Techmeme
January 7, 2016, 12:30 PM

Top News

Biz Carson / Business Insider:
Sources: Yahoo to lay off at least 10%, or 1,000+ of its employees, as early as this month  —  Yahoo is prepping to lay off 10% or more of its workforce  —  Major layoffs will be coming to Yahoo as part of its planned reorganization to get its business back on track.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
David Marcus' plan for Messenger in 2016 as it hits 800M MAUs: eliminate the need for a phone number, build app functionality into chat threads  —  Facebook Messenger Hits 800M Users: 2016 Strategy And Predictions  —  Kill SMS, spawn a chat bot platform, bring friends together offline …
Wall Street Journal:
Amazon's Annapurna Labs to sell its own “Alpine” line of ARM-based chips to other device manufacturers  —  Amazon Enters Semiconductor Business With Its Own Branded Chips  —  Amazon's Annapurna Labs targets customers designing home equipment  —  A secretive Amazon.com Inc. unit broke …
Emily Steel / New York Times:
Netflix launches in 130 additional countries, now available in 190 countries worldwide, excluding China, Crimea, North Korea, and Syria; stock rises 9%  —  At CES, Netflix Adds Over 130 Countries to Streaming Service  —  Netflix went live with its streaming television service …
Jason Del Rey / Re/code:
Hudson's Bay Confirms $250 Million Acquisition of Gilt Groupe  —  Hudson's Bay, the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and other department store chains, has agreed to acquire Gilt Groupe for $250 million in cash, the company announced Thursday morning.  Re/code reported on Wednesday evening …
Federico Viticci / MacStories:
Vidyo, a screen capture tool for iOS that simulates an AirPlay Mirroring connection, available for now in the App Store for $4.99  —  Vidyo, a Screen Recorder for iOS  —  Vidyo, a screen recording utility for iPhone and iPad available at $4.99 on the App Store, seems like one of those apps that will soon be removed by Apple.
Associated Press:
Chinese drone maker Ehang unveils human-carrying electric drone, which can carry up to 220 pounds, fly for 23 minutes at sea level, and reach 63mph  —  Chinese drone maker Ehang (EE'-hang) has unveiled what it calls the world's first drone capable of carrying a human passenger.
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Nextbit announces first wave of GSM Robin smartphones will ship February 16  —  Nextbit's cloud-savvy smartphone ships on February 16th  —  Good news if you've been sitting on pins and needles waiting for Nextbit's Robin smartphone to ship: it's nearly ready for action.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
BlackBerry CEO says the Priv is coming to Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, offers no timeline; John Legere tweeted to confirm arrival on T-Mobile Jan. 26  —  The BlackBerry Priv is coming to Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint  —  BlackBerry's Priv, its Android-powered smartphone with a sliding keyboard …

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:
Update on Node.js vulnerabilities CVE-2026-111497, CVE-2026-105482, CVE-2026-105483 and CVE-2026-106069  —  Overview On October 21, 2026, Node.js announced security releases for the 26.x, 24.x and 22.x release lines to fix multiple vulnerabilities.
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

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.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Sources:
Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:30 PM ET, January 7, 2016.

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

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Shira Ovide / Bloomberg Business:

Earlier Picks

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Owen Williams / The Next Web:
Johana Bhuiyan / BuzzFeed: