Techmeme
March 2, 2020, 11:25 PM

Top News

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Waymo raises $2.25B from Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, parent-company Alphabet, and others to scale up its autonomous vehicles operations  —  Waymo, the autonomous vehicles division of Google parent company Alphabet, just got a massive capital infusion from a coterie of investors.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google updates Pixel phones with new Motion Sense gesture controls, emoji, AR effects, car crash detection for its Personal Safety app, photo and video features  —  One of the benefits of owning a Pixel smartphone is that it improves over time as Pixels are first to receive updates that deliver the latest fixes and improvements.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Report: senior management at Apple rebuffed some operations execs' suggestion to relocate part of its manufacturing from China to Vietnam as early as 2015  —  Production on Apple's devices has been stymied in recent weeks due to delays caused by the coronavirus outbreak in China.
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Apple agrees to pay up to $500M to settle a US class-action lawsuit accusing it of quietly slowing down older iPhones  —  (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older iPhones as it launched new models …
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Behind Facebook's rewrite of Messenger, going live today, that has shrunk the iOS app's size from 130MB to 30MB and its codebase from 1.7M to 360K lines of code  —  To make its iPhone messaging app run better—especially on older phones—Facebook rewrote it from the ground up.  The new version is going live now.
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:
Report: Apple and its suppliers are among the 83 big companies benefitting from China's abusive labor transfer programs for Uyghur Muslims and other minorities  —  A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think-tank has named Apple among 83 other major companies benefiting …
Bloomberg:
Robinhood says it has been experiencing a “system-wide outage” today that it is affecting “all functionalities” on the platform  —  - Issue has been identified and fix is under way, company says  — Some customers of online broker couldn't access their accounts
Chris Welch / The Verge:
AT&T TV launches across the US after rolling out in over a dozen markets last year, with prices that start at $49.99/month but go up dramatically after a year  —  AT&T's next big TV play has a problem: pricing  —  AT&T TV is launching nationwide today after initially rolling out to over a dozen markets last year.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
US sanctions two Chinese nationals for allegedly laundering cryptocurrency for North Korea's Lazarus Group, which has hacked two crypto exchanges since 2018  —  Two Chinese men laundered funds from two hacked cryptocurrency exchanges.  —  The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions today …
About Facebook:
Facebook to begin publishing a monthly report on coordinated inauthentic behavior, says it took down 467 Facebook accounts and 1,245 Instagram accounts in Feb.  —  We're constantly working to find and stop coordinated campaigns that seek to manipulate public debate across our apps.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Verge survey of 1,123 US adults: 72% said Facebook has too much power; 51% said Google and YouTube should be split up into separate companies  —  Ahead of the election year, we polled Americans about which big tech companies they trust with their personal information …
Financial Times:
Analysis: one-third of donations from employees at big tech firms went to Sens. Warren and Sanders, despite a lack of enthusiasm from tech executives  —  Progressive Democratic candidates receive most cash from tech workers ahead of Super Tuesday  —  Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders …
Jack Nicas / New York Times:
Study: YouTube has reduced recommendations of some conspiracy theories like flat earth and QAnon but has let others flourish for topics like climate change  —  A new study examines YouTube's efforts to limit the spread of conspiracy theories on its site, from videos claiming the end times are near to those questioning climate change.
Olivia Carville / Bloomberg:
Sources: Airbnb's long-planned IPO, previously scheduled for March or April, has been derailed by the coronavirus fallout and could be pushed back to 2021  —  - Startup was targeting first half to kick off the process  — Shares of rivals dive as travel bookings canceled globally
Mike Isaac / New York Times:

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
Cultivating creativity and innovation in the modern workspace  —  In the realm of modern business, success depends on more than just delivering products or services—it requires an environment where creativity thrives and new ideas are welcomed.
Mastodon:
Donate to Mastodon  —  Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you.  Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.
The Kevin Rose Show:
How to Cultivate Everyday Dharma, Suneel Gupta (#54)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 04/24 - What Now For TikTok?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:25 PM ET, March 2, 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

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Thomas Ricker / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch: