Techmeme
April 8, 2019, 8:20 PM

Top News

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Sonos and Ikea unveil a $179 Symfonisk table lamp and a $99 bookshelf speaker, both of which can be controlled with Sonos' app, shipping in August  —  The lamp speaker and a bookshelf speaker are coming in August  —  Sonos and Ikea have fully unveiled the pair of speakers that the two companies have collaborated on for years.
Joe Hindy / Android Authority:
Snap is officially rolling out a faster version of its Snapchat Android app, which it's been rebuilding since the beginning of 2018 for better performance  —  Snapchat announced a big move in late 2017.  It was going to fix all of the problems its Android version had in comparison to the iOS version.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft makes developer and “canary” builds of its Chromium-based Edge browser available today for Windows 10 64-bit, says builds for macOS “coming soon”  —  Microsoft today released the first Edge build based on Google's Chromium open source project, the same browser that Google's Chrome is based on.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Pinterest sets IPO price range at $15-$17 per share, to raise as much as $1.275B at up to a $11.3B valuation; Pinterest was valued at $12.3B in its last round  —  After dropping its IPO filing two weeks ago, today Pinterest, the social media platform where people can discover and share ideas …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter lowers the number of accounts a user can follow per day from 1,000 to 400 to cut down on spam and bot activity  —  Twitter just took another big step to help boot spammers off its platform: it's cutting the number of accounts Twitter users can follow, from 1,000 per day to just 400.
James Vincent / The Verge:
EU publishes seven guidelines for developing ethical AI applications including being accountable, sustainable, explainable, privacy-respecting, and unbiased  —  The European Union has published new guidelines on developing ethical AI  —  The European Union today published a set of guidelines …
Ajit Mohan / Facebook:
As it preps for India's elections, Facebook says it removes ~1M accounts/day using AI, will open centers on election integrity in Singapore and Dublin this week  —  As Facebook continues to play a larger role in civic discussions and debate, we are committed to working hard to prevent abuse on our services, especially during elections.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
EU starts investigation into Microsoft products used across EU institutions, after a Dutch probe found some products' hidden telemetry violated GDPR  —  EU starts investigation of Microsoft's contracts with EU institutions after Dutch government report.  —  The European Data Protection Supervisor …
Ian Boudreau / PCGamesN:
Tencent launches WeGame X, a global version of its games distribution platform WeGame  —  Like most people, you may have missed the fact that Chinese gaming giant Tencent launched the global version of its games distribution platform WeGame, called WeGame X, this week.
Scott Scrivens / Android Police:
14 HTC apps that were on the Google Play Store have been unpublished in the last three months, including HTC Mail and HTC Calendar  —  Back in February, we wrote about the disappearance of the HTC Mail app from the Play Store, but it was quickly restored.  More recently, we received a tip …
Brian Merchant / Gizmodo:
Once boastful of its plans to rely on 100% renewable energy for new datacenters, Amazon's quietly tamped down those ambitions  —  In 2014, Amazon announced that it would power its rapidly expanding fleet of data centers with 100 percent renewable energy.  Apple, Facebook, and Google …
Jake Bright / TechCrunch:
Branch, which gives loans starting at $2 in emerging markets like India and Kenya, raises $170M, partners with Visa to offer virtual pre-paid debit cards  —  The San Francisco-based startup Branch International, which makes small personal loans in emerging markets, has raised $170 million and announced
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft changes the default removal policy for external storage like USB thumb drives in Windows 10 from “Better performance” to “Quick removal”  —  The default removal policy for external storage media was changed by Microsoft in Windows 10 version 1809 from …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle  —  Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify.  Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Zoho:
Contract Signed.  Project Ready.  Tasks Created.  —  Every project begins with a promise; a contract that outlines the deliverables, the timelines, and the terms.  But for most businesses …
Bitrix24:
Bitrix24 powers the next generation of high-performing businesses  —  Chat, projects, CRM, and automation — all in one place.  Replace dozens of tools so your team moves faster, collaborates smarter, and grows effortlessly.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
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.
Access:
Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered "full stack builders" | Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn CPO)
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.
Great Chat:
Code red: our favorite tech rivalries
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
How An AI Model Learned To Be Bad — With Evan Hubinger And Monte MacDiarmid
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:20 PM ET, April 8, 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

MSRC:
BBC: