Techmeme
April 17, 2018, 6:50 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to integrate recently acquired magazine app Texture into Apple News and debut its own premium news subscription service next year  —  Company integrating Texture purchase into Apple News offering  —  About 20 Texture staff were cut soon after Apple acquisition
New York Times:
Documents and emails show Cambridge Analytica's plans, now on hold, to debut its own token via ICO to help people store and sell their online personal data  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The embattled voter-profiling firm Cambridge Analytica quietly sought to develop its own virtual currency …
Sarah Skidmore Sell / Associated Press:
The Internal Revenue Service's payment site has been down for much of the day, preventing many Americans from filing taxes electronically  —  Just in time for tax day: the IRS website to make payments is down.  —  The IRS did not have an immediate explanation for the failure.
Shannon Liao / The Verge:
NY AG launches inquiry into cryptocurrency exchanges, sends letter to 13, including Coinbase and Kraken, seeking information on their operations and more  —  New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched an investigation into bitcoin exchanges today, his office announced.
Catalin Cimpanu / BleepingComputer.com:
After Telegram moved some of its infrastructure to AWS and Google Cloud, Russia banned 1.8M Amazon and Google IP addresses, impacting many other online services  —  Roskomnadzor, Russia's telecommunications watchdog, banned today over 1.8 million IP addresses belonging to Amazon and Google's cloud infrastructure.
David E. Sanger / New York Times:
Microsoft, Facebook, 30+ firms pledge to not help states mount cyberattacks against “innocent civilians and enterprises”; Google, Apple, Amazon decline to join  —  WASHINGTON — More than 30 high-tech companies, led by Microsoft and Facebook, plan to announce a set of principles …
Kim Hart / Axios:
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn says she's leaving after 8+ years at the agency, a day after FTC's Terrell McSweeny, also an Obama nominee, announced retirement  —  Long-time Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn announced Tuesday that she will be leaving after more than eight years at the agency.
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Intel unveils two Threat Detection Technology features: letting software scan system memory for malware using integrated GPUs and advanced telemetry tools  —  The company is also using its processors' performance monitoring to detect malicious code.  —  Since the news of the Metldown …
Davey Alba / BuzzFeed:
Sources describe turmoil at Kickstarter under founder and CEO Perry Chen, who retook the top job in March, as ~50 of 120 staff have left, including 7 top execs  —  Since founder Perry Chen took back the reins at Kickstarter, the company has landed in a period of turmoil set in motion …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Based on ARPU, Facebook might have to charge $11-$14 for monthly subscriptions to offset ad revenue, but it would empower users with choice and a sense of value  —  Would it make us love or hate ads?  —  Would being asked to pay Facebook to remove ads make you appreciate their value or resent them even more?
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon quietly launches an Android browser for emerging markets in India, touting it as “fast, lite and private”  —  Amazon has quietly launched an Android web browser app for emerging markets, where access to mobile data and high-speed connectivity is more limited.
Thomas Fox-Brewster / Forbes:
Surveillance firm Terrogence, a US government vendor, has been building a massive facial recognition database from photos on Facebook, YouTube, and other sites  —  When Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica revelations …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Twilio makes its SIM-based Programmable Wireless service for IoT developers generally available  —  For a communications platform like Twilio, getting into wireless always seemed like a logical next move and a year ago, the company did just that with the beta launch of its SIM-based Programmable Wireless service for IoT.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
The quiet power of email marketing to maximize impact for nonprofits  —  A life changed.  A problem solved.  A community strengthened.  A future made a little better than it was yesterday.For nonprofits, that's the metric.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
A quiet investor's $10 billion bet on AI, chips, and defense
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.
Cheeky Pint:
The company building America's uranium supply from scratch
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Grit:
The Difference Between 1% Improvements and 10x Growth | Immad Akhund
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano
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:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
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.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:50 PM ET, April 17, 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

New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Abner Li / 9to5Google:
BBC:
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios: