Techmeme
May 2, 2018, 5:55 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Cambridge Analytica is shutting down, says founder of its British affiliate, following the Facebook data misuse scandal  —  Company had lost multiple clients in recent months  —  Cambridge Analytica , a data firm that worked for President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign …
Spotify Investor Relations:
Spotify reports first ever financial results with Q1 revenue of €1.139B, up 26% YoY, on operating loss of €41M; MAUs up 30% YoY to 170M  —  Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) today reported financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2018 ending March 31, 2018.
Jerome Pesenti / Facebook Code:
Summary of Facebook's AI-related announcements at F8: PyTorch 1.0 open source framework unveiled, expansion of Open Neural Network Exchange, updates on research  —  Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform lives, creating new digital experiences while safeguarding our existing online interactions.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Facebook shows how it uses billions of public Instagram photos, annotated by users with hashtags, to help train its AI-based image recognition models  —  In the race to continue building more sophisticated AI deep learning models, Facebook has a secret weapon: billions of images on Instagram .
Paul Vigna / Wall Street Journal:
Source: Telegram is calling off the public part of the ICO for the Telegram Open Network after raising $1.7B from 175 accredited investors via private deals  —  Telegram plans to put the money it raised into a new digital payment platform, Telegram Open Network, meant for a wide audience
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Facebook to bring outside advisers for a civil rights audit of its impact on minority groups and to investigate claims it's biased against conservative voices  —  To address allegations of bias, Facebook is bringing in two outside advisors — one to conduct a legal audit of its impact …
Joseph Cox / Motherboard:
Facebook confirms it has fired one of its security engineers who allegedly used privileged access to stalk women online  —  After a member of the information security community provided evidence to Facebook's chief information security officer, the company has terminated a security engineer …
Zack Whittaker / ZDNet:
Coalition representing Apple, Google, Facebook, and others criticize law enforcement backdoors in devices, after Wired profile of Ray Ozzie's key escrow idea  —  The tech coalition includes Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Verizon and Yahoo's parent company Oath …
Thuy Ong / The Verge:
Google announces investment program for early-stage startups working on Google Assistant hardware or features, similar to Amazon's Alexa Fund  —  Funding the Google Assistant ecosystem  —  Today, Google is launching a new investment program for early-stage startups working to broaden Google Assistant hardware or features.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Amazon is offering to pass along discounts it gets on credit card fees to retailers if they use its payments service Amazon Pay  —  Move shows retailer is willing to sacrifice to grow Amazon Pay  —  It's another challenge to PayPal, big banks and card networks
More: CNBC
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
LG announces G7 ThinQ with 6.1" QHD+ LCD display and notch, dual 16MP rear cameras, 3,000mAh battery, Snapdragon 845, Android Oreo, Assistant button, and more  —  Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge  —  After months of leaks, LG's new G7 ThinQ phone is officially here.
Wall Street Journal:
The Pentagon is moving to halt the sales of Huawei and ZTE phones in retail outlets on US military bases around the world, citing potential security threats  —  Move intensifies a squeeze the Trump administration has put on the two Chinese tech firms  —  The Pentagon is moving to halt …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Hulu says it has surpassed 20M subscribers in the US, introduces offline mode, and inks animation deal with DreamWorks  —  Hulu now has over 20 million U.S. subscribers - that's up from the 17 million-plus it claimed in January.  The news of its subscriber growth is being delivered alongside …
Jessica Toonkel / Reuters:
Verizon's Oath signs distribution deal to place four of its apps, Newsroom, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, and Go90, on Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ devices in the US  —  (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc's Oath Inc subsidiary has signed a deal to place four of its most popular apps on millions …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Nokia to sell its digital health division to Eric Carreel, cofounder of Withings, which Nokia acquired for €170M in 2016; deal expected to close late Q2 2018  —  Nokia's unsuccessful foray into digital health hardware and services looks like it is finally coming to an end.
Giovanni Buttarelli / European Data Protection …:
Ahead of GDPR, EU data watchdog says internet platforms that collect user data are like “sweatshops” exploiting users in exchange for so called “free” services  —  The digital information ecosystem farms people for their attention, ideas and data in exchange for so called ‘free’ services.

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.
Command Line:
GitHub Universe 2026: Highlights from the developer's developer conference  —  Copilot Fusion was the belle of the ball, but the hero at the heart of the two-day event was the developer community.
Zoho:
3 smarter updates for your staffing pipeline  —  Staffing recruiters manage multiple client requirements, large candidate databases, and tight submission deadlines.  Finding suitable candidates is only the first step.
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:
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.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
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.
Sources:
Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify
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 5:55 PM ET, May 2, 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

Earlier Picks

Marco Arment / Marco.org:
Manish Singh / The Outline: