Techmeme
October 31, 2018, 11:25 PM

Top News

James Vincent / The Verge:
iRobot partners with Google and will share spatial data from Roombas to help improve Google's smart home experience by mapping rooms  —  The two companies are working together to leverage spatial data generated by iRobot's robovacs  —  Google and iRobot have announced they're working together …
New York Times:
A look at the internal backlash at Google over its handling of sexual harassment claims, with 1,500+ employees planning to walk out in protest on Thursday  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Google is struggling to contain a growing internal backlash over its handling of sexual harassment and its workplace culture.
Ina Fried / Axios:
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:
Business Insider:
Sources: Apple held multiple acquisition talks with Leap Motion, beginning in 2013 and most recently in spring 2018, when Apple made an offer between $30M-$50M  —  - Apple has offered to buy augmented reality startup Leap Motion multiple times, most recently in the spring of 2018.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter's spam reporting tool now lets users specify more details, like if the account is fake, using unrelated hashtags, or sharing malicious links  —  Twitter is adding more nuance to its spam reporting tools, the company announced today.  Instead of simply flagging a tweet as posting spam …
Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:
Xiaomi sends cease and desist letter to Lyft, saying it will pursue legal action if Lyft continues to modify scooters originally manufactured by Xiaomi  —  Xiaomi, the electric scooter manufacturer that a handful of the shared electric scooter services in the U.S. (like ones from Lyft …
More: TechNode and Mashable
NDTV Gadgets 360:
WhatsApp's VP Chris Daniels confirms WhatsApp will put ads in its ‘Status’ section, but declined to provide a timeline  —  Clearing the air on Facebook's monetisation efforts towards WhatsApp, the mobile messaging service's Vice President Chris Daniels on Wednesday said the company …
Washington Post:
Profile of Gab co-founder Andrew Torba days after Gab went offline and its CTO and co-founder Ekrem Buyukkaya quit following “attacks from the American media”  —  Like many young entrepreneurs drawn to California's technological gold rush, Andrew Torba brought a familiar mix of smarts …
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Sources: after canceling Rift 2, a “complete redesign”, Oculus now pursuing a more modest Rift update, possibly called Rift S, to release as early as next year  —  Facebook's virtual reality arm may soon find itself in the unfamiliar position of playing catch-up with hardware competitors.
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Line Games, chat app Line's gaming division, raises $110M from Anchor Equity Partners; Anchor acquires 27.5% stake, dilutes Line's holdings to a minority 41.7%  —  Messaging app firm Line has given up majority control of its Line Games business after it raised outside financing to expand …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Mark Zuckerberg has been summoned to appear before an “international grand committee” of Canadian and UK MPs to discuss fake news on November 27  —  Two separate parliamentary committees, in the UK and Canada, have issued an unprecedented international joint summons for Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before them.

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More News

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Earlier Picks

Peter Cao / 9to5Mac:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Carolyn Said / San Francisco Chronicle:
Chris Welch / The Verge: