Techmeme
January 4, 2019, 5:45 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
A pullback in spending by Chinese consumers is taking a toll on electronics makers like Apple, e-commerce companies like Alibaba, and other sectors  —  Buyers are deferring major or discretionary purchases, their confidence dented by a shaky economy and trade fight with U.S.
Vlad Savov / The Verge:
M.G. Siegler / 500ish Words:
Wall Street Journal:
Marriott says a total of 383M records were stolen in its hack, less than the initial estimate of 500M, but 5M+ unencrypted passport numbers were accessed  —  Hotel chain says fewer total customers were affected than initially feared but analysts warn data could be intelligence trove
Bloomberg:
Hackers dump private info of Angela Merkel and hundreds of other German politicians including email addresses, phone numbers, and personal chat transcripts  —  - Leak includes emails, chat transcripts, photos, phone numbers  — Hack is ‘elaborate’ social-engineering attack, IT expert says
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
PepsiCo says it will roll out a fleet of snack-carrying robots called “snackbots” to deliver snacks and beverages on University of the Pacific's campus in CA  —  Order on the app, pick up around campus  —  Today, PepsiCo announced that it will be rolling out a fleet …
New York Times:
Los Angeles sues the company behind the Weather Channel app, which is owned by IBM, for slyly using location data for commercial purposes  —  The Weather Channel app deceptively collected, shared and profited from the location information of millions of American consumers …
Sijia Jiang / Reuters:
Internal memo shows that Huawei demoted two employees and cut their monthly pay for using an iPhone to send New Year greetings from its official Twitter account  —  HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL] has punished two employees for New Year greetings sent …

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
The 90-day recognition cliff: Why praise programs fade, and what keeps them alive  —  Recognition programs often start with enthusiasm.  Employees participate, managers share shoutouts, and teams have a new way to celebrate achievements.
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

Channels with Peter Kafka:
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
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.
Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
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:
Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites
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:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:45 PM ET, January 4, 2019.

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

Will Sommer / The Daily Beast:
Christina Farr / CNBC:
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Brady Dale / CoinDesk: