Techmeme
February 7, 2019, 5:50 PM

Top News

BBC:
Germany orders Facebook to stop combining data from WhatsApp, Instagram, and third-party sites with data in a user's main Facebook account without their consent  —  Germany's competition authority has told Facebook it can only continue gathering so much data about users from beyond its app and website if it gets individuals' consent.
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Apple releases iOS 12.1.4 with a fix for the Group FaceTime bug, says a security audit of FaceTime revealed a bug in Live Photos on FaceTime, which it has fixed  —  Apple has turned its Group FaceTime feature back on following the release of iOS 12.1.4 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Manish Singh / VentureBeat:
News aggregator Nuzzel sold to Scroll, which is building a news subscription service; Nuzzel founder Jonathan Abrams and COO Kent Lindstrom to leave the company  —  News aggregator Nuzzel has found a new home and leadership and is undergoing some product changes.
Jason Hiner / CNET:
Google Fiber to shut down in Louisville on April 15 after an experimental “nanotrenching” technique to deploy fiber in trenches only two inches deep, failed  —  Google's trick to more rapidly and cheaply deploy its super-speedy Google Fiber project has hit a wall …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Twitter reports Q4 revenue of $909M, up 24% YoY, ad revenue of $791M, up 23% YoY, net income of $244M, and MAUs of 321M, down by 9M YoY; stock closes down 9%+  —  After strong results from Facebook and Snap this quarter, all eyes were on Twitter to see if the other big …
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Sources: Apple has moved its modem engineering unit to its in-house hardware technology group led by Johny Srouji, Apple's SVP of hardware technologies  —  Apple Inc has moved its modem chip engineering effort into its in-house hardware technology group from its supply chain unit …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Apple says it has notified app developers to remove code that lets them record how a user interacts with their apps without explicit user consent  —  Apple is telling app developers to remove code that allows them to effectively record how a user interacts with their iPhone apps …
Dami Lee / The Verge:
Spotify's new Terms of Service, which go into effect on March 1, will give Spotify the authority to immediately terminate accounts that use ad blockers  —  Cracking down on ad blockers  —  Spotify is now explicitly banning ad blockers, as stated in an updated Terms of Service policy sent out today.
Victoria Song / Gizmodo:
Microsoft introduces background blur feature to Skype, which uses AI to detect the user's hair, hands, and arms, and blur distracting objects in the background  —  Slobs of the world, don't work too hard KonMari-ing your apartment or office ahead of your next important Skype call.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
For Spotify to succeed as a podcast app, it needs to clearly separate podcasts from music, help users discover podcasts better, and allow creators to monetize  —  Some suggestions for improvement  —  Spotify announced today that the company plans to spend up to $500 million on podcast-related acquisitions.
Alex Heath / Cheddar:
TikTok hires Vanessa Pappas, who was YouTube's Global Head of Creative Insights, as its first-ever General Manager for the US  —  TikTok, the Chinese-owned company that has quickly become one of the hottest apps in North America, has hired a veteran YouTube executive to oversee its U.S. operations.
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Microsoft joins Google, Facebook, and Arm as a member of the OpenChain Project, which aims to standardize open-source software licensing  —  Microsoft Corp. wants to support more standardization of open-source software licensing, so today it's putting its weight behind the OpenChain Project as its latest platinum member.

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Josh Constine / TechCrunch: