Techmeme
August 17, 2019, 5:10 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: SoftBank plans to lend up to $20B to its employees to buy stakes in its second VC fund, with Masayoshi Son accounting for more than half of the amount  —  Unusual setup doubly exposes the Japanese company to a startup economy that is starting to show cracks
Ari Levy / CNBC:
A look at donations by major tech execs to 2020 presidential candidates, with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders notably absent from the list of recipients  —  KEY POINTS  — LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has donated money to four Democratic primary candidates, while Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has provided money to three.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Bakkt says it plans to launch its physically-settled bitcoin futures contracts on Sept. 23, after getting approval from NY state's financial regulator  —  Bakkt has been cleared to launch.  —  The Intercontinental Exchange's young subsidiary announced Friday that it had acquired …
Luke Winkie / VentureBeat:
How cities like Katowice in Poland, Hangzhou in China, and Frisco, Texas are embracing esports tournaments in a bid to revive their economies  —  For centuries, Katowice was a mining town.  The first settlers were craftsmen in the 18th century, who arrived in the lowlands of Southern Poland …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
YouTube changes policy: copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short or unintentional uses of music via its manual tool  —  YouTube is making a change to its copyright enforcement policies around music used in videos, which may result in an increased number …

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Earlier Picks

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Biswarup Gooptu / The Economic Times:
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Juli Clover / MacRumors: