Techmeme: How Slack has made its US workforce more diverse than other Silicon Valley companies by forgoing a diversity chief and focusing on hiring efforts from the start (Jessica Nordell/The Atlantic)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News

April 29, 2018, 4:00 AM

Top News

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:

Eric Lundgren is going to prison for counterfeiting labels, not software; judges may not know the difference, but Microsoft does and still helped prosecute him — In a sickening concession to bad copyright law and Microsoft's bottom line over basic technical truths and common sense …

More: TechCrunch, The Verge, and Techdirt

Tweets: @ifixit, @trendless, @tdierks, @ceomrgreen, and @kantrn

Frank X. Shaw / Microsoft on the Issues:

Microsoft defends its role in the conviction of e-waste recycler Eric Lundgren, says he was counterfeiting Windows software in China and importing it to the US — In the last few days there have been several stories about the sentencing of Eric Lundgren in a case that began in 2012 …

More: Engadget, On MSFT, MSPoweruser, and The Verge

Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin / Quartz:

A first-person account of a virtual dating assistant, called a “Closer”, who is a professional writer that impersonates clients on apps like Tinder — Every morning I wake up to the same routine. I log into the Tinder account of a 45-year-old man from Texas—a client.

Tweets: @mattsaccaro, @chloerosewrites, and @lfdodds

Jessica Nordell / The Atlantic:

How Slack has made its US workforce more diverse than other Silicon Valley companies by forgoing a diversity chief and focusing on hiring efforts from the start — Last week, Slack, the company whose popular, plaid-themed messaging app has simplified office communications and introduced custom fox emoji …

Tweets: @cultureshiftlab, @mediadissector, @vauhinivara, and @kennethn

Paul Roberts / Politico:

As tech-fueled demand raises Seattle house prices, activists wage a data-driven campaign to change zoning to allow more density in single-family neighborhoods — In Seattle's red-hot housing market, a group of millennial techies is using data skills to alter the look, and affordability, of their adopted city.

More: GeekWire. Tweets: @t4america and @politico

Bloomberg:

Sources: T-Mobile, Sprint deal would value Sprint at $24B-$26B; T-Mobile majority owner Deutsche Telekom to get 42% stake, 69% voting interest in combined firm — T-Mobile US Inc. and its German owners are advancing toward a deal that would value Sprint Corp. at about $24 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

More: New York Times, Reuters, Gizmodo, Axios, Engadget, The Verge, ZDNet, Android Central, Houston Chronicle, CNBC, SlashGear, Wall Street Journal, TmoNews, PhoneDog.com, reddit.com, Android Police, Droid Life, TechCrunch, Axios, and BGR

Tweets: @sherman4949, @cnbcnow, @nytimesbusiness, @cnbc, @danprimack, and @sherman4949

Mathias Döpfner / Business Insider:

In a Q&A after receiving the Axel Springer award for 2018, Jeff Bezos discusses The Washington Post, Trump admin, privacy concerns, and the early days of Amazon — Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, recently sat down with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos …

More: CNBC. Tweets: @mattrosoff. Thanks:@stevetweedie

Will Oremus / Slate:

A history of the Facebook critique “if you're not paying, you're the product” and why it wrongly paints users as powerless pawns incapable of demanding change — The history of a dangerous idea. — On March 21, at the height of the scandal over Cambridge Analytica's harvesting …

Tweets: @captkickstand, @iethics, @willoremus, @willoremus, @willoremus, @julieowensmp, @alex_shephard, @max_read, @willoremus, and @timoreilly. Thanks:@anprtweets

Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:

Q&A with Javier Soltero, Cortana's new product lead, on Microsoft's AI, Alexa, and building the “real” assistive experience, as Cortana speakers hit the shelves — This year has brought a fair number of shakeups at some of the world's biggest tech companies.

Tweets: @mmarshall

Theodore Schleifer / Recode:

Sources: Coinbase valued itself at $8B when pitching an equity package during Earn acquisition; investors received cash, management received at least some stock — That's how much it felt it was worth when it set out to acquire Earn. — Coinbase valued itself at about $8 billion …

More: SludgeFeed. Tweets: @mdudas and @disruptepreneur

Bloomberg:

Du Xiaoman Financial, Baidu's new financial services arm that uses AI to provide short-term loans and investment services, raises $1.9B led by TPG and Carlyle — SVP Zhu Guang will run newly spun-off finance division — New fintech company will be one of China's best-funded

More: South China Morning Post

Alex Cranz / Gizmodo:

A look at AMD's 6-year old bet that paid off in the Zen CPU microarchitecture inside the new Ryzen processors, which could pose a real challenge to Intel — There are few gambles in the tech world as big as spending billions to build a new computer processor from scratch.

