Techmeme
December 6, 2019, 11:20 PM

Top News

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Report: Magic Leap sold ~6,000 headsets in six months after release, compared to a goal of 100,000 in the first year, and recently laid off dozens of employees  —  And Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly left its board  —  Magic Leap's sales numbers reportedly haven't matched CEO Rony …
Caroline Spivack / Curbed NY:
Report: Amazon leases 335K square feet of office space in NYC without any tax incentives, less than a year after pulling out of its larger HQ2 campus deal  —  The e-commerce titan remains interested in the Big Apple  —  Amazon has inked a lease in midtown Manhattan less than a year …
Jacob Pramuk / CNBC:
Bernie Sanders unveils a “High-Speed Internet for All” plan with $150B to build publicly owned broadband networks, wants to break up ISPs like Comcast and AT&T  —  - Bernie Sanders announces a plan to expand rural broadband internet access and break up giant internet service providers.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Adobe is acquiring Oculus Medium, a virtual reality sculpting tool launched in 2015, from Facebook  —  New updates will be coming in 2020  —  Adobe is acquiring Oculus Medium, a virtual reality sculpting tool originally revealed by the Facebook-owned VR company in 2015.
Kate Clark / TechCrunch:
Profile of VSCO, a photo-sharing app with a reported valuation of $550M, which is trending towards 4M paying users in 2020, up from 2M in late 2018  —  No likes, no comments, no follower count — VSCO sells a sense of belonging  —  Long before Instagram toyed with removing “likes,” VSCO …
Sohee Kim / Bloomberg:
Sources: Galaxy S11 and Galaxy Fold clamshell to sport a 108MP sensor for the main camera and 5x optical zoom, with S11 also getting an ultrawide-angle lens  —  - The Galaxy S11 and clamshell Galaxy Fold will feature 5x zoom  — Next flagship to have almost every camera phone feature
Kate Conger / New York Times:
Kelsey Sutton / Adweek:
Survey of 2,000+ US users: 50% plan to subscribe to new OTT services, of which 64% intend to downgrade/cancel existing subs; say they spend ~$76/month on video  —  25% of people are actively looking to cancel video subscriptions, according to a new PwC survey  —  Key Insights:
More: PwC
Brian Feldman / New York Magazine:
Facebook's tactic of announcing features for a small minority of its users often garners positive press coverage, even if the features aren't live for most  —  Yesterday, Facebook announced an uncharacteristically useful tool, one that would transfer photos from a user's Facebook account to their Google Photos account.
Tali Arbel / Associated Press:
14 US state AGs seeking to stop the T-Mobile and Sprint merger head to trial on Monday  —  NEW YORK (AP) — A high-drama telecom deal is heading to court.  —  T-Mobile, in its attempt to buy Sprint for $26.5 billion, has already notched approvals from key federal regulators.
More: Android Police and CNETTweets: @honestduane
Scott Stein / CNET:
Qualcomm unveils 5G-compatible Snapdragon XR2 to power standalone headsets, says it is working with Niantic Labs to develop a reference design for smart glasses  —  VR headsets take you places and AR headsets show you things in the real world that aren't really there.

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Earlier Picks

Brian Barrett / Wired:
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: