Techmeme
December 21, 2016, 6:05 PM

Top News

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
After Apple accuses Nokia of collusion with two patent trolls in an anti-trust lawsuit, Nokia sues Apple for infringement on 32 patents  —  Nokia today announced that it has filed several complaints against Apple in Germany and the United States, accusing the Cupertino company of infringing on Nokia patents.
Laharee Chatterjee / Reuters:
Honda says it has entered formal talks with Alphabet's Waymo to add self-driving tech to its cars, will provide modified vehicles initially  —  Honda Motor Co Ltd's R&D unit said on Wednesday it has entered into formal talks with Alphabet Inc's Waymo to add self-driving technology to its vehicles.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Nintendo says Super Mario Run was downloaded 40M+ times in its first 4 days of availability, breaking iOS App Store records  —  Nintendo has confirmed what we all knew was likely - Super Mario Run got a lot of downloads at launch.  The company says that the app was downloaded …
Andrew J / The Verge:
Uber debuts several Snapchat filters unlocked in-app which display travel time to destination, the company's logo, more  —  Uber's app just got a lot more snappy  —  Last month, Uber unveiled a totally redesigned and streamlined version of its app that featured a cleaner interface …
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
House Judiciary Committee's Encryption Working Group report says encryption backdoors pose a security threat, siding with tech experts  —  Today, the House Judiciary Committee's Encryption Working Group released its year-end report — and the result is good news for technology companies.
Spencer Woodman / The Verge:
Data mining firm Palantir, co-founded by Trump adviser Peter Thiel, has provided help tracking immigrants for US customs and border authorities  —  Training materials obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center show Palantir has played a role in a far-reaching customs system
Steven Overly / Washington Post:
White House report: AI will lead to long-term growth in productivity and efficiency but will likely lead to millions of job losses in low-skill sectors  —  The growing popularity of artificial intelligence technology will likely lead to millions of lost jobs, especially among less-educated workers …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
eMarketer cuts growth forecasts for US smartwatch market in 2016 from 60% to 25% YoY, citing lack of clear use case  —  Apple may still be claimingthat sales of its Apple Watch are “doing great,” but overall, the wearable device category is failing to grow at the rates forecasted earlier.
Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:
WhatsApp is being used by many immigrants and migrants to stay in touch with family members and friends back home, thanks to its security, simplicity, ubiquity  —  When Facebook bought WhatsApp for more than $19 billion in 2014, Jan Koum, a founder of the messaging company …
Matthew Lynley / TechCrunch:
Owen Bowcott / The Guardian:
EU's top court rules “general and indiscriminate retention” of electronic communications is illegal, possibly opening UK's Snoopers Charter to legal challenges  —  Indiscriminate collection of emails is illegal, court rules in response to challenge originally brought by David Davis
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
AT&T announces Call Protect, a new service for automated blocking of spam calls at network level; feature only available on postpaid iOS and Android devices  —  Today, AT&T introduced a new service for automated blocking of fraud or spam calls.  Dubbed AT&T Call Protect …
Ginny Marvin / Marketing Land:
Verizon “supercookie” partner Turn settles with FTC over privacy violations charges that it continued tracking consumers even after they opted out of tracking  —  The ad tech firm was found continuing to track users even after they opted-out.  —  Turn, which operates …

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:
Introducing Zoho Expense MCP: Turn conversations into expense workflows  —  Artificial intelligence (AI) has already changed how we search for information, summarize documents, and analyze data.
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

Lenny's Podcast:
The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Demis Steps Down, Apple's Memory Problem, Microsoft's Clever Trick
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:
The White House's Secret A.I. Rules + The State of Model Alignment With METR's Chris Painter + The Final Hot Mess Express
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:
Oliver Darcy on Status, Bari Weiss, and Why Media Reporters Are Too Soft
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 6:05 PM ET, December 21, 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

Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
Chris Welch / The Verge: