Techmeme: Airbnb rival WhyHotel, which operates temporary hotels out of unrented luxury apartment buildings, raises $20M Series B, bringing total raised to $35M (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)

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December 15, 2019, 3:35 PM

Top News

New Orleans Times-Picayune:

New Orleans declares state of emergency, shuts down its network after a ransomware attack on Friday, says it had found no signs that data was lost in the attack — Collin Arnold, the Director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, speaks during the press conference …

Tom Simonite / Wired:

Researchers: deep learning, which led to great advances in AI over the past decade, is nearing its limits and new approaches are needed for further progress — Leaders in artificial intelligence warn that progress is slowing, big challenges remain, and simply throwing more computers at a problem isn't sustainable.

More: Wired and MIT Technology Review

Tweets: @wired, @alessianigretti, @juansequeda, and @joemckendrick

Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:

Palantir wins a one year $111M contract to connect US Army's operations systems into a single dashboard; Palantir reportedly took over Project Maven — - Company beats Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Accenture, Deloitte — Peter Thiel-backed company is also working on Project Maven

More: Beyond Search. Tweets: @blmohr, @jasonlk, and @impcapital

Reuters:

Argo AI CEO says the company plans to charge per mile for using its autonomous tech in commercial vehicles; sources: Ford and VW each own around 40% of Argo AI — PITTSBURGH/DETROIT (Reuters) - Sky's the limit optimism about self-driving cars is giving way to tougher questions …

Jonathan Vanian / Fortune:

Q&A with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins about its new business line - standalone networking chips to win big datacenter clients like Facebook and Microsoft — Cisco is best known for selling routers and switches, but now the networking giant is expanding into the highly-competitive business of selling computer chips.

More: Bloomberg, ZDNet, The Register, Network World, Wall Street Journal, FierceTelecom, TechRadar.com, Silicon Valley Business …, Forbes, Computer Business Review, and SiliconANGLE. Tweets: @fortunemagazine

Amy X. Wang / Rolling Stone:

Music streaming subscription prices have remained flat for a decade, amid competition from tech giants like Apple that can operate their music arms at a loss — The price of music streaming has stayed flat for a decade, but not because tech companies are generous

More: Applied Science. Tweets: @trengriffin, @jessicalessin, @brianmcc, @johnwilson, and @paulkrugman

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:

Airbnb rival WhyHotel, which operates temporary hotels out of unrented luxury apartment buildings, raises $20M Series B, bringing total raised to $35M — Airbnb has emerged as the single greatest disruptor of the $500 billion hotel industry over the past decade.

More: PR Newswire, PitchBook, Technical.ly DC, Washington …, AmericanInno, PhocusWire, and FinSMEs

Brian Merchant / Harper's Magazine:

A look at the rise of murder-for-hire marketplaces on the dark web, the vast majority of which are schemes to pilfer money from gullible users — The dark world of online murder markets — On a sunny July day in 2018, Alexis Stern was sitting behind the wheel of the red Ford Fusion …

Tweets: @harpers, @adamshermanesq, @davidparis, @bcmerchant, @craigmod, and @codinghorror

Business Wire:

Imply, a real-time analytics company, raises $30M in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz's Late Stage Venture Fund, bringing its total funding to $45.3M — Andreessen Horowitz-backed firm plans to aggressively expand as demand for Apache Druid (incubating) - based solution grows

More: Imply, SiliconANGLE, Business Insider, FinSMEs, and Pulse 2.0. Tweets: @implydata

Simone Stolzoff / The Atlantic:

A graduate of Slack's Next Chapter initiative, which helps former prison inmates land tech jobs, recounts how he managed to land a full-time job at the company — Jesse Aguirre's workday at Slack starts with a standard engineering meeting—programmers call them “standups”—where he and his co-workers plan the day's agenda.

