Techmeme
August 14, 2014, 6:40 PM

Top News

Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Ask.com Buys Ask.fm, an Anonymous Q.&A. Start-Up  —  Ask, and ye shall receive.  —  Ask.com, the Oakland, Calif.-based company owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, announced on Thursday it had acquired Ask.fm, a highly popular question-and-answer website.  —  The move signals Ask.com's first significant push into social networking.
Hayley Tsukayama / Washington Post:
Twitter vows to “improve our policies” after Robin Williams' daughter is bullied off the network  —  Twitter has promised to improve and expand its policies after Robin Williams' daughter is bullied off of the social network.  Internet trolls bullied Robin Williams' daughter off of Twitter …
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Spring, David Tisch's Latest Venture, Is Instagram For Shopping  —  For the past year, investor and serial entrepreneur David Tisch has been working with his brother Alan to build an enjoyable way to shop on mobile.  Today, that fruits of that labor springs onto the scene.
Brian R. Fitzgerald / Wall Street Journal:
Tech executives Zuckerberg, Nadella, Costolo, Schiller, and others take “ice bucket challenge” to raise ALS awareness  —  Ice Bucket Challenge: Zuckerberg, Nadella and More  —  The “ice bucket challenge,” a campaign to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) …
BBC:
Berlin bans Uber app citing passenger safety  —  The mobile taxi app Uber has been banned in Berlin by the city's State Department of Civil and Regulatory Affairs.  —  In a statement, the authority said it had banned the app on passenger safety grounds and threatened the firm with a 25,000 euro …
Roger Cheng / CNET:
Motorola plans Sept 4 event to debut Moto 360, Moto X, G sequels  —  The company is hosting an event in Chicago for the eagerly anticipated smartwatch, with an array of other products in tow.  —  Motorola Mobility's Moto 360 smartwatch will finally get its official launch.
Florin T. / PhoneArena:
Meet the 6-inch Samsung Galaxy Mega 2  —  Samsung is getting ready to launch a successor to the Galaxy Mega 5.8 and Galaxy Mega 6.3 from last year: a new device that should be called Galaxy Mega 2.  While we heard about it several times before, it's only now that we get to see what the handset looks like …
Missy Cummings / Wired:
FAA needs to speed up U.S. drone policy development and R&D strategy to compete globally  —  We Need to Reform Our Drone Policies (But This Isn't About Privacy)  —  Last week the United States launched airstrikes on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria using F-18 fighter jets and predator drones.
Kara Swisher / Re/code:
Internet of Bling: Samsung Buys SmartThings for $200 Million  —  Samsung has bought SmartThings, the startup that makes smart-home controllers.  While the companies did not disclose the price, sources said the Korean electronics giant paid about $200 million.
Dave Zatz / Zatz Not Funny!:
Best Buy's smart home hub “Peq”: $9.99 a month for service, hardware bundles start at $120  —  Meet Peq, The Next Smart Home Hub  —  As if we didn't have enough smart home hub entrants, Peq appears poised to launched.  Pronounced “peek”, we believe this newcomer is Best Buy's answer …
Quentyn Kennemer / Phandroid:
Retailer leaks Galaxy Note 4 specs: 4GB of RAM, Snapdragon 805, 4K video and more  —  While it won't be terribly long before Samsung lets us in on their little Samsung Galaxy Note 4 secret, we're eager to find out what's in store for their second half flagship ahead of its September 3rd revelation.

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
OneAuth + iOS 27: Login Smart With The Latest Foundation Model  —  We're used to doing certain things the same way every day.If a sign-in request arrives, we automatically approve or deny.
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

Big Technology Podcast:
A Sober Conversation About AI Existential Risk — With Nate Soares
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Sources:
Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Training Data:
Box's Aaron Levie: On Reinventing Yourself in the AI Age and Enterprise Diffusion
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.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Andrew Feldman from Cerebras
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:40 PM ET, August 14, 2014.

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

Earlier Picks