Techmeme
March 29, 2019, 9:15 PM

Top News

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Apple cancels AirPower wireless charging mat, citing inability to meet its quality standards for the product  —  Apple has canceled the AirPower product completely, citing difficulty meeting its own standards.  —  “After much effort, we've concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project.
Sara Salinas / CNBC:
Lyft closes up 8.7% on its first day of trading after raising $2.3B in its IPO, which valued the company at over $20B  —  - The stock ended trading 8.7 percent up at $78.29 — something of a modest IPO for such a giant tech company.  —  Lyft's stock popped as much as 23 percent in its debut on the public market Friday.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Interview with YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan about its recommendation algorithms, radicalization, violent extremism, and the rabbit-hole effect  —  Neal Mohan discusses the streaming site's recommendation engine, which has become a growing liability amid accusations that it steers users to increasingly extreme content.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
A newly published exploit for a Magento vulnerability that can be used without authentication puts hundreds of thousands of e-commerce sites at risk  —  Magento admins: beware of SQL flaw that requires no authentication.  —  Attack code was published on Friday that exploits a critical vulnerability …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Toast, a cloud-based restaurant management platform, raises a $250M Series E led by TCV and Tiger Global at a $2.7B valuation  —  Restaurant sales hit $825 billion last year in the US, but with margins averaging at only three to five percent per business, they're always looking for an edge …
Jessica Toonkel / The Information:
Sources: Amazon is planning to launch a free ad-supported video news app for Fire TV devices, featuring digital news programming from TV networks  —  Amazon.com is planning to launch a free ad-supported video news app for its Fire TV streaming video devices, featuring digital news programming …
Ian Allison / CoinDesk:
Coinbase Custody starts offering staking services to institutional clients, starting with Tezos  —  The Takeaway:  — Coinbase Custody is offering staking services to institutional clients, starting with Tezos.  — Client assets will remain inside Coinbase's fully insured cold storage at all times, mitigating risk to investors.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple to close Texture on May 28 following the launch of Apple News+, effectively ending the service for subscribers without Apple devices  —  A year ago, Apple acquired the digital newsstand app Texture to form the basis of its new subscription-based service, Apple News+, which launched on Monday.
Ina Fried / Axios:
Google pulls “conversion therapy” app after prominent LGBTQ group Human Rights Campaign suspended Google's ranking from its influential Corporate Equality Index  —  Google is pulling a controversial app that LGBTQ rights groups say engages in a form of conversion therapy …
Angela Chen / The Verge:
Inmates at two Finland prisons are classifying data to train AI for a startup building a database of companies; some experts have concerns about exploitation  —  Empowerment or exploitation?  —  “Prison labor” is usually associated with physical work, but inmates at two prisons in Finland …
Rob Price / Business Insider:
Facebook says it “mistakenly deleted” some of Zuckerberg's old Facebook posts that were public and reported on, including a post about the Instagram acquisition  —  - Some old Facebook posts by CEO Mark Zuckerberg have disappeared, and the company says it “mistakenly deleted” them.
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Huawei reports ~$8.8B profit in 2018, up 25.1% YoY on revenue of ~$107.13B, up 19.5% YoY, boosted by strong revenue growth of 45.1% YoY in its consumer business  —  - Huawei reported revenue of 721.2 billion yuan ($107.13 billion) in 2018, a 19.5 percent year-on-year rise.
Adam Satariano / New York Times:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Alibaba has acquired China-based Teambition, a project collaboration platform similar to Trello or Asana; Teambition has raised ~$17M since 2013  —  Alibaba has made an acquisition as it continues to square up to the opportunity in enterprise services in China and beyond, akin to what its U.S. counterpart Amazon has done with AWS.

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