palo Alto offices formerly occupied by smart home group Nest.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Astranis raises $90M Series B from a16z and others to launch its first commercial satellites through which it wants to provide broadband internet  —  YC-backed Astranis has raised $90 million of new combined debt and equity funding in a Series B round led Venrock, with a sizeable contribution …
Robert Stevens / Decrypt:
Crypto lending and borrowing service BlockFi raises $30M Series B led by Valar Ventures, bringing its total raised to over $100M  —  The latest funding round pushed BlockFi's total funding to over $100 million.  —  Ethereum  —  Crypto lending and borrowing service BlockFi today announced …
More: CoinDesk
Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
Democratic senators propose the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence Act that would place a moratorium on facial recognition use by federal agencies, police  —  Two Democratic U.S. Senators today proposed legislation that requires a moratorium on facial recognition use by federal agencies …
More: Axios
Financial Times:
Facebook says it has banned a network of two dozen fake pages and accounts linked to two Southeast Asian telecoms for using disinformation against rivals  —  South-east Asian providers said to have used fake accounts to discredit rivals  —  Facebook has alleged that one of south-east Asia's …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho connected apps for Google Gemini  —  Note: Now available to organizations in the Indian data center.  Support for other Zoho data centers will be available soon.AI assistants have gotten remarkably …
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

Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas
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.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Big Technology Podcast:
How AI Should Handle News, Politics, Medicine, and Mental Health — With Campbell Brown
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.
Training Data:
Parallel's Parag Agrawal: Building a New Web for AI Agents
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
Neil Movva - Making AI 10x Cheaper
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:55 AM ET, February 13, 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

Sarah Holder / CityLab:

Earlier Picks

Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE:
Zeke Faux / Bloomberg:
Data Protection Commission:
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Alex Hern / The Guardian: