Techmeme
November 8, 2018, 9:05 PM

Top News

Sundar Pichai / The Keyword:
Google says it will make arbitration optional for individual sexual harassment claims, provide more info about investigations, expand training, and more  —  At Google we try hard to build a workplace that supports our employees and empowers them to do their best work.
David Gelles / New York Times:
Sundar Pichai on the walkout, company culture, and how, China aside, Google already operates in countries with censorship laws like “right to be forgotten”  —  Growing up in India, he slept on the floor of a house without a refrigerator.  Today, the chief executive …
Google Walkout For Real Change:
Google walkout organizers say Google made progress toward addressing their demands but it must still address systemic racism and discrimination at the company  —  Last week, 20,000 Google employees and TVCs (Temps, Vendors and Contractors) walked out to protest discrimination, racism …
Michelle Castillo / CNBC:
Disney says its new streaming service will be called Disney+ and will launch in the US in late 2019  —  - Disney's new streaming service, Disney+, will be a home for its past titles and original series, including new content from the Marvel and Star Wars franchises.
Dan Seifert / The Verge:
Portal and Portal+ review: they work great for video calls using Facebook Messenger, but as general purpose smart displays, they lag behind the competition  —  Facebook's video calling device demands lots of trust for little return  —  It's not often that a new gadget gets announced and I don't immediately want to get my hands on it.
Megan Wollerton / CNET:
Davey Alba / BuzzFeed News:
Amazon staff meeting transcript: AWS CEO Andy Jassy defends Rekognition, says it's the government's duty to help specify regulations for facial recognition tech  —  Amazon executives defended the company's controversial facial recognition technology at an all-hands staff meeting on Thursday …
João Carrasqueira / Neowin:
Microsoft says it is working on a fix after a problem with its activation server causes some Windows 10 Pro PCs to deactivate their licenses  —  Some Windows 10 users are having problems with their Pro licenses today, as users on the company's Community Forums and Reddit are reporting …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Amazon makes the Alexa app, previously available on select laptops, available to all Windows 10 users via Microsoft Store  —  Available in the Microsoft Store  —  Amazon is releasing its Alexa app for Windows 10 today.  While the app has been available on select Windows 10 laptops recently …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Xiaomi opens its first UK store in London and rolls out the flagship Mi 8 Pro, alongside other products, as it continues its push into Europe  —  Xiaomi marked its official entry into the U.K. today with the launch of the Mi 8 Pro, a smartphone with a 6.21-inch screen, alongside a range of other products …
Christina Farr / CNBC:
Google hires David Feinberg, CEO of health services organization Geisinger, to lead its health initiatives; sources say he will report to AI head Jeff Dean  —  - Feinberg will work to coordinate health care efforts across many groups, including Google Brain, Nest and Google Fit.
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
YouTube finally arrives on the Nintendo Switch, available to download now, following Hulu  —  Nintendo has sold over 22 million Switch consoles since launch, with plans to sell another 20 million this financial year.  —  That said, Nintendo hasn't seemed too focused on building out its portfolio of non-gaming apps.
Dara Kerr / CNET:
Bird unveils a new feature called Community Mode, which lets people report badly parked and damaged scooters to the company  —  Scooter company Bird is looking for tattletales.  —  It unveiled a new feature on Thursday called Community Mode, which lets people report badly parked and damaged scooters to the company.
Tweets: @mcwmThanks:@darakerr
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Interviews with current and former Google staff about its China-related projects reveal tensions between preserving its founding ideals and a desire for growth  —  CEO Sundar Pichai thinks the search engine should be willing to work with Chinese censors.  Will employees go along with the plan?
More: Quartz
Conversations with Tyler:
Eric Schmidt on growing up in Italy, years at Bell Labs, PARC, and Sun, scaling Google, polarization on social platforms, how tech will shape the future, more  —  Subscribe: Apple Podcasts / SoundCloud / RSS  —  The son of an economist, Eric Schmidt eschewed his father's profession …

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:
Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.
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:
What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?
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:
OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting
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.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI
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.
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.
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 9:05 PM ET, November 8, 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

Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: