Techmeme
January 27, 2020, 3:50 PM

Top News

Joseph Cox / VICE:
Documents reveal that Avast has sold its users' internet browsing data, through a subsidiary called Jumpshot, to clients like Pepsi, Google, and Microsoft  —  An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data …
Tara Duggan / San Francisco Chronicle:
Grubhub admits to adding restaurants without their permission, after restaurateur found her Thai restaurant had a page on Grubhub and its subsidiary Seamless  —  Pim Techamuanvivit was managing her Michelin-starred Thai restaurant in San Francisco, Kin Khao, around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday when she got an unexpected call.
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:
FCC unlocks 3.5GHz band of spectrum used by Citizens Broadband Radio Service, enhancing connectivity via “OnGo” services in the latest iOS and Android phones  —  Following six years of private and public collaboration to open up some of the United States' most valuable wireless spectrum …
More: Engadget
Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note:
Consumer IoT is in trouble because normal people can't be expected to manage a house full of smart things or keep track of their bugs and looming obsolescence  —  The everything-computerized-and-always- connected smarthome is a work in progress.  This slow pace is a good thing because it gives us …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Gravyty, a Massachusetts-based fundraising platform that uses AI to analyze donor behavior in order to help nonprofits reach fundraising goals, raises $21M  —  Nonprofit organizations send an average of 3 email newsletters and 2 donation appeals monthly, and for every 1,000 emails sent to subscribers, they raise an average of only $42.
Gary Marcus / The Gradient:
A critical look at OpenAI's GPT-2 text generation AI and why the knowledge acquired by systems like the GPT-2 has been superficial and unreliable  —  OpenAI's GPT-2 has been discussed everywhere from The New Yorker to The Economist.  What does it really tell us about natural and artificial intelligence?
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Mural, a visual collaboration platform for enterprises, raises $23M Series A led by Radian Capital, with Gradient Ventures and Endeavor Catalyst participating  —  This morning Mural, a software startup focused on visual collaboration1, announced that it closed a $23 million Series A round of capital.
More: FinSMEs
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Currencycloud raises $80M Series E from Visa, BNP Paribas, and others for cross-border payment APIs that have transferred $50B+ and are used by ~350 companies  —  Sending money from one country to another — either because you are a business paying someone for a service …
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice:

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Introducing Microsoft-Decision-1, our model for fast decision-making  —  Our new model delivers top performance in latency and quality on structured decision tasks to outperform other models.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Zoho Books now supports CT600 & Final Accounts Filing as an add-on in the FREE plan  —  Managing end-of-year filing for limited companies in the UK is often expensive and multi-layered.
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

Big Technology Podcast:
Meta & Microsoft's Claude Slowdown, His Agent Leaked His Banking Info, Don't Bully Your AI
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.
Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
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.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble
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.
Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:50 PM ET, January 27, 2020.

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

Angela Strange / Andreessen Horowitz:
Eric Niiler / Wired: