Techmeme
October 26, 2019, 11:00 AM

Top News

Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Pentagon awards $10B JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft over Amazon  —  Microsoft has emerged victorious in a dramatic competition for public cloud resources for the U.S. Defense Department, beating out market leader Amazon Web Services, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Greg Bensinger / Washington Post:
In leaked video, Sundar Pichai admits at an all-hands that Google is “genuinely struggling” with employee trust as it defends the hiring of former DHS official  —  At company's weekly town hall with employees, executives assail leaks and defend hiring DHS official
Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE:
Study: researchers say an algorithm widely used in the US healthcare system to assess medical needs for millions of people is biased against black patients  —  A series of studies argue that by focusing on costs as a proxy for health, risk algorithms are ignoring the racial inequalities in healthcare access.
Sequoia Capital:
Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital, dies at 87  —  Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital and one of the generation of leaders who forged Silicon Valley, died today aged 87 at his home in Woodside, California.  He shaped Sequoia and left his imprint not just on his family and friends …
Facebook:
Facebook begins testing Facebook News with a subset of people in the US across four categories of select publishers: general, topical, diverse, and local news  —  Testing a dedicated place for news in the US  —  Journalism plays a critical role in our democracy.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Peter Kafka / Vox:
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Google says it's improving 10% of English searches in the US by using NLP techniques to better understand query context and words' relationship with each other  —  For Google's namesake search engine, delivering the right results is about understanding what people are asking for.
Atiya / MSPoweruser:
Leaked documentation about Windows 10X shows the OS is designed for both laptops and foldable devices, with the Start Menu being referred to as “Launcher”  —  Microsoft has mostly kept details of Windows 10X- a version of Windows 10 that has been tailored to dual-screen devices- under wraps.
More: Thurrott and The Verge
Meredith Broussard / Slate:
A look at how most database schemas from the 1950s through the 1990s were designed to encode gender as a binary, reinforcing the social norms from that period  —  College student Manahil Bandukwala recently tweeted a complaint about her computer science class.
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
Minneapolis-based Total Expert, which makes marketing and customer management SaaS tools for banks, raises $52M Series C, bringing its total raised to $86M  —  It's no secret that the art of customer service in the modern era is something that banks desperately need help with.
Don Clark / New York Times:
Inside the increasingly urgent discussions between Pentagon and tech industry on how to reduce the growing US dependence on advanced chip manufacturing abroad  —  Talks over how American companies can ensure future supplies of advanced computer chips have taken on more urgency.

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
What you need to know about fine-tuning LLMs  —  Success with generative AI hinges on honing a pretrained LLM to be a specialist at your intended domain or application.  Learn how to fine-tune for four key characteristics.
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
Planned India Data Center Maintenance on 5th and 6th April 2025 from 09.00 AM to 09:30 AM IST for Zoho Payments  —  Dear customers,Our bi-annual infrastructure maintenance for our India Data Center is scheduled for April 5 & 6 …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
(Essay) Silicon Valley's "Sovereign Tech Stack" Problem
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Hard Fork:
The Tech Behind Signalgate + Dwarkesh Patel's "Scaling Era" + Is A.I. Making Our Listeners Dumb?
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Aaron Levie (CEO, Box) on Enterprise AI Trends No One is Talking About Yet
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Great Chat:
Does anyone care about bad behavior anymore?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:00 AM ET, October 26, 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

Sean O'Kane / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Reuters:
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Jay Peters / The Verge: