Techmeme
February 18, 2017, 7:15 PM

Top News

Emily Tan / Campaign UK:
YouTube will discontinue 30-second unskippable ads in 2018  —  Starting next year, YouTube will stop allowing the 30-second unskippable ad and will focus instead on shorter formats.  YouTube to stop 30-second unskippable ads In an official statement, Google explained that its aim is to provide …
Kevin J. Delaney / Quartz:
Bill Gates supports taxing the use of robots to slow the spread of automation and to finance other employment  —  Robots are taking human jobs.  But Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies' use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment.
Stephen Hall / 9to5Google:
Source leaks hands-on pics and specs of LG G6: always-on display, Snapdragon 821, 4GB of RAM, 3,200 mAh battery, base 32GB of expandable storage  —  The LG G6 is far from being a secret at this point, with LG itself going as far as to confirm its ‘FullVision’ 18:9 5.7-inch display …
Paul Lienert / Reuters:
Sources: GM plans to deploy thousands of self-driving Chevrolet Bolts in test fleets in 2018, most of them in partnership with Lyft  —  General Motors Co plans to deploy thousands of self-driving electric cars in test fleets in partnership with ride-sharing affiliate Lyft Inc, beginning in 2018 …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Q&A with Bill Gates on his work as an adviser to Microsoft, the evolution of the company, and his focus on natural language processing and virtual assistants  —  It has been nearly a decade since Bill Gates left his day-to-day role at Microsoft, but he still has a connection to the company …
Liana B. Baker / Reuters:
Sources: SoftBank is considering renewing T-Mobile US merger talks in April, may cede control of Sprint  —  Japan's SoftBank Group Corp is prepared to give up control of Sprint Corp to Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile US Inc to clinch a merger of the two U.S. wireless carriers, according to people familiar with the matter.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Q&A with Sonos' CEO on his plans to integrate assistants from firms like Amazon and Google  —  A conversation with Patrick Spence  —  It's a weird time for Sonos — and not because it recently got a new CEO.  That transition seems to have happened without much drama …
Josh Freedman / Quartz:
How residents producing and selling goods sold on Alibaba's eBay-like marketplace Taobao is helping to eliminate poverty in over 1,000 Chinese villages  —  Daiji township, a dusty collection of villages in China's central heartland plains, is an unlikely candidate to be one of the country's leading e-commerce hubs.
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook:
Open letter outlining Facebook's attempts to build a more inclusive community, including improving tools for reporting abuse, squashing misleading stories, more  —  On our journey to connect the world, we often discuss products we're building and updates on our business.

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