Techmeme
January 7, 2020, 8:15 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Sonos sues Google, seeking financial damages and a ban on the sale of Google's speakers, smartphones, and laptops in US for allegedly infringing on five patents  —  The maker of home speakers said Google and Amazon stole its technology and abused their power, but it could only risk suing one.
New York Times:
Andrew Bosworth / Facebook:
Andrew Bosworth publicly releases his internal post on Facebook's role in 2016 election, Cambridge Analytica, polarization, algorithmic transparency, and more  —  The NYT recently obtained a copy of a post I made to the wall of my internal profile within Facebook.
Khari Johnson / VentureBeat:
Google says Assistant now has 500M users and announces upcoming features: Scheduled Actions, privacy-focused voice controls, longform reading, and Sticky Notes  —  Google Assistant is now used by 500 million monthly active users, and today Google is previewing features on the way in 2020 …
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Natasha Mascarenhas / Crunchbase News:
Report: pizza-making robot startup Zume, which raised $375M from SoftBank Vision Fund in 2018, plans to lay off up to 400 staff, or about 80% of its employees  —  In a little over a year, pizza-making robot startup Zume has gone from getting $375 million from SoftBank, to pivoting …
About Facebook:
Facebook says it is tightening its policies around misleading manipulated media by banning videos that are either heavily edited or deepfakes  —  People share millions of photos and videos on Facebook every day, creating some of the most compelling and creative visuals on our platform.
Washington Post:
Facebook bans deepfakes, but its new policy may not cover simpler forms of deception like with the distorted Pelosi video  —  Facebook has banned users from posting computer-generated, highly manipulated videos, known as deepfakes, seeking to stop the spread of a novel form of misinformation months …
Cory Weinberg / The Information:
Sources: Softbank-backed car-rental startup Getaround plans to lay off ~150 employees, or about a quarter of its staff, to mitigate rising costs  —  Car-rental startup Getaround plans to lay off roughly 150 employees, or about a quarter of its staff, in a bid to reduce rising costs, people familiar with the matter said.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
A look at Intel's NUC 9 Extreme modular desktop, building on previous efforts by combining a compact design with upgradeable parts, coming in March for $1,050+  —  It might change the way mini-PCs are built  —  Today, you can upgrade a desktop PC's gaming performance just by plugging in a new graphics card.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Uber open sources Manifold, a visual tool for debugging AI models that is used in analyzing Uber's Michelangelo ML platform  —  Debugging machine learning (ML) models isn't a walk in the woods.  Just ask the data scientists and engineers at Uber, some of whom have the unenviable task …

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Cloudflare:
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Zoho Sign takes a bite of Apple's latest: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate  —  It's September, and you know the drill.  Apple just handed us a fresh batch of releases, and there's plenty to look forward …
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Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
A Sober Conversation About AI Existential Risk — With Nate Soares
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Sources:
Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
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.
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Training Data:
Box's Aaron Levie: On Reinventing Yourself in the AI Age and Enterprise Diffusion
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Andrew Feldman from Cerebras
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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More News

Earlier Picks

Ben Patterson / TechHive:
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Andrew E. Freedman / Tom's Hardware:
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
Chris Velazco / Engadget: