Techmeme
December 13, 2018, 5:50 PM

Top News

Ina Fried / Axios:
Apple announces a $1B Austin campus initially for 5,000 workers, new offices in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City, and expansions in several other US cities  —  Apple plans to build a new $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas, adding thousands of jobs, while also setting up new large offices in Seattle …
Arielle Pardes / Wired:
Postmates announces Serve, an autonomous rover launching soon in LA, and says it now averages 4M deliveries per month in 550+ cities  —  HANGING ON THE wall of Postmates' stealth R&D laboratory, there's a framed photo of an iconic scene from Star Wars, Luke Skywalker bent down beside R2D2.
Jason Del Rey / Recode:
Instacart says it will end its partnership with Whole Foods starting in February; source: move is expected to reduce Instacart's revenue by less than 5 percent  —  Instacart will begin pulling the first group of workers out of Whole Foods locations in February.
Sam Levin / The Guardian:
Some current and former fact-checkers say Facebook has ignored their concerns, that they have been used for PR, and that they have lost trust in the company  —  Journalists paid to help fix Facebook's fake news problem say they have lost trust in the platform
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Apple is notifying artists that it is removing their ability to post to Apple Music Connect and is removing previously posted content from Artist Pages  —  Apple Music Connect appears to slowly be going the way of iTunes Ping.  Apple has started notifying Apple Music artists that it is removing …
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Google Maps adds Lime as a navigation option, showing distance to the nearest bike or scooter and an estimate for the cost and ride time, starting in 13 cities  —  Google Maps is always ready to help you get where you're going, and the latest addition to its list of features is a tie …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
The state of technology in 2018: the enterprise market is thriving and the consumer market is stagnant, dominated by “innovations” from a few large behemoths  —  This article is a bit of an annual tradition: in mid-December I summarize the state of technology,1 and appropriately enough …
Amy Gesenhues / Marketing Land:
Facebook says it is rolling out Watch globally on desktop and Facebook Lite and expands availability of Ad Breaks, 15-second in-stream ads, to 14 more markets  —  Says more than 75 million daily Watch visitors spend, on average, more than 20 minutes on the video platform.
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
YouTube's annual Rewind video received 10M dislikes in about eight days, overtaking Justin Bieber's Baby to be the most disliked video  —  Creators help explain why  —  To say that this year's YouTube Rewind didn't go over well with the YouTube community would be quite an understatement.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Robinhood launches checking and savings accounts in the US with a 3% interest rate and no minimum balance or fees for overdrafts or foreign transactions  —  Robinhood is undercutting the big banks by forgoing brick-and-mortar branches with its new zero-fee checking and savings account features.
Kent Walker / Google:
Google says it won't sell general-purpose facial recognition APIs before working through “important technology and policy questions”  —  More than 400 million people in the world have diabetes.  A third of them have diabetic retinopathy, a complication that can cause permanent blindness.
Karen Weise / New York Times:
New York's HQ2 proposal shows the types of data Amazon collected: availability of tech experts, real estate sites, outcomes from educational institutions, more  —  The city and state sent loads of data to Amazon during its search for a new headquarters, offering a peek into the valuable information …
Ryan Randazzo / Arizona Republic:
Police in Chandler, AZ have documented 20+ incidents in the past two years where people vandalized Waymo's autonomous vehicles and harassed their test drivers  —  Police have responded to dozens of calls regarding people threatening and harassing Waymo vans.  —  CONNECT
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Amazon starts selling the Chromecast Ultra and third-gen Chromecast, nearly a year after it promised to sell Chromecast devices again  —  Amazon pulled the Chromecast from its online store in 2015, after it instated a new rule that only streaming devices that supported Prime Video could be sold.
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
South African fintech startup Jumo, which specializes in microloans, savings, and insurance, adds $12.5M to $52M round from September as it expands into Asia  —  Months after a big round, African fintech startup Jumo has pulled in a fresh $12.5 million to add more fuel for its expansion into Asia Pacific.
More: jumo.world
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Tumblr reappeared on the App Store this week, after being pulled in November over child pornography concerns and 10 days after announcing a ban on adult content  —  Tumblr is back.  Sort of.  The social blogging platform reappeared on Apple's App Store this week, some three weeks after being pulled over child pornography concerns.
Gillian Brockell / Washington Post:
Tech companies should automatically turn off irrelevant ads based on info users share, such as ads for baby gear when a pregnant person has a stillborn child  —  Dear Tech Companies:  —  I know you knew I was pregnant.  It's my fault, I just couldn't resist those Instagram hashtags — #30weekspregnant, #babybump.
Kate Clark / TechCrunch:
Juniper Square, which operates a platform for commercial real estate investment firms, raises $25M Series B led by Ribbit Capital  —  Juniper Square, a four-year-old startup at the intersection of enterprise software, real estate and financial technology, has brought in an additional $25 million …
Kate Clark / TechCrunch:
Online design marketplace Minted, which sells stationery, art, and home decor, raises $208M Series E led by Permira, bringing total raised to $300M  —  Minted, a company we've been covering on this site for a decade-plus, plans to double down on its wholesale and licensing business …
Nivedita Balu / Reuters:
Starbucks partners with UberEats to deliver food and coffee from a quarter of its US stores starting in 2019, following a pilot program in Miami in September  —  (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) said on Thursday it is partnering with UberEats to deliver food and coffee from nearly a quarter …

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