Techmeme
January 18, 2020, 9:50 PM

Top News

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
A look at Clearview AI, a facial recognition app claiming it scraped 3B+ images from sites like Facebook, YouTube, and that 600+ law enforcement agencies use it  —  A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.
Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:
FBI seizes the domain of WeLeakInfo, a site offering usernames and passwords from data breaches for sale; WeLeakInfo claims to have 12B+ usernames and passwords  —  Site aggregated 12 billion usernames and passwords from over 10,000 breaches.  —  On Wednesday, police in the Netherlands …
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Tile accused Apple of acting anti-competitively at a House antitrust hearing on Friday, while Sonos testified against Google, and PopSockets against Amazon  —  BOULDER, Colo. — Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google took a public lashing at a congressional hearing here Friday …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Microsoft knows about an actively exploited bug in Internet Explorer on all Windows versions, but likely won't have a fix until the next Patch Tuesday on Feb 11  —  Microsoft has confirmed a security flaw affecting Internet Explorer is currently being used by hackers, but that it has no immediate plans to fix.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Spotify in early talks to buy The Ringer, founded by Bill Simmons, which has a podcast network that had revenue of $15M+ in 2018  —  The Ringer, founded in 2016 by former ESPN commentator Bill Simmons, has over 30 podcasts  —  Spotify Technology SA SPOT -2.31% is in talks to buy sports …
Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
The latest panic that the EU may force Apple to abandon Lightning is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of both the EC's intent and how charging works  —  It's all about chargers, and Apple already makes them  —  You might have read headlines today about how the EU is looking to force Apple to ditch the Lightning cable.
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Airbnb to tie metrics like guest safety to employee bonuses, says it has created dedicated teams to serve all “stakeholders”, which include hosts and guests  —  Ahead of plans to go public, home-sharing platform emphasizes serving ‘stakeholders’ that include hosts, guests, investors, employees
Annie Musgrove / Tech.eu:
Comtravo, which uses AI and NLP to offer an end-to-end solution for booking and managing business trips, adds €9M to its Series B, increasing it to €30M  —  Comtravo, a Berlin-based B2B traveltech startup, has announced a second close of its Series B round, adding €9 million …
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Containous, which says it has built a “multicloud networking platform” for containerized applications and microservices, raises $10M Series A  —  Cloud-native networking company Containous SAS today bagged $10 million in new funding.  The Series A round was led by Balderton Capital …
More: Containous
TechCrunch:
Sources: Eaze, an on-demand pot delivery startup with $166M in funding, raises $15M bridge round, amid struggles with cash and a pivot to selling its own brands  —  The Uber of pot is almost out of cash  —  The first cannabis startup to raise big money in Silicon Valley is in danger of burning out.

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Earlier Picks

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Wall Street Journal:
New York Times: