Techmeme
July 31, 2018, 10:05 AM

Top News

Nick Statt / The Verge:
WhatsApp group calling for voice and video, announced at F8, now live globally on iOS and Android, with end-to-end encryption and support for up to four users  —  Up to four people can chat simultaneously  —  Back at Facebook's F8 developer conference in May, WhatsApp announced …
Richard Kerby:
Review of ~1,500 VCs shows about 40% attended either Stanford or Harvard, and the group is 82% male, 70% white, 26% asian, 3% black, and 1% hispanic  —  The lack of diversity within venture capital is something I have been hard at work to try and remedy and I write about frequently.
Bloomberg:
Samsung misses Q2 estimates with an operating profit of ~$13.4B, up 5.7% YoY, on revenue of ~$52.19B, down 4% YoY, amid weak sales of Galaxy S9  —  Samsung Electronics Co.'s net income fell short of analysts' estimates as slowing growth in the global smartphone market hits demand for its Galaxy devices …
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Uber says it will stop development of self-driving trucks and instead focus on self-driving cars; Uber Freight is unaffected by this decision  —  Uber is shuttering its self-driving trucks unit, a beleaguered program borne out of the company's controversial multi-million acquisition of Otto nearly two years ago.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Despite Facebook's disappointing Q2 earnings, its moats are deeper than ever and its money-making potential is not only huge but growing  —  While I was mostly unplugged on my vacation last week, with the news of Facebook's disappointing earnings report and subsequent stock decline …
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat:
Google officially launches the Chrome browser on its Daydream VR platform, with voice search, incognito mode, and a cinema mode that optimizes web video for VR  —  If you're excited by the prospect of browsing the web from the comfort of your VR headset, good news: Google is bringing …
David McCabe / Axios:
Policy paper from Sen. Warner lays out 20 ways to address issues posed by big tech platforms, from putting a price on users' data to mimicking GDPR rules  —  In a policy paper obtained by Axios, Sen. Mark Warner's office laid out 20 different paths to address problems posed by Big Tech platforms …
Jamie Rigg / Engadget:
Sony reports Q1 revenue of $17.9B, beating estimates with ~$1.8B profit and sales of 3.2M PS4s, but lost nearly $97M from its smartphone division  —  Sony's new CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has been at the company's helm for just a few short months now, but fortunately, former chief Kaz Hirai left him an already successful company to run.

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More News

Jeffery C. Mays / New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / Motherboard:
Polina Marinova / Fortune: