Techmeme
May 20, 2020, 10:55 AM

Top News

Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Mark Zuckerberg announces Facebook Shops, a free tool that helps businesses easily list products on their Facebook Page, Instagram profile, Stories, or in ads  —  - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Shops, a new e-commerce feature that allows businesses to easily list their products on Facebook and Instagram.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Facebook details the AI behind its shopping experiences, accounting for consumer traits like body type, skin tone, location, socioeconomic class, age, and poses  —  Facebook today announced improvements to the shopping experiences across its platform, including Facebook Shops …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Indian ride-hailing company Ola says it is cutting 1,400 jobs, or 35% of its workforce in the country, as revenue dropped by 95% in the last two months  —  Ola said on Wednesday it is cutting 1,400 jobs in India, or 35% of its workforce in the home market, as the ride-hailing firm works …
Taylor Lyles / The Verge:
Sony says PlayStation Now has 2.2M subscribers and PlayStation Plus has 41M+ subs; Xbox Game Pass had 10M subs and Xbox Live had 90M active users in April  —  PlayStation Plus has amassed over 41 million subscribers, too  —  Sony says 2.2 million people are subscribed to PlayStation Now …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google launches Chrome 83 with updated safety and privacy settings, third-party cookies blocked in Incognito mode, DNS-over-HTTPS support, and new dev features  —  Google today launched Chrome 83 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.  Chrome 83 includes redesigned safety and privacy settings …
Brian Merchant / OneZero:
Google says it won't “build custom AI/ML algorithms to facilitate upstream extraction in the oil and gas industry”, after new Greenpeace report on Big Oil ties  —  A Greenpeace report details Silicon Valley's ties to Big Oil — and spurs Google to take a step toward opting out
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Productivity tool Notion's free tier gets unlimited notes and blocks  —  There's never been a better time to check out the collaborative note-taking app  —  Notion, the workspace and note-taking app, just became much more appealing to individual users.  The company said today that people …
Nick Corasaniti / New York Times:
Profile of the founders of Occupy Democrats, who run a Facebook page employing meme tactics for the left, regularly outperforming pages for Trump and Fox News  —  Occupy Democrats, a Facebook page that Rafael and Omar Rivero started eight years ago, has emerged as a counterweight to right-wing meme machines.
Charlotte Tucker / EU-Startups:
Helsinki-based Happeo, which offers intranet, enterprise social network, and collaboration software to companies, raises €10.9M Series A led by INKEF Capital  —  Today Finnish startup Happeo, an employee communications platform, announces having raised approximately €10.9 million …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft announces Project Reunion, its latest attempt to unify the Windows developer platform by reducing fragmentation between Win32 and UWP APIs  —  At Build 2020 today, Microsoft unveiled Project Reunion, its latest attempt to unify the Windows developer platform by reducing fragmentation …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sara Fischer / Axios:
NYT says it will stop using third-party data to target ads in 2021, building a first-party data platform instead, starting with 45 proprietary audience segments  —  The New York Times will no longer use 3rd-party data to target ads come 2021, executives tell Axios, and it is building out a proprietary first-party data platform.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Microsoft says it acquired Windows task automation startup Softomotive for an undisclosed sum, merging its tools with Microsoft's Power Automate  —  Microsoft today announced that it acquired robotic process automation (RPA) startup Softomotive for an undisclosed sum.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
3 smarter updates for your staffing pipeline  —  Staffing recruiters manage multiple client requirements, large candidate databases, and tight submission deadlines.  Finding suitable candidates is only the first step.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
The Difference Between 1% Improvements and 10x Growth | Immad Akhund
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
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.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
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.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:55 AM ET, May 20, 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

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Ashley Carman / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

EJ Dickson / Rolling Stone:
Karen Weise / New York Times:
Munsif Vengattil / Reuters:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
The Verge:
David Meyer / Fortune: