Techmeme
January 24, 2019, 8:30 AM

Top News

New York Times:
China appears to block Microsoft's Bing, despite the company's self-censorship of its search results in the country  —  SHANGHAI — Under China's president, Xi Jinping, the last vestiges of the global internet have slowly disappeared from an online world that had already shut out Twitter, Google and Facebook.
Yuan Yang / Financial Times:
Sources: Microsoft's Bing has been blocked in China following a government order, removing the last major foreign search engine left in the country  —  Microsoft's Bing search engine has been blocked in China following a government order, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
CNBC:
Sources: Apple laid off 200+ employees this week from a Project Titan; Apple acknowledges it has restructured its autonomous systems tech team  —  - Apple dismissed just over 200 employees from Project Titan this week, its stealthy autonomous vehicle initiative, people familiar with the group told CNBC.
CNBC:
Verizon Media Group, which owns Yahoo and AOL, plans to cut 7% of its global workforce, according to an email to employees from CEO Guru Gowrappan  —  Verizon Media Group — formerly known as Oath — is laying off 7 percent of its workforce, a person familiar with the change told CNBC.
Sean Scott / The Amazon Blog:
Amazon says it is field testing Amazon Scout, a small autonomous six-wheeled delivery robot, in Snohomish County, Washington  —  At Amazon, we continually invest in new technologies to benefit customers.  We've been hard at work developing a new, fully-electric delivery system - Amazon Scout …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
AWS launches WorkLink, a fully managed service for $5 per month per user, that aims to make accessing mobile intranet sites and web apps easier  —  If your company uses a VPN and/or a mobile device management service to give you access to its intranet and internal web apps, then you know how annoying those are.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
In a video posted online, Xiaomi teases a working prototype of a phone with a double-folding display and a more symmetrical design than Samsung's foldable phone  —  China's Xiaomi has become the latest smartphone maker to tease a folding smartphone, dropping the below video clip of its president …
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Reuters:
Waymo to invest $13.6M in a factory for level 4 autonomous cars in Michigan, partnering with Magna to install Waymo's self-driving system in cars made by others  —  - Alphabet Inc's Waymo self-driving vehicle unit said on Tuesday it plans to build a plant in Michigan to transform vehicles …
Facebook:
Facebook to launch Page Quality tab for admins, showing when content is removed for policy violations and when post distribution is reduced due to fact-checking  —  We're taking new steps in how we handle Page content that goes against our policies.  First, starting tomorrow people who manage …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
After Netflix price hikes, Hulu will lower its base, ad-supported subscription plan to $6/mo, down from $8/mo, and hike its Live TV service to $45/mo on Feb. 26  —  The core service is getting cheaper, but live TV now costs more  —  Hulu just announced that it will lower the price of its base …
South China Morning Post:
Research firm says China had 713 VC deals in Q4, down 25% YoY, worth $18.3B total, down 12% YoY, amid cooling valuations and tighter hiring for tech startups  —  - The number of venture capital deals in China dropped 25 per cent year on year to 713 in the fourth quarter

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Chris Welch / The Verge:
Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
Paresh Dave / Reuters: