Techmeme
August 13, 2019, 9:45 AM

Top News

Ursula Perano / Axios:
WordPress.com owner Automattic says it will buy Tumblr from Verizon, take on ~200 staffers, and keep the porn ban; source says Automattic paid less than $10M  —  Verizon is set to sell the social network Tumblr to Automattic Inc, the owner of blog site and publishing tool Wordpress, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Nitasha Tiku / Wired:
Interviews with 47 former and current employees about the past three years at Google reveal fear of the far right, activist awakening, weaponized leaks, more  —  ON A BRIGHT Monday in January 2017, at 2:30 in the afternoon, about a thousand Google employees—horrified, alarmed, and a little giddy …
New York Times:
How YouTube radicalized Brazil, diverting users to conspiracy and far-right channels, elevating Bolsonaro's party, and possibly creating a public health crisis  —  NITERÓI, Brazil — When Matheus Dominguez was 16, YouTube recommended a video that changed his life.
Daniel Palmer / CoinDesk:
Coinbase tells UK customers to convert their Zcash to other coins or move it to external wallets, otherwise it will automatically convert to pounds on Aug. 26  —  The U.K. arm of Coinbase appears to be dropping support for the privacy-focused cryptocurrency zcash.
Brad Sams / Thurrott:
Microsoft says the next planned major update for Minecraft, the Super Duper Graphics Pack update, is “too technically demanding” and has been canceled  —  Back at E3 2017, Micorosft showed off what was going to be the next major update for Minecraft.
Chris Davies / SlashGear:
Johnson Controls' GLAS thermostat, debuted as a Cortana-powered device in 2018, is being updated to remove Cortana, instead offering Alexa and Google Assistant  —  The GLAS smart thermostat was to be Cortana's big expansion in the connected home, but the stylish glass HVAC controller …
HuffPost:
Since YouTube changed its recommendation algorithm in January to deprioritize conspiracy theories, monthly views of Fox News' YouTube channel more than tripled  —  Conspiracy channels all over the platform are funneling increased traffic to Fox.  —  Early this year, YouTube adjusted …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Kasten, which offers a platform for policy-based backup, recovery, and migration for Kubernetes applications, raises $14M Series A led by Insight Partners  —  Kasten, which bills itself as an enterprise-scale and cloud-native data management company, today announced that it's raised $14 million …

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Canalys:
Steve Dent / Engadget:
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Jon Fingas / Engadget: