Techmeme
February 27, 2020, 1:35 PM

Top News

Queenie Wong / CNET:
Facebook cancels its F8 developer conference, which was scheduled to take place May 5-6 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, over coronavirus concerns  —  Facebook said Thursday it's cancelling its annual F8 developer conference, the social media giant's biggest event of the year …
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says TikTok is “fundamentally parasitic”, always listening, and its fingerprinting technology is “truly terrifying”  —  TikTok is one of the hottest social media platforms but the CEO of Reddit had some harsh words for the popular app …
Aaron Holmes / Business Insider:
Report: Rajeev Misra, head of the $100B Vision Fund, is accused of sabotaging other SoftBank execs for career advancement; Misra and SoftBank deny allegations  —  - Rajeev Misra, the head of SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund, is accused of overseeing a plan to lure SoftBank's then-president into a …
Jason Del Rey / Vox:
Sources: Walmart plans to start publicly testing a membership program called Walmart+ as soon as next month to compete with Amazon Prime  —  Walmart has struggled to keep up with Amazon's online dominance for years.  Javier Zarracina/Vox  —  Amazon Prime has devastated traditional retail.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review: 120Hz screen is nice and battery life is good but the main camera often acts like a first-gen product with first-gen problems  —  A new-generation camera with first-generation problems  —  Samsung has something to prove.  —  That's the most obvious feeling …
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
DoorDash announces it has confidentially filed documents for an IPO with the SEC  —  Food delivery service DoorDash announced Thursday it has taken a first step toward a public offering.  —  DoorDash said it has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Bloomberg:
Sources: Nokia is working with advisers to explore strategic options ranging from asset sales to mergers  —  - Company working with advisers to consider asset sales, mergers  — Equipment maker has cut outlook amid fierce competition  —  Nokia Oyj is exploring strategic options …
Martin Brinkmann / gHacks Technology News:
Google officially adds support for Google Earth on Firefox, Edge, and Opera browsers, and says it is working on adding support for Safari  —  When Google unveiled the new Google Earth back in 2017, it switched Google Earth from being a desktop application to a web application.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Online gaming platform Roblox raises $150M led by a16z's Late Stage Venture fund, reportedly at a $4B valuation; Roblox was valued at $2.5B+ as of last year  —  Online gaming platform Roblox, now home to 115 million largely Gen Z players per month, announced today it has raised $150 million …
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Square beats Q4 expectations with revenue of $1.31B, up 41% YoY, says its Cash App has 24M MAUs, up 60% YoY, with a profit of $144M; stock rises 10%+  —  The company reported its fourth quarter financial results on Wednesday.  —  Square reported its fourth quarter financial results on Wednesday.
Carli Velocci / Windows Central:
Microsoft says it will not attend Game Developers Conference due to coronavirus concerns and will make sessions and experiences available in a digital event  —  The move follows Sony, Facebook, and Unity.  —  What you need to know  — Microsoft Game Stack announced it's pulling out of GDC due to coronavirus concerns.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft says it will likely miss its guidance for its More Personal Computing segment, which includes Windows, due to COVID-19's impact on its supply chain  —  Microsoft shares fell 2% on Wednesday after the company said it doesn't expect to meet the quarterly revenue guidance …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
LinkSquares, which allows legal and finance teams to automate searches of legal documents and eases management of company contracts, raises $14.5M Series A  —  It takes between 20 days to 30 days for a company to create, negotiate, and finalize a contract, according to Aberdeen Research.
More: FinSMEs
Spencer Neale / Washington Examiner:
Ninth Circuit court affirms YouTube, as a private company, did not violate free speech rights when it tagged some of PragerU's videos as age-restricted in 2017  —  A top right-wing, nonprofit organization known for publishing conservative videos on YouTube has lost an appeal against Google, the owner of the video-sharing platform.
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
YouTube appoints Matt Koval, a former YouTube creator who joined the company full time as a lead content strategist in 2012, as its first “head creator liaison”  —  A buffer between YouTube and the creator community  —  YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has repeatedly said that YouTube …
Yomi Kazeem / Quartz:
South Africa-based Jumo, which partners with financial service providers and telecoms to offer lending, savings, and insurance services, raises $55M  —  African fintech has scored yet another major investment win: Jumo, a five-year old fintech startup has raised $55 million in debt and equity funding.
Edward Ludlow / Bloomberg:
Ford's e-scooter rental startup Spin to expand internationally, starting with Cologne, Germany, as soon as the spring, with plans to apply for a permit in Paris  —  Spin, the scooter-sharing service owned by Ford Motor Co., is expanding to new markets outside of the U.S.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Facebook says it has paused use of the election reminder feature in the EU after the Irish DPC raised concerns about what data it collects and how it is used  —  Big tech's lead privacy regulator in Europe has intervened to flag transparency concerns about a Facebook election reminder feature …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Generate Sample Data the Way You Want It Using AI, for Free  —  Finding good sample data is harder than it should be.If you've ever tried to test a dashboard, build a demo, or train a team on an analytics tool, you know the drill.
IDrive:
IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI  —  L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
The A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR's Ajeya Cotra
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Big Technology Podcast:
Cloudflare CEO: We're Ready To Block Millions of Websites From AI — With Matthew Prince
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Brian Singerman from GPx
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:35 PM ET, February 27, 2020.

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.

More News

Denise Howard Long / OneZero :
Charles McLellan / TechRepublic:
New York Times:
Michelle Cheng / Quartz:

Earlier Picks

Casey Newton / The Verge:
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Aaron Harris / Y Combinator:
Nick Statt / The Verge: