Techmeme
May 17, 2021, 8:35 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Microsoft's board decided in 2020 Gates should leave the board as it probed claims Gates sought to initiate an affair with a Microsoft engineer in 2000  —  Company's board members began investigation in 2019 into woman's allegations of prior sexual relationship with Bill Gates …
New York Times:
Sources: long after his marriage, Bill Gates would pursue women at Microsoft, at times creating an uncomfortable workplace environment  —  Melinda French Gates voiced concerns about her husband's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and a harassment claim against his money manager.
Brian Stelter / CNN:
AT&T to spin off WarnerMedia and combine it with Discovery in a $43B deal; the new company will be run by Discovery CEO David Zaslav  —  New York (CNN Business)The streaming TV race is about to get even more competitive.  —  On Monday morning AT&T (T) and Discovery, Inc. (DISCA) …
Biz Carson / Protocol:
Q&A with Rick Klau, an ex-Google product manager and California's new CTIO responsible for building apps and services for various departments across the state  —  When Rick Klau joined the California government, he expected a culture shock after 13 years at Google.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Ride-hailing giant Gojek and e-commerce marketplace Tokopedia say they have merged to form GoTo Group, the largest tech group in Indonesia  —  Ride-hailing giant Gojek and marketplace Tokopedia said on Monday they have combined their businesses to form GoTo Group, the largest technology group in Indonesia.
Joshua Swingle / PhoneArena:
Jon Prosser leaks what he claims are Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro renders, as well as a promo video and images of Android 12, ahead of Google I/O  —  Google is rumored to be revamping Wear OS this year and the update is said to be so substantial that even Samsung is on board with the plans.
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News:
Pandemic-induced rise in app ordering has given birth to the “appuccino”, a phenomenon driven by TikTok, where customized Starbucks drink suggestions go viral  —  Stomachs churned and food service workers broke out in a cold sweat when a photo of a long, complicated custom Starbucks order went viral on Twitter.
Parmy Olson / Wall Street Journal:
Profile of Foxglove, a tech-activism group famous for pushing UK into reassessing its use of algorithms, that's challenging Facebook and Uber on worker rights  —  Foxglove successfully pushed back on government tech tools and now is looking into bigger corporate targets

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Featured Podcasts

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Sources:
Sundar Pichai on Gemini 4 and the AI compute crunch
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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Machine Gods:
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How Toto Wolff built the most valuable team in F1
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
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More News

Shannon Liao / Washington Post:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Matt Burgess / Wired UK:
Clive Thompson / New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Zeke Faux / Bloomberg:
Stephanie Chan / Sensor Tower Blog:
José Adorno / 9to5Mac:
@antoniogm: