Techmeme
August 20, 2015, 3:25 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft's Surface Pro 4, Band 2, and new Lumias set for October launch event  —  Microsoft is planning to hold a massive hardware launch event in October.  Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell The Verge that the software giant will use the event to unveil two new Lumia handsets, the Surface Pro 4, and a Microsoft Band 2.
Samuel Gibbs / Guardian:
UK data protection watchdog gives Google 35 days to remove links to news stories about right to be forgotten link removals  —  Google ordered to remove links to stories about ‘right to be forgotten’ removals  —  UK data protection watchdog orders search engine to remove search result links …
Joseph Cox / Motherboard:
Ashley Madison hackers post new 20GB archive that appears to include company emails and internal documents  —  Hackers Dump More Ashley Madison Data  —  Over the past few days, people have been digging through 10GB of data apparently sourced from the extramarital dating site Ashley Madison, and its parent site Avid Life Media.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Jordan Novet / VentureBeat:
Bing for Android update beats Google On Tap to the punch, offering information and actions based on what's on screen when you hold down the home button  —  Microsoft beats Google to the punch: Bing for Android update does what Now on Tap will do  —  Microsoft today is introducing a major …
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
96.8 percent of new smartphones sold are either iPhone or Android devices  —  The latest quarterly smartphone sales data from Gartner is out today, and it tells a very familiar story.  BlackBerry keeps shrinking, Microsoft is stagnating, and Google and Apple are tightening their already dominant grip over the entire market.
James Vincent / The Verge:
Sony's SmartBand 2 monitors heart rate, is waterproof, will be available in September for $132  —  Sony's SmartBand 2 will monitor your heart rate and field your calls  —  Sony has officially unveiled its SmartBand 2 after accidentally publishing details about the activity tracker earlier this year.
Maeve Duggan / Pew Internet:
Pew: 70% of Facebook users log in daily, 36% of smartphone owners use messaging apps, Instagram and other social sites see increase in engagement  —  Mobile Messaging and Social Media 2015  —  In today's world, people — particularly young people — are continually finding and adapting …
Myles Udland / Business Insider:
Twitter falls below its original IPO price of $26 after dropping more than 5% today  —  Twitter's IPO buyers are officially underwater  —  Investors who bought Twitter's public debut are officially underwater.  —  On Thursday, shares of Twitter fell below $26 — the level where Twitter shares priced …
More: Bloomberg BusinessTweets: @nikogeorge
Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:
ZocDoc valued at $1.8B after raising $130M round that closed in July  —  ZocDoc Valued at $1.8 Billion in New Funding Round … Online doctor-appointments service ZocDoc Inc. is now one of New York's most highly valued, venture-backed companies after raising $130 million in funding.
Garett Sloane / Digiday:
Sources: Google, Yahoo, and Bing test promoted video ads in search results  —  ‘A gusher of money’: Google testing video ads in search results, industry sources say  —  Google is testing promoted video ads in search results, a format that could bring more brand dollars to marketing there …
Liam Tung / ZDNet:
Infinix's $90 Hot 2, with a 5-inch display, 1GB RAM, and 16GB storage, is the first smartphone to launch in Africa as a part of Google's Android One program  —  Google expands Android One to six countries in Africa with $90 Hot 2  —  Ahead of Google's major reset of Android One …

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

Big Technology Podcast:
Software's Epic Comeback, Meta's AI Layoffs Blunder, South Korea Stock Market Chaos
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:
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.
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 3:25 PM 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

Earlier Picks

Yevgeniy Sverdlik / Data Center Knowledge: