Techmeme
August 12, 2014, 6:15 PM

Top News

Ina Fried / Re/code:
Apple's Diversity Report: 70 percent Male, 55 percent White in U.S.  —  Apple is the latest company to release a report on the diversity of its workforce, saying Tuesday that its numbers represent a work in progress to the diversity it hopes to achieve over time.  —  Currently seven in 10 of its workers globally are male.
Steven Levy / Wired:
Ex-Siri engineers promise consumer-friendly digital assistant “Viv” that can teach itself  —  Forget Siri: This Radical New AI Teaches Itself and Reads Your Mind  —  Viv was named after the Latin root meaning live.  Its San Jose, California, offices are decorated with tsotchkes bearing …
Christina Farr / Reuters:
Apple in talks with Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Allscripts about its HealthKit service  —  Exclusive: Apple prepares Healthkit rollout amid tangled regulatory web  —  (Reuters) - Apple Inc has been discussing how its “HealthKit” service will work with health providers …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
OnePlus asks women to participate in degrading contest to get a smartphone  —  The startup OnePlus recently launched its first smartphone, the One, and to deal with production issues it's been letting people buy them by invitation only, slowly offering them to more people as more are produced.
Nick Summers / The Next Web:
Xbox One to offer TV streaming on SmartGlass, video playback via USB and DLNA network streaming  —  Just before its Gamescom presentation kicked off, Microsoft announced some hefty updates for its Xbox One video game console affecting some of the core apps, SmartGlass and live TV.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Uber says Lyft cancelled 12.9K Uber rides, and Lyft investors pressured Uber to buy Lyft  —  Accusations Fly Between Uber and Lyft  —  All is fair, they say, in love and war.  And Uber and Lyft, two smartphone-based car services, are most certainly at war.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Acquires ‘Pandora For Places’ App Zofari  —  Another acquisition for Yahoo, this one focused on improving the company's local search capabilities: it has bought Zofari, a local recommendation app that uses machine learning, natural language processing and third-party data from sources …
Nick Summers / The Next Web:
Sony has sold 10 million PlayStation 4 consoles worldwide  —  Sony is on a roll.  During its press conference at Gamescom 2014, the company announced it has now sold 10 million PlayStation 4 consoles worldwide.  —  To be clear, this is the number of consoles that have been bought by consumers …
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Uber is launching an API to enable “Request A Ride” buttons in more apps  —  Uber Is About To Launch An API  —  Uber wins when you hit the “Request A Ride” button, so shouldn't it try to put that button everywhere?  It seemed like a smart plan, so I did some digging …
More: The Next WebTweets: @panzer and @joshconstine
Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:
Twitter admits that as many as 23 million of its active users are automated  —  This piece has been updated to clarify the kinds of accounts in question.  —  Twitter raised eyebrows last month when it suggested that many of its active users aren't actually human.  Now we know how many.
Austin Carr / Fast Company:
Square killed prototype credit card due to legal hurdles and fear it would alienate partners  —  Why Jack Dorsey Killed The Square Credit Card  —  Square, the payments startup from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, has prototyped a Square credit card.  The plastic card is all black …
More: Gigaom and The VergeThanks:@davidlidsky
Ben Thompson / stratechery:
BuzzFeed's valuation reflects how the Internet is narrowing the difference between media and software distribution  —  Is BuzzFeed a Tech Company?  —  It's telling that Chris Dixon, in a blog post explaining Andreessen Horowitz's $50 million investment, goes out of his way to explain …
Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:
RelayRides Adds $10 Million From Trinity And Looks To Expand Peer-To-Peer Airport Rentals  —  When we last checked in with peer-to-peer car rental startup RelayRides about six weeks ago, it had raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Canaan Partners.  Well, it wasn't quite finished raising money, as it turns out.
More: Skift and PE Hub BlogThanks:@stevendwebb
Kyle Russell / TechCrunch:
YC-Backed Rigetti Computing Raises $2.5M To Create Commercial Quantum Systems  —  Once confined to research labs and science fiction, quantum computing is finally reaching a point where researchers aren't simply trying to find out what's possible, but looking at how they can actually work the technology into commercial hardware.

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Earlier Picks

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Bloomberg: