Techmeme
December 13, 2017, 6:15 PM

Top News

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
T-Mobile is acquiring Denver-based TV tech company Layer3 TV and says it will launch its own wireless TV service to compete with Comcast, others, in 2018  —  T-Mobile says it will launch its own TV service in 2018, expanding its competitive focus beyond the U.S. wireless giants to target major cable …
Nate Raymond / Reuters:
Unsealed court documents show three men have plead guilty to creating the 2016 Mirai botnet that disrupted access to major internet platforms  —  (Reuters) - A former Rutgers University student and two other men have agreed to plead guilty to computer crimes related to the creation and use …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Patreon CEO Jack Conte says the company will “press pause” on planned change to service fee for each pledge, set to start Dec. 18, after uproar from creators  —  Patreon has called off plans to add a service fee to patrons' pledges, a proposed update that angered many users.
Jason Del Rey / Recode:
Target says it plans to acquire grocery delivery platform Shipt for $550M in cash and will run it as independent unit; Shipt has 170 staff and has raised $65M  —  Target will offer same-day delivery from half of its stores by summer.  —  Another domino just fell in the wake of the Amazon-Whole Foods acquisition.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google says it's bringing Assistant to tablets running Android 6.0+ and phones running Android 5.0+ in US, UK, India, Australia, and elsewhere  —  The Google Assistant, Google's take on Siri, Cortana and Alexa without the approachable name, has long been available on most modern phones and tablets.
Josh Lipton / CNBC:
Apple awards $390M from its $1B Advanced Manufacturing Fund to Finisar, which makes laser chips used in iPhone X and AirPods for depth and proximity sensing  —  - Apple is investing $390 million into Finisar, which makes chips used by Apple products for depth and proximity sensing.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Microsoft updates Bing with improved conversational search, Intelligent Image Search, ability to better surface different viewpoints, Reddit partnership, more  —  At a special AI-focused event today in San Francisco, Microsoft announced a number of feature updates to Bing that it hopes …
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Google says it's opening an artificial intelligence research center in Beijing, its first in China  —  Google has officially announced that it is opening an AI center in Beijing, China.  —  The confirmation comes after months of speculation fueled by a major push to hire AI talent inside the country.
Sahil Patel / Digiday:
Sources: Facebook plans to end program that paid ~300 publishers and other content creators to produce videos for News Feed  —  Multiple publisher sources said Facebook no longer plans to pay publishers and other video makers to produce videos for the news feed.
David D. Kirkpatrick / New York Times:
Kim Willsher / The Guardian:
French government moves to ban smartphone use in primary, junior, and middle schools, affecting children age 6-15, starting in September 2018  —  Pupils, teachers and parents seem less than convinced by measure prohibiting use in primary, junior and middle schools
Johana Bhuiyan / Recode:
Uber says its head of driver product, Aaron Schildkrout, is leaving the company after three years, as the firm concludes its 180-day driver improvement campaign  —  Aaron Schildkrout joined Uber in 2015.  —  Uber's head of driver product, Aaron Schildkrout, is leaving the company after three years.
Tweets: @ericnewcomer

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Automate your scheduling workflows with Zoho Calendar  —  Your calendar can do more than schedule meetings Creating a calendar event takes only a few seconds.  But scheduling is rarely just about creating the event.
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:
AI Doom Backlash Arrives, Anthropic & OpenAI IPO Outlook, Frontier Business Momentum Slows
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Sources:
Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
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.
Training Data:
Box's Aaron Levie: On Reinventing Yourself in the AI Age and Enterprise Diffusion
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.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Andrew Feldman from Cerebras
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:15 PM ET, December 13, 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

Jon Russell / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Reuters:
Jeff Benjamin / 9to5Mac: