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December 13, 2018, 4:00 PM
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| 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 …
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Apple, Wall Street Journal, Ars Technica, NPR, Business Insider, AppleInsider, SiliconANGLE, The Register, Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Quartz, Washington Post, Silicon Valley Business …, Telegraph, Engadget, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, CNET, CityLab, InvestorPlace, The Hill, Mashable, GeekWire, Politico, CNBC, MSPoweruser, The Next Web, Fortune, iDownloadBlog.com, Apple Must, iPhone in Canada Blog, Apple News aus Cupertino, Gizmodo, Silicon Valley Business …, BBC, Neowin, MacRumors, The Verge, Xconomy, New York Times, iPhone Hacks, Investor's Business Daily, Reuters, CNBC, 9to5Mac, and Associated Press
Tweets: @tim_cook, @tony_the_murse, @bostonchaahhts, @bryfitz, @carletonenglish, @ivanthek, @carnage4life, @mikeisaac, @prdonahue, @_danielsinclair, and @rrhoover. Thanks:@inafried
| 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.| 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.
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Gizmodo, Engadget, Postmates, The Verge, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Forbes, Bloomberg, and The Spoon
Tweets: @mollywood, @nattgarun, @laurengoode, and @wired
| 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 … | 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.
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YouTube, New York Times, YouTube, The Hill, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, BBC, 9to5Google, Mashable, Neowin, Engadget, and Business Insider
Tweets: @mkbhd, @youtube, @mkbhd, @redletterdave, @brockwilbur, @loudmouthjulia, @maryannmaria7, @mkbhd, @lazarbeamyt, @jazzmynejay, @keemstar, and @darknezzz13
| 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.
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CNBC, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fast Company, Business Insider, and Investor's Business Daily
Tweets: @amasad, @alex, @jonathanzwhite, and @mdudas
| 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.
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Facebook, Axios, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Engadget, and The Information
Tweets: @cityofthetown, @mattnavarra, @mgsiegler, @caseynewton, @caseynewton, and @sarahfrier
| Richard Lawler / Engadget: |
Google Maps adds Lime as a navigation option, with distance to the nearest bike or scooter, 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 …
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The Keyword, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Neowin, 9to5Google, BGR, MSPoweruser, Android and Me, The Verge, GeekWire, Mashable, CNET, and Electrek
| 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.
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TechCrunch, 9to5Google, AFTVnews, Chrome Unboxed, SlashGear, Android Authority, Android Beat, Thurrott, MSPoweruser, The Verge, Engadget, and Ars Technica
| Marrian Zhou / CNET: |
Amazon rolls out preview of Alexa Guard and announces Alexa security panel that lets users control home security systems from ADT, Ring, Abode, and Scout Alarm — Amazon says Alexa wants to keep your home safe. — On Thursday the company rolled out a preview of Alexa Guard … | 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
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Telegraph, Fortune, TechSpot, Inquirer, Business Insider, and The Next Web
Tweets: @mims, @greglinden, and @stevenjhsieh
| John Timmer / Ars Technica: |
Hands-on with the ECG feature in Apple Watch Series 4: taking an ECG is easy, but old ECG traces can only be viewed on the iPhone, not the watch itself — When Apple introduced the fourth iteration of its smartwatch, the big new selling point wasn't a feature we typically associate with a watch or any sort of smart device.| Sam Levin / The Guardian: |
Some current and former fact-checkers say Facebook has ignored their concerns, they have been used for PR, and 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 — Journalists working as factcheckers …
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Facebook, Fortune, Mashable, and Business Insider
Tweets: @politifact, @oneunderscore__, @alibreland, @donie, @zackwhittaker, @mollymckew, @brendannyhan, @violetblue, and @jamesrbuk
| Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: |
Brave ad-blocking browser moves to Chromium codebase, now supports Chrome extensions but says it won't integrate any Google-based features — Brave replaces ambitious Muon interface and goes full Chromium. Gets 22 percent speed boost in the process. — Privacy-focused browser Brave … | 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.
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CNET, The Next Web, Bloomberg, Engadget, ACLU, BuzzFeed News, and Google AI Blog. Tweets: @snowjake
| J. David Goodman / New York Times: |
How Amazon is trying to quell opposition to its new NYC offices by hiring well-connected lobbyists and taking to the streets to hear residents' concerns — Amazon is trying to quell rising opposition to its plan for offices in New York, hiring well-connected lobbyists to make its case …
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BuzzFeed News, The Verge, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Recode, Vox, 6sqft, The Hill, Fortune, PYMNTS.com, CNBC, New York Post, TechCrunch, The Guardian, CNBC, Curbed NY, and Gizmodo
| 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.
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jumo.world
| Joshua Goldman / CNET: |
Samsung upgrades its two-in-one Notebook 9 Pen with a new 15-inch option, updated S Pen, and a promise of 15 hours of battery life, coming in 2019 — With its updated Notebook 9 Pen two-in-one laptop, Samsung is targeting creative professionals who want the flexibility of both a laptop … | 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.
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BBC, Silicon Republic, Telegraph, Firstpost, Telegraph, Fossbytes, ZDNet, Pretty 52, Scary Mommy, GeekWire, ABC, Sydney Morning Herald, Big Think, The Independent, The Hill, Slate, BuzzFeed News, BBC, Newser, and CNBC
Tweets: @gbrockell, @robjective, @gbrockell, @lookwhatimade, @mboorstein, and @fizapirani
| Michael del Castillo / Forbes: |
Stablecoin project Basis, backed by Bain Capital, GV, and a16z, confirms it is closing due to regulatory issues and will return the $133M capital raised — Not even three Princeton honors students and $133 million could save the Basis cryptocurrency from the scrap bin of SEC rejects.
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CoinDesk, TechCrunch, Cointelegraph.com News, The Block, CoinSpeaker, NewsBTC, CCN, and SludgeFeed
Tweets: @sasha35625, @melt_dem, @mickhagen, @mdudas, @arrington, @whalepanda, @coinfund_al, @_jillruth, and @cryptomanran
| 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 … | Daniel Palmer / CoinDesk: |
Opera releases its Android browser with a built-in Ethereum wallet, support for crypto collectibles such as CryptoKitties and ethereum-based decentralized apps — Opera has announced the public release of its “Web 3-ready” Android web browser, which notably sports a built-in cryptocurrency wallet.
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The Next Web, The Verge, NullTX, TechCrunch, ZDNet, CryptoGlobe, and Opera Mobile
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