More: ExtremeTech and Android Authority

Sponsor Posts

Google:

Try Gemini 3 Pro — Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life

Shopify:

Shopify's new AI commerce stack — Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.

Zoho:

Connecting, collaborating, and growing: Zoho Mail 2025 wrap-up — Your inbox has been home to a lot this year—quick updates, long threads, approvals, reminders, and the occasional late-night draft you weren't sure about.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Great Chat:

The stories we told ourselves in 2025

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.

Grit:

How Brands Stay Visible When AI Decides | Profound CEO James Cadwallader

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Lenny's Podcast:

The coming AI security crisis (and what to do about it) | Sander Schulhoff

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:

OpenAI's Potential, Google's Speedy Model, Copilot Hits Turbulence

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.

Hard Fork:

Why Roomba Died + Tech Predictions for 2026 + A Hard Forkin' Xmas Song

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling

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.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:00 AM ET, April 29, 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.

From Mediagazer

Sara Fischer / Axios:

60 Minutes' CECOT segment, pulled by Bari Weiss, was mistakenly aired in Canada via an app owned by Global Television, which airs 60 Minutes in the country

Dave Michaels / Wall Street Journal:

How Makan Delrahim, a top antitrust enforcer in Trump's first term, is helping Paramount buy WBD; sources say he told WBD investors the DOJ may reject Netflix

Blake Brittain / Reuters:

NYT reporter John Carreyrou and five other writers sue xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Perplexity, accusing them of pirating their books to train AI

Upcoming Tech Events

Jan 4

Samsung "The First Look" media event

Game Developers Conference

More News

The Guardian:

Nintendo's head of Switch Shinya Takahashi on the firm's creative process, approach to hiring new talent, and why older technologies sometimes surprise players

Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed:

How real people are using services like Fuelgram to turn their Instagram accounts into bots in order to game the site's algorithm by trading likes and comments

Tweets: @swiftonsecurity, @swiftonsecurity, @buzzfeednews, @fabiochiusi, and @kantrowitz

Sergey Galyonkin / Steam Spy:

Steam Spy now operating in a limited capacity as it switches to a new algorithm after Valve's changes to the Steam Web and Store API

More: Engadget, SlashGear, International Business Times, Tech Times, Polygon, Kotaku, VentureBeat, PC Gamer, and Gamasutra

Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:

In the coming weeks, Facebook Fundraisers will eliminate platform fees, which are 4.3% in the US, for personal causes, such as medical needs, vet bills, more

More: Facebook, Neowin, Digital Trends, MSPoweruser, Adweek, Engadget, and Gizmodo. Tweets: @codinghorror

Shaun Nichols / The Register:

In a quarterly report filed with the SEC, Facebook warns that it may find more Cambridge Analytica-sized instances of user data misuse

More: United States Securities …, Gizmodo, The Hill, and Bloomberg

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook now shrinks the size of fact-checked false news stories in News Feed and uses machine learning to help prioritize articles sent to fact-checkers

More: Gizmodo, Engadget, Digital Trends, Mashable, Firstpost, and The Parallax. Tweets: @techcrunch

Earlier Picks

Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed:

Twitter confirms it is now pushing news links tweeted by your network into your home timeline and grouping tweets mentioning the link underneath it

More: Digital Trends and Engadget. Tweets: @jack. Thanks:@kantrowitz

South China Morning Post:

Sources: Huawei has been working on a mobile OS in case it is cut off from Android; it began the work in response to US 2012 investigation into Huawei and ZTE

More: Digital Trends, Neowin, Gizmochina, Liliputing, and Fortune

Jordan Novet / CNBC:

Cloud-based collaboration and work management platform Smartsheet closes up 30% on its first day of trading after raising $150M in its IPO at $1.48B valuation

More: GeekWire and The Seattle Times

Shara Tibken / CNET:

Source: Apple is working on an AR/VR headset, slated for 2020, with two 8K displays that wirelessly connect to a dedicated box powered by Apple's own 5nm CPU

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Microsoft announces that the “Windows 10 April 2018 Update” is coming as a free download on April 30, with features like Timeline, Focus Assist, updated Edge