Techmeme
May 19, 2020, 8:05 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Disney's top streaming exec, Kevin Mayer, resigns to become CEO of TikTok and COO of parent company ByteDance; Disney names Rebecca Campbell as his successor  —  Kevin Mayer will lead the Chinese-owned app for making and sharing short videos, which has exploded in popularity during the pandemic.
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Profile of Rebecca Campbell, Disney's new direct-to-consumer and international chairperson in charge of streaming, including the global expansion of Disney+  —  Rebecca Campbell, whose promotion to Disney's Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer & International on Monday put her in charge of Disney+ …
Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac:
AG Barr says that, “no thanks to Apple”, the FBI succeeded in unlocking the “phones” of the Pensacola gunman, who they found had significant links to Al Qaeda  —  It looks like the most recent contention between the FBI and Apple over device encryption has come to an end …
Richard Speed / The Register:
At an MIT event, Microsoft president Brad Smith says the company was “on the wrong side of history” with open source  —  Tell-all with president Brad Smith reveals Obama warned tech giants that a privacy reckoning was coming  —  Microsoft president Brad Smith (pictured) …
Campbell Kwan / ZDNet:
Sony and Microsoft announce partnership to embed Microsoft Azure AI capabilities onto Sony's new image sensor with built-in AI that was announced last week  —  Sony's image sensor will have Microsoft Azure artificial intelligence capabilities.  —  Sony and Microsoft have joined together …
Oculus:
Oculus says it will start accepting Quest titles that support hand tracking this month and details two new collaboration and productivity apps coming this year  —  We're about to celebrate an exciting milestone: the one-year anniversary of Oculus Quest and Rift S!
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal:
In email to staff, Dara Khosrowshahi says Uber will cut 3,000 more jobs, in addition to the 3,700 that were let go earlier this month, and will close 45 offices  —  The ride-hailing giant also is exploring the sale of noncore businesses  —  Uber Technologies Inc. is cutting several thousand …
David Cohen / Adweek:
Instagram introduces Guides, a feature letting creators curate content on a specific subject, debuting with select accounts focusing on wellness  —  Creators, public figures, organizations and publishers can curate content on a specific subject  —  Instagram introduced a new Guides feature Monday …
Zoe Schiffer / The Verge:
Jack Dorsey has told Square employees they can work from home even after the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders end, following a similar move at Twitter  —  Employees can work remotely even after the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders end  —  Square employees will be able to work from home …
Larry Dignan / ZDNet:
Walmart says it will discontinue Jet.com, which it acquired for $3.3B in 2016, even as Q1 e-commerce sales were up 74%  —  Jet.com was critical to Walmart's e-commerce strategy and omnichannel efforts, but is no longer necessary.  —  Walmart said that its first quarter e-commerce sales …
More: TechCrunch and Business WireTweets: @davezatz

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:
The hidden tax of making employees search, switch, and repeat  —  Employees lose more time to digital friction than organizations often realize.  Searching for information, switching between tools …
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

Hard Fork:
Meta Shifts the Blame + Do Data Center Bans Work? + The Final HatGPT
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.
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.
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 8:05 AM ET, May 19, 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

Ashley Carman / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asian Review:
Sachin Ravikumar / Reuters:
Sam Nussey / Reuters:
Bloomberg: