Techmeme
August 17, 2019, 5:10 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: SoftBank plans to lend up to $20B to its employees to buy stakes in its second VC fund, with Masayoshi Son accounting for more than half of the amount  —  Unusual setup doubly exposes the Japanese company to a startup economy that is starting to show cracks
Ari Levy / CNBC:
A look at donations by major tech execs to 2020 presidential candidates, with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders notably absent from the list of recipients  —  KEY POINTS  — LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has donated money to four Democratic primary candidates, while Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has provided money to three.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Bakkt says it plans to launch its physically-settled bitcoin futures contracts on Sept. 23, after getting approval from NY state's financial regulator  —  Bakkt has been cleared to launch.  —  The Intercontinental Exchange's young subsidiary announced Friday that it had acquired …
Luke Winkie / VentureBeat:
How cities like Katowice in Poland, Hangzhou in China, and Frisco, Texas are embracing esports tournaments in a bid to revive their economies  —  For centuries, Katowice was a mining town.  The first settlers were craftsmen in the 18th century, who arrived in the lowlands of Southern Poland …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
YouTube changes policy: copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short or unintentional uses of music via its manual tool  —  YouTube is making a change to its copyright enforcement policies around music used in videos, which may result in an increased number …

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:
Step into smarter meetings: Zoho Cliq Rooms is now available on Neat devices  —  The meeting landscape has completely transformed over the last few years, moving from conference rooms to people joining across locations and time zones.
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

Acquired:
Home Depot
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Subscribe to Acquired.
Big Technology Podcast:
Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
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:
Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet
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.
Lenny's Podcast:
How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:10 PM ET, August 17, 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

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Biswarup Gooptu / The Economic Times:
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Juli Clover / MacRumors: