Techmeme
October 24, 2017, 5:40 AM

Top News

Alex Hern / The Guardian:
Facebook testing News Feed change in six countries, moving non-promoted posts from Pages to a secondary feed, decreasing engagement for some media  —  New system could destroy smaller publishers if implemented, after journalists report drop in organic reach - but users will still see their friends' posts
Adam Mosseri / Facebook Media:
Facebook says its News Feed test is about emphasis of personal stories, no plans to expand to more countries or ask publishers to pay for all distribution  —  There have been a number of reports about a test we're running in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Microsoft drops suit against the US DoJ after the department announced new policy to limit the use gag orders by prosecutors for accessing customer data  —  Microsoft says it's dropping a suit against the U.S. Justice Department that targeted a tactic commonly used by prosecutors …
Tom Dotan / The Information:
Sources: Snap overestimated demand for Spectacles, has hundreds of thousands of unsold units in warehouses; Evan Spiegel previously said sales beat expectations  —  Snap badly overestimated demand for its Spectacles and now has hundreds of thousands of unsold units sitting in warehouses …
Michael Balsamo / Associated Press:
FBI Director Christopher Wray says in first 11 months of fiscal year, agents were unable to unlock over half the mobile devices it tried to access, over 6,900+  —  PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The FBI hasn't been able to retrieve data from more than half of the mobile devices it tried to access in less than a year …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft Azure customers can now run workloads on Cray supercomputers  —  Microsoft and Cray are teaming to give Azure customers with data-intentsive HPC, AI workloads access to Cray supercomputers running in select Microsoft datacenters.  —  Microsoft and Cray are enabling Azure customers …
Jordan Pearson / Motherboard:
A second Bitcoin fork expected to take place within days for Bitcoin Gold; new code to be released to public Nov. 1  —  When a group of Bitcoin users and companies split the digital currency into two different versions in August, it was an unprecedented event in the technology's nine-year history.
Bloomberg:
Cisco to buy telecommunications software company BroadSoft for ~$1.9B to expand further into software and cloud services  —  Cisco Systems Inc. agreed to buy BroadSoft Inc. for about $1.9 billion to expand further into software and cloud services.  —  Cisco will pay $55 a share in cash …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
FTC failed in allowing Facebook to acquire Instagram, WhatsApp; it should intervene on tbh, regardless of whether the purchase price is enough to mandate review  —  There was one line in TechCrunch's report about Facebook's purchase of social app tbh [sic] that made me raise my eyebrows (emphasis mine):
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Snapchat updates iOS app with link sharing from other apps, introduces temporary opt-out options for Snap Map  —  Snapchat is embracing links beyond its native content and will now allow you to briefly disappear from its Snap Map.  In an update to Snapchat's iOS apptoday, Snap began rolling out two important new features.
Stan Higgins / CoinDesk:
E-sports betting startup Unikrn, backed by Mark Cuban, raises $31M in ICO; Unikoin Gold token to act as a medium of exchange for bettors to use on the platform  —  E-sports betting startup Unikrn has raised roughly $31 million in an initial coin offering.  —  The firm collected 112,720 ethers …
More: Quartz
Jason Del Rey / Recode:
Amazon to shut down its five-year-old Amazon Wine business December 31, 2017, but will still offer wine via Amazon Fresh, Prime Now, and Whole Foods Markets  —  Amazon Wine will close up shop at the end of this year.  —  Amazon notified wine sellers on Monday that the company would shut …

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

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.
Training Data:
Chai Discovery's Bitter Lesson: Drug Design Is Another Scaling Problem
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:
Gavin Baker - AI Market Jitters
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 5:40 AM ET, October 24, 2017.

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

Kim Zetter / The Intercept:

Earlier Picks

Saqib Shah / Engadget: