Techmeme
May 17, 2019, 12:45 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft announces Minecraft Earth, a real-world AR version of Minecraft, available in closed beta on iOS and Android this summer  —  Alex Kipman, Microsoft's HoloLens and Kinect creator, is always enthusiastic about the future of computing.  As he stands in front of me inside …
New York Times:
Profile of Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer, who admits AI alone may not be enough to deal with toxic content and chokes up when discussing the issue  —  Facebook has heralded artificial intelligence as a solution to its toxic content problems.  Mike Schroepfer, its chief technology officer, says it won't solve everything.
Arjun Panchadar / Reuters:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise to buy supercomputer maker Cray in a deal valued at $1.3B, or $35 per share, which represents a premium of 17.4% to Cray's last close  —  (Reuters) - Supercomputer manufacturer Cray Inc said on Friday it would be bought by Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co in a deal valued at about $1.30 billion, net of cash.
Jonathan Hillman / Axios:
Trump's actions against Huawei limit its 5G tech in US, but Huawei continues to build or improve ~100 undersea cables; ~380 cables carry most international data  —  President Trump's executive order and the Commerce Department's “Entity List” create new challenges for Huawei's 5G wireless technology …
Financial Times:
Chloe Taylor / CNBC:
Deliveroo announces that Amazon is leading a $575M funding round for the UK-based food delivery service, bringing the total raised to $1.53B  —  KEY POINTS  — Deliveroo is a British company that allows users to order food deliveries from nearby restaurants using an app.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft and Sony announce a strategic partnership to explore development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure for game and content-streaming services  —  An unusual partnership  —  Microsoft and Sony are announcing an unusual partnership today, allowing the two rivals to partner on cloud-based gaming services.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Spotify starts testing Car Thing, a voice-controlled smart assistant device for cars, with some Premium users in US  —  To learn how people consume audio in their car  —  Spotify will begin publicly testing its first hardware today: a voice-controlled smart assistant for cars …
Sean Lyngaas / CyberScoop:
DOJ says that it has indicted 10 members of the criminal network that used the GozNym malware to attempt to steal an estimated $100M from 41,000+ victims  —  Law enforcement officials from the U.S. and some European allies say they have broken up a criminal network that used banking malware …
Julian Chokkattu / Digital Trends:
Tests of Verizon's 5G in Chicago on the Galaxy S10 5G show download speeds of up to 1.35 Gbps, but speeds were inconsistent, though never fell below 550 Mbps  —  I'm in Chicago.  Again.  It's my second trip to the windy city in the past month, and I don't expect it to be my last.  —  Why?  5G!
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Sheryl Sandberg: there is concern in US “with the size and power of Chinese companies, and the realization that those companies are not going to be broken up”  —  KEY POINTS  — Sandberg said breaking up Facebook does not address the underlying issues people have with tech companies.
More: CNET
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Health at Scale, which wants to match patients to the right treatments from the right providers at the right time using AI, raises $16M Series A  —  Health at Scale, a startup with founders who have both medical and engineering expertise, wants to bring machine learning to bear …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Stack Overflow says hackers breached its systems on May 11 but that there is no evidence of customer data being accessed, promises more info when probe ends  —  Stack Overflow said it detected a security breach over the weekend.  —  Stack Overflow, the internet's largest Q&A site for programming …
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Researchers: NYPD used edited suspects' photos and photos of celebs, when witnesses said the suspects looked like them, to generate facial recognition matches  —  In one case, a photo of the actor Woody Harrelson was used to locate a suspect  —  A new report from Georgetown Law's Center …
Theodore Schleifer / Vox:
Sources: Quora, which has 300M+ MAUs, is raising a $60M round led by Valor Equity Partners at a valuation of $2B, and told investors it had $20M in 2018 revenue  —  According to some, the financing round for the question-and-answer platform speaks to the high valuation for virtually everything these days in the tech sector.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Sources: acceptance rates for Facebook job offers among graduates of top US schools like Stanford fell from nearly 90% in late 2016 to around 50% in early 2019  —  KEY POINTS  — Among top schools, Facebook's acceptance rate for full-time positions offered to new graduates has fallen …

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More News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
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Makena Kelly / The Verge: