Techmeme
February 20, 2018, 7:35 AM

Top News

Sheera Frenkel / New York Times:
Fact-checking the tweetstorm by Facebook VP of ads Rob Goldman on the Mueller indictment and Facebook's role in election interference by Russia  —  Rob Goldman, Facebook vice president for ads, tweeted about Russia's disinformation effort.  President Trump then cited him.  We fact-checked Mr. Goldman.
Nicholas Thompson / Wired:
Sources: Rob Goldman apologized internally at Facebook for his tweetstorm about Russian interference, saying “I conveyed my view poorly”  —  ON FRIDAY MORNING, just before 10am on the West Coast, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller published his indictment of 13 Russian operatives …
Mishaal Rahman / xda-developers:
Nuance discontinues Swype keyboards for iOS and Android after buying Swype for $100M in 2011, says it will focus on AI for businesses instead  —  For the longest time, one of the advantages of Android over iOS was the ability to use third-party keyboard apps available on the Play Store.
James Vincent / The Verge:
Research from Alphabet's Verily shows that blood pressure, age, whether someone smokes, and more can be deduced by analyzing scans of patients' retinas with AI  —  Experts say it could provide a simpler way to predict cardiovascular risk  —  Scientists from Google and its health-tech subsidiary Verily …
Nikkei:
Sony and five Japanese taxi operators plan joint venture to develop taxi-hailing system in Japan that uses AI to predict demand  —  Group teams with fleet operators to develop AI-powered dispatching  —  TOKYO — Sony will lead a new Japanese effort to develop a taxi-hailing system …
Mark Wilson / Co.Design:
After opening Snap Store this month, Snap sells special Jordan shoes at LA concert via QR code that sent customers to Snapchat for purchase, shipped same night  —  The social media company is looking at e-commerce as its next big revenue channel, and it's starting with some brand-new Jordans.
Ari Rabinovitch / Reuters:
Israel's OrCam, maker of an eyeglass camera for the visually impaired that can read text aloud and recognize faces, announces $30.4M round at $1B valuation  —  JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's OrCam, which has developed a visual aid for the blind, has completed a funding round that values …
More: Bloomberg and OrCam
Manish Singh:
Wikipedia Zero, which partnered with 97 mobile carriers in 72 countries to provide 800M+ users access to Wikipedia at no data cost, is being discontinued  —  In an unexpected development, the Wikimedia Foundation announced on Friday that it is discontinuing Wikipedia Zero …

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

Grit:
Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord's product chief | Peter Sellis
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:
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:35 AM ET, February 20, 2018.

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

Usama Jawad / Neowin:

Earlier Picks

Tuomas Forsell / Reuters: