Techmeme
March 15, 2018, 4:20 AM

Top News

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Ex-Apple employees say Siri was released prematurely, leading to development debates after launch, and that the Siri team was unaware of HomePod until 2015  —  The Information has published an in-depth look at how Siri has transitioned from one of Apple's most promising technologies into a “major problem” for the company.
James Vincent / The Verge:
Google has open sourced the semantic image segmentation model that powers the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL's portrait mode  —  Google's Pixel phone has one hell of a camera, and one of the reasons for this is AI.  Google has used its machine learning talent to squeeze better shots and shooting modes out of a tiny smartphone lens.
Megan Farokhmanesh / The Verge:
Wikimedia says it was unaware of YouTube's plans to use Wikipedia content next to conspiracy videos, amid concerns it could increase article vandalism  —  Well, this is awkward  —  At SXSW yesterday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the platform would start adding information …
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:
SEC charges Theranos, CEO Elizabeth Holmes, and former president Ramesh Balwani with defrauding investors for $700M+; Theranos and Holmes have settled  —  Holmes Stripped of Control of Company for Defrauding Investors  —  The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Silicon Valley …
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Google's new Maps platform for games gives developers access to real-time Google Maps data, an SDK for Unity, and a new API to use real-world locations in games  —  The first wave of games includes Jurassic World and The Walking Dead  —  There's been a wave of location-based mobile games …
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Lyft to develop and manufacture autonomous car systems with Canadian auto supplier Magna; Magna making $200M equity investment in Lyft, now valued at $11.7B  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The ride-hailing service Lyft has agreed to alliances with just about anyone working on driverless car technology.
Allison Linn / The AI Blog:
Microsoft says it has trained AI that can match human performance in translating news from Chinese to English  —  A team of Microsoft researchers said Wednesday that they believe they have created the first machine translation system that can translate sentences of news articles from Chinese …
Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:
Leaked docs: by early 2017, Amazon's US audience for all Prime Video programming was ~26M, its top TV shows drew 5M+ people worldwide to Prime membership  —  (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's top television shows drew more than 5 million people worldwide to its Prime shopping club by early 2017 …
Kevin Draper / New York Times:
Sources: NYC's Madison Square Garden has quietly used facial-recognition technology to bolster security and identify those entering the building  —  Madison Square Garden has quietly used facial-recognition technology to bolster security and identify those entering the building …
More: Quartz and Gizmodo

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Renae Merle / Washington Post:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Rory Cellan-Jones / BBC:
Bloomberg:
Bloomberg:
Sarah Nassauer / Wall Street Journal:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat: