Techmeme
December 4, 2019, 9:15 PM

Top News

Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Instagram says it will now require birthdates from new users, in order to improve safety features for minors and better target ads for age-restricted products  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's Instagram said it will require birthdates from all new users starting on Wednesday …
Jason Schreier / Kotaku:
Sources: Microsoft is planning a cheaper, disc-free Xbox, codenamed Lockhart, to go alongside its high-end Project Scarlett console  —  In June, Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, a new iteration of the Xbox that the company said would “set a new bar for console power, speed and performance.”
Andrei Frumusanu / AnandTech:
An in-depth look at Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 and 765 chips, and why Snapdragon 865 does not come with an integrated 5G modem  —  We're here in Maui for the second day of Qualcomm's fourth annual Snapdragon summit, for what is probably the most exciting part of the event …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Language learning app Duolingo raises $30M Series F from Alphabet's CapitalG at a $1.5B valuation, more than double the valuation from its 2017 Series E  —  Popular language learning app Duolingo has raised $30 million in a series F round of funding from Alphabet's investment arm CapitalG.
Caroline Haskins / VICE:
Internal and public documents portray efforts by Amazon's Ring to entice police with parties and batches of 40+ free Ring doorbells for promoting the service  —  This is the second of a three-part series exploring how Ring transformed from start-up pitch to the technology powering Amazon's …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Reddit publishes its 2019 retrospective: 430M MAUs, up 30% YoY, with 199M posts, 1.7B comments, and 32B upvotes; Bill Gates AMA had the most upvotes with 110K  —  In a year-end retrospective released this morning, Reddit says its user base grew 30% this year to reach 430 million monthly active users, as of the end of October.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google says Focus mode, a Digital Wellbeing feature for Android that mutes notifications, is rolling out to Android 9 and 10 users  —  At I/O 2019 in May, Google announced the latest Digital Wellbeing features to build on last year's initial launch.  In testing for the past several months …
Victoria Song / Gizmodo:
Craigslist, which launched in 1995, finally gets an official app, available now on iOS and in beta on Android  —  Craigslist has long been a staple of the internet since it first launched in 1995—but surprisingly, it hasn't had an official app in the decade or so since the smartphone era began.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Plex launches a free, ad-supported streaming service featuring thousands of movies and shows from studios like MGM, available in ~220 countries  —  Plex today is launching its own ad-supported streaming service, a rival to The Roku Channel, Tubi, Crackle, Vudu's Movies on Us …
Li Yuan / New York Times:
Huawei's reputation in China, once unimpeachable, has been dented by a labor dispute over severance pay with an employee, who was recently freed from jail  —  When an executive wrote about her house arrest in Canada, an outcry about a former employee's treatment arose on social media.
TechCrunch:
SEC filing: Sequoia Capital has raised nearly $1B for later-stage US investments and ~$2.4B for venture and growth deals in China  —  Noted Silicon Valley venture capital fund Sequoia Capital has raised nearly $1 billion for later-stage U.S. investments and roughly $2.4 billion for venture …
Newley Purnell / Wall Street Journal:
India, which is increasingly trying to shelter local companies, has erected regulatory hurdles over the past year for how US tech firms operate in the country  —  New barriers make world's biggest untapped digital market a slog for Walmart, Facebook; taking cues from China's protectionism

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