Tweets: @csinschools, @andrewnebus, @sameerpatel, @ckinstitute, @gregghoush, @tlm, @simonestolzoff, and @theatlantic. Thanks:@simonestolzoff

Michelai Graham / Technical.ly DC:

Arcadia, an app that can help US consumers lower their electricity bills by connecting their accounts to clean energy options, raises $30M Series C led by G2VP — D.C.-based Arcadia has closed a $30 million Series C funding round. — The renewable energy tech company …

More: Greentech Media and FinSMEs

Michael Hytha / Bloomberg:

China-based autonomous air taxi company EHang closed at $12.49 in its first day of trading on Thursday, down one cent from its US IPO price after raising $40M — EHang Holdings Ltd., one of several companies seeking to commercialize autonomous taxi aircraft, closed its first day of trading …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:35 PM ET, December 15, 2019.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:

SAG-AFTRA signs an agreement with Netflix covering The Pete Davidson Show as a podcast, after talks about whether it should be treated as a TV show or a podcast

Antonio Zappulla / Thomson Reuters Foundation:

The Thomson Reuters Foundation says its news brand, Context, will be “phased down”, some staffers will lose jobs, and the site will remain up as an archive

Bloomberg:

Meta and Snap report minimal impact from Australia's teen social media ban as it affects a small number of users who aren't high-value targets for advertisers

More News

The Economic Times:

Flipkart and Walmart invest in Ninjacart, a Bangalore-based fresh produce supply chain startup; sources had said earlier that Walmart could invest up to $50M

More: The Indian Express, Entrepreneur, The Financial Express, Firstpost, Moneycontrol, Business Insider, Livemint, The Hindu BusinessLine, YourStory.com, PYMNTS.com, Inc42 Media, and Quartz

Tweets: @ninjacart and @investindia

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Carsome, a Malaysia-based marketplace for trading used cars, raises $50M Series C from MUFG Innovation Partners and others to grow in Southeast Asian markets

More: NST Online, The Business Times, KrASIA, and DealStreetAsia

Zen Soo / South China Morning Post:

Grab says that food and financial services, which have better margins than ride-hailing, now generate more than 50% of its gross merchandise volume

Tweets: @trengriffin

Alex Wellerstein / Restricted Data:

Creator of NUKEMAP, which lets users visualize effects of nuclear explosions, explains why it isn't using Google Maps anymore, citing API stagnation and pricing

More: 9to5Google, The Verge, and iPhone in Canada Blog

Tweets: @wellerstein, @dancow, and @carnage4life

Financial Times:

Fintech startups in Asia are proving to be formidable competitors to traditional banks, offering a slew of financial services, but many are bleeding cash

Tweets: @tonyw, @cristinagberta, @anandaramsanjay, @trengriffin, @mohossain, and @financialtimes

Earlier Picks

Will Knight / Wired:

China's AI unicorns like Megvii, which thrived on government contracts for facial recognition, are now facing challenges amid US sanctions and cheaper tech

Tweets: @scottthurm, @ealmirall, @psb_dc, @willknight, and @privacyproject

Kane Wu / Reuters:

In China, investors and bankers say SoftBank's involvement, once a sign of promising prospects, is now viewed as a red flag that a company was likely overvalued

Anil Dash:

Instagram's limit of allowing one web link for users as a “Link in Bio” is a slow knife - a subtle, pervasive attempt to kill the open web

Tweets: @mimosaishere and @rdw0409

Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:

Researchers claim they used 3D masks and photos to deceive facial recognition systems used by Alipay, WeChat Pay, Schiphol Airport, and train stations in China

More: The Verge, International Business Times, Gizmodo, and infosecurity-magazine.com

Tweets: @briansolis, @boycotthegemony, @privacyproject, @bruno_j_navarro, and @jeffjohnroberts

Michael Sheetz / CNBC:

Morgan Stanley estimates Amazon is delivering half of its US packages, will soon pass UPS and FedEx in total volume, at a current rate of 2.5B packages a year

More: The Verge, TechSpot, GeekWire, Android Central, and PYMNTS.com

Tweets: @ericjhonsa, @cryptonetwealth, @craigmod, and @cmroberson06