Techmeme: Q&A with the author of The Mastermind, which traces the rise and fall of Paul Le Roux, a programmer-turned-drug kingpin who avoided capture for years (Recode)

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Ben Thompson / Stratechery:

Spotify's bet on Gimlet and Anchor gives it a foothold into podcasting to apply its listener monetization skills without worrying about sending money to labels — Credit Spotify CEO Daniel Ek with honesty; in a blog post announcing a major move into the podcast space, Ek wrote:

More: Voicebot and Howard Lindzon

Tweets: @evoterra, @shawnyeager, @devonzuegel, @jayhinman, @austinohlmeier, @taylorpearsonme, @armchairdude, @matthewstoller, and @caseynewton

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Recode:

Gimlet's Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber on weighing remaining independent and being acquired, the days before the deal, and reach, data, and discoverability

More: USA Today, ITworld.com, Techdirt, and RAIN News. Tweets: @arjawn

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Tim O'Reilly / Quartz:

Hoffman and Yeh's “Blitzscaling” offers practical advice for startups but presents a lot of revisionist history and ignores the perils of VC-fueled hypergrowth — The pursuit of monopoly has led Silicon Valley astray. — Look no further than the race between Lyft and Uber to dominate the online ride-hailing market.

Tweets: @swardley, @timoreilly, @stevesi, @gaberivera, and @metaviv

Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:

Waymo CTO talks about the early days of Google's self-driving project, its 10th anniversary, Waymo's plans to expand commercially beyond ride-hailing, more — A decade ago, about a dozen or so engineers gathered at Google's main Mountain View campus on Charleston Road to work on Project Chauffeur …

Tweets: @kirstenkorosec and @maxbraun

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:

Amazon now has 288M sq. ft. of warehouses, offices, retail stores, and data centers; all retail adds up to less than 20M sq. ft. and all of AWS uses 10M sq. ft. — The data on the company's real-estate holdings reveal a remarkable inflection point. — Amazon's origin story is firmly embedded …

Christina Farr / CNBC:

Fitbit launches Inspire, its first fitness tracker available exclusively through its corporate, wellness, health plan, and health systems partners — Fitbit has recently introduced a new activity and sleep tracker. But unlike it's previous devices, this one is only available if your health plan or employer is signed up with Fitbit.

More: Engadget, TechCrunch, Fortune, and USA Today

Tweets: @parkjames and @chrissyfarr

Victor Luckerson / The Ringer:

Following major tech scandals, a look at how Stanford University is reevaluating its role in shaping Silicon Valley's future employees and leaders — Stanford has established itself as the epicenter of computer science, and a farm system for the tech giants.

More: New Republic and New Republic. Tweets: @ringer

Recode:

Q&A with the author of The Mastermind, which traces the rise and fall of Paul Le Roux, a programmer-turned-drug kingpin who avoided capture for years — Ratliff's new book traces the rise and fall of Paul Le Roux, the leader of the first internet drug cartel (but he won't be the last).

Casey Ross / STAT:

A look at how US hospitals are integrating voice assistants like Alexa into patient care and the challenges facing them — At first it was a novelty: Hospitals began using voice assistants to allow patients to order lunch, check medication regimens, and get on-demand medical advice at home.

Tweets: @daniel_kraft, @harvardmed, @mayoclinic, and @drjoyeeta

Tony Romm / Washington Post:

Hasty adoption of California's privacy law left many unresolved issues and privacy advocates fear industry lobbying will lead to revisions that weaken the law — SACRAMENTO — A landmark law adopted in California last year to rein in the data-collection practices of Facebook …

Nate Oh / AnandTech:

AMD Radeon VII review: at $699, the first 7nm gaming GPU is good value when used as a high-VRAM prosumer card but for pure gamers there are better options — For AMD's Radeon Technologies Group, 2018 was a bit of a breather year. After launching the Polaris architecture in 2016 …

Tweets: @ismh. Thanks:@iancutress

Eric Newcomer / Bloomberg:

DoorDash says it stands behind its pay policy, which uses tips to help cover what it owes delivery drivers, similar to the policy Instacart reversed this week — Startups like to test boundaries. At their best, they push technological ones. At their worst, they breach legal or ethical limits.

More: Forbes, Slashdot, TechSpot, and Engadget

Tweets: @frankpasquale, @rmac18, @ceodonovan, and @krosecz

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Owen Williams / Charged:

Google's policies about inclusion of small publishers in Google News, one of the biggest news platforms on the internet, are opaque and applied at random — There's been a lot of discussion about the future of publishing over the last few years, particularly as Facebook traffic began cratering …

Tweets: @ow

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