Techmeme
August 1, 2019, 6:10 PM

Top News

Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the biggest name in Fortnite and one of Twitch's most popular stars, says he will move to Microsoft's Mixer full-time  —  Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the biggest name in Fortnite and one of Twitch's most popular stars, is leaving the platform to stream exclusively on Mixer.
PR Newswire:
DoorDash agrees to acquire Caviar, Square's food delivery business, for $410M  —  DoorDash, the fastest-growing last-mile logistics platform in the U.S., announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Square (NYSE: SQ) to acquire Caviar for $410 million in cash and DoorDash preferred stock.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Inside US-based “phone farms”, where people use dozens or hundreds of smartphones to fabricate engagements with ads and generate some disposable income  —  Ordinary Americans are using armies of phones to generate cash to buy food, diapers, and beer through ad fraud.
Donie O'Sullivan / CNN:
Facebook details its first takedown of inauthentic accounts linked to the Saudi government, alongside a separate takedown of accounts linked to UAE and Egypt  —  Washington (CNN Business)Facebook said Thursday it had found evidence of something cyber security and national security experts …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: as part of its antitrust probe, FTC is investigating whether Facebook bought startups like Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralize possible competitors  —  Regulators examining whether social-media giant bought companies to neutralize possible rivals  —  The Federal Trade Commission's …
Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
An in-depth look at Intel's new Ice Lake chips, including their development history and benchmark results  —  Intel's new Ice Lake platform is the company's second attempt at producing a 10nm chip for the mass market, and follows on from the Cannon Lake platform.
Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Jacqueline Feldscher / Politico:
Pentagon puts the decision of awarding the $10B JEDI cloud services contract on hold as Defense Secretary Mark Esper reviews accusations of unfair competition  —  The Pentagon is slamming the brakes on its mega-competition to award a $10 billion cloud computing contract after President Donald Trump suggested …
Abhijeet M. / SamMobile:
Leaked render of Samsung's 3.5mm to USB-C adapter is a further indication that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 10 will not have a 3.5mm headphone jack  —  We've seen the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ in all their glory in a slew of leaked renders already, and now, a render showing the 3.5mm …
Bloomberg:
SEC filings: MacKenzie Bezos is now the second largest Amazon shareholder, holding 19.7M shares, or a ~4% stake worth ~$37B, in the company  —  MacKenzie Bezos is officially Amazon.com Inc.'s second-largest individual shareholder.  —  About 19.7 million shares are now registered …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Bird unveils new electric scooter with 50% more battery life, anti-vandalism sensors, anti-tipping kickstands, and anti-puncture tires  —  Bird Two also has anti-tipping kickstands and anti-puncture tires  —  It's been less than three months since Bird unveiled Bird One …
Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:
Holloway, which publishes in-depth guides about running a startup, raises $4.6M in seed funding from The New York Times, NEA, Lightspeed, and others  —  Founders need to get smart quickly about the many nuanced aspects of building a company, from understanding weird language in a big term sheet to hiring a key software developer.
More: FinSMEs.  Tweets: @caseynewton
James Thorne / GeekWire:
Former Expedia executive Aman Bhutani taking over as CEO of GoDaddy as Scott Wagner, who was promoted to the post in 2017, steps down for health reasons  —  Tech Moves covers notable hires, promotions and personnel changes in the Pacific NW tech community.  Submissions: tips@geekwire.com
More: ZDNet.  Thanks:@taylor_soper
Ben Fox Rubin / CNET:
Following its move to stop selling new Dash buttons in February, Amazon says it will turn off the capabilities of all its Dash buttons worldwide on August 31  —  If you're dying to test out the features of Amazon's Dash button, it's now or never.  Amazon said Thursday it will turn off …
More: The Verge.  Thanks:@benfoxrubin
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:
With an estimated 420K CCTV cameras operating in the city, London has become a test bed for visual surveillance tech, including live facial recognition  —  On the last day of January, few of the shoppers and office workers who hurried through Romford town centre in east London …
George Anadiotis / ZDNet:
Dgraph, an open source graph database startup, raises $11.5M Series A led by Redpoint Ventures  —  Imagine a graph database that's not aimed at the growing graph database market, selling to Fortune 500 without sales, and claiming to be the fastest without benchmarks.  Dgraph is unique in some interesting ways.
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:
London Stock Exchange agrees to acquire financial data provider Refinitiv, a former arm of Thomson Reuters, in an all-stock deal valued at ~$27B  —  LONDON — For more than 300 years, the London Stock Exchange has been one of the world's most enduring symbols of capitalism.

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