Techmeme
May 13, 2020, 6:55 PM

Top News

Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
Google announces a new tab-grouping tool for Chrome, rolling out “slowly”, letting users cluster tabs together and organize them by name and color  —  Google is introducing a new feature to Chrome that will have you asking how you lived without it before.
Joe Maring / Android Central:
Report: Google's Pixel division has lost Marc Levoy, the engineer leading the camera division, and GM Mario Queiroz over the past year, as sales disappoint  —  The general manager for the Pixel division is also gone.  —  What you need to know  — According to The Information, Marc Levoy and Mario Queiroz have both left Google.
Martin Matishak / Politico:
A bipartisan amendment to FISA to prohibit warrantless surveillance of Americans' online browsing and search histories failed in the Senate by one vote, 59-37  —  In a win for congressional privacy hawks, the Senate on Wednesday adopted a bipartisan amendment to strengthen legal protections …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Uber says all riders and drivers will need to wear masks starting next week and introduces new tools to verify drivers are doing so before each trip  —  - Uber is launching a new tool that checks if drivers are wearing face masks before starting trips.  — The ride-hailing firm …
April Glaser / NBC News:
Sources say Google has rolled back diversity programs, but Google disputes the claims and says it's adding outside help to scale racial equity training globally  —  One well-liked diversity training program at Google called Sojourn was cut entirely, according to seven former and current employees.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Epic Games unveils the Unreal Engine 5, coming in 2021, with a PlayStation 5 demo and says the Epic Online Services set of tools are available today  —  Epic says its new engine is a ‘quantum leap,’ and it'll arrive in 2021  —  Epic Games today announced the next iteration of its game engine …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Facebook brings Avatars, its Bitmoji competitor, to the US after launching internationally last year  —  Avatars can be used in comments, messages, and stories  —  Facebook is now rolling out its customizable avatars in the US after first launching them internationally last year.
Sean Lyngaas / CyberScoop:
DHS and FBI jointly accuse hackers affiliated with Chinese government of attempting to steal US research into a COVID-19 vaccine, adding to a slew of charges  —  The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI on Wednesday blamed hackers linked with the Chinese government for attempting …
Tyler Sonnemaker / Business Insider:
Filing: Kickstarter laid off 25 employees, or ~18% of its workforce; the company says 30 staff members took voluntary buyouts, taking total reductions to 39%  —  - Kickstarter is reducing its workforce by around 39%, the company confirmed on Wednesday.  — “Through a combination …
More: The Verge
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Dell announces a new XPS 17 and a redesigned XPS 15 with 16:10 edge-to-edge displays, only USB-C ports, and Intel 10th-gen CPUs, starting at $1,300 and $1,500  —  Dell goes all USB-C and 16:10 for its XPS lineup  —  Dell is making some big changes to its XPS lineup today, with a redesigned XPS 15 and a new XPS 17.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Cisco beats Q3 expectations with revenue of $12B, down 8% YoY, and Infrastructure Platforms revenue of $6.43B, down 15% YoY  —  - Cisco's results and quarterly guidance beat expectations.  — The company said in the quarter it would allow customers to defer their payments with coronavirus spreading.
More: ZDNet and PR Newswire
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Amazon updates the Fire HD 8 tablet with a faster processor, more RAM, more storage, and USB-C, with the base model getting a slight price increase to $89.99  —  Along with a slight price increase to $89.99  —  Amazon has announced a new update for its Fire HD 8 tablet, adding a faster processor, more RAM, and USB-C charging.
Max Willens / Digiday:
Sources: Apple is asking the publishers participating in Apple News+ for permission to produce audio versions of stories, with Apple handling production costs  —  Apple News+ is pivoting to audio.  —  Over the past several months, Apple has been asking the publishers participating …
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Alphabet's Loon signs deal with carrier Vodacom to bring its commercial internet service to Mozambique  —  Loon, the Alphabet -owned company that's using stratospheric balloons to provide high-speed bandwidth to hard-to-serve areas without strong ground infrastructure, has signed a new deal …
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Cryptocurrency trading service FalconX raises $17M from Avon Ventures, Accel, and others  —  Over the last few weeks all eyes in the crypto world have been glued to the halvening, a nigh-religious moment in the blockchain realm.  Every once in a while, the amount of new bitcoin mined …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Some European Netflix users say video quality throttling is still in place, angering those who pay more for higher-quality plans  —  Facebook to Pay $52 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over Moderators' Exposure to Graphic, Disturbing Content  —  Almost two months ago, Netflix …
Doug Black / HPCwire:
MemVerge, which develops memory machine software, raises $19M led by Intel Capital  —  Memory situated at the center of the computing universe, replacing processing, has long been envisioned as instrumental to radically improved datacenter systems performance.
More: FinSMEs
Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Spatial makes its VR meeting rooms free to use and adds support for the web, mobile, and Oculus Quest  —  Two years ago, we called Spatial's virtual collaboration platform “FaceTime in VR.”  Since then, the company has focused on corporate users who have access to pricey augmented reality headsets …
More: Wired, VentureBeat, and CNETThanks:@lucyagoss
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Lawyers involved in the settlement between Facebook and its content moderation contractors say around half of all moderators may develop mental health issues  —  That's according to lawyers involved in a settlement announced this week  —  In November 2018 I received a message that changed my life.

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.
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:
What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?
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.
Hard Fork:
OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting
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.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI
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:
Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:55 PM ET, May 13, 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

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:

Earlier Picks

Robert Stevens / Decrypt: