Techmeme
November 1, 2016, 7:50 PM

Top News

Mike Jazayeri / The Keyword:
Google's Daydream VR headset is coming to stores in US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia on November 10, available to pre-order now  —  Last month, we announced Daydream View, a comfortable and easy-to-use virtual reality headset and controller powered by any Daydream-ready phone.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram to test window shopping, will partner with 20 brands so users can research and price products, but will send users to retailer's sites for purchases  —  Instagram wants you to shop without always having to interrupt your scrolling with a browser window.
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Pinterest makes Instapaper's premium features free, previously $3/month; features include full text search on all articles, speed reading, text-to-speech, more  —  Nearly three months after being acquired by Pinterest, Instapaper is making some changes that will impact its users.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Lenovo starts shipping Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, the first Google Tango phone, for $499  —  The Lenovo Phab 2 Pro is shipping now  —  If it weren't for Pokémon Go, augmented reality might have stayed another forlorn futurist technology the public paid little attention to.
Michael Tsai:
A roundup of the mostly negative reactions to the new MacBook Pros and the current state of the Mac by creative professionals and developers  —  I was really disappointed with today's Apple event.  It seems like Apple has either lost its way, that it has lost touch with what (some of) …
Napier Lopez / The Next Web:
Twitter adds Welcome Messages and Quick Replies to DMs to improve businesses' customer service response times  —  For all the talk of doom and gloom regarding Twitter's future, there are some things the platform does better than anyone.  Recently it's been strengthening its position …
Stefan Nicola / Bloomberg:
YouTube strikes deal with German royalty-collection group Gema, ending seven years of legal battles and unblocking thousands of music videos in the country  —  @StefanNicolaBBG More stories by Stefan Nicola  —  Video service to pay licensing fees for clips shown in Germany
Se Young Lee / Reuters:
Samsung Electronics says it's investing $1B+ by the end of June 2017 to boost system chip production at its Austin, Texas facilities to meet growing demand  —  Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Tuesday it plans to invest more than $1 billion by end-June 2017 to boost production of system chips …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Minecraft: Education Edition launches in 50 countries and 11 different languages; game costs $5 per user annually or less through volume licensing  —  Following months of testing and free trials for early adopters, Microsoft announced this morning that its learning-focused version …
Selina Wang / Bloomberg:
Alibaba creates new digital media company, Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group, to consolidate media assets, announces $1.48B fund for new projects  —  Yu Yongfu, of UCWeb, will become CEO of new group under Zhang  —  Breaking out media assets is part of transparency efforts

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:
Do you need a Zoho Partner?  Here's why working with one can benefit you.  —  Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case.  From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …
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

Hard Fork:
Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight
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.
Great Chat:
Tech's short-term era
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.
Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback
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.
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 7:50 PM ET, November 1, 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

Earlier Picks

Andrew M Harris / Bloomberg:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica UK:
Kurt Wagner / Recode: