Techmeme
August 20, 2015, 6:50 AM

Top News

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Ashley Madison's data breach could have profound consequences for users and will likely be catastrophic for the company  —  The mind-bending messiness of the Ashley Madison data dump  —  Massive data breaches have become so routine as to become background noise.
Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed:
Ashley Madison's $19 ‘Full Delete’ Option Made The Company Millions  —  The hacked cheating site sold peace of mind to tens of thousands of users.  —  Ashley Madison, the hacked affairs site, made nearly $2 million dollars off of its so-called “Full Delete” function in 2014, according to private company documentation leaked yesterday.
Yevgeniy Sverdlik / Data Center Knowledge:
Lightning strikes Google Compute Engine data center in Belgium; services disrupted and 0.000001% of data lost  —  Lightning in Belgium Disrupts Google Cloud Services  —  Not even the mighty Google data centers are immune from acts of god it turns out.  —  A series of successive lightning strikes …
TechCrunch:
Here Are The 52 Startups That Launched At Y Combinator Summer 2015 Demo Day 2  —  Hardware was the clear-cut theme of Day 1, but Demo Day 2 of Y Combinator's Summer 2015 was a bit more... eclectic.  Moving services!  Streaming services!  Hotel booking, augmented reality, esports!
More: MediaNama
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Alex Rampell, co-founder and former CEO of TrialPay which was acquired by Visa this year, joins Andreessen Horowitz as general partner  —  With an Eye on Fintech, Andreessen Horowitz Adds a New General Partner  —  The leaders of Andreessen Horowitz believe that experience is the best teacher.
Sam Biddle / Gawker:
Snapchat lost $128M and generated only $3M in revenue between January and November of 2014, according to leaked financials  —  Snapchat Lost a Ton of Money Last Year  —  In 2013, teenage attention-pit Snapchat turned down a $3 billion buyout offer from Facebook, which is only not an insane …
Jonathan Shapiro / Sydney Morning Herald:
Apple launches “benchmark-sized” Australian dollar corporate bond issue, orders pass $1.2B in under two hours  —  Apple launches iBonds in Australia  —  US technology giant Apple has formally launched a ‘benchmark’ sized Australian dollar corporate bond issue, its first ever sale in the currency.
More: 9to5MacTweets: @mattyglesias and @johnnyshap

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:
App Spotlight: MessageWhiz SMS for Zoho CRM  —  App Spotlight brings you hand-picked solutions that enhance your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all of our apps, integrations …
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:
Big Tech's Insane Hidden AI Spending, Ranking Anthropic vs. OpenAI, AI For Travel Debate
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:
OpenAI's Two-Week Pause + Jill Lepore on the Threat of the "Artificial State" + Train of Thought
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 $12.5 Billion Lakers, the NFL's TV Fight, and Sports Media's Big Split
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.
Training Data:
Rich Sutton and Khurram Javed: Why AI Models Stop Learning, and How to Start It Again
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:
Ben Thompson on Big Tech, China, and the AI Boom Running Out of Money
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 6:50 AM ET, August 20, 2015.

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

Kevin Tofel / ZDNet:
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Earlier Picks

Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld:
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Cam Bunton / 9to5Mac: