Techmeme
November 14, 2019, 11:40 AM

Top News

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Motorola announces a new Razr phone with a 6.2" touchscreen display that folds like a clamshell, launching in January on Verizon in the US for $1,500  —  The Razr returns  —  The Razr is back, but now it's an Android smartphone that can fold in half.  Motorola has officially announced its much-rumored …
Roger Cheng / CNET:
How Motorola created the foldable-screen Razr and why it claims it solved the problems faced by Samsung's Galaxy Fold, by focusing on a hinge design  —  Exclusive: Motorola, in need of a comeback, wants to reignite the excitement over foldables with a phone that's equal parts retro and cutting edge.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is considering bundling News+, Apple TV+, and Apple Music as soon as 2020 to attract subscribers, meaning less money for News+ publishers  —  - Company keeps rights to bundle News+ service with TV+, Music  — Move may woo more subscribers, but lower publishers' News+ cut
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Toronto-based password manager 1Password raises $200M Series A led by Accel, its first external round of funding in its 14-year history  —  1Password, a Toronto-based password manager, announced today it has raised $200 million in a massive Series A funding round that was led by Accel.
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple Research app is now available to download for iPhone and Apple Watch; US users can enroll in three health studies  —  Following the announcement at the September event, the Apple Research app is now available to download for iPhone and Apple Watch.  Users in the United States can sign …
Janko Roettgers / Variety:
Oculus CTO John Carmack says he is stepping down but will remain as a “consulting CTO” and will work on an artificial general intelligence as a personal project  —  One of the driving forces behind Facebook's virtual reality efforts is leaving his post: Oculus CTO John Carmack …
New York Times:
How startups around the world, using SoftBank funds, got contractors like drivers and hoteliers to commit via unsustainable incentives, and then cut them off  —  SoftBank poured money into start-ups that use armies of contractors.  That has upended the lives of drivers, hotel operators and real estate agents around the world.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple Music launches Replay, letting subscribers look back at their favorite music in 2019, similar to Spotify's year-end review, Wrapped, but updated each week  —  Apple Music is taking on Spotify with the launch of a new feature, Apple Music Replay, that will allow subscribers to take a look back at their favorite music from 2019.
George Anadiotis / ZDNet:
Siren, which helps build knowledge graphs from enterprise data, raises $10M Series A led by Atlantic Bridge  —  Siren promises the benefits of knowledge graphs, without the hassle of reinventing your existing data management and infrastructure  —  Graph databases are amazing, but the knowledge graph is in your data already.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Salesforce says it will use Microsoft's Azure for its Marketing Cloud service, signaling a thaw in a complicated relationship  —  - Salesforce will deploy its Marketing Cloud service on Microsoft's Azure public cloud infrastructure.  — Salesforce already uses Amazon Web Services …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
GitHub announces improvements to code search and notifications and unveils its first native mobile app, available in beta for iOS, with Android app coming soon  —  At its annual Universe conference today, Microsoft -owned GitHub announced a couple of new products, as well as the general availability …
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Report: Google is planning to offer checking accounts to users, in partnership with banks and credit unions, starting as early as next year  —  Google is the latest big tech company to make a move into banking and personal financial services: The company is gearing up to offer checking accounts to consumers …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Punchh, which provides app-based loyalty cards and other analytics services for retailers and restaurants, raises $40M at an estimated valuation of $300M+  —  E-commerce accounts for around 11% of all retail sales in the US, but it's growing much faster than brick-and-mortar sales …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Roger Cheng / CNET:
Jonathan D. Epstein / The Buffalo News:
ACV Auctions, a Buffalo-based online marketplace for used cars, raises $150M Series E at a valuation of more than $1.5B  —  The ACV Auctions office.  (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)  —  Buffalo has its first confirmed unicorn.  —  Only this one isn't a horse with a horn on its head.
More: FinSMEs
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Apple says the updated Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR will ship in December, but does not provide an exact date  —  Apple has officially announced that its long-awaited Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR will be available starting in December.  —  Apple also announced that the new ‌Mac Pro‌ …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Facebook says requests from governments for user data in H1 2019 were up 16% over H2 2018 to 128,617, the highest on record, led by 50,741 demands from the US  —  Facebook's latest transparency report is out.  —  The social media giant said the number of government demands for user data increased …

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
(BNS) Brian's Appearance On Daily Detroit
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:40 AM ET, November 14, 2019.

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

Ashlee Vance / Bloomberg:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Aliya Chaudhry / The Verge:
Financial Times:
Bloomberg: