Techmeme
April 19, 2018, 8:30 PM

Top News

Cameron Johnson / Netflix Media Center:
Netflix launches vertical preview videos for mobile, each about 30 seconds long, on iOS now and coming soon to Android; users can swipe to see next preview  —  One of the best ways to know if you'll like a new series or movie is to watch a quick trailer.  Today, we are excited …
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Google's App Engine can no longer be used for domain-fronting, which let services use its network to avoid state-level internet blocks  —  Domain-fronting is now a thing of the past  —  App developers won't be able to use Google to get around internet censorship anymore.
Bloomberg:
An investigation of data-mining company Palantir, cofounded by Peter Thiel, which works with government agencies and law enforcement to help track US citizens  —  Peter Thiel's data-mining company is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens.  The scary thing?  Palantir is desperate for new customers.
David Ingram / Reuters:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon introduces Alexa Blueprints that let anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses without coding  —  Amazon this morning is introducing “Alexa Blueprints,” a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple open sources FoundationDB core, three years after acquiring the database company  —  Apple owned-company FoundationDB today announced that the FoundationDB core has been open sourced with the goal of building an open community with all major development done in the open.
Stephen Schenck / Android Police:
New budget Moto handsets: €250 G6 with dual cameras and USB-C, bigger €300 G6 Plus, €200 G6 Play with larger battery, €150 E5, €170 E5 Plus, and E5 Play  —  For smartphone fans who enjoy a good spoiler, we started the year off with a pretty substantial one …
Ryan Faughnder / Los Angeles Times:
Sources: Netflix has considered buying movie theaters in New York and Los Angeles; it decided not to pursue LA-based Landmark Theatres due to high price  —  Netflix, the global streaming giant that has dramatically changed the TV industry and clashed with movie theater owners …
Bloomberg:
Interview with Jeff Wilke, who runs Amazon's worldwide consumer division and has been Bezos' right-hand man for 18 years, on its usage of USPS and more  —  Retail chief Jeff Wilke talks about the company's AI ambitions and downplays Trump concerns.  —  Donald Trump has hammered Amazon.com …
Chloe Cornish / Financial Times:
Interview with Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's 24-year-old founder, on his “weird” 2017, which saw ether's market cap reach $125B+, the broader crypto market, more  —  Up in San Francisco's Monterey Heights district stands a modest detached house; a house that would be perfectly ordinary …
Becky Peterson / Business Insider:
Filings show Qualcomm's layoffs will happen on or around June 19, will impact ~1,231 employees at its San Diego HQ, 269 in its San Jose and Santa Clara offices  —  - Qualcomm will layoff a total of 1,500 employees across its San Diego and Bay Area locations, according to WARN filings with the state of California.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Lyft announces “multimillion-dollar” initiative to invest in environmental projects as it hopes to offset 1M+ metric tons of carbon in the first year  —  The plan is to offset over a million metric tons of carbon  —  Lyft announced a multimillion-dollar investment to become …

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.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Zoho WorkDrive named a Leader in the Nucleus Research CSC Technology Value Matrix 2026  —  Enterprise content management is evolving rapidly with about 80% of the data unstructured.  The growing challenge is not about storing information anymore.
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:
OpenAI's Bots Break Containment and Hack Hugging Face Autonomously — With Alex Stamos
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.
Great Chat:
Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Substack Wants To Become A Social Network; Beehiiv Wants To Stay Invisible
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:
Factory's Matan Grinberg: The Coming 'Dark Factory' Where Software Builds Itself
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:
Matthew Smith — Natural Gas: The Next Bottleneck
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 8:30 PM ET, April 19, 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

Pew Research Center:
Stef W. Kight / Axios:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Aaron Tilley / The Information:
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: