Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors
Techmeme
May 18, 2020, 9:50 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac:
AG Barr says that, “no thanks to Apple”, the FBI succeeded in unlocking the “phones” of the Pensacola gunman, who they found had significant links to Al Qaeda  —  It looks like the most recent contention between the FBI and Apple over device encryption has come to an end …
New York Times:
Disney's top streaming exec, Kevin Mayer, resigns to become CEO of TikTok and COO of parent company ByteDance; Disney names Rebecca Campbell as his successor  —  Kevin Mayer will lead the Chinese-owned app for making and sharing short videos, which has exploded in popularity during the pandemic.
Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal:
In email to staff, Dara Khosrowshahi says Uber will cut 3,000 more jobs, in addition to the 3,700 that were let go earlier this month, and will close 45 offices  —  The ride-hailing giant also is exploring the sale of noncore businesses  —  Uber Technologies Inc. is cutting several thousand …
Richard Speed / The Register:
At an MIT event, Microsoft president Brad Smith says the company was “on the wrong side of history” with open source  —  Tell-all with president Brad Smith reveals Obama warned tech giants that a privacy reckoning was coming  —  Microsoft president Brad Smith (pictured) …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says Minecraft has now topped 200M sales, up from 100M in 2016, with 126M monthly players; Minecraft saw a 25% increase in new players last month  —  Minecraft continues to grow despite being 11 years old  —  Minecraft sales have officially topped 200 million, with 126 million people playing the game monthly.
Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asian Review:
Sources: TSMC, the biggest contract chipmaker, has halted new orders from Huawei in response to new US export controls; orders placed before are not impacted  —  Taiwan chipmaker's relationship with its second biggest customer under fire  —  TAIPEI — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. …
Oculus:
Oculus says it will start accepting Quest titles that support hand tracking this month and details two new collaboration and productivity apps coming this year  —  We're about to celebrate an exciting milestone: the one-year anniversary of Oculus Quest and Rift S!
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Facebook's VP of consumer hardware Andrew Bosworth says users have spent over $100M on Quest VR content and Portal sales are up 10x compared to mid-March
Zoe Schiffer / The Verge:
Jack Dorsey has told Square employees they can work from home even after the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders end, following a similar move at Twitter  —  Employees can work remotely even after the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders end  —  Square employees will be able to work from home …
Sam Nussey / Reuters:
Alibaba's Jack Ma resigns from SoftBank board, as he pulls back from formal business roles to focus on philanthropy; SoftBank to propose three new appointments  —  TOKYO (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp said on Monday that Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma will resign from its board …
Pavel Alpeyev / Bloomberg:
SoftBank Vision Fund records $17.7B loss in the last fiscal year after writing down investments including WeWork and Uber, reports a net loss of $8.96B
Ranjan Roy / Margins:
DoorDash is listing restaurants on its service without their permission, leading to inaccurate menus, unhappy customers, and even arbitrage opportunities  —  There is such a thing as a free lunch  —  If capitalism is driven by a search for profit, the food delivery business confuses the hell out of me.
David Cohen / Adweek:
Instagram introduces Guides, a feature letting creators curate content on a specific subject, debuting with select accounts focusing on wellness  —  Creators, public figures, organizations and publishers can curate content on a specific subject  —  Instagram introduced a new Guides feature Monday …
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Google suspended a popular Android podcast app, Podcast Addict, from the Play Store and removed ads from existing installs, because it lists COVID-19 content  —  Part of a new Google policy  —  Podcast Addict, an Android podcast app with millions of users, was suspended over the weekend because it lists COVID-19 content.

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:
Beyond productivity: Why live captions belong in every meeting  —  You join a meeting, someone starts talking, and within a minute, there are names, numbers, ideas, and unfamiliar terms flying around.  You could ask them to repeat it.
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.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
 Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
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.
Invest Like the Best:
 Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
 The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
 Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites
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:
 Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
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.
Great Chat:
 Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:50 PM ET, May 18, 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.

From Mediagazer

Deadline:
Disney initiates a third round of layoffs under Josh D'Amaro, sources say impacting a couple hundred staff, largely in HR and tech, smaller than prior rounds

John Koblin / New York Times:
Paramount streaming chief Cindy Holland is leaving the company; she joined Skydance as an adviser and became Paramount's direct-to-consumer chief last year

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the Trump administration used DHS funds to finance pro-Trump ads, including one that is almost identical to a 2024 Trump campaign ad, calling them PSAs

More News

Jonathan Vanian / Fortune:
Microsoft and FedEx partner to help companies ship products more efficiently, including a tool that aggregates information to predict potential issues

Earlier Picks

Sachin Ravikumar / Reuters:
Indian food delivery startup Swiggy says it will lay off 1,100 employees, or nearly 14% of its workforce, to cut costs amid the pandemic
Bloomberg:
Apple says it's reopening 25 US stores this week plus 12 stores in Canada, adding to nearly 100 global locations that have reopened so far
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Edison Mail says it has “rolled back” an iOS app update that gave a “small percentage” of users full access to other users' email accounts
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter