Techmeme
October 18, 2021, 11:20 AM

Top News

Emily Glazer / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: two Microsoft execs, including Brad Smith, told Bill Gates in 2008 that emails with a midlevel female employee were inappropriate; Gates agreed to stop  —  Top lawyer, HR chief informed some Microsoft directors they told billionaire co-founder that his emails with female employee were inappropriate
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
What to expect from Apple's Unleashed event on Monday: 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with mini-LED, AirPods 3, redesigned Mac mini, and macOS Monterey launch  —  Apple's first fall event of 2021 focused on the iPhone and the Apple Watch, but the second, set to be held on Monday, October 18, is expected to be Mac-centric.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Wall Street Journal:
Internal documents: Facebook's AI has minimal success enforcing its rules against problematic content, including removing an estimated 3%-5% of hate speech  —  AI has only minimal success in removing hate speech, violent images and other problem content, according to internal company reports
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Florence Ion / Gizmodo:
What to expect from Google's Pixel event on Tuesday: Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro with Tensor custom SOC, improved cameras, bigger batteries, and more colors  —  Will there be any surprises at Google's event next week?  Here's what we know so far.  —  Alerts  —  If you've been holding …
New York Times:
NYSE says ProShares will launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) linked to Bitcoin futures, giving investors exposure without having to hold bitcoin directly  —  An exchange-traded fund tied to the cryptocurrency is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange, a milestone for the industry.
Reuters:
Five US House Judiciary committee members write to Amazon accusing executives of either misleading Congress or lying about promoting its brands above rivals  —  Five members of the U.S. House Judiciary committee wrote to Amazon.com Inc's chief executive Sunday, and accused the company's top executives …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
In an SEC filing, Sinclair confirms it suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted its channels on Sunday; Sinclair initially blamed technical issues  —  Sinclair formally confirmed the ransomware attack a day after this initial report in SEC documents.  Original reporting below.
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Berlin-based mobile banking startup N26 raises a $900M Series E at a $9B valuation and says it has 7M clients in 25 countries  —  Fintech startup N26 has raised a $900 million Series E round at a $9 billion valuation.  That represents a big jump from the company's Series D valuation of $3.5 billion.

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:
Automate your scheduling workflows with Zoho Calendar  —  Your calendar can do more than schedule meetings Creating a calendar event takes only a few seconds.  But scheduling is rarely just about creating the event.
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:
AI Doom Backlash Arrives, Anthropic & OpenAI IPO Outlook, Frontier Business Momentum Slows
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:
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
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.
Subscribe to Sources.
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.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Andrew Feldman from Cerebras
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:20 AM ET, October 18, 2021.

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

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
Cynthia O'Murchu / Financial Times:
Patrick McGee / Financial Times: